Unweighting

The memory is no friend. 
It can only tell you 
what you no longer have.
 ~Margaret Atwood

David Bulow
@bulow_ink
Used with Permission

It is better to forget
me, you say, as soon, I
will have forgotten you.

Burn my poems,
if you prefer a pain
both fierce and brief.

Do you imagine, I ask,
that will help you feel
less alive? Or less lost?

as I fold his torn pages
into paper kites and we
take turns at the window.

Better to leave words
to the whim of the gods.
And love no less for their loss.



For Art FLASH! in the Imaginary Garden, which features the art of David Bülow. Visit Bulow Ink to see further examples of his work. David can also be found on Instagram (Link under picture).
This poem is inspired both by his image and the poem A Visit by Margaret Atwood.

Self Portrait in Night

In the secular night you wander around
alone in your house. It’s two-thirty.
Everyone has deserted you,
or this is your story...
In the Secular Night ~ Margaret Atwood

Night Windows (1928)
Edward Hopper

The nights are not dark enough.
I sleep with the windows wide open
and wake at all hours, and always the night

is lit above and below by streetlights
or the diaphanous moon. I rise
to look at my garden which murmurs

like a strange sea and seems to heave
and flow; and I don’t know if my room is atop
a tower, or below decks of an abandoned ship.

I only know that I am alone. And it is night.
Without a god to pray to, or ghost lover
to yearn for, or blindness to hide myself

from myself. Only the undark, the unquiet night.
And my breath fogging a pane of glass
with every question I no longer want to ask.


Instructions for Living a Life, a poem inspired by contemporary poet, Margaret Atwood.