Monday, August 24, 2020

Frequent flutters and a constant sizzle,
something like fuzzy electricity jumping
across imperfect connections or
the seventeen-year cicadas screaming
into summer’s stink, crowd me out,
do not hold me, do not embody me,
do not necessarily nudge or nuzzle,
yet always push and pull my gut and
gizzard into inhuman acrobatics:
my brain playing chutes and ladders
with newts and adders, doubt-addled
and mistruth-splattered without 
taking root, just blind branches reaching
for ghost-light, any sign of room to grow,
any word of acknowledgement 
or shadow-sliver of home. No, don’t
fill me up, you frothy frustrations
that urge painful gestations through pesky
garbled permutations too eager to check.
You are not me, so not of me, sow not in me,
grow not, own not, knot not around my mind
nor tourniquet my heart, lungs, spleen,
clean thyself of me by sifting and sieving,
crushed and squeezed by holy tendrils,
breathed out like filthy droplets into
utter innocuousness, untethered and free.

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love notes
a ritual to start the work week