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)
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)
like so many broken bones
scattered on a shaman’s floor
wait to be puzzled back
into our imaginations
these are the answers
I do not know as these
are the questions I am
too frightened to ask
the fragments are small and soft
the edges vague indeterminate
how they are to be returned
whole waits troubled for night
as each day’s tenuous relation
struggles to piece the past entire
(November 21, 2018)
in this vacuous world the air is pulled
from these lungs like a scream on a string
a whirlygig’s motion without purpose
other than to click and clack in the wind
as winter branches break against branches
with a self-flagellating destruction
my words flail against themselves in anger
searching for a simplicity not there
I’ve desired to speak since I was a child
but have been hesitant to raise my voice
above the churning storm outside the door
the constant turmoil conspires to control
like a hand at my throat each syllable
until all I could say is ground to dust
(September 26, 2018)
“chiseller of inaccuracies”
–Fernando Pessoa
I would not speak
if I knew what to say.
There would be no need
to form words around
an unrealized dream.
It is the unsaid
which must be given
shape; which calls us
from its shapeless dark
to speak into existence
what we cannot know.
Yet, I know so little
about so much, I must
speak about it all.
I start where I am
which is always here.
First, I must listen,
discern the shapes
before I can speak.
My words carve out
what is there
from what is not
as the silence unfolds
a new kind of truth.
(August 23, 2018)
“I’ll be your mirror”
–Lou Reed
I try to write as I am. Of course,
I could be lying—but that’s the trick,
Isn’t it? To write through the skin
until the pen’s nib scratches dry bone,
until the face I present implodes
into the silence from which it rose.
Even when lies are unintended,
one only knows what one only knows:
the mirror lies as often as not.
(July 27, 2018)
as in rain
arms out
head back
laughing
only my voice
in the way
I open to silence
(July 23, 2018)
