long last, like eyefire and spin-swimming laughter,
a click-swish click-swish step,

long silence,

like this is what it's like
this is what it's like,

long nights, like "look what you've found
in me, look- thank you."

Be silent always when you doubt your sense;
And speak, though sure, with seeming diffidence:

---I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope,
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing.
...In my beginning is my end.

Beauty, beauty, beauty, beauty, Silence.

Beauty, beauty, beauty, beauty, beauty, beauty,
beauty, beauty, beauty, beauty, Silence. Hands
and and night and morning
shadows and here and gone and
words and silence. Not to touch
because

truly never so worklocked that in my wake lay more scratched redacts than poetry, but there it is and here this is and I'm not sure the it will count but it's the best I can do at 2am and 2am's the best I can do at honesty and, honestly, I don't know how not to say all of this so I try not to say very much at all-

I am wrapped in my childhood comforter,
and it is enough around me to keep off cold through cracks a century coming, a century like chimes pealing, peeling off, years falling away like leaves dropped and it’s still clingy autumn here:

but I’m building walls of books, too,
because in my bed they help to keep of the cold and for all its warmth Dixie sure has biting nights that even three years north of the Mason-Dixon have not yet taught me to love, and the books are enough, enough enough:

but I’m wooling my mind with words,
tangled like click, click, click I never learned to knit properly so I really should put these needles aside and just crochet, but it’s diverting to knot phrases in unfamiliar ways and everything here is so familiar that it’s a comfort, really, so I need these words to unwind me:

but walking these roads I feel at home,
in place, in peace, embraced, and sure as ever that my autumns will drop on red clay like it doesn’t matter how fertile the soil is I’ll grow here, dammit, and there’s nowhere else I’d rather be no other words I’d rather weave no, no nothing else I’d rather read no, no no way else I’d rather sleep:

but these are not my thoughts,
my thoughts are very different.

Part One

Twelve days ago I sowed a seed
in ground where it would grow.
Did it stretch its tendrils tall?
In truth, I do not know.
It had all that a life might need:
good loam, the sun, and air,
but will it in its growth succeed?
If it didn't, would you care?
Or, for that matter, care would I
if its short life were to end?
Do we think outside ourselves
or towards our innards tend?

أحبك In Five Hesitations

I.

Letters are just symbols
combined to shape words.
Words are just symbols
combined to shape ideas.
Ideas can be dangerous;
This is why, in the history of oppression,
illiteracy has been the weapon most
commonly wielded by the oppressor.
I want to write.
I want to share my thoughts
with you.
I want to use words
to show you my thoughts;
Perhaps I may put them in your head as well.
Perhaps I may name thoughts that are already there.
Do I dare?

II.
I want to tell you something.
It's something I've said a thousand times
already, but words can be misleading.
It's something I've shown you a thousand
times, but looks can be misjudged.

III.
Words bind me
Words free me
Words fill me
Words leave me.

IV.
I remember feeling
Light-headed and tripping
over my words
(how they tangled 'round my tongue)
Very foolish, very
Embarrassing, but then again
You did take me by surprise
Outside, I regained my footing:
"Unlikely."

V.
Music in my head:
someone else's music.

Allow me my indulgence:
I love you.

The Problem

It's not that I'm trying to be different, it's that everyone else is trying to be the same.