This desk is an amalgam of children’s wishes, personal reminders, literary motivators and religious tradition. Like its cluttered drawers and scattered shelves, these four components attempt to provide organization and separation to elements of life that are inseparable.
My life is a study in separation, division, secrecy. Beneath the clutter is a simplicity that, with a simple sweep of selfishness, could flourish and offer freedom in ways no god ever has. Or, perhaps this cleansing is exactly what all gods precisely point to.
The problem is, we are all on display, so we replace journals with status updates, etc. There are very few people capable of living what they believe, which is why religion is a dream, ethics a reverie.
We can speak a great deal about beliefs, about what should be. The problem is, what is is, staring us accusingly in each and every reflection, and so long as this is the case, the only honesty that can be, is silence.
In the morning, evading echt, he stands onefooted in a dark room. When the world awakes, he puts his foot down and steps in to the light. This, he does every day.
The dark room, it is draped with symbolism, a goldflame so long an ubiety that whatever it might have stood for is forgotten.
Until one day he reads some words. These words somehow speak to a hidden place, trampled under a footputdown.
In the morning, evading echt, he stands onefooted in a dark room. When the world awakes, he puts his foot down and steps in to the light. This, he does every day.
The dark room, it is draped with symbolism, a goldflame so long an ubiety that whatever it might have stood for is forgotten.
Until one day he reads some words. These words somehow speak to a hidden place, trampled under a footputdown.
In the morning, evading echt, he stands onefooted in a dark room.
The ménage and messuage of the writer are constantly changing. Once, open, empty so thoughts echo off unseen boundaries returning as subtle, novel suggestions. Again, occlusive mine-shafts, crowded foreign tongues vying for a madman’s reason.
It is not a process: there is no beginning or end, birth-death. It is not a moment. It is a place and a presence, neither perceived nor mensurated, yet always present, tangible alone to the author’s gradual retreat from everything, into the expansive hold of his hadronic self.
Gnarled branches make a lonely home
To this finch along Tunari’s slope.
Cloud-cut roses, better made
For isolated battle, quiver beneath
Its grasping claws, soft pomegranate
Plumage pressed against peeling bark;
Dark reptilian scales hard as curse’s shell
Give way—they must.
There are few birds of this species,
All bound to subsist in this landscape
Of polylepis and solitude,
A dying bird and a dying forest
Living together: one gives to the other song,
The other to the one rest.
Beneath the laughing sun
Root deepens for coveted drink
Beak scours for scattered seed
And why?
An unlikely pair
Determined against extinction.
There is a cat lying in the dirt,
Curled against dawn’s spreading thighs—
His neck, a futile crowbar between
Gravel scratch pad and placid chine.
Feet advancing, stepping down the curb
Through steel dogs towards those hated
Moments, mind behind overlying
Humus throne aside tar-striped
Day’s king. I covet this peaceful rule
Amidst stone and weeds, prostrate
Heritor of fallatial dotage,
Stiff sceptre in hand of late-
Coming virgin turned whore.
