7. Running Out

quilled & quivering | the ragged run of words

as a child | my favorite poem was | yellow-bellied sapsucker

imagine the bird in | a seersucker suit | and the shoes

nothing echoes | inside a head | yet I hear this reverberation

an echo is always the past | coming back to you | when you come to

all you remember is the fear | the ear hears it back into you

I cannot escape the future | where I can escape tornadoes by

burrowing underground | I fall down a rabbit hole of my own devisal

the past reminds me of a faceless person I never met | twice

I didn’t meet him twice | maybe thrice | exigencies are my

life raft | requirements are my life jacket | I am always

floating | away

blissful, in dream | the door locked to keep

me in | I can open it only if I don’t have the key

as a child | I was determined and willful | a broken nose

did not change me | only my breathing

I cannot pronounce your | name | because I don’t know how you hear it

no-one wants to pay a pair of taxes | a pun has come upon you

look away to avoid the horror | the horror | I could curtsey

if I had the legs for it | English is a foreign language

 

I move my tongue and mouth to try out | a word

being careful to avoid making | a sound | it is a pity

so many people say words | when they could simply mouth them

the simplest sounds hurt | the most

people | almost the most of anything | keep a tongue

quiet | if you want ears to listen

during the day, I rummaged | for words | attempting to

find one that would not clash | with my thoughts

tenebrous | I am not a vampire but | I avoid

the light | anyway, New York is losing its castles

soon, there may not be any | dungeon to

sleep the day away in | the scent of subterranean soil

cool earth | the heat is coming | the fire is coming | the summer

is here | almost no-one appears in our neighborhood

anymore | and the few cars that pass beside us | at night

sound like the wind changing course | just a little

we don’t live in a ghost town | because the ghosts have

already left | I know this because | all the white sheets

have disappeared from the linen closet | replaced by

T-shirts with holes chewed through them

 

the room | kitchen-living-dining-room | breathes along

with me | not in tandem but | contrapuntal

I am not opposed to punting | bunting is another matter

my life is so far from my last birthday | that my flowers are fading

they droop and brown | yet I like to see how their color

fades into versions of vegetal rust | it is as if their

heads are bowed | in contemplation or prayer | as if

they worry about their future | all they are is color and

scent | the carnations have been | the most durable

my world is small and compact these days | and as wide as the sea

physical space is a mirage | the life of the mind is reality

what word I can slip in after the last | what thought I can imagine

all the way out of me and to | another | it seems things get

a little smaller as the night gets older | that every

piece of thinking becomes more rickety

that we try to speed up our words

because we are almost out of

time | I always think I’m

running out of time to

think | write | live