Category: ritual

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Parasite

I project myself onto a new world

Which is not mine, but simply becomes mine.

These become moments when something happens

And nothing happens. I exist tangled

In marginalia, a handwriting

Stitched upon the edges. Another book

Becomes a palimpsest to my tired thought,

A filter to strain away the slither.

Roman priests examined the intestines

Of animals slaughtered for sacrifice.

To devine auguries in the moment,

When something happened, and nothing happened,

They would take the eviscerated signs-

The clots of blood, the bits of flesh, as truth.

(November 30, 2018)

A Confession Must be Heard

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Much of what I write these days

sounds like a rote confession;

yet, I am no savior, even to myself.

So to hear the nuance thicken

around a verb in my own ear,

I must speak a native tongue;

and like all true stories I tell,

I shape myself to a form

which best suits my desires.

I collect what is at hand,

charting all my little failures

as profound, as if the paucity

of my life could ever be enough

to transcend these humble clichés.

 

(May 31, 2108)

Against the Background of the World’s White Noise

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Repetition runs counter to chaos.

The steady tap-tap declares one

to be; it belies the random

scratch upon the prison wall.

Only for a moment one rises

above the skitter of rat’s feet

through dry straw to say it

again: I am here, I am here.

 

Too often ritual’s condemned

as too difficult a constraint

to work within. Yet, there is no

freedom in the sun’s fire and fusion.

Freedom’s found in the patterned

improvisation of predictability.

 

(May 7, 2018)

 

Communion

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love and fear bond us

the collaborative

notion we are dead

without the other

that god exists

within not without

as the beast devours

the ones on the edge

together we hold

what wisdom we have

in the stories told

as we eat our bread

 

the dead like god live

as wine in our blood

 

(February 8, 2018)

Time’s Lackadaisical Continuum

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A fire flares and flickers

As the dark embers pulse,

Keeping beat to the dancer’s

Feet twirling in a circle.

He hesitates to speak,

To throw his slow mind

Into relief against her quick

Laughter rippling the room.

His words bind him to earth

Like roots tangling underground;

Hers flutter like butterflies

Rising as one from flowers.

 

Flames, flowers, roots and embers

Turn, and turn, and turn again.

 

(January 30, 2018)