Archivalosity

You keep thinking it’s not
A text, so much as an
Object to be buried,

A thing, a container,
A box of something rare
Or at least peculiar,

And you don’t know just what
To do with such a thing—
Your bank that holds your words—

That preserves their patterns.
You’ve been replacing things,
That’s why. This container,

First found on a counter,
Part of the DMZ—
You’ve been replacing texts

With other sorts of things,
With odd little treasures.
What will become of this?

Can you wait out the hour,
The day? Can you get to
A place safe for your names?

What they are, anyway,
Right? A series of hoards
Of parallel insults.

No, you’re still lost in it,
The reading and writing,
The collections of grace.

You Could Start by Falsely Assuming You’re Safe, See How That Feels

Everyone on the lookout
For what they need to feel safe—

You lived on their planet, immune
To their toxicity, if not

To all their intricate agonies
And suffering they’d cause each other,

And you’re beginning to suspect they won’t,
Ever, any of them, find what they need,

Given each and every of them’s a threat
At least to self, if not to anyone else.

They’ll seek out their most fool-proof strategies,
And then, convinced they’ve made themselves secure

They’ll fall to mental illness, to fights
Inside the fort, inside the silo,

Or some aspect of their planning
Will unforeseen a circumstance,

Or it will turn out they don’t
Have a clue how to feel safe.

Rift of Rose

It’s a hammock of black evening
You sway in, trying to remember
Only enough to draw the paper

Over your thoughts for a thin blanket
In equally black ink, leaving roughed
Paper imprints for deciphering,

To scribble all over, every inch
A life, a torn scrap of memory.
When a safe place is taken away,

The question remains, are there others?
What is left, what is left for us now,
That we can do, that we may have to?

Can you wake up your phantoms for us?
Can we believe in phantoms, again?

The Orchard

There’s some character
To the wanderer
You know as sunlight—
Not only burning
And pure agency,

But a persona,
Maybe real as yours
(Yours being less real
Than each persona,
Of itself, expects.)

The sunlight, then, must
Want something, sometimes
Must experience
Desire and hunger,
Young lights in your life.

The sunlight’s squinting
At you from the back
Of a large boulder,
Taking your measure.
You would like to be

What the sunlight would
Like to be, what you
Can’t be unless sun
Drives you there, across
Fallen apple trees.