Invocations at Two and Three AM
My youth passes from my sides,
Startled into scattered crystals
That blow from me
Like blue goblets
When winds bearing mindless words
Cut through the decorum of smiles,
And I realize that I alone
Am my shadow beside me.
Fold me so these silent
Screams cannot echo,
But be absorbed
And distilled into release
When I, unfolded,
Melt back to me
And greet the dichotomous foe.
Breathe me into being real
To become unreal again
Through forces
Whispered through my pores.
I emerge from these pages
As distinct half-notes
Of ashes that I left behind
In traces with
No uncertain pattern,
Afraid to claim this world as
My own design.
Give me whispered flows
That know not me
And purge in denial of themselves.
All this to become real
And less, much less.
Fragments return to
Create a mist
Before new immersions
Which must release
Themselves into this air
Of corners where
I rather let the
Night take me,
And let the words
Read to me my scope
Of horror, buried
In stately tombs of disarray
Among costumed mourners
Whose countenance
Is one shadow of lies.
I dissipate and scatter my crystals
On these meek pages;
I stand between and
Around each letter
And know not if
I support them or they, me
Or if this symbiotic
Turn is horizontal
Or vertical betrayal of self,
And if I will remain castigated
By lower-case platitudes
Turned profound around
My four o’clock blues.
Section me so
My pieces are smooth
And lay me on
The ashes of this bed
Whereon all but
The shells have died
And await renewal.
Take me and bury me again
Until I blossom clean to write
The breath of startled images
And the death of those
Whose rustling
Is but a shadow
From a dream sequence.
Then set me to a rhythm
Which omits notes
Once removed from being
And make me the song
That whispers through
These morphemes.
Make me graphic
And the analysis complete
To release only the feel.
Sounds slide and letters bleed
From my wounds.
They hurl themselves onto the
Pyre, making
Immortal only the smoke
And ashes of what
They might have been
And what I will never be,
Trapped inside
These charred ruins
Of templed faces.
