Let me start by departing from convention, then returning
To it, even if only to confuse with clarity, or simplify through paradox.
I am no sphinx. Within me lies no truth. Within truth there are no lies.
Or ought not to be. Anyway, back to my point. I apologize for meandering.
The straight path is cobblestoned. The crooked one, wreathed with loose
Rocks and sifting soil. Shifting, constant as the sands of time. Remember,
This unforgetting will not suffice. But you will. Less is more. This is a paradox,
But so is so much of life. Let me let you in on a secret. Believe me, I am lying.
I do not always speak in elusive loops. Trust me, all this meandering
Will lead us to a destination beyond the accretion of loss.
There is always a trail. But sometimes, only crumbs remain.
So we have departed from Ithaca, and I do know when we would return,
This, I mask as a confession. I do not know, and yet therein lies
The rub. Artists are magpies. [1] We beg, borrow, even steal, meandering
Through moral molasses and murky mirrors to thieve through losses
That are not our own. Like vultures we feed on the grisly remains
Of other people’s pain. What else is sustenance enough? Return
To the swivel. My world spins on an axis of my own making. No paradox,
No, not this. Just an iffy whim of my imagination. Always, I meander
Past the meadows of lush green, cities of soft booms, gains of losses,
Past the slow spin of dandelion seeds and poppy fields of clean forgetting.
I do not want to remember the (in)vulnerability of this mimosa skin of steel. Turn
Back the Dali clock. Lop off the darkness with a swift axe. Erase paradoxes.
They no longer serve their function. Grey matter no longer resides in my skull. I lie.
Again. I know, pathological right? My mortality is tight, but my morals are loose.
So I continue, all the jerky starts and stops. The smooth grooves of memory
Never fail to elicit some spark in me. I run my tongue over memory’s skin. Recoiling,
I evade her Circe snare – all saccharine seduction and bittersweet touch. Paradox
Has no place in her rosy bed of thorns. She plunges into a climax. Squeals like a swine, lies
That she would free him. Her ploys freeze into a running paralysis. No longer can she meander,
All sinuous curves and honeyed wax, rising from the ashen thorns. The Lotus Eaters remember
How to forget. Penelope remembers she must not forget. Odysseus pretends to forget. Returning
After two decades to Ithaca he leaps into his oaken bed, only to discover rootlessness. Hah. Paradox.
Perhaps. But more of an oxymoron. See, I am slipping up. Not as witty as I used to be. I lie
Vertical, a skyward carousel that scissors its way through the slate of cerulean. It meanders
Directly towards our ratchet sky. But the sky protests. In a quiet riot, deafening silence loses
Part of the battle, but never the entirety of the war. And so we leave, having left, return
To our state of unbelonging, all meandering journeys and loose land, bolted ground where
You and I lie, side by side, hurtling towards a parallel intersection of lesser losses.
[1] I magpie-d this from a literary friend, in the spirit of thievery.