Lost

Maybe out there somewhere
there lies a path
overgrown now, weed-choked, stopped
by debris--a fallen log
astir with insect life, 
its loosely clinging bark
atwitch
   like skin--
where once a person might
have turned aside and found
down rootbound valleys
hidden there among 
the shadow leaves (whose negatives
are sunbeams)
              something
else.

The woods hide gold that is and isn't
sunshine,
show rending claws that are and
are not bears.
Some things are food and poison, some rain 
and dew and blood.

Maybe there was a way 
through then, although it didn't
seem so. A poke,
a prod might have revealed--what?
Dog-run, deer-trail, some parted sea
of weeds revealing tracks
beyond my understanding,
patterns I had not the skill
to name?

And maybe after miles, after bright orbs
of white and yellow dazzled me like
swamp gas, will-o-wisps, 
for who knows what the cycles,
then
     or now, or when, or
soon, 
I might have turned and recognized
a flower, called its name,
rhododendron, devil's trumpet, trillium,
felt suddenly unlost and therefore safe;

or else, aswim in plants evermore
strangers to me, no path, abandoned
by taxonomy, I sprint 
a barefoot madman through clasping leaves--
green twigs caught in my hair, bugs crawling through
the dirty thatch of my gray hermit's beard,
be so unmade and deliriously free, I would
to joy and to oblivion
succumb.

It could be so.

For now, as lost here in these words
as any child forsaken in the wood,
gone feral, wolf-raised out of sheer neglect,
I find just tangled thoughts, a knotted string
around my hand, so difficult to trust.
What have I snared? What is it tugs and leads
me on around the next 
leaf-shaded bend? Whose hand?
Or is it my own dumb animal soul
now bound here by some hidden hunter, 
Time?

So many knots, and spoken promises
once breathed, that can no longer
be revised.

Walk far enough, and nothing will make sense.

A poke.
A prod.

Maybe it lies there still.

The Awful Uncertainty of the Artist

Maybe this is it:

the depression/mental illness
that will finally make my work (and life)
meaningful
     saleable
          interesting.

But,
(oh God)

               ...what if it's not?

Permeable

I have to teach myself again to love
this: the fall of sound on sound, like gravel
trailing, streaming, steaming dust from where
the climber's foot just pressed and left behind
the shape of its own absence. There's some-
thing in me forgot, that thought the words
inside, unvoiced, divorced from sound, could live--
as if a root divorced from earth could


Wait, though. That's not it. 

                             I hear
the green sprout snap, while egg-
shaped leaves float, unsuspended, free of sense
above a ground all silently ascream.

Is that just what I meant?

When stolid, solid, soil-bound, brown and dank 
with rot and my own sense of gravity--where else?
The petals yellow-golden, pink as flesh
pulsate, vibrate to send the message down
to my subterran brain. Why not? Where else?

There must be holes. There must be tunnels in
from both sides of a boundary. Any one.
Nothing gets through without a broken gate.

Not sound, not sense. Not beauty. Even rain.

"Because It's Probably True": First non-sonnet post

Because It's Probably True


If suddenly the room burst into flames
orange ivy climbed the curtains
black clouds rolled up and out
and hair floating on waves of heat
crinkled, shrunk away


while everyone obliviously slunk
between table and chair
 bedroom and bath
   beer tub snack bowl
("Nice party, what's this dip?")
while at their backs
a cataclysm
only I could (in this problem)
see--


It takes an effort of
 imagination
to feel my arms go up
to see my jaw drop
to
 (hypothetically)
    taste soot
          ozone
          methane
          new sweat
on my dry tongue
taking the breath with
which I'll shout:


"Hey! Fire!"




I've always been the quiet one.


Of course once if I edging toward the door
 a dampened napkin pressed
   under my nose
saw that
no one
had noticed
(incredibly)
the
    blackening ceiling
    the cd player plastic bubbling
        like Yosemite mud
(I know, but just bear with me)
nothing except
       perhaps
some dizziness
and the fact that the softwhite sandwiches
suddenly
are toasted


then of course would I pop the lock
murmuring, as I stepped outside
to cool air
  wet grass
  green trees
that someone maybe ought to call somebody
and I've had a great time, thanks,
but by the way, some of you might think about


leaving


because it's getting late
and a work night
and the kitchen is on fire and
after all, no one wants to be an ash, hahaha--


But seriously.




I would do it.
If I had to.


But even in this dream it ends
like this:


everyone turning to stare
and smirk or frown or pucker their lips
and (even
         as their flesh
                        cooks off their bones


)


thinking


"Well. Someone
needs


attention."