A Season in Inference

Every now and then a hand will appear --
an eager bird indigenous to glass, itching
to be relieved at last of its lot --

our lottery; how we scratch and scratch
to win its regard -- two benumbed
degrees apart, we fortify the window.

Pomegranate

We wish to wash our hands clean of it,
undo in ourselves any hint
of having entered it -- pit after pit
through untold corridors: we spent

our innocence for access to the other side
of a story -- half-formed, unmeant
for even mirrors -- with trembling hands fed
ourselves a part of the pulp we rent.

Reader, the story, overwrought,
refuses the bait of a coined phrase; that day
we live to recant -- what shade remains pent

in our minds like a contrast dye --
forms the closest tint to a pint
of blood our systems can tolerate.

___

written in conjunction with my friend Katrina's Weird Vegetables blog entry. Please check it out!

On Reading One’s Own Work

Many people will say the poet is gifted; I believe the poet is cursed-- doomed to seek the assurance of others to tell him that the thing he holds in his hands is not a corpse, but a child.

What an existence, this second-hand knowing!

The poet carries blindly the thing in his hands-- nurtures this half-formed promise to become accustom to the weight, this child or this corpse, and the ache of having carried it so far.

Many people will say “if you created it and will starve it, surely you should see yourself through to its drowning!” They cannot understand that what the poet holds in his hands is practically himself-- that this man, trying to see that the thing he wrought is vanished entirely into the water, wades deeply with it. Deeper still. Farewell.

A video of my reading