Story House

chinks in the story
like a house leaking memory
your hands shift the mouse
sort of like in church
at little flower thick
incense in the doorway
kneeling on the hard bench
working for a small comfort
the story in its various
versions exhumes the sad
ghost of those lost intimate
moments another map of a
terrain deliberately forgotten
a tapestry not hung on the wall

so many versions of the version
so many candles burned to the end
so many days disinterred
black saturdays chipped away
your attention turned to
another creature's life and needs
but the house still stands
in the back behind the big weeds
also part of the life you have lived
leaking now bits of the story
falling into the universe on
screens like this one

lost still lost alphabets images
photographs songs situations
relations loves cancers abortions
disasters plane rides endless
miles hours accruing an economic
end your hands struggle the mouse
drags you back to the house
hard to know if it is worth
repairing now the end in sight
hard to contemplate the damage
hard to see the words again
shingles falling from the roof



Struggling to make something out of the fact that other people read these pieces, however sporadically, and that the poems themselves comment on the actions and actual events of more lives than this one that is mine. The house metaphor is a constant in my dream world. Usually the house needs significant repairs, but recently the house has been almost new. Does this mean I am anticipating the end? I have always had significant mortality issues boiling away in me. The subject of the end of individual identity is something I have thought quite about entirely too much. It is sort of Buddhist to understand, to know, that ending a physical existence can mean returning to a consciousness larger than one's self. Yet, here I am, seriously and selfishly clinging to my individual being, though it is horribly flawed, full of error, and marked by an abysmal, almost naive inability to make the right judgement as to action and relationship. If not for Kimberly and Gary I would have never chosen correctly in all those years of thinking I was a deep and constant truthful viewer of the world. It is interesting, wondering what finesses your errors, how they can come to be accepted and used for positive growth, understanding in the larger sense. Can anyone solve this? Why does the mystery metaphor always seem so apt to me? I'd love to have a conversation with someone about it, but no one seems to talk with me this way now, or they back out of the discussion right away. Well, whatever, as they say today.