Being “someone” felt like taking
care of a baby that wasn’t mine,
sad little helpless stinking bundle
of other people’s exhaustion,
expectations, and distress, alone
Category: poetry
life, it seems, in thirds
Commiserations in the negative, the mutuality of dissatisfaction and disgust, even anger, if delicate senses of wished-for dignity found offense to take. Storybook characters thinking themselves descended of Caulfield, but to what end? Conclusions are such a funny preoccupation of youth, dawn obsessed with dusk.
predicate
The ground again, yesterday,
it’s still there, or was, and it’s
still hard with these pauses to
tell where one step begins and
the last one ends,
so might as well admit I’m
still somewhere
on it, the ground, that is, though
proud this time (for once?), not
so much held down as simply
looking, quick on my feet and
quicker yet to be still.
informalism
Everything I tell you is a story, or a part of one, and I’ve no inclination-desire to be less esoteric, only to be more poetic. The tussle with content and form, with self, in fact, un-fact, and all its reconstructions, even selflessness with the “I think” qualifier to down-tone the pathology, and how and in what mode or medium to paint it. Even now—where do the line breaks go, if any? Ok, none, for now, decision made, and then there’s Yiadom-Boakye saying “the power is in the painting itself.” Not the page or idiom, in other words, not those somehow alone, but the act. The actless act, I might add, to dig it a little deeper, the selfless-ful effort of the putting, free of mission or agenda or construct. The power is in the prompt, you might say, and it makes no difference who you are, listener, and doesn’t matter who I am—just another listener, a sometimes teller, enjoying how it feels to hear and be heard, back in a corner, down in a hole, out in the open.
formats
There’s a hole in my chest
where the truth’s supposed
to be. There’s a hole in my
head where this creation’s
supposed to be. I’ll pour
everything in, I wonder,
filling it, suppose, and what
will be left. What will, answered,
but French-braided ambiguity.
flow
Esmeralda, how much of what we do is out of fear of humiliation?
I fill people up with my secrets like little pools and walk away
when I can no longer stand to see what they reflect.
twelve lines plus one
If I sit down now I’ll never get up again and then we’ll never know.
If we never know we’ll never go.
I know.
