Tuesday, April 9, 2013

After

Your voice
is an image now,
stamped -
quite beguiling.

 My
                eyes burn with ideas,
 and I'm stuck
 in
                                                              time flowing so fast
                                                               it deranges.

                                                               I see what's
abandoned, what affliction is avoided,
and I'm contemplating the wisdom in matching all you're cap-
able of.  Deserting, too, the
                       the towering space where once we stayed.
                                                                    Did we leave
anything at
all
behind?  After rumors of ruins,
              and suggestions of deaths, I am fearful of venturing back...
though
the cries of passage
         echo earthward,
 treasure
                            telling, somehow.   There is
a choice in this,
but remembrance falters, and your scarcity gives you away.
Still,
I dig through, clambering up, not sure what I'll find or
                                                                        where I'll end
up.
I am
filtering through the vanished and
unreturned,
pushing
past phantoms, and I am taut of tongue close to
  the precipice
where our love
  hangs in balance.

Write at the Merge

Friday, April 5, 2013

Let's start with you




Let's start with you,
I hear you say,
as you hold back, breathing long.  So, I prepare,
                                                                                                                       pick up pencil,
and the words become damned digits, tricky little bastards, I can't get a hold of.
I'm staring into your laughter, hearing calculus, doing math, where I should be writing rhythm.
I'm reckoning my life in terms of loss and gain,
but it won't add
up.
I'm reworking each number, line by line, going half
         mad, trying
                 to figure out where I
                                     went wrong.
I am turning, examining angles of myth, bends of mystery, holding on and giving up.
       This
isn't easy.
     To what small or large degree have the mistakes of my past brought me, in mind,
                                                   down to the boundary where the indigo pulls, closer to you.  Maybe, you've got
              the brains - or the ways, can do with negatives what I do with the upside of words.
                         I start with you, because that's where it started,
but maybe if I move the placement.....and you draft dispersal,
we'll fit in the end.
I am rounding up, mixing roots,
        real,
imaginary,
    and then impossible, and
                  maybe, I'm tallying what I should not be, maybe, I'm instead,
                                                          subtracting increase.
                                                                          It's a
                                                               toss up, this pending
                                                                        pain, I know.
Torment of dilemma, or maybe it's simple
                                                                          as pie, you and I.
                                                                                I think what it all comes down to is the sound of your
voice,
so I say, Let's start with you;
          you tell me how one and one makes two.