Dark Matter

Words repeat inside me
as if I had no power:

home,
broken, 
fire, 
gold.

I struggle to decide
if I should write them down,
sing them, say them
out loud to another or perhaps

just to myself 
while walking deep
into a forest
with self-care
or harm on my mind?

It is not as if
I have volition, 
to be honest. To be honest
I cannot recall
having free will or
an intent to do anything
for some time now: weeks
at least, months more likely.

Like a plant in spring,
urged upward unknowing, 
cresting from soil to sun
and transformed being, although

there’s poison 
and smoke and foulness
up here instead of health:

what I am becoming
as home burns
and stone breaks
and gold dulls from want
to fear is unclear; walking
unsure of what to say
under a fiction
of choice, toward
a place where words
may be mine again
to choose and live by
with any luck and 
a break in this fog.

Dove-hearted lover
of a quiet life,
have you ever understood
how hunger can make you
loud even as it makes you weak?

Flower-eyed changeling,
sure of a place in this order,
have you ever seen how those teetering
on a ledge might rage at you
as they fall?

Moon-captured elf holding on
to mythic peace for blind life,
do you see anyone at all
out there in shadow?
They see you:

sparkling
like a target,
a singing bowl 
empty of sustenance
by design.

So.

Sit back,
watch home burning.

Secret evil
soon be gone;
sigh in relief.
Concealed treasure
soon be gone;
grieve it in secret.
Open wealth
soon be gone;
gnash teeth and wail.
What was ever unknown
will remain so;
nothing to say
or do; so:

sit there 
overlooking
ash-heap;
sit there 
on unburned stone,
flameproof rock,

bothered
by one question:

what now,
with so much lost
for good or ill? 

Sit back,
saying,
“so…?”

Voice, trail off;
eyes, close.

When I lay
my last tool aside

and turn to the West
to see the sunset

I know I will think
of how long it took

for the sun to cross
the pale hot sky.

I will imagine that my birth
brought heat and light,

though I was born
in late winter at night; 

I make a myth
of who I am

as any one of us might,
as any number of us do.

The trick is to allow
a myth to be not a lie,

but a story told on behalf
of the truth, even if facts

fit imperfectly, even if
it changes as one lays

a last tool aside
at sunset, at rest.

While enjoying a meal with friends,
a person turning into a broken clock.

Stuck in a moment, struggling
to be present with each guest

yet only seeing each one as
the sum of past shared experiences.

As time moves forward, 
finding it harder and harder

to move their hands
at appropriate intervals

to illustrate the attention
they are attempting to give

their comrades, each failed
gesture ticking louder and louder.

The hands struggling to move.
Unease spreading through the room,

broken clock losing their appetite,
stumbling to a chair, sitting immobile:

too jammed up
to even speak.

Having been pushed
so many times
as far onto a ledge
as I can go
without hurtling off into 
the quick void before
the dead Void,

I have learned
how to wrap my toes
so tightly onto stone
that I could break it apart
through stubborn will 
alone; 

learned a little about how
to reach back into evolution
and summon an ancestor,
an animal I need
to help me survive: this is why

as you face me you feel fear
in spite of your apparent victory
when you see I have been pushed
as far as possible, when you see my
yellowing eyes, when you feel 
the ground crack beneath you
and talons in your arm —

ah, I can see
that you see 
my sudden wings.