Poetry

another departure
sand storm and winds
change on every horizon
slow forward let go
let us go
lets go toward
somewhere else
trudge or gallop
fasten memory to
message
onward into story

“The innumerable ancestors who merge within me.”
– Jorge Luis Borges

a helix of familiarity resonates
about our set jaws, dark hooded lids
of inner-lit eyes, wild broad smiles

we grant an ironic twist
an awkward gait
the smell of overtired children

random chemistry exchange 
and varied ocean voyage
perforate the here and now

complex into present
allow nuance of empathic logic
awestruck admiration

in the long-haul chain of relativity
tears well-up and lonely nights
hover in suburban structures

emptied of rhythmic stories 
or crocheted doilies
these emoticonic moments seem situational

grey roots and receding hairlines
eye colors and surges of venomous rage
translate from another layout

differing and deferring 
as the landscape warrants
pooling and seeping into our children

ideas brew, percolate, steep but when I sit down 
to write the long imagined play
the characters move slowly from their platform of ruined columns 
refuse to speak as they shift compliantly into Scene 1

I do not hear them and yet I expect an ease I never find
as if words would arrive the way ideas do
the way novels seem whole

the labor is supposed to happen without me
the final product should spill forth perfect
complete

beware the dangers

of a symbolic mind

so connected to detritus so fond

of the fading stain on a poster-tube

its blue par-avion sticker

still intact

between pain
and pleasure
new depth

I contemplate future
like some dinghy
in a wild sea

switching lanes in light rain
the difference between then
and now

all I know
travels toward

    (Borges)

inflated ego attack
as in grandiose stance

astride the future
tense with command

hands crumpled in on themselves
a chronic grip

teeth grind day and night
the way rage surges

in cases of escape
opposition to exile

in cases of obedience
servitude or severance

the ideal of memory loss
has vague merit here

one more way to avoid
the terror of perspective