I:
My focus is inwards,
funnel-like, flashlight-magnetic
- I could chase each thought back
along its barrel-o-monkeys chain
to some quivering enshadowed thing
not meant to be touched by light -
but what would be the point?
I sprout like fungi inside myself
when I'm not looking each one
has the world to themselves
and dies alone:
childhood memory,
flashbulb-sharp:
put one foot onto
my other knee and
try and climb myself
like a ladder;
thoughts are like that,
unbound by any gravity
but their own. I am
the butterfly who believes
they built the web
that entraps them.
II:
it's very crowded: there's yelling.
"jump off a bridge!" someone yells.
"you are not yet close enough to death
to be truly alive." what bullshit.
"no," someone responds. "you are
not yet close enough to life to
truly die." i wonder, were i to speak,
whose mouth i would come out of.
"is there one of us," another, asks,
"who is not inevitably paradoxical?"
i don't understand the question. am i
debating, or preaching? "these multitudinous
fuckups," they say, "egregious and frequent
as they are, paint a mural in shit on
the walls of the universe; in the beginning
you said 'let there be doubt'
and it was fucked; and on the seventh day
your seven failures smelled sweet
as your own farts; and at end of days
when sun and moon hang low as testicles
in the sky your true weakness will be revealed,
amen praise be"
but i was never one for religion.
"I," says the other. "I
could make it all go away, I
can make it easy, you know I
'm right you want it I
can take you there I
am what you crave sleep at m-I
feet and I
'll make you a God, I"
am in spirals i watch fireflies
that are just
only light on the walls
from the holes
in who I
am;
III:
no answers.
inside, different,
from one moment
to the next:
once was sure
of things now no
thing is solid as
the wind and rain
and whisper
in the s lent
overtones of earth:
w nd ins de
float and
who was s
only grav ty,
a dream ng
w th n
a memory:
I am fire
unobserved.
(completed 5/26/16)
My focus is inwards,
funnel-like, flashlight-magnetic
- I could chase each thought back
along its barrel-o-monkeys chain
to some quivering enshadowed thing
not meant to be touched by light -
but what would be the point?
I sprout like fungi inside myself
when I'm not looking each one
has the world to themselves
and dies alone:
childhood memory,
flashbulb-sharp:
put one foot onto
my other knee and
try and climb myself
like a ladder;
thoughts are like that,
unbound by any gravity
but their own. I am
the butterfly who believes
they built the web
that entraps them.
II:
it's very crowded: there's yelling.
"jump off a bridge!" someone yells.
"you are not yet close enough to death
to be truly alive." what bullshit.
"no," someone responds. "you are
not yet close enough to life to
truly die." i wonder, were i to speak,
whose mouth i would come out of.
"is there one of us," another, asks,
"who is not inevitably paradoxical?"
i don't understand the question. am i
debating, or preaching? "these multitudinous
fuckups," they say, "egregious and frequent
as they are, paint a mural in shit on
the walls of the universe; in the beginning
you said 'let there be doubt'
and it was fucked; and on the seventh day
your seven failures smelled sweet
as your own farts; and at end of days
when sun and moon hang low as testicles
in the sky your true weakness will be revealed,
amen praise be"
but i was never one for religion.
"I," says the other. "I
could make it all go away, I
can make it easy, you know I
'm right you want it I
can take you there I
am what you crave sleep at m-I
feet and I
'll make you a God, I"
am in spirals i watch fireflies
that are just
only light on the walls
from the holes
in who I
am;
III:
no answers.
inside, different,
from one moment
to the next:
once was sure
of things now no
thing is solid as
the wind and rain
and whisper
in the s lent
overtones of earth:
w nd ins de
float and
who was s
only grav ty,
a dream ng
w th n
a memory:
I am fire
unobserved.
(completed 5/26/16)
