i abstract myself
i cloak myself with language and
translucence of form
insist upon anonymity.
i introduce myself,
yet remain un-named
repelled by my own compulsion to identify
refusing to be a tidy package shelved
yet longing for that contained compliance.
the provinces of imagination are limitless,
untethered by misshapen materiality:
either too contrived or too chaotic –
just north of ease, of grace,
of what i had in mind.
as a child i felt the weight of expectations —
i studied the others,
learned to imitate,
remained bewildered.
reached outward, acquiesced.
The effort distanced me from the home within –
that constant outward seeking rubbed away my edges,
i became transparent, ill-defined.
The critic and cynic distrust uncertainty,
innocence and curiosity.
They rush to purchase: label, conclude, obtain.
I hover in ambivalence
beyond reach of pins and papers.
Linger outside grading systems,
outside the straight-jacket codes
for living, moving, speech.
i don’t want to paint houses on hills,
dignified portraits or flowers in vases.
i don’t want careful composition.
i want to feel life arrive —
under my fingers:
thought married to gesture.
I want it to flush through and subvert
my crowded, clever, neurotic mind.
I want uncertainty –
and i fear it.
i want immediacy: color to texture to line.
i want presence —
the convergence of visible and invisible (matter and mind)
in awkwardness and uncertainty
in the disappointment of hopes.
i want to be as weather
to bear witness as gods and demons pass through.
to carve empty space
as unthinkingly as wind and rain carve rock.
To be as leaves caught in air,
revealing the wind’s path –
through branches,
like blood vessels,
in the imprint of Earth seen from the moon.
To mix the subtlety of night, mist, moss,
running water, reflections –
to render translucent,
to fissure and layer
to build palimpsests from time.
Does presence have a form?
I am beyond and yet
must inhabit
This body, a casement,
an astrological map
a lens the moods of this world traverse.
i want to read its constellations
and shine them.
I am the pinpoints that are myself.
equipped for particular things.
And yet untethered, I float
along the perimeters of definition
flirting with possibility
as growth becomes decay
and then growth again
hovering above the fractured ground
bracing myself in anticipation
unsure if this is homecoming or exile,
I gather myself and surrender
remembering Eve.