Holding Pattern, Part B (beta version)

 

It's true, though, I reserve the right

to hate them and to tell you

you've done everything wrong:

because you have

We have all done everything wrong

marriage, heresy, dilution

we have all at times done nothing

but the mean thing is real

One slips and screams

            I mean this

I demand real, this is not too much to ask

            I demand

A gesture toward liking is not the same

as attraction: get it all

over with nonetheless

and apologize in the next breath

            Apologize again, but keep meaning

Procreation, presumption is wrong

whether it is

or is not true   (and so)

There the devil stands on his head

in a big fucking pool of ice

There the devil recites a list of his 'interests'

and composes a guest list on the back

of a clean paper napkin

He wipes his mouth absently on another

and leaves it lying around because someone else—

            Apologize again, but keep running

We all like to be distracted

these brief connections, more of the same i.e.

the Respondent respectfully responds to the Petitioner’s motion?

No, it's true, I reserve the right

not to invite you, in the end

Holding Patterns

But there is nothing to hold on to, after

all. And so the wind is even comforting

in that absurd way. What is taken away,

what is not returned. What is ridiculous

(how I'm avoiding saying what I really mean).

And how there is something left somehow

after all: a convoluted unanswering of the whole thing.

Complicated by truth is better than complicated by having to maintain a lie.

Holding Pattern, Part 2 (sort of)

        

but what I meant?

impossible to articulate

you said it already, though

the fear that everything, that everyone else

has vanished

has dissolved

it is not even 2AM

and I am not calling

/

kneeling in front of the wood stove, singing

'I don't want to set the world

on fire…' I realize

that's a lie

so if I am defective, I wish more people were

PS:

you can't resent the sky, now—

or can you?

Holding Pattern: A Concert of Wind, But

a concert of wind, but

            what I cannot escape

is the ambient noise of this 21^st century which

creeps through the ducts of this house I could never live in

because it is too large and because

            there is still no room

I slip through the lack of cracks

why am I so far away?

this fold in myself where a fold was not

             / before

            so far between

because it is too large and because

it is still so far, there is still no room

which creeps through the distance

why is this so close?

the absence of wind I cannot escape

the ambient noise of—did I already distract myself enough?

did I already escape?

            a subset of

a concern of placement, this message

from myself to myself:

you will learn

to become more efficient

            , that's what