let’s write a poem:

T:

I pulled apart the curtains to pull apart myself

S:

I stayed behind the windows

I stumbled through the pages to stumble through myself

 

As I felt the pages unfold, and the flipped through the leafy gold

I wrote how I had become

I silenced the thoughts of the other ones

 

But they didn’t leave

They pitched tents just behind my temples

Intent to stay awake

Making shadow puppets on the canvas

 

From the flames of indian dancers

and real-life prancers

They celebrate what I watch

Because life cannot be taught.  

 

But I still scrawl notes and diagrams

Draw flow charts and histograms

In corduroys with coffee stains

As neighbor boys trudge through the rain

 

I’m a boy masquerading as a man

A mask parading all over town again

Only a crack between flesh and fake

My insides all slumber, cannot fall awake.

 

So I’ll invest in insulation

And expand interpretations.

 

If I was more or less

This or that

Then that would that be it?

Or would it still be like this?

 

But specificity was never my strong suit

and productivity is for the unmute.

So I’ll settle for not knowing more than nothing

And relax in the throwing of time into something

Click.

 

Clack.

Change the ribbon.

No ribbon.

Buy a ribbon.

Change the ribbon.

 

Pick.

Pack.

Empty your bag.

Fill up your bag.

Throw away your baggage.

 

Strap around the right shoulder.

Reach with the left.

Can’t grab what’s left.

Loosen the strap.

Reach with the left.

Sit back down, lean forward.

 

Consider for a second.

What to think first.

Is left the right choice?

Or in some way, the worst?

For I am a bag.

and a typewriter with no ribbon

A tree without leaves.

A thinker with no inhibition.

 

Fill me up,

I’ll latch on to you.

Change me,

I’ll mark myself.

I know you see what was,

Or what will be,

But not me

Now

 

My tinted glasses

Put shade in my eyes.

My shadowed soul

Seeps from my seams.

Because I blocked my windows

With curtains of iron.

So pull apart my curtains.

And pull apart my sins.