Thursday, June 23, 2011

Deficit in Several Parts

I reconstruct worlds,
a contractor of words,
piecing together particles.
Deaf I sometimes sit
to the whole,
an apprentice of parts,
reorganizing spaces,
empty air, broken sounds.
A word-forger,
clutching fragments of discourse,
fractured bones of pericopes,
hands, limbs, face, and hair,
floor, walls, windows.

Sometimes I sit deaf to the whole,
hearing parts and pieces,
stops and starts,
shuffling lines and wrinkles,
light pulsing from teeth, pupil, tongue,
phonemes rolled up tightly
in a montage of timbre and spaces
across your face.
I squint, staring up at the edifice,
facade of towering air and shattered phrases,
wanting you to know how much
I did not choose to miss your meaning,
this poor phrase-monger of fragile lines
and acts, scenes, and interludes,
architect of empires and lost poems.

Words lost,
links to other worlds,
as penetrating insights,
resolves of cosmic proportions,
or unwritten poems
perish in the scattering debris
upon waking up at empirical borderlines.

Days break with blinding sounds
like continents around my feet.
I remap them
limb by limb,
broken spaces,
sounds, and faces.

2 comments:

  1. "I did not choose to miss your meaning"

    I liked that. How many times I have felt this.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Shague, this is definitely one of my favorites from the Books and Culture challenge.

    I was first struck by the "fractured bones of pericopes." But the entire poem builds so well, by the end you have me completely.

    Thanks for sharing your poetry with Books and Culture.

    ReplyDelete