Saturday, April 24, 2010

some poems

i have starred
once, in my childhood, as
the bird that does not sing, and
the rock whose weight
is felt
only by itself
and the ground it pushes
into. i have counted
days, trees, anything
waiting for the day
when I was allowed to
breathe, breathe
though i didn't know
what stopped me: all i knew
was that i can't have myself
and everything else at the same time
now i know
it doesn't matter, you don't have to have
anything and it doesn't have to
be yours, and isn't.
Even love
isn't yours, loves belongs
to the world
and I am here
only to keep it circulating.


Slipping

Stop! Oh, the
--sinking
of it.



Supposing the world
supposes I am
here. Oh, the world
supposing I am here.



Lump of me.
Oxygen battlefie.d
Cropped home.



All of it
leads back to me,
I think.
All of it
thinks, hears, feels
is full
is total.



Sight of
generous
opening--



Sand shifts.



Leapoard
exposes no
spots.



The fragile
length between
myself and my
self runs
away with me.

*

Long parenthetical
marks deplete me--
a drip, a running
tail of language
oxygen-free, allowed
to the beginning
to the first
notion of time.

*

Course, dependable daylight
sinks nose down
into me.

*

You are wrong
to think man
cannot expose
himself.

He breathes a wire
film, shares thickly
the sink of his
modern beginning.

The Way The Light Finds Me

Count to ten,
slowly.
Take a step,
a deep breath.

Run your voice
through the air
listen to leaves
shake out
their own voices.

First,
I have to find me.

Light creeps
around me, slowly.
Listening.

***

new poem:

light
does not have knowledge
of the sun
but moves through and about
from it, enacting
color and performing
day and time
a morning, a silver
beginning, could be
diseased, could be
could be
who remains
underneath broken pieces
of light
light that runs trails
light that shudders
and quivers and
furtively touches
of knowledge,
light ruminates
noiselessly
and we listen
but nothing ever
speaks, it is only ourselves
our voices offering
plaintive answers
when nothing has
ever been asked of us
anyway.

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