Monthly Archives: December 2020

Remade

As if someone has put hands
on either side of my head
and lifted it one inch off my shoulders

turned it completely around
and let it fall back into
its accustomed place

Looking at the same world
with eyes forward again
but the notion of my mind and body

forever changed
so that nothing
is in its original frame

and how I interpret
what I see now is detached
from old context

This is how I fell into
this desperation about
my now obsolete name

I am not that
Do not call me that
Can you not see

I look the same
but am somehow
altogether again and so new


The Big Window

All is right
with the world

you can see through
the big window

Windows are made
for breaking through

on your way to
the world outside

which is where you want to be
and where they don’t want you to go

They can’t understand
the garbled fuss in your mouth

that comes from
your unarticulated longing

or why a fall from that big window
looks like that yearning fulfilled

You try to tell them
the little cuts you’d suffer

would be blood
worthwhile shed

and that sudden stop
at the bottom

a wake up call delivered from
four stories up

to anyone else trapped
behind the big window

You’re fine with that
but they are less so

You curse your body
that clings to the chair

that will not do
what you want it to do

its fear of what comes after
the breaking of the big window

holding you back as solidly as
any chain or pillory

All is right with the world outside
yet you can’t even break a corner

of the big window to feel it
They won’t even let you

open it just a crack
and feel the air out there




Be back soon

Just getting through some stuff. Back soon. Sorry about the delay.

T


Legacy

If there was ever tenderness
I have forgotten it.

I do recall
how honest you were,

telling me not to go
the route you went,

and here I am now,
somewhere else entirely.

If there is a rationale
for your advice,

I have become its
embodiment. I indeed

ruined everything. Indeed
I am myself a ruin:

a mystery, an unexcavated
burial chamber waiting

to be bulldozed and regretted.
Hear them revving their engines

now. You are still here and will
be here after they pass — no one

guessed that would happen.
When they finish the road

over where I was, you will
take it to wherever it goes.

I’ll be in the blacktopped
earth, still underfoot.

I did not go the route you took.
I instead became that route

and look where it got me: if ever I had
tenderness to offer,

it remained unoffered. It remains so
today. Here in the sealed earth it all ends —

for the best perhaps, considering
what I was, what I might have been.