THERE IS NO EMPTY TOILING

Always walk in the light, lest you be dragged into it.

They sometimes align

in the form of brittle statues,

breaking before recognition.

 

Or quiet struggling:

thoughts striving to be thought,

then sliding down the throat,

right before pronunciation.

 

Either way, the day is spent

amid stained cell walls and

various fog-forms hovering.

 

They figure me mule-like,

all the while, floating torsos

questioning, often lecturing.

All get their turn, all bubble up.

 

Disoriented

Everything gets frayed,

so everything gets scribbled:

 

One is a flickering bulb,

dangling above a stairwell.

Another, untrimmed ivy.

But not a flower, never a flower.

 

Honesty in grit, grime and grind.

Just grist for the mill.

Something battered, lovingly.

 

There is no empty toiling.

I know the dignity of work.

Thoughts, poems, all these haunts-

when I rest"we rest together.