Admit

Admit: life is littered with miracles,
pregnant, bursting, fecund with the decay
of every squirming offshoot, lyrical
as chaos unfolding, forcing its way.

Acknowledge: all miracles are neutral
in effect. That you don't see is a trick
of perspective; the universe, frugal 
and cold, has no intent and does not pick.

Apprehend: what consumes you is never
a consideration. Your fall has no
impact; your weightless want is no lever
to move the miraculous world. And so,

Submit. The world, physical, is just there:
does not watch, does not wish, and does not care.

felixitations

warm soft trusting small
sleek sprung rocketing brawl
arching stretched shuddering tall

wide-eyed shrinking slinking low
sprawling languid pawing slow
sauntering weaving thumping so

crouching sighting thundering by
clawing grasping leaping high
shuttered purring curling sigh --

a catalog of varied states iconic:
catalyst / catawampus / catatonic


Blaming the Tripkitlets for this one. 

After the last

After the last death, you are free, at last,
To consider the rope once put aside --
To count the pills, clean the gun, check the gas.
This empty room has no echoes. Decide

To go, or stay; even stay your going --
From habit? To eat one last, glowing peach?
-- Admiring the blade's sliding gleam, knowing
Love is beyond this stain's corrosive reach.

To unbuckle. To breathe. Set it all down,
Unshouldered, loose, a confetti of care,
Scattering wide all that has kept you bound
To here and hurt and helplessness. So, dare.

At last you are free, after the last death.
To follow. To cease. To loose the last breath.

In matters

In matters of spirit we are matter
Still, physically manifest, blood-flesh-bone
Aching breathless from no one cause alone:
The blow-to-pride, flinch-from-fear matter

As much as any blade or blunt object.
So we feel loss as an amputation,

Limping after, unsteady and undone,

Bent and shuddering as if to reflect

The steady bruising thud of every day;

The weight of hours, of gray sky, glaring sun;

The regular confirmation of one

More blow or slash on its uncaring way. 

Your heart? It's not broken, but crushed beneath

The heel of the world: the physics of grief.

-- Infernum hoc iterum

We drown

We drown in words, buffeted, turned about
by narrative, tides and currents combined 
or opposed, seeking solid ground without
hope of rescue, and yet are not resigned.

We are buoyed by stories -- towed, in truth,

over waves of words -- and struggle to peer

down through them to the ragged and uncouth

shards of the real, rising but never clear.

We pray that lives like boats of paper float

on a sea of meaning, certain and sure,
fluttering sails of text; and chant by rote

the words we've drunk -- swallowed -- choked on -- endured.

We ache beneath the waves to understand:
a wordless wanting, out of sight of land.