W
“and I am
out with hanterns, looking for myself”
–Emily Dickinson
Despite the lights in the house,
The darkness penetrates.
It assumes positions in corners,
Presumptuous in its domain.
Like lions pace a cage’s confines,
I am lost in loops of thought
Looking for a set of keys
Which will let me inside.
Yet, there is no rest within
Nor without which can comfort
Enough to bring a closure;
Locked in my obsessions,
I worry each item in turn,
Tangled like tumblers at a fair.
(November 26, 2018)
The river runs dry,
and he has no bait
for stones. Distantly,
delusion shimmers
a claim on intimacy
somewhere beyond
the moving horizon.
He writes towards
her, casting out lines
in hopes of catching her
in a turn of phrase,
where she will see
herself, and come
to know his slow intent.
(September 7, 2018)
It’s not fair to compare
one to the other where secrets
are apropos to a love affair,
or some distant war as far
as that goes. Yet, what’s to be
done to stop it? What metaphor
within yourself were you willing
to sacrifice? As long as one
doesn’t mind water swallowing
your words, it’s simple enough
to drown in any nearby river.
I, too, hold my expectations
at a distance in order to live—
I’m not sure what occurred,
or even if we were just lovers.
(August 15, 2018)
You were a dream, as was she,
but neither of you were the dream.
She kept shifting from dark to light.
Both of you were, simultaneously
light and dark, entwined like lovers
tangled in a kiss. He watched, intrigued
and somewhat guilty, as if a voyeur
peering through bedroom blinds.
The dream kept returning to you
and her together, but not together;
separate in your costumes and colors:
red and black lace against warm skin;
a part of the ambient background
reasserting itself again into day.
He woke often, then returned to you,
in the dream, with her. The dream
turned the morning back into itself,
until where each of them left off vanished,
like promises which were never made.
(May 7, 2018)
She infused your words with hers
as you did not say what she intended.
The words in the letter in the dream
swirled and slipped across the page.
You began to read like a film voiceover,
then her voice became stronger erasing
your words as she spoke your confession.
You knew she knew you knew she wrote
to you she thought; but was unsure
the letter, your letter, her words said
as much. If only she did not know
the letter, as her desire, was a dream;
and no amount of bland exposition
could explain away her obsessions.
(May 2, 2018)
embers, embedded
beneath the snowy ash, burn
slowly, secretly.
(April 29, 2018)
I am told they say the language
is always already there waiting
to speak to hear to wallow in
like in omphalos blood coated
before the nascent cry cuts
sharply through the thick air
I have lost my metaphor
which becomes my metaphor
absence replaces other semblance
I suppose one cannot escape
language’s chains as they rattle
like bones in a cup the words
we speak in guarded greeting
each morning each to each
(March 23, 2018)
