| Twenty-five of Fifty I have forgotten you while walking in the rain, forgotten you as I forget my bones. Emptiness is freedom to draw breath. I have no memory of myself. I walk, I track, animal with no conscience harnessed in the traces, pacing wet, blindfolded streets, toward green weeds, toward deserted buildings. The damp world vaults reason and riots with messy paws. The populace of grass blades rises in war cry, green javelins at my cold palms— Bricks hurl a hypnotic clay perfume of history, the baked earth unmuted repeats its moist name— Stained glass falls like a smothering veil—my heart twists in these cobwebs, I grow heavy with rain, my hair rughooked and torqued, strands frescoed on my forehead and my neck, my coat sooty and drizzled. I don't feel any of it by name. The urgency obliterates slow priorities of the brain. I don't know why I must keep going— But let me return to you saturated and swollen with the world, the thick blood atoms immersed in color. Let me look on your face, a foreign script, let me transmit my wild planet to you through glances and my fingertips as I newly decode what you are, strong, warm, alive and cognizant and freighted with our love— let me have this, let me forget you so that I might forsake the whole world's sultry weight to remember you. Let me walk out, even if it is dark. Do not keep me safe and indoors, however adored, however you love me, however good company I might be with the reading lamp on and my book in my lap, sitting beside you crippled and quietly whimpering. Back to Poems List |
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