The poem I never wrote begins with his name, although I have said it aloud with no one in the room, and my pillow would tell you the same, and so would the walls, and so would the gloom that his name has warded off in all the corners of my mind--except one.
And just like his name, the story is unwritten.
Find someone else
outside of your head
and hear at least another voice
that is not your own.
There is only noise in being alone--
you must be a sender
and also,
to receive.
You make
only so much
static, beeping,
and squealing,
without sense or feeling.
You find your own meaning,
but it exists somewhere--
and in living it,
so do you.
What if my words were steam building up
in a boiler that might
explode?
Or scratched on a parchment
and placed in an urn
and left 2,000 years
to corrode?
Imagine if my words
bled out, through my pores,
drawn on my skin?
Could I get you to see them then?
Would you wipe them away
before you'd even
begin?
I hold them in.
Oh, I hold them in.
The Dawn loses sleep over the creaking of Tithonus,
although she no longer knows what he chirps about.
He last said he loves her still, before at last
the form of an insect took him over--
Does it matter? It all now sounds like recrimination:
Why? and Why? and Why?
The problem was hers: her nonfatal decision
to prolong his thread in length but not
to preserve his form. She forgot and so,
unevenly yoked, she glowed with aura celestial
as he dwindled to a shrivelled husk.
And now his ceaseless calling haunts her
both sleepless night and working day.
She sighs and admits another mercy--more for
herself but perhaps also for he--and turns him loose.
He can not be a god, but he can be free
and serenade another.
You approach me like an alien
in a movie where it is unclear
if the strangers come in peace,
but communication of some kind
is certainly necessary
to find out--
and I talk to you like
we shared past lives, over and over
together,
and for the life of me
I can't recall a single one,
but it must have been a powerful
soul contract to
have gone on so long,
without a doubt.
Maybe we could
awkwardly learn
one another's tongues
after patient study,
until we become fluent
and discover a shared language
suprisingly
congruent?
Knowing what I want now is knowing
the things I have and do not want,
with a homesickness that makes
it impossible to be home.
I'm longing for a place
that feels like me
that is anywhere else I could
happen to be.
Restless in my exhaustion,
I yearn to find
energy in the idols
I burn
with the glee of an arsonist
on Bonfire Night
where my wrong longing
suddenly seems
right.
The greatest work is made
of many small steps,
like a pyramid or a ladder;
hone knives,
tend fires,
set plates,
carry rods,
lay down your burden at night,
and pick it up again.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
Wear out shoe leather
and bend the knee.
Every thing you act on
will also act on you
with or without intention--
therefore be intentional,
but do not be afraid
to step into the unknown
because you have made a life
of all the little steps.
Knives, fires, plates, rods.
The tools fit your hand
like you were born with them
and will be reborn with them.
Make of that what you will.
