“my mouth is wet with your life”
–H. D.
He held you
There: loose, free,
Out of control.
As if one could,
In any form ,
Control your you.
You sensed the net
He threw, then sloughed
Your skin, and fled.
(April 30, 2017)
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No Echo
by
I’ve whispered secretsTo you for years,Without response.Who’s deaf? Me,You? Is silenceA response?In a winter’s vault,I am a ghost;You, a projection,A bat’s lyric cryWithout a wallTo reflect definition.(April 26, 2017) -
Dream Into Myself
Out of breath, I arrive through words:The train, the tracks, the station.I step forth into a languageI don’t understand; the simplestRequest skitters across the roomLike kittens: meaningless, chaotic.When I speak from dream, the wordsStretch and pull like carnival taffy;Thick clots burden the gelatinous airWith distorted incomprehension,Bending them back into my mouth,Choking me with my fears. Yet,somehow I manage to arrive,to dream myself here again.(April 25,2017) -
Quiet Life
Silence sounds my shallows;The surface depth is all.Not even a remnant to fathomBeyond what lies in front of me.I hold my head in my handsTo keep it from fragmenting,And floating away, like dust motes’Lackadaisical swim in sunlight.Silence bends against my fear:To say nothing, or to speak,to break silence, to mean nothing;Intent’s imbued, then ignored, in all.In desperate quandary to live my part,I quietly inscribe silence to my heart.(April 20, 2017) -
Resignation’s Not Enough
Like an old ox under yoke who pullsAgain, and again, until he cannotPull any longer; then stops, and waitsas if waiting were an art to besavored, instead of endured like pain,I’m frayed, worn thin from being;From what I’ve been; from who I am.I wait caught in quandary’s eddy,Without knowing what I wait upon.I linger over every trivial decision,As if all time stood still and waitedFor permission to take the tatters,And transform into someone new.I must move; yet I wait, afraid to move.(April 16, 2017) -
Fluid dynamics
Always an other, evenWhen oneself, awareOf oneself as one self—Divisions and elisionsIn simile, motion’sViscous moments;Coiled currents curlInto a helix’s wisp:You are there, as I—You not I, asI not you, as well—All collapse equallyInto a differenceOf syntactical revision(April 14, 2017) -
Shhh
by
It’s easy to keep a secretOne never hears—lostIn misunderstanding’s mazeWhispers slip into echo’sMisdirection and disperseLike the surprise of rosePetals scattered on a path.Without context, the hintsAnd coy flirtations fallInto a soft silence unsureIf the conversation’s at an end.(April 14, 2017) -
Transcendence in Transition
by
A momentCaught in anxiety—A wasp’s angerIn amber’s eternity,His breath left in exhaleLike a lover’s secretWhisper as she leavesBefore dawn(April 13, 2017) -
Secret Cults of Conversation’s Silence
by
I exist in the telling:A story to puzzleOut, a shadowedCharade—inarticulateAnd vague. LimitsMask, lines form—Like walls a room;An emptiness becomes,From nothing, more.Hold this here, a cruxTo hang a cloth upon,A transubstantiationOf me into you.(April 12, 2017) -
Puzzled
by
“Words turn on the mischief of their telling”–Ann LauterbachAs a child, as still now,I played with tanagramsArranging, then changingThe blocks as arrayed.From such simple set shapes,More complex could evolveWhile holding anew theirSimplicity; as if,What one can expressCan also be said so,With as little effortAs several small wordsArrayed upon a page.I’m the shape of my words,Reshaped then, then again.(April 10, 2017) -
A Comfortable Death Waits Here On Death
by
It’s easy enough to plod alongThe path I’ve plodded along nowFor years and years and yearsIt’s a comfortable road clearOf brush slow graded curvesNot too steep anywhereBut not much new to see whichI haven’t seen before todayOr before the before of todayThe flowers are lovely this yearAs they always are in springYet such pleasures aren’t enoughI no longer care to walk hereIt’s too easy to die here(April 7, 2017) -
Another Day Broken
Along the edge of the cup,Like several of our cupsAnd glasses, there’s a chipCaused by the benign chaosOf the house: overloadedDishwasher, dishes piledNear the sink waitingLike many things waitFor attention, for careI don’t know what to say,What to do anymore nowThan anytime beforeI hold the cup, feel its warmthTake a sip, and think of you(April 6, 2017) -
What’s Not Spoken
the silence’s thickand uncomfortableone’s aware withoutreason without beliefof the beastwithin a cavecoughing bloodinto the bowloffered to youand you’re afraidsomeone’snoticedand it’s youunable to speak(April 5, 2017)
