Please forgive me if i seem a little
intangible
these days
i’ve begun to think that maybe
i make a better story
than i do a person
If my touch seems cold
it’s only because
Life is for the living
and i might be a ghost
of some past time
Forgotten now.
These here fingers are still out there grasping
but all words have become weapons and
even just asking
Feels wrong.
Life keeps on slipping through me
like liquid/sand down an hourglass/drain
and i’m grabbing and clutching
but fingers slip
like a mask
and suddenly exposure is deadly AGAIN…
Please excuse me if i sound a little
irrational
these days
i’ve begun to believe that i might
make a better statistic
than i do a human
I’ve already survived a Plague, don’t you see?
i got it but i lived and yet now the whole world
is dying
What if memories
are all we’ll have left?
I listened as Nikki Giovanni read:
I am cotton candy on a rainy day
the unrealized dream of an idea unborn
(I was barely 18 then
but her knife cut to the bone
that my heart doesn’t even have)
I share with the painters the desire
To put a three-dimensional picture
On a one-dimensional surface
How could you even hear me
if i just keep
writing?
It’s not as if these words
could be touched, even if spoken aloud.
The “i” who is:
a writer
a lover
a statistic
a story
All these are still contained
inside some Dorothy, looking for home
there’s a heart, a brain, some little bit of courage
lots of shoes but aren’t enough of those heels
already clicking out there?
Just as these fingers keep clicking across a keyboard,
a body if not a voice that’s screaming into the void.
I think i might’ve been young enough someday to believe
that i had all the answers,
but i’ve read a lot more books now so i realize
“the master knows nothing.”
Reality might become virtual but that won’t stop
the howling
of the wind, the void, the wolves, or the voices
of all of us who always knew in our souls
that a better future awaits.