POEM

Hardly any artists or art-lovers in my family,
so encouragement for art was (and still is)
like a broken mirror; the cracks of it crumble

& I’m still peeling shards away from my body.
I call mercy. Mercy always answers with a bit of
buffoonery. I give truce to those broken reflections,

as if I should give possession to what accepts me,
or what is acceptable with exquisiteness
that shows promise amidst hopelessness,

regardless if it seems like a crumbled direction;
a street full of sinkholes, airfields full of toxins,
giggles in the gut that begs for retreat, or

a fairytale that echoes in the woods
as I pass them by one night as brown beetles
flip and turn, in swarms, on the street,

as if some invisible torrent depresses their wings,
their bodies chanced to meet with some plague-like
Undefiance; superhorse-like rage

juices the jugular; to swallow the unswallowable
picturesque humidity, at the expense of walking around
during the slippery night, rain falling

as if to mean something else than mere falling,
to hear myself speaking in my mind’s tongue,
as if walking around in circles through neighborhoods, or

down dark highways, means to pull up phenomenal roots
of newness for what’s sake?
Headlights in the distance, anatomy of pearls.

I cut a glance into a yard; the house’s side-lights
illuminating a group of bright-colored tulips that make my
lips curl into pausing rosebuds—

Light fills gaps where darkness’ synapse
travels on a trellis of accumulated relapse.
My uncle always speaks of being in his Comfort Zone.

The wallpaper of the mind, of the body, of one’s Being,
is a harmony in one’s home that you feel;
it either will claw into you, or massage your nape.

What is it to feel ordinary? What stirred just now
stirred me to the bone. It’s when you
pay more attention to the periphery of things

is when innumerous oceanic particulars vacates
the energy of your surroundings.