Prying Beneath the Mask (section III)

This is the third and final section of this poem. Parts I and II are here.


[identity: Ali Meyer]


Prying Beneath the Mask (section III)

Without flesh is naught.
The moodiness of biography
sums the rubble
of a tower
collapsed beneath its own weight.
Subtraction is the reward
for the hand
opening its fist,
allowing grains of sand
their return
to ocean.

_____

Sitting on a bare floor
in an empty room.
To reverse the past
with each breath exhaled,
not in forgetting
but in the meeting of the present
with open arms
on a day
the rambling wind
gossips of things unseen.
The cracked window
shakes in the proximity
of now.

_____

How the tenuous thread
posits an absolute,
a monosyllabic self
poised in a straight
vertical line
connecting heaven
and earth.
If only the sacred
could be discovered
in the language of narrative,
uncovered in the plot
arching with each lost second,
bound only by the limits
of laughter,
or tears,
or the simple forehead
cracking plaster
from the wall
in its frustration.
To create an aperture
through which god,
the Beloved,
might compose a sign
on the rough surface
of skull.

_____

The chain-link linearity
of time,
bound as one is
to the repetition of dawns
and sunsets.
A human being
is coded to escape the limits
preventing the fracture
of a cloudy sky
to ashen slivers of glass,
each piece
reflecting an image
of the whole,
just as each cell
contains the blueprint
of the body.

_____

So, on a given morning
I awake
with a knife stuck
in my side,
dried blood on the sheets,
and a note
taped to the wall
apologizing
for the poor aim,
signed only with a circle.
And I remove the blade
from flesh,
cover the ragged wound
with pages from a notebook,
suddenly aware
I am not yet awake,
and sure
I have never felt more alive
than when the mirror
reveals the mask
of my own death.


Del.Icio.Us Tags: Prying Beneath the Mask, Poetry, Beloved, Identity, Voice, Death, Mask, Self, Time
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This poem is published in whole at Zaadz.