(In)different

Her heavy greedy breaths

no longer pull air

from our shared spaces.

Her restless body,

laden in sleep, no longer flings

appendages against shared walls.

His voice, 

after all tese years

is distant and muffled,

a life spent

with his intonations 

and likenesses 

filling the quiet spots

of time

and privates places 

like memory.

I find myself

in new places,

quiet, desolate, 

unable to move

and different

than I thought.

Most sensibly,

and quite inevitably,

my own shallow gasps

leave no consideration 

or room for the limbs

to dance 

or provide sound
a body
to absorb.



Painting by Ford Madox Brown [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Talking myself out of any and all steadfast beliefs

And the shadows became emboldened

tossing themselves, whole bodies

against the stuccoed wall of the house

like a lunatic whose waxing drips onto

the serenade night.

Appendages out of lines, 
sinew slung haphazardly, 
do not move, it will heal.

A straightjacket all white and tight

would pacify this wicked waving,

haunting in its accidental tempo.

It was stirring.

The stale air, intent on suffocating this

common moment, tries to circulate.

Still, under such serious moonlight,

all stars let out a slit of light and with
pity.

Keep going.
Solidified, all recast and quartered

for symbiotic division of belief by
schisms and seizures.
See there,

old ways of seeing arthritic or systemic.

Unrelated to shrinking white matter,
this time indivisible from the prism
have been here again
breaking light from black wholes
made it all night once any again. 



Painting by Frits Thaulow [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Stress test

Can you tell it's right if you hold it up to the light?
Do you know if it is better than good
if it can be completely understood?
Is it the ideal size-target market wise?
Does it truly sound like all the others that abound?
Is it flammable, is it like the animal
in us-
indigenous?
Is it harmonious or relevant, erroneous and malevolent?
Does it make you dance in some clandestine way
Does it have something significant to say?
Then-
is it worthy
to be called poetry?



Painting by Marie Spartali Stillman, Love Sonnets (1894) in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.