POETRY

MOMENTUM

What I thought of as before has 

simplified 

and simplified again. 

From a concert hall to a single dancer on center stage, in the spotlight, and then there is only me 

and the spotlight

and both are me.

This waltz, dance of push and pull, madness dripping from my lips, my brow.

I bow

I writhe with the fury of hell and the blossoming of a flower in the spring. 

I am both.

The nasty wild animal, tearing with my teeth through flesh and fear.

 I am the first peak of a fresh green leaf through the soft soil as the sunlight glimmers on the dew. 

I am the rage of destruction, violence, chaos, wrath, and war. 

I am breath, beauty, hope, purity, joy, and prosperity. 

I am in the dumpster juice running through the streets and the pigs crowded in cages, rank in the stench of suffering on their way to slaughter. 

I am in the anthills, and the starfish, the dandelions and the egrets. 

The lice on the head of starving children, the fly trapped in a spiders web, 

the speck floating in the ocean, surrounded by nothing really at all.

Alone 

in all of this 

I am

yet ever so 

Aware

For there

Is a watchful eye. 

Who watches me, who watches all? 

Says I? 

Seer of all things, surely, that could be seen, by a seer such as me. 

And what might they see? Looking across a mirrored way? From darkness, from shadow, from all the unknown?

Who goes there? 

I can not get away. 

Every step I take it mimics me, until I can’t quite tell who’s who

Hello my dearest shadow, 

they told me you might come. 

What a delight to have a friend such as you to accompany me through the rest of my life.

 A partner, a companion, is that not what I lost? 

What I have sought to gain? 

Have I not lamented time and time again, alone in my head? 

Alone, in my head.

What have you got to contribute? 

What’s the goal? 

What’s the agenda? 

Quiet slime creeps in and cools the tips of my bones and makes my eyes heavy in my head.

 A slow and melodic lulling which I have never known pulls me down and down, like a wet, wool coat. 

My friend, why do you hurt me?

What have I done to deserve this discomfort? 

Mimicking again,

 I see.

 Is it him or me? 

Why again, I wonder, would you do this to me? 

Stop, you are hurting me.

 I am hurting myself.

 I pull the curtains back and draw the blinds. 

Is that really you? 

Has this been true the whole time? 

Some sort of switcheroo. 

I can breathe again, but I’m sad to see, 

the light has scared away my only companion in the night. 

So I amuse myself for a while, until he comes to haunt me again.

 And again we shall play the game and dance the dance. 

As a sweet molasses draws me in, kissing my hand. 

I love myself I think, I feel loved.

 I know myself I think, I feel known. 

I trust myself I think, I feel trusted. 

You’ve never been more beautiful than you have already been before.

 You have never been more greedy than the greed you stole from yourself. 

The crayon drawings on the walls under my bed in the trailer and the textbooks full of charts and citations racing through my mind. 

Every form of outward expression, every mark with a pen.

An emphasis, a meaning, a purpose. A decision, a choice, a reason. 

A moment. 

Potential to kinetic. 

Momentum.