ropes & threads
nooses & lines
08/09/2023 & elation in a small courtyard

skin & bone
scent & exhale
your touch & maybe love, hesitant imprint

joy & passion
silence & silence
the waves & the wind, remains of my ardor

i'll cut them all to stay in control

if the words were real
and leapt off the line?

because you're skilled, or
because you have nothing else?

if they only lied to save your feelings?

if all it took were imagination?

if light weighed more than a thousand bricks?

             Upon the pier, the wind and absence
             gazing out, darkening all into an empty
             canvas or pond, canvas or chasm, why not
             both or nothing but it's too cold to stand
    
             Even stars bend from pressing distance
             but eyes can capture what hands only touch

if he truly believed,
the waves would hunger yet

a little touch, melting
as all good things, remembered  
only as sensation:  
the walls and the floor stir on and on  

to dissolve without melting, a small (aq) at the side  
but to release? too much and too little held  
too little to hold, a useless spoon
it drips into a stillborn flow

I serve my everything on a table:
gateaux and layers, any more than bread  
you have to take something, there’s no nothing to refuse
you can’t be refusal, even that is served
you can’t be full, you need to be hungry

you can’t be nothing,  
please don’t be nothing

I lie when I say I want you free,
In a cage, maybe,
dissolute in my precious vial  

no, melting is different  
I want solid things! I only complain about my state because I’m secure in it!  
and there’s no significance to early Thursday breakfasts which I didn’t fold in myself
I miss the sugar you gave to my batter;
it’s cloying when I do it,  

I missed Thursday and now it’s Friday  
but I still want Thursday till Friday curdles  
lined in rows of half-empty cups
the unrisen mix of every lost morning:

flour & water, basic lifeblood,  
glutinous river molding  
the great mound of delicacy:  
things burn left in the oven too long, even sugar
especially sugar

how much is too moved?
more than a light year
and less than an inch
you can't grasp it either way

but isn't it easy
to imagine?

how much is not enough?
i guess as much as i don't have
which is enough to hold on to
easier said
than done

how much is lost forever?
i don't want to say
i just want you to hold me
and comfort me
like another stone in my pocket

(it looks better outside when it's raining)

and as the day pours down
i ache for all that we have lost

silent night, holy night
free me from your brutal grip,
truthful grip, oh how I am falling
falling  
 falling
  falling
   falling
    falling
      to the wake of reality

time is a wave
pillow is depravity undeserved:
my head should rest in dreams alone
for races condemned to three hundred minutes of solitude do not have a second opportunity in past days

I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I      the stars are few tonight        I   Q. window window on the wall I       I        less for want of light              I    who's the weakest of them all?  I
I          than for having fled            I   A.  see for yourself                        I
I  the burden of being witnessed  I  Q. why can't you show me what I I              i too would dim               I   want to see?                                   I   I             if it meant no one              I  A.  0                                                 I  I         could name my sorrow        I   Q.Q.Q.Q.Q.Q.Q.Q.Q.Q.Q.Q.Q.  I
I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I

it shrouds me
this pale view of distances                     un-X-X-bridge-X-X-able
this nocturnal solo elegy                            ave falsus corpum
it brings me ever closer to death                                                    
my gentle repose

but do not pity me
even the darkening star burns
and the softest tremor in the chest
means i'm still reaching for something > 0
even if i call it sleep

so let me rest,
unmourned, remembered
for that dismal resilience;
bleak survival
through the depths of night
for one stanza longer

In the blanketing abyss of night's prelude
no lamp subdues the dark within
but rather set a hazy stage:
lucidity's awakened hour

Dimly and diffuse you blur
through my drifting lines of sentience
reaping your cruel harvest, slyly
scattering my germinal love

How grim this fate that you have cast
upon my hopes so premature:
aborted at 3 weeks
more loss than I can take
enough for me to bury
enough for my resentment
burning unrealised:

fire of my nascent eyes
piercing through the false eclipse
scorching your covert disguise
the veil I long to rip apart
and disintegrate with verity,
to spit upon with love's acid froth
crude as every image of you
...
crude as dispossessed illusions

For I know you no longer,
and grasp for silent solace:
I can still turn the lights off by myself
by myself