My past imperfections intercede
to lay claim to what I can see.
The air between thickens in time
like delirious veils in the wind.
Each word she spoke I heard
as if her fingers on my arm
traced a secret in braille
I was too blind to read.
*
Now too tired to transform time,
I watch myself as if dead;
the chill pushes through my flesh,
like a rat gnawing in the wall.
Time’s translations fill my silence
with the words neither of us spoke.
(December, 20, 2019)
from “Renditions of Change,” a work in progress
Random borders set blurred forms
to contain apportioned bits
of chaos. He accepts these
chains, like religion, to free
himself from the infinite.
(June 10, 2019)
The ghosts in his forest sift
between the bramble, collect
momentarily in clearings,
and compare notes on their
unconsummated affairs.
His apparition slips along
her edges, begging the margins
she ignores. Annotations,
without context, entangle
his thoughts, growing a life
of their own, a meaning
of their own, as blooms
of moss on the forest floor
disguise the broken trees
in a green effulgence.
He tries to trace her designs
within her fractured words.
Each turn he takes leads away
form yet another possible exegesis;
until, he falls into a clarity
forever uncertain and voiceless.p
(May 5, 2019)
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)
