i spent the evening wondering

by doreen peri

Posted to Poetry on 2004-05-29 13:10:00



i spent the evening
wondering where the afternoon
disappeared to past morning’s
lament; i spent the past tense
and the present resentments
like dissected sentences
hovering over unwritten
paragraphs and uninstalled
frozen scripts. i resist the urge
to write music to ease
the suffering, yet muster
enough courage to spend
the night right amid
a moonlit flow of verbs
while bidding an evening
scream goodbye, my
meter askew, my cadence
capsized, my view obscured
by whatever more or less
never could have happened
without a fight.

i lie prone
on the cutting room floor
spending the night
once more
without a
candle lit.

i sit
cross-legged,
an Apache rhythm
ripped in my chest.

i attest to nothing
other than tenses
investing themselves
in pupil dilation,
i, the student of myth,
i, the respendence
of conjugation,
now, the only moment,
now, the creation,
now, the sentence
coming down….

LIFE!
the gavel pounds.
LIFE! and no less,
no sacrifice for the sake
of honorable dreams,
no execution on a stake,
no way to make the way
i spent the evening wondering
where the afternoon vanished
from morning vision, by
whatever less or more
could have never again
happened without
a flight. of fancy
invisible word
dances.


dp.5.29.2004


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