Sunday, September 27, 2020

poem

Tourniquet

Twist a white shirt
Clockwise tight
Until you stanch
The pulsatile spurt.
First things first;
Stop the bleed,
Worry about the rest later.
Pale then blue then black,
Strangulate the parts
You don't explicitly need.
You'll be ok
If you don't get them back.
Most things are not indispensable.
You can live without your sweater,
By making peace with the shiver.
You don't need this house,
This comfortable suburbia
This cultivated persona.
Life is tolerable without the fine china.
Kill it before it kills you.
Be like the drunks smashing full bottles,
The thinkers who empty their minds
In the quiet woods and listen to trees,
The writers who break their pencils snap,
In half, halt the flow,
A gradual stifling
Of all things serious and trifling;
Suspicious looks, wrong words, misplaced thoughts,
Cap them with purplish dry scabs.
All bleeding, in the end, eventually stops.


It's time to grow up.
First, save the essential
And cling to what is left.
Then shrink into smaller spaces,
Circle the wagons tighter,
Cast your ballast into the sea.
The wounded will heal
With beautiful complex scars.
Fragments re-form like
Silver globs of molten metal
Inexplicably fusing together like desperate lovers.
Time will ultimately grant
A new sense of wholeness
Another day, another step
Even if it's one limb less.

9/25/20






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