The words I have
are enough
to tear
my flesh from bone,
to feed
the ravenous voices,
the hundred mouths
which peck,
and gnaw, and savor
my base
foundations
as if blood.
They are enough
for this—
(August 21, 2020)
Category: inner speech
Another New Year
Another cold night flows
into yet another dark day.
For more than forty years,
I have spoken to silence
unvoiced presumptions,
unvoiced expectations.
Why do I still presume
tomorrow with change?
Why do I still expect
that day will come?
I’m tired of talking,
pretending some one will hear.
(January 1, 2020)
Clarity
What we wish
to hear, what
we wish them
to be: scolds,
advisors, absolvers
of guilt, devour
us like desire.
Yet, table thumps
and tarot cards
talk only
with our tongues.
The dead cannot
speak except
through ghosts
we evoke
in memory
late at night
when we cannot
sleep again.
(December 4, 2019)
Refraction
The mirror’s a mask
for who I think I am;
How long have I been gone?
Where did I go?
The man I see is worn
and fragile, skin dry,
wrinkled; eyes deep
with dark half-moons
floating below them
like shadows on water.
I am not who I am,
yet more than an echo.
the mirror’s a mask
for what I have become.
(September 5, 2019)
Coming to Meet
from “Renditions of Change,” a work in progress
It’s always so simple to trust
an Iago’s words to lift
a bland darkness over
the light like a veil
to hide a leper’s face:
I allow myself to degrade
myself, ignoring my better
angels as if they exist
only as shallow hubris.
(April 26, 2019)
Biting Through
from “Renditions of Change” a work in progress
My voice is not
enough to speak.
(February 29, 2019)
How Poetry Works
An image like a flower,
something simple, a cliche
even, to distract away
from the slight of hand performed
beneath the mark’s open gaze.
Like now, for instance, you turn
your attention from the poem,
secure in your own slow thoughts;
what you trust to know trembles
as if a leaf in autumn.
Here exists my truth and yours.
I can explain myself true,
in a way that you cannot.
Thus, seeds grow into flowers.
(November 25, 2018)
Storied Definition
Within the parameters
Which define me,
Am I who I am,
Or who I have created?
I revise a simple story
Of which I am a part;
The story compels belief,
And I comply completely.
I am only a part of
this story as a voice
I hear, which stays near
Slightly behind all I do:
I am this voice, this story;
I am my only limitation.
(November 20, 2018)
Nothing More
“..truth is often nothing more than meaning”
—Trinh T. Minh-ha
I mean–
what can I say,
you know?
I’m just talking,
to myself.
You know
what I mean?
I imagine you
do, since
I hear what
you’re saying–
You understand
what I mean?
(November 13, 2018)
Circle Maze
“The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.”
–Ludwig Wittgenstein
Emerson once wrote
that the first circle
is that of the eye.
My self fleshed in words
falls in a circle
that binds me to god.
My world’s in my voice
which whispers close by.
The first circle sees
these limitations
inscribed in thin lines
along the edges
of my fragile skin.
The weight of my words
holds me to the ground
where the air grows thick.
No fairy circles
exist to conjure
magic from a dance
only a few know.
I know my own dance;
each step a new world,
each thought adds new flesh
to my empty bones:
my thoughts embodied
in the day’s motion.
I wander slowly,
head bound in prayer,
obsessively lost
in the ancient turns
one must take each day
to gather the strands
that were left behind
by all the others
who tried to escape.
(June 14, 2018)
