As if braille,
I cannot be traced
Without a quick
Flutter of fingers
Across the page.
Even as I hide
Within words,
My handwriting,
Like kudzu, disguises
My intent.
I don metaphor
And stand still
To cloak certainty
In comfortable
Deniability.
My whispers are
My camouflage—
Hints and misdirection
Like bells nearby
In the dark.
(December 3, 2018)
Often while reading,
I scan the words,
turn the pages,
and then the book
vanishes, and I vanish,
aware of nothing.
To hold nothing,
and have nothing hold,
I desire this freedom–
a breath unnoticed,
as it is
ubiquitous:
Radiant, without center,
I cannot name
my discontent.
A wind, at my ear,
stills as I turn;
yet, still’s nearby.
(November 4, 2018)
Somewhere, not here
A field lies open,
Unframed, without
Mind, as if lost,
Waiting on ritual.
In Increments,
I have changed.
Each day dawns
Into itself;
There is no other.
Hear, and here
As well, I
Still seek
Her across
These echoes:
She followed
A fragile winter
Ice across a lake.
I am cold; the wood
Grown dark.
(October 30, 2018)
“She is a forgery.”
–Anne Carson
since
she fears
she will be
discovered
as
so much
less
then she appears,
she revises
her lines,
practices
improvisations;
until,
she vanishes.
(October 23, 2018)
“I live by impulse, by emotion, by white heat”
–Anais Nin, “Henry and June, A Tunnel of Love
impulse would not wait
to feel the white intensity;
with no emotion to attach,
she’d coldly leap away,
unfinished, unresolved.
no tidy ends in escape,
just bloodied stumps
where our hands were
torn away through neglect,
and unrequited regret.
(August 19, 2018)
Once I wrote to flee,
now I simply erase;
still, they intrude,
like cats crying
for fish at my feet.
They will not go away:
avarice, decay, lies—
all ubiquitous as air.
Explanation’s weight
allows no time to think,
nor decipher machinations.
The charms of language
no longer protect me from
fangs slavering in the street.
(August 12, 2018)
to lost friends
The weight of silence
is not the same
as the weight
of absence;
anymore than the weight
of disappearance
can be the same as
the weight of being left.
The weight of forgetting
is much lighter
than the weight
of the forgotten—
for it does not carry the weight
of all that can be remembered.
(July 25, 2018)
