inchoate
“Whatever you do as an artist, people have to have an experience. It’s not about the details. It doesn’t matter. It all doesn’t matter. It only matters what people think when they leave the room and what their impression was.”
Mistress of Parables
Grace is the refinement of energy; it’s an element of our action we can control. I have not been candid with myself and the toxins leech as little white lies crawling from my pores. I refine to soften the edges. I sculpt to pull the ticks from my bones. To soothe a boundary, you must first know its definition. It’s too simple to say, Let It Go. At what point do we stop looking backward? Water moves in all directions. I move in too many channels and parts of me are drying up like Colorado. We will run out of minerals before we run out of land. Space can be stacked. Earth to ether, the higher we go, the more we see. This does not equate to enlightenment. Elegance is the final note that rings through your body before you die; gratitude for what was. Death feels like a starchy cloth tied to my forearms. If I bite, I bleed. Who suffers the wound- you or me? I perceive thanklessness as ignorance. Entitlement is a bracelet blowtorched to a wrist. Ball and chain. I pried the cold clasp apart with music.
I hummed my way to freedom. The vibration stills when I do. The one place you can hold on to when your body drops with gravity is the place below your ribs. Feel it. Put your hands to your chest and taste the beats with your palms. I go there when I’m sad. Your heart never fully forms. In constant motion, like each tear or raindrop. Surface runoff. Groundwater. Perspiration. Condensation. Evaporation. You must let go to grow. Instead, you draw a sword and cut yourself off from your surroundings. There is more than one way to feel your heart. Carve it out if you like, or keep it in its cage. I present mine wrapped in cheesecloth to anyone who asks for a bite—massacre by passion. There is no choice but to move with the thing you feel. Elegance is the ability to adapt to your surroundings while honoring your heart. I mistook my heart for a fist and used it to beat my opponents. I crawled home empty. The pieces in my mouth. Hanging by a tooth. Locked jaw. Those who see me witness the sands blown apart by the impassive wind.
Those who meet my eye see the beetle rolling in the bus and the heron standing on one leg in the water. The starfish hiding between slippery rock and the zebra running light and fast into the skyline. Those who see me understand the weightlessness of this world when you empty yourself of all ideas. Preconditions. Societal construct. I stuck my thumb in the webbing and the spiders fell on my pillowcase. Their eggs laid in an ear. A navel. A scar. I latch onto things that do not belong to me. What is- a song, a poem, a metaphor. My hands are mine. I part lakes in dreams by waving fingers at the stars. Constellations that unravel when I whisper the word. Magic exists because we do. My teeth fell out when the eggs hatched and I realized there was no thing to bite. I long to be bitten. Consumed by the mortal statues. Gold. Green. Bronze. Bright stars. Mucus. Flick me from the inside- I want to remember that I Am Alive. I need another poet to validate me. Otherwise, I'm lost in this language every one speaks.
Photo source.
