Math

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I quietly stood as the wind rattled in
And I turned very little
For what was a breeze
When the sky hasn’t fallen or yet to begin
A decent knowing it’ll
Just shift in degrees
And when standing the way I’ve been standing I can’t say the wind has affected the path

With every new whispering, trivial sound
Whether given to ebbing
Or pointless egress
From a “what could be finished” for “what could be found”
Do I let it be webbing
Composed of a guess
That I know would be better, if blemished, but beautifully built as if bartering longing for last

And words like forever don’t measure as tall
When the spaces between it
Go shrinking away
So the pieces that mattered are kept, nearly all,
And I swear that I’ve seen it
Or will in a day
When the sun, even setting, is brighter than echoes of light far away in the past

And how very loving it certainly seems
As if built of affection
And loving restraint
But reality ripples and so do the dreams
And of course, in correction,
Do fantasies faint
And in moments the magic is melting away like an abacus counting what’s left of the day and you finally see it and finally say, “all the things you were giving, the things that you say… isn’t you, it’s just you doing math…”

Omissions

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Long ago, I found a vacant field
A home, dilapidated, on the fiction of a crumbling foundation
Giving meager thought to if the imagery appealed
To any message I beheld
I guess avidity prevailed
And so I labored all the while just creating for the sake of some creation

Sowing seeds of negligent regard
And patching up the windows with an origami curtain of obsession
Watching as the pillars played politely in the yard
I made a frame of brittle board
For all the days that I ignored
And set it up like it’s a card so I could say that I possess my own possession

Laboring, I rarely wondered why
The walls were wearing jackets made of gossamer and old alliteration
Rested on the windowsill with such a heavy sigh
As if too weary just to say
“It’s still the first of yesterday
And every step is imitating all the ones I only took through imitation”

Walking, finally, far enough afield
Where shores, however reaching, never spoke of inhibition
I saw, not far behind me, like a scab I poorly peeled
No single signal that compelled
But rather reasons rarely quelled
As, in response, am I omitting all the parts I had to pare so I could keep what I omit from my omissions

Continue

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I find a fitting melody to rob me of the quiet
In the shallowest peripheral of allegories slipping
Where the stone is smooth as silk and all the instruments are chipping
In the slow pursuit of something half as meaningful as what it cost to buy it

But long ago I found, if only doing so in folly,
The perimeter of morning where the evening is resentful
And the lips that let me rise are, to my eyes, now only lent wool
That remains as dying needles from the pine that’s turning gray beneath the holly

And hoping it was mistletoe that hovered there above me
I recalled, as if a metaphor that only meant forgetting,
There were reasons for a second set of glasses for the setting
That extended, momentarily, beyond the limits lent to being lovely

But somberness was severed from the damages within you
Like a ribbon that was stolen from a present undelivered
For the arrows giving love and lacking pain are cruelly quivered
And the dust upon the feathers and the clouds within the sky seem to imply that this is how it must continue

Friend

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I twisted my apologies
And sacred ideologies
Until the parts I needed most were true
I filled my heart with fuses
Just to decorate the bruises
Knowing not why what I choose is
Always different
Never different
Somewhere in between cerulean and blue

Where all of the apologies
Were pages from theologies
The sun had bleached to bone before they bled
Where letters are as flowers
Petals lost beneath the towers
Holding vigils for the hours
Always changing
Never changing
Somewhere in between the colors rust and red

I wove all of the similes
Until their lacking symmetries
Was something I could hold, or else pretend
For just a little while
Wouldn’t falter like a smile
Just a stranger in the aisle
Always watching
Never watching
Somewhere in between forgotten and a friend

Vigil

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I put another flower on your grave today
The ones I placed before were losing color in the shade
Were growing duller as they grayed,
For, like a little congregation, they were dying where they pray

I placed a pair of roses there before your tomb
The other ones, I guess, had been devoured by the snow
And so they cowered, hidden low
For, like the severed things they are, they were bereft of ways to bloom

I placed another tulip where your body rests
Yesterday, an orchid, and tomorrow, daffodils
But like a sorrow seeks to kill
They seem to wither like a promise that we never had to test

I brought a new bouquet, it’s all I had to spare
I’ve brought so very many but they never seem to last
As if forever is the past
Because I know you’re still alive and I’m just waiting for the day you meet me there

Cutter

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Arbitrary landscapes in a flutter ’round the cellar
Are they moving interstellar
Being fortune and the teller
Not the sold and not the seller of the all consuming clutter

Piling in monuments of other minor moments
Where we measure in components
Being growth and how we’ve grown it
Into fountains full of foment fit to fade like just another

Trivial pursuit that we discover, like an idol,
Of a moon, and we the tidal
Wave we soon would see a bridle
Like a sun now suicidal with a mask of cloudy cover

Statuary still and here we shudder all the while
Putting factures into tile
Like a pre-existing style
Of the sad and how we smile when we see that we’re the cut and we’re the cutter

Tranquilized

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I set a set of shackles
On my unassuming wrists
So that in search of tender trysts
I found a string of jaded jackals
While my care and my concern all shrank to cries

And lost, there in the brambles,
Where beneath the swirling mists
I looked for longing that I’d missed
Among the me I left in shambles
Keeping warm beneath a cloak of thankful lies

I placed in all the places
That I never could exist
The woe of words upon a list
That, even now, would conjure faces
As I’m searching for a hope in hateful skies

But lost are the reminders
Of a pain that won’t persist
As if a love I’ve never kissed
Because I lost the will to find her
So I let my heart continue
Beating slowly through a thin view
Where the depths of could’ve been are tranquilized

Seeming

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Wrapped up in the intimation of a figure stoic
Wearing, even now, a garment partially heroic
Speaking words I never really understood completely
Uttered as if confidential whispering discreetly

Standing here as if it mattered to you in the merest
Modicum of meaning yet I held you, ever dearest
Bolstering the feeble feeling that if I could barter
More than what I had then maybe none would be the martyr

Wrapped up in insinuation cauterized and scarring
Underneath a gauze umbrella where the pain is jarring
Lying through the teeth I’m gritting tight to hold the torrent
Of the failing benediction you would never warrant

Slipping slowly with a clatter made of apprehension
In a field of memories I’ve learned to never mention
Maybe all I’ve ever been is something you were dreaming
Sadly, though, you’ve never seen me…all you’ve ever seen is how I’m seeming

Confession

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I feel as though I calculate
And never make a single calculation
I measure out the permanence that wasn’t really permanent
In values organized in permutations

I set a set of sliding scales
Against the metaphors of old deception
I find in the dividing there are only larger dividends
To quantify the meaning of exception

I feel like I’m conspiring
But never wear the mask of conspiration
I organize the images and elements and reasoning
Until I cannot see a complication

I put another piece in place
Without a thought and, so, without concession
I walk along a dotted line of severed veins and arteries
And cannot hear the blood over the sound that I omit from each confession

Sell

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I take the smallest fragment of a spark
And then I set it by a lens
A backdrop made of green so I can filter out the dark
I magnify it till it seems as if a sun that won’t descend

Positioning the light before it fades
I simply take a photograph
Then alter it in ways to make it show in different shades
So it’s a loop that ever plays and no one hears the epitaph

So others, even now, can see it glow
In ways it never did before
In patterns that conceal how much was never there to show
And masquerading what was real as if a mask it merely wore

The spark, however, died a silent death
Within cavern hidden well
But since no one can see the light no longer has a breath
Nobody knew to even be there when I put it down to rest
And no one seems all that concerned as long as I still have the photographs to sell