existence, part v (man, the terribly lucky mishap of skin)

where would we be without form?

my lens is dirty, sue me (our lenses are always dirty)

this poem is unclean
it can't help but be
it is like this with linen
and dust jackets too
and skin
it is like this with skin


i have touched this poem

doorway

the world i mean to inhabit

the world that inhabits me

the natural progression of things

how sweet

and small 

the fleeting taste of raspberry

we hold

we let go

tent

inside the tent my son has gathered closely to me and holds my fingers, creating between us another tent, into which he breathes.  his breath warms us both. outside the tent phantom shadows form and stretch to find us.  it does not matter what creates the shadows.  it does not matter how many tents we form or how closely we gather to one another.  we live as exposed as the cold rock that we jumped off earlier today into the dark abysmal water which we did not dare begin to measure.  and even still, it is not these unforgiving truths which hurt me. what hurts me are his softly curled chubby fingers through mine and his loose and pouting sleeping bottom lip.

the bones

driftwood along the lips

flies on the corpse of an overripe peach

water when we are thirsty

the flesh

colour is not necessarily evil or untrue

black and white reveals the bones

however, the flesh is not irrelevant

thread

i wake up today, mostly dead

not yet, mind you

but i am fashioning my suit for the afterlife

with which thread do you stitch it, you ask

i point to the shimmering light off the leaves in the forest

to a nameless and until now unseen spider

engaged in his life's work

spelunking

i promise you something
a bear is not what you think
a fox is not what you think
are you holding a glass?
throw it down
it is not what you think
you think you know yourself?
that too is made of glass
shatter it
the world, time, history, tomorrow

on the way to the cave
i came upon a bear
i came upon a fox
they were not what i thought
i studied them
i made new thoughts
i took photographs
i wrote into the metal of my mind
                                             truths
yet the bear and the fox are still not what i think
over and over i shatter little ideas like stalactites in the cave
but they press forward recreating themselves in new forms
obscuring my view

the world is a cave
our thoughts are not real
break them, throw them to the ground
find the light