Rough Drafts

Slowly these pages break into a draft
I must edit for quality.
There are unclear lines
and here, an imbroglio,
a direct proposal to pack
each page with ambiguous symbols.
Were my words ready for the public,
were grace upon my pen and an echo
reaching back to me from the future
of my finished work,
I would not so struggle to perfect
these very beginnings.

Animate

     He leans against the small, white porcelain pedestal sink, his palms pressed into the rounded corners. The reflection of his deep, brown eyes staring straight back at him, his hair a mess of dark, straight strands criss-crossed on the top of his head, thick chunks falling at a slant across his forehead, just touching the top of his eyebrows. Thick stubble beginning to form the shadow of a beard along his jaw line and chin and connecting to the dark hairs along his upper lip. He looks closely at every detail, focusing again on his eyes, trying to see something in them, a soul, perhaps, something more the his human self. Perhaps a god. But the more he stares the less he sees of anything, the less soul, the less human. His eyes become only an object of his being. There is color. No, there is not even color, but light. Light reflecting back to his vision what he perceives as color. Nothing real, only reflection, only deception, only the way his brain is wired to see such things as he sees them. “Fuck,” he says, his voice deep, dry, with a slight rasp. He has leaned too long, his back and shoulder blades stiff from holding the pose.
     Breakfast is a dark piece of toast with a thick spread of creamy Jiff over the top. This kitchen is a dim, morning blue. He can see through the thin slits between each closed slat of the forest green blinds over the window above the kitchen sink that it is a sunny summer day. Even without pulling down the string to lift the blinds up, he can tell that there is not one cloud in that bright blue sky. It is eleven o’clock in the morning, but he is still only in his boxer shorts, an old pair with a small hole torn along the seam of the crotch. It is the end of June, but he is still thinking about his final paper for Philosophy in Literature. He ended it all wrong. He should have made the conclusion clearer. It was an A paper, but the end was all wrong. Cliché, even. Typical, at least. He bites into the soft peanut butter and the crunchy toast. Perfectly contrasted complements.

Working Outlets

Whether it be the spiraling of smoke drifting up from a cigarette.
Green. Yellow. Red. Wheels rolling to Stop. Or.
What some call miracles. I can only see good. Naivety.
I can only see in fractions, fractured glass, empty spaces.

We call it a waterfall, but waters fall. That sheet of rushing white
is not whole. Even the sky, blue, broken up by cloud. Sun. Moon.
Gasses. Heat. Turmoil of the solar system. Turmoil of the Sol.

Whether it be the spiraling of smoke drifting up from a cigarette.
Or. The repetition and incorrect use of punctuation to identify
experiment. I can only see the red heart of that paper-rolled tobacco.
Pulse. A breathing body. Miracle. I can only see so far inside.

Then the car becomes a top, spinning. And my head whirls.
There are colors in the empty spaces, broken up by cloud.
Someone had the correct spelling for the word I was thinking, but

whether it be the spiraling of smoke drifting up from a cigarette.
I identified the object flying through space. Rim. Headlight. Mirror.
An enactment of the self looking upon the self as the self objectifies.
The tip of a finger inside a splinter of reflective glass.

Wonder is not the same as wander, but there are times I wander when wondering.
Turmoil of the soul. Traffic light. Lamppost. We call it The Fall, but
falls give rise to differences. That of the difference between word & object.

Whether it be the spiraling of smoke drifting up from a cigarette
and up to where God can breath earth into his ever expanding lungs. Or.
What we call a miracle. God. Breathing. Life. Into. The man on
the fourth floor of the nearest hospital whose life depends on working outlets.

I still see wonder in the unfinished piece of piano music. One
minor chord in the chorus. The moment before. Yellow.
Pulse. The movement forward, into... Unidentified space.

Cabin

Sometimes I take the three and a half hour drive to my cabin up north, lie outside on the overgrown grass, look up watching the sky move, close my eyes, and imagine disappearing into the earth. One, maybe two days on the weekend I have time to dream of existing elsewhere. On a Friday, I leave right from work at 4:59pm. I don’t even stop to eat. I wake up ten minutes early that morning to fill the tank. When I arrive, the sky is dark and clear. The stars are many and bright. I lie there on the cool grass, still in my $400 Armani, and watch the stars blink. One falls. One shoots across the sky. But finally, for the first time this week I am not in motion. I am still, and if I wanted to I could lie here until earth began to turn toward the sun, until light began to press into my eyelids, until my body began to feel the heat of those glorious rays.

Work Schedule

The schedule said I was to be into work by
the time written beside my name
but my name was mispelled so I wasn't

sure if I was me or if I was the same person
listed who was to be
in at the time written beside the name
that wasn't mine, but might have been.