To speak of the office
in my home
is to speak of the laboratory in yours
I've confused often
the click of the door being shut
the handle turned
with the muted peck of a goodnight kiss
Writing is like crying
it demands a pretty basic level of hydration
in its grainy, atomic core
instead:
the liquid-less void
a bleeding, dusty silence
between the desk and
a suddenly vacant door frame.
Cheap gilt rubs right off
beneath your parched and brittle fingers
what you need is a
more thorough entanglement
of the elements involved
Look here:
we are hunched
in crisp white coats
over microscopes and legal pads:
to adjust the height of the eye
is to strip and pare and reveal
at the right degree of magnification
all of us cries out for more of something else
and when we have strained our eyes
to the limits of our artifice
what's left is
all ache and crunch; a
crystalline futility
and a hunger poorly spent
