For Joan (Sestina 11)

For Joan (Sestina 11)

Collaboration with   Aytch Rae 


"No one here gets out alive."

More often these days we find ourselves with fumbling tongues, no longer open
speaking wholeheartedly but stilted half lies and unsaid truths. Pretend as
if the ship has not yet wrecked that we have not yet tailspun. Are we not a product
of dispersed stardust, wishing to see a glow beneath our flawed flesh? Gleaned
from cosmic rubble, straining across lonely spaces for someone to call home--
to reflect the light of scattered starshine become brighter than a separated you and I.

Fall then rise repeat daily like the sun, like Sisyphus, like  his boulder weary to the point I
can no longer recall the point of lacing shoes of brushing teeth of keeping my mind open  
to possibilities of ever after endings instead finding bars and beers avoiding that place called home.
Shoulder to the boulder grind the path smooth. Lift the weighty world create daily mass; toil as
prayer. Each profane intake of breath wafts aloft cold heart ashes, embers quicken. Exorcize doubt, lean
down to razor thinness- keen self-awareness, warmed from within. Become a self-sufficient final  product.

On the verge of becoming phoenixed yet frequently  flummoxed. Last year’s mistakes remade, a byproduct
of fixating on living a fictitious movie life of undamaged drama and hollywood endings where home
is where the heartless or the heart was. Home is now nothing more than a house, waiting to be cleaned.
Burn it down. Vacate repetitive space, ride the big grey canine, escape. Elsewhere Possibility lies, open
legs toward the sky strung with neon. Baited breath, a lure, caught in reckless fishnets once more as
it becomes clear I  repeddle the cycle, become a trifle the flaw can’t be in the geography, but in my own eye

Balled and chained stuck in a rut backbone broken fear filled thoughts of stealing away from home
you cannot run you cannot be enough you cannot avoid suffering you cannot be anything but a product  
of society and everything is purchased or pawned from souls to plastic forks and being caught broke has
advantages: turned out pocket linings become wings, fly above petty exchanges of fluids, sarcasm, fault-finding. I
kick routine in the teeth, tear down the streets, race for my own finish line. Brandish the baton, bash open
the lane cleat hobbling misgivings beneath pounding feet. Stand tall alone, reject the crutch on which I leaned

Run. Back through memories of days lived without care days where you leaned  
out passenger windows sang along to Cash, cigarette in hand headed away from home
running without destination running without stopping running with only the hope of a wide open
future. Recall those newly minted freshly printed days you had your shine on, an untouched product
unscuffed unscarred unscathed unaware of future nicotine stains, tattooed veins, wide-eyed
hurtling ahead heedless that the prize for finishing first is a box of worms and ash .

                                                                                                                                                           as
we pause to remember Galileo                                                                                          leaned  
out over the edge of the ledge with the river swirling below                                           I
drop a heavy heart, see how fast it falls     home
now a prison, bars of fear and steely doubt, doing nothing productive
but stargazing with my spyglass open

as once we escaped  home  
          leaned on friends as damaged was we                product
latched keyed                               I                                                    you              no longer            open