the song of the pillars dancing an unforgettable dance so still and solitary, wavering only in lonely wind gusts--
I stand tall in the grooves of hard-granite, dreaming to reach unforgettable realms, not knowing impossibilities.
truth, the pillars stand as a tree branch falls, my arms go to my side; minds wander onward, soft with hope & lust.
Journal of the Old and Tired
After sleeping all morning I look down at my feet and hold them near to
me, examining them, the cold grey skin, the purple blemishes— I think to myself (who other?) that this must be what my brain looks like. All that mushed matter is really an exact copy of my pale and sleepy foot here and it's a real disappointing thought to think. As I go on I take myself to the mirror and look at some secret code locked in my eyes and all over my skin-- In fact, all I see on my poor face is marks of dark old spots that won't ever leave and black holes on my nose and it's all like a terrible prank written on my skin in ugly ink.
There's more to look at I know but after staring at the face of that old
sore grown-child in the glass there I realize I just can't do it and
decide to leave or at least walk away. Urging movement in my
entire body is the hardest thing to do because it takes a little bit of
each part of you, as if I had a whole, so I remain that it's a miracle
whenever I move or walk around a little-- really it's all my unnerving
command; it's incredible. Even without the mirror I realize
the worst part is that I feel it all over me like a giant towel, or no,
like the heat of a humid summer's breeze, it all surrounds me, this
aura of "self", self everything, and it's sickening to feel so aware and
out. Melodramatic as it is, my whole body is tired and my mind doesn't
want to work, it just doesn't want to, like an old child being pushed to the bath, my whole self just doesn't want to-- that's it, that's all the ways I can say it
Snore
soft thunder through wall; from man, from nose. Record-a-Poem
speak to me the words you would if you could speak any word in the vocabulary of love; then hold them there for a moment, dear, beside your heart so true; let them become your mouth, your tongue, your sound, and slowly the poem will unfold.
Before Sleep
it was a pre-thought, before sleep, that went into sleep, hearing the dog snore to herself, to the empty space around her, and earlier in the day watching all three cats on the bed, at the window, in the sun, sleeping, always sleeping. It seems to be the thing to do, and why not, if it makes us happy, why not, if it makes us look sweeter in the dark. It couldn’t have happened quicker, like sleep never does, and if it were ever to be found and written, all the world would not come to see, they would sleep.
Ladder to the Moon, by Georgia o'keeffe
Nighttime Thoughts of the Unspoken
I want to cry but it takes too much effort. I'd like to sit in the corner with no one around and then smile at all the little things gone wrong. Then maybe, if I got the courage, I would cry. I'd close my eyes and go dancing, dancing about the room-- through the bookshelves and above the table tops-- but only in my imagination. I do not like actual dancing. It makes me uneasy and tired, and I do not like to feel this way. But right now, as I lie in my bed condensing the world into easy words I know how to pronounce, I digest thought in one swift movement. I hesitate at first because I am scared of all things, of all nothings. Even the breeze. Tomorrow I will wake with four hours sleep behind my eyes and it will be my luggage all throughout the day. This is why I want to cry. All of it,I want to cry all of it out, the good and the bad. I want all these sensations to leave me-- but I am too weak to weep. I am too sleepy to have any more thought.