1).
i will find words
that belong to you
and return them right
fully. i've have been looking, back
logging desire in my quiet
skin's candor - not asking
to be more than it is - as it is, it is
largely underestimated - a ceiling sealing gravity to its limit.
just passed the past, perhaps time exists only
in us and like god, needs our relics, our reverence, needs
our sentry's securing its edgelessness to each century,
sure as sorrow desires
my eyes and daydream sustains me.
2).
susceptible to self hypnosis;
likely to abandon ruthless monotony for what i create.
daydreaming. easy.
and so you are here
- immediate, transparent and yielding,
solid and fixed to distinct inked-in outlines,
all touch and tactile air rifts between us.
I feel where we aren't and my spirit goes flush
to heat the space where we are. your wet eyes
and dry throat soft, hoarse whisper made moist
when listened through, towards my long silence,
unfolded into more of itself.
barrenness - no questions to answer or answers,
questioned. no abbreviations or run on
sentenced-to-criticism. no witticisms
or humble apologies. no healing
hesitation - this is not convalescence: wounds,
unacknowledged and unwinding. dreams, smeared
together into blank space blocking slumber.
bad patterns exist in nature that we might
seek beauty, but this silence skips, repeats,
plays back, stares blank and unlooking.
3).
in a distant yard an alarm goes off:
broken chain, lost watch lies obscured
and loudly unheard by its owner
beyond earshot - does distance exist without movement?
she is still and far and lost to dawn,
with one hand around 20 sheets
- empty pages, while each voiceless vignette paces
the length of countless small acts waiting. waiting
and down-breaking by unbroken silence.
4).
a newspaper thud-bounces off steps into bushes.
it will rot in the fisters and serve good purpose.
a curtain is opened, but hung over stone wall - still,
light finds its way through blind effort.
an empty office with flourescent switches hitched off.
only now, with human absence, it feels human
and shadowy and soft and the desks hunch
like gentle sleeping beasts, except for one,
piled raw with books bent open while their owner deep
and distant falls far into further urgency.
alarming: the speed of apathy and gentle, unlaundered silence.
light years ahead of shut down, down, downloaded
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