In Isolation

Write, paint, they say;
also, stay away.

Do what you haven’t done;
do it alone.

Break open your inner star.
We will watch you from afar.

Learn, teach, and entertain — 
this is all that remains.

Stay clean, stay safe, 
and then create — 

as if the dirt and risk of living
were never themselves a source of life.

As if an everyday touch of death
was never as vital to me as breath.

I sit and stew and stare
and think of how far removed I am

from what I need to be myself:
to be again the Work itself.

Still, the danger’s out there
waiting for the unprepared.

Here I am, and there’s the world.
I stay enclosed and safe from all.

They tell us all: create and play.
I don’t know how to do that.

I’m terrible at safety, at risk-free art.
Free fall’s better for me by far —

but somehow, though it all feels more like death
than any danger ever has,

the cloister here is less sanctuary
than prison and I am weary

of such long and sterile days;
I stew. I stare. Nothing for me to say.