Interlude (26)

First of all, glad to share that Part 32 found a place in Via Negativa’s blog roundup for Week 5 of 2023. Read the digest here. And Part 33 is in the collection for Week 6. Read it here. This home away from home for parts of this series is such a joy. Thank you so much, Dave Bonta.

Then, a poem from November 2017, that now takes position here as Part 34.1. I am seeing this back and forth across years like putting together a jigsaw puzzle. Life spills over everywhere. I also found the words in the title of this poem in a draft of a future part that I will share in a few weeks.  The original post is here.

Myself from Myself
disappointment is raw sky
before it paints its face innocent blue,
where the blackness sears your eyes,
a fire that you cannot see or put out,
where you grasp the stars so you will not fall,
how many points do they have?
why do they gash and cut my palm, leaking blood
that will not leave my body?

disappointment is seeing the moon
strung from hooks and steel cables,
a falsehood made of recycled dreams,
how many hopes were pinned on a piece
of dented aluminium glitter?

in the back streets of the city where
the asphalt and trees have an unwashed
mediocrity, the crows look tired and ashen
and the cats are mangy, as if they would rather
starve than eat the tasteless gutter rats-
from there to the top of the mountain
is a million steps, the only way to rise
is to cut strips of yourself, unburden
yourself of yourself as you go, and yet
tonight, reaching the top, flat and empty,
my head half-buried in the undressed sky,
seeing reality lie after lie,
was it all for nothing? but wait,
you can prise out sunbeams buried
in the dirt and slide down
to where you began,
but there is a question, a ticket clerk
at a half-window, bemused, asking you
who you are, apparently there is a right answer
to exit purgatory and go back to the beginning,
to the foot of the mountain that
you cannot climb without ridding yourself
of yourself.

i told him I was everything I wasn’t,
I wasn’t anything I was, and found myself
back where I started, the mountain of
doubt ahead of me, with nothing
to give up that was or wasn’t,
unable to separate myself from myself,
disappointment is knowing the end
and still starting that
journey to hell, again.

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