Poemunity — your poem community

It scares me to watch a woman hobble along the sidewalk, hunched adagio leaning on — there’s so much fear I could draw you a diagram of the great reduction all of us will soon be way-back-when. The wedding is over. Summer is over. Life please explain. This book is nearly halfway read. I don’t have a pill for that, the doctor said.

But sometimes I forget where I am, Imagine myself inside that life again. Recalcitrant mornings. Sun perhaps, Or more likely colorless light Filtering its way through shapeless cloud. And when I begin to believe I haven’t left, The rest comes back. Our couch. My smoke Climbing the walls while the hours fall. Straining against the noise of traffic, music, Anything alive, to catch your key in the door. And that scamper of feeling in my chest, As if the day, the night, wherever it is I am by then, has been only a whir Of something other than waiting. We hear so much about what love feels like. Right now, today, with the rain outside, And leaves that want as much as I do to believe In May, in seasons that come when called, It’s impossible not to want To walk into the next room and let you Run your hands down the sides of my legs, Knowing perfectly well what they know.

I dreamed that I was old: in stale declension Fallen from my prime, when company Was mine, cat-nimbleness, and green invention, Before time took my leafy hours away. My wisdom, ripe with body’s ruin, found Itself tart recompense for what was lost In false exchange: since wisdom in the ground Has no apocalypse or pentecost. I wept for my youth, sweet passionate young thought, And cozy women dead that by my side Once lay: I wept with bitter longing, not Remembering how in my youth I cried.

I dug, beneath the cypress shade, What well might seem an elfin's grave; And every pledge in earth I laid, That erst thy false affection gave. I pressed them down the sod beneath; I placed one mossy stone above; And twined the rose's fading wreath Around the sepulchre of love. Frail as thy love, the flowers were dead, Ere yet the evening sun was set: But years shall see the cypress spread, Immutable as my regret.

I dwell in Possibility – A fairer House than Prose – More numerous of Windows – Superior – for Doors – Of Chambers as the Cedars – Impregnable of eye – And for an everlasting Roof The Gambrels of the Sky – Of Visitors – the fairest – For Occupation – This – The spreading wide my narrow Hands To gather Paradise –

I create time I cannot create time I’m frozen in place I cannot be frozen I’m moving but don’t notice I notice me moving, I pay attention To the small yet immense yet Small movements that guide My limbs, my hair growth, my joint oils I don’t think about it I don’t feel it either I don’t have emotions right now I see films of divine quality I don’t see any films This black This not black To me I am I am not to me not I walk with this hollowness I walk with this blooming I’m moving outward forever Onward eternally inward I create all objects like shampoos And cats, I create nothing Like space and antimatter I resign to the clocks that keep time I surrender to the clocks that don’t keep time I’m sure about it, the color white I’m not sure about it, what is word? Oh, the loops and unloops Destiny unfolds in my knees I eat breakfast to begin the day

I eat my peas with honey; I've done it all my life. It makes the peas taste funny, But it keeps them on the knife.

I feel horrible. She doesn’t love me and I wander around the house like a sewing machine that’s just finished sewing a turd to a garbage can lid.

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain, And Mourners to and fro Kept treading - treading - till it seemed That Sense was breaking through - And when they all were seated, A Service, like a Drum - Kept beating - beating - till I thought My mind was going numb - And then I heard them lift a Box And creak across my Soul With those same Boots of Lead, again, Then Space - began to toll, As all the Heavens were a Bell, And Being, but an Ear, And I, and Silence, some strange Race, Wrecked, solitary, here - And then a Plank in Reason, broke, And I dropped down, and down - And hit a World, at every plunge, And Finished knowing - then -

I find no peace, and all my war is done. I fear and hope. I burn and freeze like ice. I fly above the wind, yet can I not arise; And nought I have, and all the world I season. That loseth nor locketh holdeth me in prison And holdeth me not—yet can I scape no wise— Nor letteth me live nor die at my device, And yet of death it giveth me occasion. Without eyen I see, and without tongue I plain. I desire to perish, and yet I ask health. I love another, and thus I hate myself. I feed me in sorrow and laugh in all my pain; Likewise displeaseth me both life and death, And my delight is causer of this strife.