Video - Autoportrait A
Originally uploaded by Neal Romanek
a legend,
scaled back,
measured within,
in difference,
inundated,
in attendance.
implicit - the neediness
in storytellers.
telling wants audience.
i listen
and too, i myself tell into
impassive space where
unnamed emotion
stakes its claim.
territorial wealth of sorrow,
emptiness hoarded
and hoarding more
of itself, like a great fire beast
wrapping its wings round its jewels
in sleep.
bereft.
wrung out,
the sponge.
your hands,
like mine,
purple from
cold. cold as white
river water, but the
water’s change color as
you have and I
have. is that bad?
name one thing one
thing that doesn’t chameleon
or shift shape at least
on occasion -anything?
yes.
names.
there are. Yes.
not the same as constants though,
not the same as …
Sameness.
still, not enough is enough
to go around. the size of a fist,
just about … and spongy too.
- the human heart absorbs all ever
changing water’s someone else
wrings out.
visceral and delicate,
the shock simplicity,
the effortlessness of your colors
amidst a grey world,
dry and curling at the edges.
which body
of water
do i dream of?
you tell me.
lead me there to where i am
already. stream after stream, everything
branches - thought event inner working
nerves-electric information veins and valves
and oxygen -
all tracing back
to the heart.
tie in there.
tie in tight
to the trustiest limb
- something breaks down …
the rope, the branch,
momentum itself grows
tired.
on simple days when the air goes dull and dumb,
much is brewing on the other side
of opaque. lifted high, she looks like
an overdue mother, heaven does.
an undersized egg held up to a light -
something winged inside
a cliché butterfly wing.
deliberate, intricate veins.
all you have to do
is fill in the lines
and you can make
any word
you want.
or need,
if you’re telling a story.
silence then, settles into me.
the unasked,
the questioning left
as is, undisturbed
by words.
i’m riding this one out.
why? branching
Y i don’t know Y i’m
trying to y Y Y
believe Y build or cast or
hold the golden thread i am
poetry versus versing
… something something
sleeping in me. I misunderstand
the words. i am,
but i am, yes, just.
… the language .
