So I Sit

Quarter Century's eve for me... a few disjointed images.

So I sit.

Form informing.

Handling curfew of the handless clock.

Guiding fishing wire

with blistered index,

spooked and shot to depth.

I'll never catch myself.

No time.

An organ in its prime.

Pulse permutes to prison,

beating out the days.

So I sit.

Slideshows playing shadows on my face.

Lines displacing choices.

Drugged metro meter,

Revving, keening,

Metallic flutter.

Lidded sky,

engorged as mousse,

acid drip to rouse the shredded guts.

A quarter.

Any left to spare?

Is there a parking space

In parallel with this one here?

A grizzly-trap of skins and genes.

A litter of ideas.

Fertile s**t, decaying ore.

A rusting currency.

What change in store?

And will I fare with fare that's fair?

Fear peels back

the onion tears.

Poison fumes prevail.

Melt into an omelet.

Inhale the nectars of the chamber.

Ache right below my neck.

Stretching back in retrospect.

Arching back,

a feline shelf-life halfway read,

four or five to go,

who knows?

Arch at self.

Archbishop of cold cut self-help.

Archived faltering: index,

brittle bone as I plumb the depth,

no domes, no buttresses in sight,

we both admit.

Snap.

There goes my line,

my spine,

my curiosity.

It goes in suspended ribbons,

under all misgivings.

Contrived survival, and

surrendered living.

Quit, but not resigned.

Oh, and so I sit.

Reviews

[613]

Amazing imagery & well written. My favorite line is "And will I fare with fare that's fair?"

- Brittney

[R J Askew]

There's a lot to be said for sitting, esp in our silly world where people are so busy they write 'sorry got to runt o work'. Best never to catch yourself, as what would you then do? Like 'keening' and 'lidded sky'. Really like 'rusting currency' and the notion of melting into a omelette. Arf, arf, really like the ache/arching/arch/Archbishop/archieved thang and how it segues into buttresses/both. The dismount from this fun and gentle joy at just being and humming with words and stuff is great. 'Snap' is like a mental blink. We wake from the reverie. The line/spine cld be the verse. And the curiosity cld be the poet's wont to know where it goeth. Contrived survival cld be what we all do one way or another, surrendering our lives in the process - though we have no idea why. Which may be why we need poets to sit and tell us why it's good to just sit. How am I doing?!

[Thaddius]

You know, I glance at this one sometimes, and myself have trouble understanding what the hell I was thinking. It's an expressionistic, free-associating, double, triple, quadruple entendre-ing meditation on mortality and self-knowledge. I wrote it on my 25th birthday.

I think 'form informing' sets the terms for the poem, like the terms for a geometric proof. It means that the suffering and meaning is somehow in these puns, these dualities.

[R J Askew]

Well, I hope you are still pondering the subject in such a creative way on the eve of your 50th. It wld be fascinating to read what you might produce then and to know how you feel about this write then, too.

[Thaddius]

I'll try and remember to!

[R J Askew]

What was I talking about? ;))

[Nessie_AJ]

The imagery created here is simply amazing.

[Dipanjan Dutta]

I have my own interpretation for this and doing so I love this. I also like the words, the way the poem is structured and long but an easy flow of the same.

Glad I could read this. :)

[Thaddius]

thanks man I'm very glad you found something enjoyable in this

[The Representative]

Like the others, the meaning escapes me, but that it has meaning and intent is utterly without question.