subtext

My Poetry and Commentary on Life

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by

chant, definition, fragments, memory, poetry, sonnets, traces, writing

“These fragments I have shored against my ruins.”

–T.S. Eliot

fragments of memory

figments of memory

traces of memory

trances of memory

dances of memory

dresses of memory

redress of memory

represses of memory

tresses of memory

trembles of memory

resembles of memory

assembles of memory

assertions of memory

assuages of memory

(December 2, 2014)

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then you’re old

by

acceptance, haiku, poetry

sitting with pigeons,

trees dapple him in sunlight;

a wind slips through.

(December 2, 2014: salvaged from a notebook-2003)

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ouroboros’ hunger

by

despair, poetry, tension, unstable

I am a worm

absorbing and excreting

my earthy remains:

I strip away

nagging remorse;

strip away

all desire

for some other

than now,

to find

I return

a blind dog

along cold traces

filling in old vacancies

with ornate mouthings

that gnaw

their silent hunger

through my skin.

(December 1, 2014)

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Love Letter

by

erato, eros, hope, love, poetry, reader response, sonnets

I cannot reach for you

nor embrace you

as a lover

my arms are numb

they hang slack

like a marionette

broken immobile

without strings

these lines must do

to seduce you

my words are an act

reaching beyond now

to touch you again

and again with this kiss

(November 29, 2014)

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love’s clichéd agency

by

control, definition, erato, eros, love, paradigms, poetry, sonnets

strip the tendons

from the heart?

burn what life’s

left at your alter?

how much sacrifice

must be tithed

short of it all?

Is that love?

I offer only this:

friends can be lovers

as well as any other;

true, actions speak:

lips trace kisses

down her hips.

(November 26, 2014)

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I Write Into What I Think I Hear

by

attention, erato, obsessions, poetry, traces

a dry flutter

lost unvoiced

you come unbidden

on obsession’s wing

I write it down

lest I forget

the happiness

amid the fear

in lines of poetry

and incidental

sentences I hear

your voice’s echo

my conversations

are delusion

your words embroidered

tight along an edge

(November 24, 2014)

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Rebirth

by

change, hope, poetry

Moon,

O, Lover!

Embrace my Darkness!

(November 24, 2014)

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Narratives

by

chance, erato, eros, fate, poetry, traces, ways of knowing

he could tell the story

with a different end

a different beginning

more wild less mundane

one where she would listen

as he read poetry to her

in their bed then whispered

desires the length of her skin

until they both fell in love

laughing one into the other

instead he wonders

at missteps and chances

which opened and closed

like butterfly wings

briefly before flitting

away from the field

to other flowers

other lovers

other possibilities

he was unwilling to tell

(November 23, 2014)

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Whip Stitched

by

change, fragments, poetry, unstable

I dissemble my parts

rendering what integrity

remains into lies

to feed the beast’s

hard laughter.

I listen, eyes wide,

a ventriloquist’s puppet

trying to speak

from someone other

than myself.

I am a mockery

slurred through bruised lips.

The loose patchwork

does little to disguise

the hand at my heart

fingering each blood drop

until it relents

any semblance of truth.

(November 22, 2014)

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the ink speaks into nothing

by

communication, erato, hope, obsessions, poetry, traces, ways of knowing

As a silk veil drapes

across a coy desire,

a whispered tease

hides in our noise;

so say it again,

some flow of image:

I wish you were here- –

a correspondence

without closure

again as it began

vaguely from the nothing

between my words.

As if within

handwriting’s flow,

the letters inscribe

an incantation,

a circle to contain

all we wish to define.

(November 21, 2014)

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You and I

by

borders, interrelationships, poetry, ways of knowing

“Je est un autre.”

Arthur Rimbaud

you was

circled

in red ink

like a noose

with words

trailing along

the margin

of your poem

asking

who is you

the teacher

wanted to know

you wanted

to say I

am you

but you

did not

because you

knew

the you

was the same

as the one

who berates

you for all

you do

who stares

blankly

back at you

from the mirror

as you shave

with a razor

at your throat

and you knew

to step out

of your self

reflection

and speak

as one

to claim

the other

would cross

a red line

and your voice

would wash

the world

in your blood

(November 19, 2014)

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Duality

by

borders, chance, erato, hope, obsessions, poetry, sonnets

As when I was a child

to catch my other self,

like Peter Pan’s shadow,

I’d stand near a mirror

peering around a corner

to see if he was still

there, or had vanished

into refracted spaces

deeper within the glass,

the chance persists

within my reflections

I can find a place

to hold you other

than in my heart.

(November 18, 2014)

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Losing My Voice

by

doubt, erato, poetry, silence, writing

Not that I will not

be able to express

what I see, but

I will have nothing

to say at all;

that she will stop

speaking to me, and

I will be left with

my own silences;

and the whispers

gnawing on doubt,

like rats skittering,

within my walls,

will go unremarked.

(November 17, 2014)

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Realignment

by

change, control, identity formation, memory, poetry, sonnets, storytelling

turn into the wind to make your way home

there is no other way back to yourself

so easily you fell away for love

or perhaps a misplaced desire’s better

terminology for what twisted you

down rabbit runs like some misbegotten

Alice into an alternative tale

so that the trip back requires reflection

of a sort usually demanded

from ideologically deviant

folk when they are forced to erase their lives

in order to believe what they’ve become

has always been the story they have told

when the differences they have lived are gone

(November 16, 2014)

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the emptiness of a room

by

borders, change, liminal, memory, poetry, sonnets

“even forgetting has its shape in the permanent reality of change”

–Rainer Marie Rilke

I look through a space

back into a space

fixed and transcendent

less of me than more

more of me than less

a jar without a lid

without a hill without

like slow marbles

inside a glass ball

slipping on ice

an expansion away

from either or

from outside to in

from me to some other

(November 14, 2014)

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