The Object of Introspection

But why dissect destiny with instruments 
    more highly specialized than the components of destiny 
            itself?
Marianne Moore



You examine your mind
as if it were a venetian glass paperweight
containing a multifoliate star, immensely
outreaching the orb in which it is contained –
but really so small, a shrivelled bit of tinsel
magnified a thousand-fold and seemingly
(for the instant) unfathomably deep.
You must conclude
that every thought you have is unoriginal,
and merely a repetition
of one you already had, syntax
slightly less grammatical, the day before.


Day 11 ~ GLASS

Izy is our host in the Imaginary Garden, asking us to relay News from Your Bed.

Counting Days

A knife, a fork, a plate, a spoon
and muted chatter to be consumed
as meat, delicately sliced from the bone –
What did I not do, that found me here,
                                              so far from home?




For Kim's Weekend Challenge: And the days are not full enough.

Blancmange

Photograph circa 19th Century

This blank mind
deserves better,
than a dab of mustard
and sautéed asparagus spears –

I had pursued a level
of detachment, a divorce,
one might say, from the rue
and inconvenience
of photographic memory –

but when one’s brain
is little more than a side of beef
one ceases to wander
in wakeful disbelief at all –


A brainless 55 for Camera FLASH! 55 in November

Untitled (Poem for my Sister)

In the branches of the laurel tree
I saw two naked doves
One was the other
and both were none
Federico Garcia Lorca




This poem is for my sister 
who never was born

except as the other half of me
the sole companion of my head
where I see myself as myself
and as some lonelier other girl
whose hands are empty but hold
my own against the bleak return
of sleepless nights and hollow days

everyone leaves me but not her
the voice in my heart that beats on
the awareness in a purposeless world
who bids me pay attention to details
to find courage in natural beauty
and know that one love is enough
my undefeated sisterhood of self



April One: One Love

On reading Of the Dark Doves by Federico Garcia Lorca