A room full of clocks
In a room full of clocks
in a palace too clean,
your guide with the saffron turban
and immaculately pleated trousers
points to Turkish clocks and French clocks
and Italian clocks and Russian clocks.
You find they show the same time
so you tell him so. His moustache bristles
and you see the lines near his eyes
wax deeper. You see yourself:
your brown neck, the eight day beard
you can’t stop scratching, the tears
on your jeans, the faded slogan
on your t-shirt “You talking to me?”,
your splitting shoes. You feel the glare
of the marble floor, the pointed eyes
of hanging chandeliers, the disdain
of pillars seething in silence.
You fear you are turning brittle, that
the next loud tock from the resonant
clocks will shatter you. You wonder
will he keep standing there till someone
mops up your fragments. Or will he
walk on, gritting teeth at your dust
sticking to his shoes like pollen
seeking a better home.
Cockroach
The mad dash from corner to corner, then the sudden halt,
the pause to contemplate, perhaps, the shape of the known
universe. As if it would understand each infinite part
of what exists, learn it, love it, then move on
and so until there is not a thing in this room that does not
bear the mark of its searching feet, the insidious trace
of its yearning feelers. Insect, pilgrim, I cannot
offer you the certainties you seek. You have wasted
yourself, as I have, in the furious sprint to where
we thought we should be. We ran with fear like a clock
in our hearts, with the promise of grace at the far
corner. Now, we are here and when we look back,
our past is lost and the world is new like a temple
forged and re-forged in its mad god’s temper.
Rapunzel
In darkness, every room is a tomb, open
like the pages of an old notebook. Their scent,
as stale as memory. Every night is a half-life
a ticking countdown, what dreams may come, then light
like a mushroom cloud at the edge of the horizon
The streets are littered with walking corpses, summoned by the dead sun.
Nothing bursts into flame. The world persists.
I sip my tea. I call out to things, “You exist!”
There is no echo. I wonder what my voice
would sound like if I wasn’t there to throw it.
I am told there is a background hum
to our universe. A cry that never ended. A drum
struck once, a hollow boom, before noise
overtook it. My days are spent in silence.
I don’t need this window to recount the lies
I’ve told myself. There is no denouement
no clash of cymbals from the beginning of time
I have waited. I am waiting. Beloved, if you’re real, please stay away.
They left no monsters to guard me. You’re not needed. I’m safe.
The Swing
A swing is not a plank, just as a sponge
is not a lung. A swing cannot stay still,
it is made of motion, for rising through
the pauses that make us who we are.
For falling through time like a man who squints
at today trying to find the day he wants
to live again. So yes, a swing is not a thing
of the wind just as a sponge is not a thing
of shallow breathing. A swing rises, a swing falls.
As the grass rises to meet the light,
as if it were blessed, as birds fall
from a distant sky to say hi, I love you, hi.
As a lover’s breath, at the sight of the beloved,
exhales love into empty space
as a lover’s breath, when the beloved leaves,
inhales the hidden memory of the earth.
