subtext

My Poetry and Commentary on Life

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Changes

by

change, identity formation, loss, poetry, response, time, traces

to D. B.

“At each step, don’t you have to give up the previous step taken?”

-Luce Irigaray

a constant leaving

one mind to another

without transition

separate without

separation a diffuse

movement thins

until all parts

exist within all parts

and there is no need

no desire for farewells

(January 11, 2016)

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Ghosts

by

chant, erato, friends, love, muse, poetry, traces, ways of knowing

“I wait for you to come for me from everywhere.”

-Marc Chagall

Carelessly

as broken glass,

I shape you

again within

these tropes and suppositions,

as if you were more than

fog drifting through a field.

No promises,

I promised,

but I lied to myself:

all reasons were mine;

yet, you came along

with reasons

of your own.

And that was enough—

like the butterfly

that landed on your book,

to shatter my pretense

into befuddled

adolescent

stutter and shuffle.

Even now as I write,

you appear tangentially

like a ghost in a different room;

and I sigh anxiously,

conjuring what meaning

I can whisper

from nothing.

(January 9, 2015)

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event horizon

by

abstract, change, identity formation, liminal, poetry, transition

as from a shell

I fall into myself

my skin tight

yet permeable

where I leave off

abstract and uncertain

in the dark

around a silent spasm

a thin membrane parts

into a word

I cannot hear

even if spoken

(January 7, 2016)

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to see’s not to see

by

critical theory, fate, lament, poetry, storytelling, ways of knowing

here is no control

beyond what’s told

history’s glacial claws

direct and redirect

now onto a then

to form a tighter fit

like a horse’s blinder

to turn our head

from the fire

burning the building

down about us

(January 6, 2016)

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Desire for Silence

by

change, dance, erato, hope, meaning, poetry, silence, writing

Though language enrapts us,

Nothing defines us more,

even more, than our words.

The ocean pounds the shore;

the shore resists ocean’s pulse.

I must learn to bend my words

between the sacred and profane:

can my utterance demand

something more from silence?

All the chatter, the clatter

and prattle, dances about

between her bangled feet,

whispering meaning as if

the dust that rises softly

with each step changes

the earth’s slow pattern

enough to unfold a different

shape to what I want to hear.

(January 3, 2015)

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Do You See the Emptiness?

by

attention, broken, change, happiness, lost, narrative, poetry, ritual

Your answer’s sought through

invocation again tonight.

I am tired with a headache;

I forgot to take my meds—

so, I worry causality’s beads.

No doubt, that is a symptom—

one I refuse to, again, look up.

And even that bit of agency,

that bit of non-conformity,

is another sign, another template

through which to bend a metaphor,

until what I knew I know again

like ouroboros devouring the skin

it sheds across a forest’s floor

where there are no trees

to help find one’s way back,

and I don’t know what to do.

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worship’s purpose

by

alone, belief, death, fate, god, life, poetry, response, ritual, sonnets, ways of knowing

such genuflections are required

to appease a darker god than you

can invoke with millennia of prayer:

the bent neck and obsequious

mutters— a mere charade of ritual

to reinforce submission’s place

more than attain some god’s grace

so eat your bread and drink your wine

tell yourself again and again

your life has no consequence

except in questionable service

to a promissory pact in the end

you will be free to be as god

dissolved into non-existence

(December 31, 2015)

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petal’s flesh unfolds

by

communication, desire, erato, eros, interrelationships, language, muse, poetics, poetry, sonnets

“These blooms are not seen.”

–Luce Irigary

what I seek cannot be said

it lies beneath soft voices

a substrate for the spoken

a scaffold like spider’s threads

from which to dangle as the words

work their way past resistances

returning to your flesh what was given

adorning it with roses like kisses

blossoming across untended gardens

wild effusions unfurling its petals

withholding nothing in the resonances

of its deep mournful ululations

which began to bud in the silences

of all we could not say so long ago

(December 26, 2015)

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Dissonance

by

definition, fate, poetry

Full Cold Moon tonight—

high today seventy-eight:

my life in this world.

(December 24, 2015)

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topographic maps

by

clarity, communication, erato, loss, lost, muse, poetry, time

like the flat

relationships

of these lines

to the distant

possibilities

of our true natures

your pattern

I laid upon

myself remains

I bend back now

a switchback

path snaking up

a mountain

as origami folds

the timeline’s

disparate moments

to trace finger

tips to lips

to causality’s kiss

a brushed cognizance

like whispers

much too late

to know who

spoke of whom

if at all through

the dark lost

in our ways

(December 23, 2015)

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what does the silence mean

by

friends, loss, poetry, time, traces

the widening space between

each word as if stars

drifting apart could fix

the dark in which they

vanish slowly over time

like friends I no longer see

(December 20, 2015)

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All the Difference

by

chance, choice, definition, fate, happiness, poetry, sonnets, ways of knowing

One has heart.

One’s heart is death.

One feeds itself.

One’s omnivorous.

One hears music;

one war’s harsh drum.

One plays the fool.

One cannot laugh.

So one chooses:

the well-worn,

the least trodden.

No difference

between the two

beyond the heart.

(December 18, 2015)

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Fragmented Awareness

by

abstract, attention, poetry, unstable, ways of knowing

How much of my day is delusion?

From moment to moment blurs

between stock mutters brandished

like shields softly rattling before

the onslaught of tangential dreams

as I walk through the halls alone.

Each step, each side conversation,

ripples like bells on distant hills

calling and calling for some other

to flow down the valley in streams,

until I drown in possibilities’

endless pulse and thrust.

As a glass resonates on the verge

of shattering, I can feel the first

harmonic trembles flutter along

the edges of my skin. My voice

breaks in waves, then vanishes

into the howling maelstrom.

(December 16, 2015)

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World View

by

abstract, broken, poetry

All is truth;

I am the lie.

(December 16, 2015)

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Then When?

by

haiku, loss, poetry, relationships

Distance is rhetorical:

I’ve sat next to you,

wondering. Where have we gone?

(December 16, 2015)

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