You are, at once,
Infinite and finite,
Old and New,
A cog in the cosmos.
When I think of life
I think joy and pain
And freedom. But I also
Think chains and boundaries.
We are tied to our selves,
Stuck on Earth,
Bound to this body.
We are stuck, so utterly,
Like moss on a rock.
I’ve never been
to such a place- where dreary hills
make wastelands shine.
Content in stasis, slow moving
like syrup suffocating
and squeezing the light from eyes
bright and new.
The day is grim, and promises snow.
To Staunton we go for The Country Wife.
Smoky tendrils
Offer the blaze of autumn
With lust and pyre, relenting,
With amber spokes.
Stab and prod
Overflowing disgrace
And silence
Unto common disbelief.
Conversations draw you here
or do not,
Fumbling vain attempt to clear
The air of cheap nonsense,
Noise noise noise you see
Constantly
Making bonds out of segments that may appear.
Fumbling: Can you recall the blocks
Held together;
The fortress
Of time wound about a clock
expanding continuously
by the sea
by the sea where moments float and shiver?
Conversations: Just think
About all the wasted spaces,
Voids to be filled,
maintaining all of life’s great entropy;
how they are
like a gigantic soiree
Talk to everyone there, be sure not to sink.
The constant unwavering wit
Of expectations
Hidden with tradition
must be obliterated:
Conversations and fumbling unlinked
and away…
A beige border, a few centimeters, precisely
traces the edges of the collage
inlaid with the repeated pattern of
small three-petaled flowers.
This is merely the background—
a cut up box of cigars, arranged on both ends
golden and ornate. Written
in script the indecipherable words
spell out some brand or another.
And yet another rectangle
encompasses this.
The opposing side filled with
neatly printed lines on
the top and bottom, the middle
taken up by an architect’s chickenscratch reading:
“Stand on your head”—
a mother and child, affixed in the
center gazing into the
unknown.
Maybe they are waiting
for these sentiments to arrive.
Often, when you sit by the window
Looking out at the alleyway behind the house,
I feel lonely near one or two p.m.
And go for a walk in the affluent districts, adjacent to our own
Until the sidewalks don’t look
Grimy and littered with plastic asteroids.
I stop at the tulip garden,
Along rows of mansions, too big for their own good,
Complete with oversized shutters plastered on
The front like a botched breast
Augmentation. I notice solitary evergreens,
Veteran saplings torn
From their mother soil. The wilted petals and drooping
Stems, some stomped into the earth—
The result of vicious intent, others
Standing, barely, by the virtues of their
Lengthy stalks. Early afternoon,
Middle-aged divorced women
In the park, their Pomeranians’
Eyes sparkle. Chewing on a blade of grass,
I return to my endeavor, past a parked golden
Subaru under trembling branches of untimely heat,
Traversing those sidewalks that will never
Feel the same way,
Those infinite perfumes of solstice: the burn of mowed lawns
And sanded wood, seasonal enchantment. Once,
With late night whimsy, I tossed
A handful of Cosmic Brand herbs,
Dried green flecks fluttering about your spasmodic limbs.
Later, I’ll still be trotting along as the cloudless sky
Succumbs to black. I know you’re asleep—
Making perfect short breaths, methodical and
Efficient as a sharp knife runs over tender
Flesh—entirely content, or perhaps quietly seeking.
Overwhelmed by the brevity of existence.
Disinterested in the fate of the world.
Congruence.
Futility.
Chk, chk, chk.
Your last breath will falter; harmony interrupted.
"we had reached the place where the motion of the wasted world accelerates just before the final precipice" - William Faulkner
~Hope Gamper~
