part 1 - suspended letter

here's one story: i've known you, for a long time - most (all?) of this life - beyond. you chose me and your father. you chose us when we were small, like you were small and watched us - and bided your time. i felt you - i've felt you and sensed what you were like - palpably - since I was in my early twenties. i felt you walking beside me, a little boy, and i reached in a gesture strangers wouldn't notice, to take your hand; our laced fingers swung between us down dark city blocks and shadows while i walked - displaced in time. i was a little drunk, i think, and if i might have felt a bit silly, this was overridden by how right it felt.

i never thought much about wanting children but there you were. this did occur. and when you were inside me - when i was pregnant - then too - i sensed you - your humor and imagination and light - i felt your wings and energies and thoughtfulness - i recognized your face in the crowd of unknowing and through your infancy when you cried and yowled - so much - i knew - i knew you behind and above and through the petty details. i was still scared though - i doubted myself - especially when i was pregnant. during my first trimester, standing in my little apartment, i told your dad that i was so much a kite without a string and he said he thought that was ok - you would be my tail. i've remembered this - often - prophetic and such a valuable thing he said to me, though in no way does it suggest that i am your kite. of course.

my first blog posts - i tried to clarify reasons for having a blog. but 'reasons' skim a surface i don't want much time on. we look for sense, reason, when in fear of the unknown or uncertainty, and do find what will comfort us - the human mind wants to explain and is good at it - the human heart, to wonder and experience awe. but - if I put into words for myself, as I sometimes do, a reason to continue - to not scrap this sporadic blog effort entirely, you are there at the thick of it. there are other pieces to my calling too - but - it has become a place that i am building for you to visit me when i am no longer here - after i die. euphamisms are easier but also so awkward. i don't know how to say it.

my posts are not nearly as consistent as i'd thought they'd be - wish that weren't so, but it's difficult. sometimes i tell myself, "just pick a notebook, open it, and transcribe." sometimes this works. other times, it is not so easy. i get lost in language that flowed through me and seems not even to be mine. it's all one verse begun decades ago - my uni verse - my part of it will be done when i am. so, breaking it into pieces that stand of themselves, can be daunting. sometimes, it ... evokes ... too much emotion. for the same reason, i don't listen to music that i love more often. i get overwhelmed - if i'm trying to listen while doing other things, i end up dancing instead or writing (even more into notebooks i'll not likely get around to posting) - or otherwise immobilized and 'unproductive' towards the chosen (multi) task.

when i write, usually it is not with forethought or a subject in mind - through retrospect, i can infer a meaning but that meaning shifts with where i happen to be planted at the time. the last piece i posted, it is a new piece and i felt the energy of you in it from the beginning - that is unusual. it made me extra thoughtful and is what compelled me to do this - this post here. it is a letter, something like that, i think. i won't give it to you properly; it's written - here - because i need to - for me. and here, it will wait beyond time's convention, broken off moment, suspended and unstuck to history.

time, to me, is ... not what we say it is. we are silly in our clocks and calendars, i can 'feel' they are not 'right.' i understand they serve a purpose but question even that - it might have been otherwise. it often is for me and so, find myself subtley resistent to this convention (and quite a number of others). humans can be so arrogant - ahh - but that comment could turn into a rant - arrogant in its own right - and you know already my feelings about this subject. it's a grace to have that - that you know - already and that we finish each other's sentences - or could - but don't so often, as we still want to hear - as if it is all always new - and it is.

i say all this for myself. you have it already, in one way or another it has been expressed and grasped. i say it here - now - for me - whether or not your read it - or anything here, is not in my hands. it is just here - suspended and free from time's convention - a moment unstuck to history, just as you have been for me and now, are - for yourself. on some level, i imagine you feel it here - all of it - these words waiting - and that is enough.

part 2

for some souls there is a place, deep in ... 'athleticism' (?) ah, but i lack a word ... body/mind spirit ... ? limitlessness - movement's alchemy - breath's bridge - exhertion as a form of prayer.

this Place - we've talked about it; the place of build up, discomfort/suffering/pain - a threshhold, and at some point within it, people stop. it is technically physiological - lactic acid/aerobic threshold, VO2 max - supposedly - it gets called all kinds of things. and it scared you, at first, arriving there during a game or workout - your mind noticed the 'pain' and said panicky things about the burning in your legs and lungs: i can't breathe, this is not safe or good for me it hurts - too much. ohmygod i can't keep going i have to stop - too much - those sorts of things.

i have, in vague, loose ways - talked to people before about my experience with that place and how it is not a stopping point, but a place to begin.

'in the beginning ... the word.' i don't know - in writing, in humanness, i recognize a certain necessity or bondage to this belief, but this leaves off. i listen and hear 'god' listening to me (Mother Theresa unplugged) and that is all. i put god in quotes because i'm not sure one can use that word, free from connected ideas, definitions, which make it too small. maybe most words do this and so, past language, there's more room for .... beginnings. silence can be visited in seated meditation - it is and is absolutely not the same thing for me, though. i've gone into more detail sharing this with you than anyone else because it was relevant to your passion and i wanted to share my discovery that there is nothing to fear. Re-fashioned and related to training for stamina i explained how it is for me, something i seek - or make myself available to; i've learned that my mind comments are best dismissed and they will rattle, then pass. somewhere, past that snagging point is an opening.

we've talked about how sensation, when left unlabeled as 'pain' by thought and association, isn't - it isn't pain at all. you've found your own way to explore this and the discussion has continued. to me, it is just intense experience comprised of temperature, color, a bright but soft light. i think of descriptions i've heard involving near death experience and wonder. i close my eyes at those peak 'crisis' moments and look - my body is there in the effort elsewhere; my consciousness, my spirit hold in pure focus and calm. physical form transcends itself. the strength does not run out - the breath, the power does not come from me - it comes through me - from the Light - and is limitless - past the 'excruciating' point. i have grown disinterested regarding my thought's revolts that might pull me into panicked complaints after so many years of exploring this - beginning when i was around your age or a bit younger. i don't know how i stumbled upon this. it isn't something i sought or tried or worked for. it chose me. just like you. a willingness to 'go there' on most days has grown through understanding that it makes me 'better' in the rest of my life - and for you - than i might have been otherwise. the last words i say, inside myself, before leaving language behind involve gratitude and the inherent vision within blind faith.

'it' is different for you of course, and has changed for me a great deal since i was in my teens. you find your own way - your own experiences through/of spirit - they inform the rest of your life and vise versa - i don't understand your 'details,' but when we are training sometimes, i see it in your eyes - your face - you are there - you get it - and will continue this journey into places within that are the mark and grounding for your unique power.

and so, the symbol of flight and wings. that just became so impoortant to me over the past few weeks - ridiculously so - thinking about it much of the time - and for the blog post with images of wings - i looked for a pair for you - there were quite a few beautiful drawings and i could not decide. that's why i asked you; i pulled up the page and asked that you pick your wings - i showed you the ones i had considered. you didn't think this a strange question or ask why - you ultimately chose a very simple line drawing of smallish wings and i was ... disappointed (?). when i posted later that night, i almost inserted a more elaborate, different pair - the ones (i thought) you'd need to suit you. then - a bit later - i had to go back - i can be slow sometimes - and change them to the pair you chose. this is the pair i almost included for you:

not for you - of course. they look powerful, but - heavy. you chose a pair without baggage - simple streamlined light - economical (boorish word, but they are). you do not need the weight or size for power - you will supply it - the wings i chose suggest a bondage to them in themselves and you don't need to ever struggle with an ache to be free - of your wings. those you have now, suit you now and if they need to grow in any way - like your heart - they just will.

i've continued thinking about wings and your athleticism and ... birds - their flight experience. walking skyler in the 'blue time (as you call it)' - watching them in the coldish wind, i thought of this: do their wings reach that point in flight? burn hurt ache? i choose to imagine that yes/no. they are always 'in the beginning'; - and beyond - wordless pure experience. if those sensations are there, they are inseparable from the joy of being and flight and bird-ness. they purposefully choose to be in the sky when the wind is violent so they can find the angles to ride upslopes and currents and the invisible paths or air - flapping their wings for hours when they travel - against the wind. the burning in their wings - their spirit does not pick apart the experience to fret a sensation as painful or difficult or even intense. a fusion - intrinsically atoned to their being. they ARE flight and the ache isn't distinct from joy - ecstacy - openness (even these - more useless words - that fail in approaching the ineffable). you too, are flight and internal music- the earth falls away and the wind, regardless of mph force or direction, will never be against you; your wings will only understand its power as an ally.

i project a gob of hummanness onto the birds in this - i know - but it's what i've been thinking about and will probably mention in a sentence or two (believe it) before your next conditioning workout.

and finally, because of all this, i am again brought home to reconsider my own spirit. i cannot know that my own wings are always trapped. maybe, just in moments, during workouts (or work ins) - during long talks of listening with you - they unfold - i am not looking - i cannot see - and perhaps it is largely none of my business.

pen soul

{20 years ago, a friend gave me this excerpt from a Rilke poem:

WHO, IF I CRIED OUT WOULD HEAR ME AMONG THE ANGEL'S
HIERARCHIES? AND EVEN IF ONE OF THEM PRESSED ME SUDDENLY AGAINST
HIS HEART: I WOULD BE CONSUMED IN THAT OVERWHELMING EXISTENCE.
FOR BEAUTY IS NOTHING BUT THE BEGINNING OF TERROR, WHICH WE ARE
STILL JUST ABLE TO ENDURE, AND WE ARE SO AWED BECAUSE IT SERENELY
DISDAINS TO ANNIHILATE US.}

................................................

small pieces loosely joined:
the space between breath,
differing lengths -
rooms to retreat, hold,
to wait.


it's as if the words are already there;
my pen scrapes away the white
invisible absence - a substance
in itself,
a letter at
a time.

already there.
my hand moves: a needle on a seismograph or the one i watched respond to
my labor contractions. vital signs - my pen describes convexity, deep
shadow pooling like green waters against skin. places i once believed were
black, just too much blue spilled in one place - layers of it.
in the right light, time on space,
crows turn over backstroke bellyup the sky.
purple pulling out a length of flight
and songs of old men scraped from overgrown gardens
that fight back winter like frightened cats.

it's wings that i want to give you -
i measure with my own arms
a wingspan, then repeat,
mirror reversed, for the second,
comparing symmetry
like the barber that cut your hair when you were small in my lap.

measuring by eye for weight and texture - i think
how to hinge the wings together,
then reconsider - you are their hinge. i will climb a ladder,
hang them from the ceiling by the door
to wait for you to meet them
when you leave.




roots and wings - courage to honor one, drives the other deep.

and mine?
mine too - i feel them in place;
i've always felt them
cramped behind scapula, crowding my shoulder muscles.
deep red - sunset colored - death and birth
colored. Colorless secret. jagged - raked by the light
into weightless columns.

huge.

and impinged.

hidden darker than darkness, threatening,
but also redolent with longing rushing
through space and i wake wet with
sweat from dreams of hovering -
gravity rescinded, allowing removal from
earth, from thought, a safe distance.

wings silent.

still, they inform my every movement.

one can grow used to
annihilation
through beauty.
sometimes, i fear

... Nothing.
in its multitude
of meaning,
i scrape away the white and
feel my wings burn through the spider brambled lines
that open an unlikely horizon.

3

a dream kept to itself - inaccessible unless
it chooses to remember me


fragments - line segments


thread flow flown through
seemingly seamless heart. i live on its
underside - feel the missed stitch
and knot;
arc verses across illusion's surface.
needle in, needle out like your
skipping stone; its split decision
under the surface, whether to break and rise again,
or not.

---

i didn't burn the bridge;
it was already made of flame.
no warmth from its remaining coals,
my boat and oar below,
both carved from water.
unnoticed by the ocean, i'm safe from
and forever
drowning.


---

sometimes, it is as if i hold hands with
my own heartbeat. traveling easy beside me
in a sphere of movement balanced
between transcience and always. the familiar rhythm of
an intimate friend that keeps me as a secret from myself.

---

language of a line,
flesh against my flesh.
bone fused to wooden handle,
breath's loose grip on
pigments tangled at the end of
a brush - if my life, reduced to bristle tips
could be pronounced - this quiet stutter responds to
fine kinetics so slight i'm unaware they're mine.

- bright lights produce all the more
shadow - mine, falling out
of themselves across my line of vision, holding moment in doubt, exploring
the perhaps, resuming without assumption. i am only
painting a line, trying to keep it straight or settle
for good enough illusion - just don't look too close.

i try with eyes shut tight.

trust is a blind line.


... wading through dragonflies.


---


the smell of coffee spilled just below my collarbone, all
warm morning skin sweet and bitter. thick, this scent, circling
amidst other memories - golden smoke around me with
some rust in there, connected to a million de ja vues.

~ fast forward to
relics scattered up
across the sky's upturned soil
turned under towards the saddest light there is
- the glow of it -
too familiar and at odds with lost-after-midnight-hours
- can't find them on the clock
anywhere.

gone silent, except

the sound of a truck in reverse 3 miles away.

nothing between me and the driver. closer to him than anyone else on the planet
right now.

i'd like to sit beside him,
as i imagine him,
not of gender but spirit,
roll down the passenger window
unshielded from lights, celestial
and human - all burning up the sky.

both of us - it doesn't matter who we are,
just,
we are.
painfully alive.

a flame in every cell burning
so brightly it hurts. all soul's, like mine, with
mine, flung over god's shoulder looking back
- rest my hand over his while it shifts neutral towards
reverse - tracks left in the dust,
he wants them straight, feels the blind spot
brailling his movement
crossing the earth.

2

darkness pulls the moon up,
cut in line with the stars.
night falls from her and showers my skin:
i feel like laughing - almost.

dreams recurring and when interrupted, pick up where they left off. perhaps conscious reality is just this, at a collective level; i am an r.e.m. fragment within some other beings wave length. a butterfly's - i must have read that somewhere. i imagine a turtle or seahorse. a dark ocean lit with only jellyfish.

nocturnal sine waves - squeezing between window and wall, humming along my skin,
calling. flight for the sake of flight - for the feel of the wind - i watched them,
all summer - large birds; i feel them now, loose and splitting my heart seam.

merry go rounds most always feel faster to the passenger than the onlooker.
the passing blur of world on a travel weary window's underside. a traveler of the in between

... going and coming - i wish i could choose to make it happen or prevent it: pull a plug so i drain away - but only when i choose.

creped mysteries dropping blossoms. the air snaps amidst otherwise inaudible music, swelling out from the evening's red light, healing the air that felt all scraped up and tuned to static during the day; healing my bodies broken rhythms. drowning music drawing ghosts from the dying. such a small sound - a sigh alone can fall across the whole world and shift its orbit - knock a season clear off the calendar. no one misses it. stories must be told to stay alive.

fragments - 1

we had bee's in our birdfeeder. you saw them coming and going a lot - thought there
was probably a hive. toward evening, the thickness of heat and bright loosened,
the bee traffic slowed; i lifted the lid to check - there it was:
a small hive, cupped in the dome of the lid, cupped in my hand, right by my face
- less than half the size of a tennis ball, rounded like that, but much prettier, really.

i am quite allergic to bees and should carry one of those kits with the self
administered shot. it's been years since i've done that; i'm not sure why. our home
here in particular, seems to attract a lot of bees. this last spring our backyard tree buzzed with tangled hot wires - electrical. it took me awhile to locate the sound - organic harmonic - overhead. i recognized a need for concern, should they swarm after you or our little dog - there wasn't a hive then, that we could see - or aggression - just life - loud in response to the sweet smell of a huge tree. as for myself, in as many years as i've lacked a kit,
i've not gotten stung.

i'm not really afraid of bees; june bugs scare me more.

crashing through the front door, flushed in deep breath. you'd hit the birdfeeder with your soccer ball - hard. enjoyable fear rushing out from your pores - a story
and sun-shine-sweat swarm around you, lifted your words to hold up somewhere
between us, suspended. chased clear around the house and

... a knock at the door interrupts; (the bees?) a neighbor with a big plastic bottle and some kind of spray attachment. a witness to the incident, insisting on justice - we needed to promptly get rid of them. no longer your story - the backyard,
a fog of chemicals perfumed to smell pleasant and not like bug killer. it hurt my eyes.

staggered flight, dropping - we just watched from a distance. they didn't swarm or attack, they just died. you told me later there were four that escaped; you counted - up - towards branches now bland with plain august leaves.
you wondered that they might return and rebuild. i didn't think so.

this morning, barefoot in the backyard early. letting out our dog, i followed. i usually don't do this; even beautiful mornings feel sharp against something in me deep and still rubbed raw from dreaming. i keep a buffer between myself and that edge when i can - a curtain across the hollow where a plate of glass rests,
undecided if it wants to be a window or a mirror.

still, i wandered over to the birdfeeder to ... look. down beside my foot, the dislodged empty hive. a shock of symmetry. bees have 5 eyes - 2 that are compound through which they see color and shape. this science byte i recalled, drifting my thought at the comb ~ disco balls - their vision of the large world manifest and shaped as their home. compound hive - they live in their own eyes. some poet's do this with verse - artist's with music or brush stroke or lines. music - harmonic trees.

in the bottom of the feeder, there were four bees - i fell into a rhythm counting their signifigance - 1,2,3,4 ... 1,2,3,4 . an almost pefect + ,
their heads at center and facing each other. subtle movement clarified
their breath; they weren't dead, but if not rebuilding, than what? how large is a bee's lung? why are some hives huge and dripping with honey and some, like the one by my foot?

it was too hard a thought to imagine they'd wait there, just breathing
amidst temperature and noise, until they died.

anthropomorphism? i'm disinterested. we cannot know what we cannot know. my skin's illusion doesn't separate me. my heart is a disco ball. loss is large. enough said.

perhaps the hurt places in different creatures seek each other out - breed a kind of love between them.

shallow expansion, my breath trailed down, deep, fragment of a word in there unfinished - unconscious - my arms spread wide pushing back invisible walls. long and thin as a girl, i see my shadow, so stubborn and fragile. i want to kneel down and kiss her. boneless, she disappears into my gesture; folded into hope, re-emerging to add the sound of a hive, light and empty, carefully wedged back into the lid of a birdfeeder.

the clouds will not, and so the earth
breaks. in places, the broken
travels deep as sorrow after death of a vow
abandoned: storms would fill the beds of ocean
and river; in turn, they'd mirror heaven's face
in all its occurence.

i pace this broken in silence; it's difficult to navigate
another's heart. brown grass that once spoke in skitter
crunch beneath my feet, offers only husk-mute implosion
- everything pulled out of it. the sun, sad yellow, sits
high in the slate, pauses,
continues.

- reverse chronolgy. stories told backwards.

pulling me like a wind sock behind you, bent back umbrella
slowing your intent. it was only rain; soft, broken glass
slivering us into its mirror: house, house-statue,
tree-billboard, face - mine, multiplied through
your smooth, flat surface. a sharp shot sheet downpour
scored with images collected inside a cumulus freedom.

breathe in.

did you save me that day from drowning?
was the shelter we found really safety?

after the floodgates recoupled - past, pooled at our feet.
old selves, too many to save, floating whitecapped.
possibility in brief offering - a mirror's reprieve,
i was new to you in our lost direction.
for that fractal of time, we might have chosen
any way we wanted.

drops fall still from the falling
weight of my hair. crystal balls tossed
like un-numbered, sideless dice. blank faces
predicting complete worlds,
each in itself; future falling inconsummate.
let it fall - fall many, fall singular,
one down a windshield - rivulet
riveting my eyes
to my eyes,
reflected,
one captive
trajectory
traced back to
your own soul
and mine -
and then
back still
to downpour -
sky, just behind,
the sun's
weak spark
suggesting
Light.

one

breathing body ~
primal desire,
inevitable response; a light grip
on light grafted onto
exhaustion.

two racing thoughts chasing themselves,
the other, always in its way; erode rage.
sweet and dry, thirst wakes my throat
to take morning.
sore and loose against
the bright.

what will i do in my quiet crisis?

foundation passing through me,
lost and found falling again.
slim as a first breath or a last
hope held tight to my chest unbound
at either end tightropeburns put raw
and rapping against this single
moment centered somewhere between my heels
and toes, resisting a stretch back
towards memory or forward, into future.
all i have is the dire need
for balance against a drop on every side
filled with sirens of natural
law and my shadowed, unnatural flaw
to just slacken and open
and fall.

a hurt shadow
runs parallel
to my dream.

it is loaded:
charged with
fatigue; its
artistry is
hungry.

i feel it,
bottomless,
equal to
my ascension.
it does not fall
from me but is,
is always
falling.

refusing fusion
reckless and aloof -
fearing most, my
gentleness.
we keep our
distance; we are
inseparable.

self expression,
press of power dispersed,
weakened breath root
torn between levitation
and grounding. opulent extremes
set tense past tension
and spinning.

in the distance, names are issued
like promisses for comfort.
stories retold about hours
and creation, brushing low over
the forehead of a crowd,
rapt in the florescence
of a mob's stollen voice,
evidenced in collective
furrowed brow.



thought's heart holds open
the curtain between dreamt
conscious and sub and un's reality
in continuum, strung loose
yet precise.
a hammock of sky
swinging stars that hold
within their flames,
the snuff that can
extinguish them;
the lungs dormant plurisy
breathes deep-easy,
for now.

where here, all heart
without thought uplifted
and shifting above thought
without heart:
1+1= ... ... ...
you tell me and
i'll agree and
remove altogether
the numb burrs of
intellect worshipping
itself.

holding steady as
a dragonfly
rapping my cracking
fluent body through
communication's
obstacles; i lose
the place
to land
but trust
my success
and how that's defined:
oblivious to X set in
triplicate on The Map.

clarified as the fire
fly on flaming wings
moving through dry grass
and other fragile things,
successfully consuming
... nothing.

i am not beautiful like you. i am beautiful, like me (unknown)

movement holding
immobile between moments,
dissolving edges
circle a choice
not to be 'smart.'

compelled by exile to concentrate
without interpretation -
every sound indicating
no thing rising from no where:
the burning waste from a star's collision,
rocks compressing small deaths into fossils
and it all brushes full against my flesh
which doesn't exist
past the distance
between each vibration.

every line, reverent.
landscape's forbidden manuevere
through assymetry, conjuring beauty
in stark absence of classic measurement.
an event horizon: so constant, and so
just beyond reach of my synchopated fingerprints.
birthmarks - skin deep;
the long, unfamiliar
privacy of my
own skin.

Elizabeth Gilbert: A new way to think about creativity

i hear the crushed music of underground springs -
the shifting patience in tense unlit candles.
sound becomes meaning.
i decode the world.

listen.

a muse morphs into a tree;
her sighs become sap and
the china thin skin of her ear fuses
through veined leaves against the sun.

awareness uncurls from its tight rest;
verse weds unceremoniously to verse.

coming close in contact with my consciousness,
things change. they aren't made better,
just made mine, if only for how
they have
changed me.

what i acquire leaves my hands open,
open eased empty and
what comes to me moves through me,
moves me, stays briefly
moves on leaving
deep imprint - its tracks like
the underground spring crushing out
its song.

i remember a tired child brought
parallel to the sun in a moment of solitude
yellow cornmeal sifting through thin pink
glass - filling up the whole. she believed in
these things, these at least were things to believe in;
sunlight's prints on her arm and she tracked them
like a hunter would follow an animal, back into
the back of her own soul and she drank the late late night,
cool and sweet sliding down her throat though it was high
dry summer still scented with warmth and regret and
adults and the simple buttons down her father's good shirt
glittering like a trail of tears while she stared
at her small knees - pale hills goose bumped and poking up
from a yellow dress falling away - cloth and faces coming
towards her in blizzards of dots

so tired but she still knew the world to be worthy
even through weary sorrow,
it regailed her with raw intensity and she
liked this world and knew this world
to be worthy of
her love.

grace fullmoon mourning son

it is not in the blink
of an eye or a verse lapping
blindly against its own curves,
circling back, climbing towards
collapse. limping through
subliminal postures, it is not,
not a place within description,
nor a region of reason.

a visceral season. times volume
and temperature,
it has changed.

so many, how many
worlds i lived through
to get to
you.

i don't even try
to tell you ...
you have no need
to know the ragged
past, its waves
retract, evaporate,
re-absorb refracted
light from my
recollection,
collecting in
images - watery,
beveled glass.

mine, but not
mine to share.
their surface
worn smooth,
no hand hold
to grasp-pass on.
only this.

us.

what we create.

i'm going nowhere.
now here atoned
at one; such an
unlikely path.
for you,
i'm brave and
better than
i am for you are
better than
i ever believed
in back then,
and then morphed
quietly into

IS.

in the blink
of a verse.

so clear.

i am,
for this moment,
now. here.

absent

complete within itself.
its stance, immediate; its contact
with my nakedness, quiet yearning.
a singular word beginning, pull
pulled by one other building
an entity beyond thought,
calling reluctantly upon thought,
only briefly. meaning's means
towards end:
silence
again.

long strands, eventual,
language sheds itself to
express, build,
gather a clear space.
words long most for
all that they are not - returning,
return, turn over. verse
breathes and dies and again,
silence. its surface ripped open
by light. shadow responds, dims,
draws down into cracks,
patching imperfection with
absence.

broken
silence
its pieces
wrapped random
in words deeply purposed
beyond careful edit.

and still It's left
unsaid. insular, insolent
insolvent stubborn
withheld urge gathering
around itself - taking on
the shape of wanting to
want for something that
may not be ...
permissable.

augment - add to - improve, remove
myself - nothing's reduced;
the pieces cast off persist
within enamel days,
within porous nights,
too bright, devoid of texture -
fused together in defiant widths
towards compulsion slipping into
simple pattern; as if never
otherwise. hunger is perfectly natural
and naure, perfectly
hungry.

a shift in my chest floor, loosening spill weak
waving lines without frequency - heartbeat rough
and sore yet constant enough to offer
incoherent comfort.

morning coming. it will press down
hard. around three a.m., anxiety
waits in the thread holding dreamlines.
by dawn in all its blatancy,
pain's wrapped a series of bands
heavy, adjusting just above
my belly. i've learned to
announce hurt to
myself then
dismiss it in
the same breath.
a breath i never do
give back to the rest.

here.

here it is still
kept.