3.24.2022

oblique (10.16.2021)

 Why do I write so obliquely
            finding it impossible
to stand square against 
            my truth and just
put it on paper
            say in words
                express oneself, absolutely
            and finally.

Maybe its the way a 
            minor chord tripping 
on these hard wired
            emotional triggers
    eclipses the plainness of 
            our banal truth

That I don't know
            Why I want
                to pull it
                    all down.

In the coldness of uncertainty
            in the unsatisfying reality 
    of this stage of life
where there are fewer sure
    things than ever before
the light cast obliquely through
    the prism of experience
        and language
paints the picture in
            a way to mollify
    to scratch the itch that
eternity refuses to

An inexhaustible unknown 
            an impossibly choice
                an absurd reality.

Every truth is individual
            because there are no other
                truths.

We're all, always on the same
    very offshoot bound by
        an impenetrable dark
only possible to know after
            the wanting to know
subsides
        but then nothing matters
is nothing, is no more
        us or anything resembling
a possible knowing now

We are ghosts, shadows
        we are skeletons
    wearing human costumes
        and playing dress up
inhabiting lives we guess at
    from watching others
            knowing better than me

Letting each other in on
            the joke
is the greatest kindness we
    can give to those
beating hearts with
    whom we share
our disappearing minutes

and she, body next to
    mine
        flesh so alive and 
            lovely
stirring in me a primordial
    reaching out for communion
        seen and unseen
        darkness of night or 
            burning sun I want to
be entirely other than
       only myself 

Creating one new thing
    neither she nor I
        but more and so
much less
            indelibly
    and irrevocably less
            than the longing
for an understanding
we were expressly designed
    to never reach.

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