Prying Beneath the Mask

This poem was originally posted in three parts at Integral Options Cafe. It appears here, in full, for the first time.


Prying Beneath the Mask

One cannot be angry without flesh:
the sheer weight of being
in gravity’s spell
makes possible the shadow
engendered in tissue,
its consent to time.
Wounds open in the image
one carries as the face
reflected in a puddle of water.
All distortions
root in the space
between a blink of the eye
and the slim memory
of that fleeting instant
of darkness,
recollection of how the wound
was inflicted.
All the retelling
one perceives is the narrative
of a series
of linked events,
snapshots grouped thematically
by the tenuous thread
of I.

_____

Of course,
that tenuous thread
does keep flesh attached to bone,
allows the murky pretense
that where one stands
at this particular moment
can be traced
backwards
in a straight line
to the instant
of conception,
one sperm and one egg
manifesting a spark of light
which grew
moment by moment
to produce the person
who now stands
in the middle of an empty parking lot,
at 2:51 a.m.,
having no idea
what crooked line of god
has shifted the narrative,
fractured
the fragile glass cage
once believed to contain all the words
ever needed to define
one’s self—
left sitting beneath yellow lights
with nothing but a question,
and no voice
offering an answer.

_____

Apparent doubt swims
in the undercurrent of language.
Predictable patterns
of ocean surface
offer only a vague glimpse
of what lurks
in the depths below:
silences between words,
dream images
rising from the reptilian brainstem,
roots of consciousness.

_____

To walk without name
in the tremulous forests
of fear, each step
takes one closer
to a center where silence
ruptures the synaptic maps
of perception: the deafening hum
of molecular energy,
the tonal lucidity
experienced as a dagger
plunged between ribs,
ecstatic blood
falling to earth.
And a human voice
wails as though its feet
were slapped
for the very first time.


                    II
The muscle has shriveled,
rivers beneath my skin
reduced to mere thin streams.
Rocks exposed to sun,
a stiffening of bones.

_____

Positing the reader
as anyone . . . .
Any person who has tossed
in cold hours after midnight,
tangled in sweat-stained sheets,
wanting only to stop
the inner voice,
or praying
for a tangible body
to share the bed—
a Beloved who is more than body,
another who touches
one’s soul,
who closes the window
when blowing snow
dampens the quilt,
whose warmth
can fend off the coldest night
and bury all fears
beneath a moss-shrouded oak.

_____

The projection of emptiness:
things are loved
in folly,
a false praise
pushing the Other
toward the door. A need
thoroughly primitive,
unanswered in the eyes
of the Beloved.
Words become rain
falling to abstraction.
Only touch
reveals one’s self
in all its leafy decay,
seeking redemption
in the autobiographical stare.

_____

The Beloved binds one’s tongue,
demands forgetting,
carries the body
back to the watery source
until breath
fills the margins
of belief
with the one true name,
the body knotted
in longing. Each cell
echoes the name
of the Beloved,
a pulse of wind
swaying willow limbs
in a rhythmic prayer.

_____

This, being
the instant the eyes
open as door frames
allowing starlight
and the pale moon’s somnolent glow,
the chilly assimilation
of what is missing
into the skin-textured portrait
of identity.
Feeling as though one climbs
a ladder
leading ever higher,
each step leaving the soil
of one’s roots
further beneath the doubt
shaping each utterance,
wrought mouth
unable to taste the wine
such height entails.

_____

The open eyes, fixed
on a point of departure:
a plywood box
rolling into the furnace,
face to face
with devouring flames.
Confrontation
with the final word.
Enveloped in the strong arms
of the Beloved,
a way out
or back within.


                     III
Without flesh is naught.
The moodiness of biography
sums the rubble
of a tower
collapsed beneath its own weight.
Subtraction is the reward
for the hand
opening its fist,
allowing grains of sand
their return
to ocean.

_____

Sitting on a bare floor
in an empty room.
To reverse the past
with each breath exhaled,
not in forgetting
but in the meeting of the present
with open arms
on a day
the rambling wind
gossips of things unseen.
The cracked window
shakes in the proximity
of now.

_____

How the tenuous thread
posits an absolute,
a monosyllabic self
poised in a straight
vertical line
connecting heaven
and earth.
If only the sacred
could be discovered
in the language of narrative,
uncovered in the plot
arching with each lost second,
bound only by the limits
of laughter,
or tears,
or the simple forehead
cracking plaster
from the wall
in its frustration.
To create an aperture
through which god,
the Beloved,
might compose a sign
on the rough surface
of skull.

_____

The chain-link linearity
of time,
bound as one is
to the repetition of dawns
and sunsets.
A human being
is coded to escape the limits
preventing the fracture
of a cloudy sky
to ashen slivers of glass,
each piece
reflecting an image
of the whole,
just as each cell
contains the blueprint
of the body.

_____

So, on a given morning
I awake
with a knife stuck
in my side,
dried blood on the sheets,
and a note
taped to the wall
apologizing
for the poor aim,
signed only with a circle.
And I remove the blade
from flesh,
cover the ragged wound
with pages from a notebook,
suddenly aware
I am not yet awake,
and sure
I have never felt more alive
than when the mirror
reveals the mask
of my own death.