Wait and Watch this End Happen to Me
I wait and watch this end happen to me
Quite unafraid as I am overcome
By powers that crush my ash-fragility;
I view this massacre unmoved and dumb.
The sorrow without fear is a companion;
Destruction without horror, but a rough ride.
Dispassionate, the peak sinks to a canyon
Disproving superstitions of its pride.
There is no fall for one whose world is plane.
A ragged soul can’t be impoverished.
No torture moves a soul immured by pain.
The great secret is this — nothing’s finished.
My dullard eyes, but seeing it again,
View the cataclysm unastonished.
Wallflower Rejoins the Ball
. . . thyne eyen two . . .
If whistling is its own reward
and walking leads a way toward,
why not resume what’s never been done?
Stare long and hard into the sun,
then acquiesce to this discord.
If thinking is a hologram
precisely priced at worth a damn,
then let the false dimensions sing
their shadow dance that shows no thing
save love and truth and life and sham.
For disappointed díscouráge
is no less mist mystic mirage.
To choose between delusionments
becomes a simple matter since
the one is love and truth and sham,
precisely priced at worth a damn,
a shadow dance that shows no thing
yet makes the false dimensions sing.
(The other is a freezing storm
that only keeps its coldness warm.)
Sweet nothing, may I take this chance
To make the pleasure of this dance?
(It’s your two eyes that acquiesce.
No need to breathe a word of yes.)
Want to be the Lightest Element on Earth
I want to be the lightest element on earth:
Thinner than air, a phantom pleasure of the mind,
A single-faceted impression of mirth;
If I were not a man, but a mere memory,
I’d be a simple creature of this kind;
If I were not a man, but a mere memory.
I want to be a solitary monument:
An unobtrusive stone man, frozen in my place,
Unmovable, but moving some mild sentiment;
If I were not a man, but a mere memory,
Raindrops alone would course my granite face;
If I were not a man, but a mere memory.
I want to be remembered by the ones I love;
I’d rather not be tolerated by them now,
And I would rather not feel things that tear and move;
If I were not a man, but a mere memory,
My shadow to you, love, I would endow.
Wednesday’s Walls
He said:
Everything is possible once your heart is broken
You see things you’ve never seen before
You see how your life goes by so fast
and this is how it goes:
Suddenly it’s Wednesday again
Yesterday was Wednesday
Wake in the morning it will be Wednesday still
You are trapped in Wednesday
Here you shall grow old
Entombed in Wednesday
here you shall come to dust
Tunnel out
or scale Wednesday’s walls
escape to Saturday morning
You might find a moment of freedom
Free to sleep in
Free to brew fresh coffee and slowly sip it
Free to watch out the window
birds flitting from garden to power line
power line to garden
delirious indecision
Free to think: I have no place I must be
and no one to answer to
In the midst of this freedom, this reverie
Hammering at the door comes Wednesday
He breaks into the house
with a brace of police dogs on one hand
and a sawed-off shotgun in the other
Recaptures the prisoner
Suddenly it’s Wednesday again
You are trapped in Wednesday
and here you shall grow old
Weight of a Whisper
The weight of a whisper
the winged wonder wanders
out on a limb
No risk to the weightless