This is the door

 

this is not spoken word.
these are words, 
spoken.

~

this is not slam,
this is the door.

this is the window.
this is the glaze.

this is the breeze
brought across your skin.

this is the wind on the water and
the breath on the surface.

this is the ripple.

~

this is the breath of the earth
brought to the sky.

this is the surface 
where the landscape is seen.

this is the landscape 
where we all wander.

this is the place 
where we all are lost 			
and 
this is the only place 
where we will ever find each other.

~

this is living a vibrant adage.
this is living on a verdant ledge.
this is living on that vibrating edge.

~

this is not my body.
this is my voice.

this is vibration brought into being.
this is my mind pushing a column of air,
somewhere.

this is sound shaped into meaning.
this is me breathing, in you.

this is muscle and cavity, moving.
this is diaphragm, lung, larynx, tongue, lips and jaw.
 
these are my words in your mouth.		
this is my world 
in the mouth of your mind.

~

this is not performance, 
this is incantation.

~


this is where body touches mind.
this is where meaning is born
and this is where meaning dies.

this is not finding meaning in a story.
this is making a story mean something.

this is not seeking meaning. 
this is living meaning
and this is making all these things mean something.

this is not seeking, 
this is making.

this is mind making myth.
this is myth-making mind.
this is making myth mind.
this is myth making mind 
and
this is making me (into) a myth.

~

this is not ritual,
this is invocation. 

~

this is not some 
thing,
this is something lived.

this is some but not all.

this is the sum.
this is the current.
this is the slow movement of mind
and 
this movement is not mine.

this is the company of misery.
this is the beat of the beaten.
this is the brand of the new.

this is the spent cartridge,
the smell of sulphur
and a cloud of rust
in a sepia sky.

this is blood sucked 
straight from the sand.
this is the tatters 
of the temple’s torn curtain.

~

this is pure speculation.
this is mind ore.
this is the whore of the mind
doing its helical mambo.

this is me 
fucking me.

this is what it means.

this is what “it” means.

and

this is all there is.

this is all there is.

this is all there is.




~~~~~

(I began this piece sometime in 2015 and have tinkered
with it on and off ever since. As happens often with me, 
I get tired of looking at things or I don't know what else
to do with them and so I abandon them here....

“Poems are never finished – just abandoned”
—Paul Valery)

It was….

(…an abecedarian…)

 

It was...

…about this time that I decided to
become the list, to see and feel what
came next, to know from within the
dead weight and heft of
every single 
form that I could fathom, the
grand scheme (if you will) of this
healing human game that has played
into (and out of) our history in countless ways for countless days,
jogging our memory, not judging us exactly, but still
keeping an eye on us from—
lying just there—just inside the door,
measuring and metering and giving
nonce notices from the threshold,
once in a while letting us 
pretend to be in control, 
(queer as that may seem) while still and stilly and quietly		
reassuring us about our lacks at the same time, and 
stretching us ever-so-gently, nursing us at the beginning and at the end, taking its
time with us, not leading us directly to (never that!) but at least pointing us 
                              ever more towards
understanding, placing things in our paths with the utmost 
veneration, teaching us the value and deep, deep roots of our
wonder, opening and reopening us, encouraging us to not fixate on the
x-y axis of every single thing around us, while still reminding us of the value 
                              of anchors,
yearning for us still and always to always and still reach somehow beyond our
zenith, and maybe—just maybe—helping us to get out there, somewhere just a 
                              little bit closer to it.