the map is not the territory

the yearning is not the journey

yet the labyrinth is carved in human flesh

by the agency of desire;

in dark gardens what’s left unfinished blossoms,

constellations of fears and dreams

turn into indigo flowers;

lost souls will forever hover

above the rustling foliages of abstractions

looking for an impossible wholeness or

perhaps the seed-bearing fruit;

you see, in the sinking gardens

the closing of the gates conforms to

a non-linear dynamic so

there’s no purpose in the quest or

the peacock’s cry

among the blind hydrangeas.

i was so fond of you once

but now -

i am so tired.

in metaphor, solace,

in shadows, redemption;

up there, beyond the elusive summit,

an alien moonscape devours the silence;

among the disembodied voices

i sleep no more.

everything that rises must converge.

it was a summer of truth, a season of clarity - the knowing felt like an endless fall. travelling along the river of second chances, can i forget the past? can i let go of that enfoldment of memories that haunt me - moments of bad judgment, control relinquished to others, the accidental debilitation of the survival instinct, failed new beginnings - hollow nights echoing screams - guilt sinking its fangs into the rain’s siren song?  time divided what I lived into pieces, memory has patched them together in no particular order;  long ago i gave birth to  swarms of black bees - i was so proud of my creation, so blind - dissonance drifted into the constellation of petty triumphs - i trusted the power of blood and words and silver mornings - such broken and forsaken materials, shimmering shards for the eager heart. as seen from today past victories were the unavoidable precondition of the fall from grace, torn pages from the chronicle of defeat. there’s nowhere for me to go now;  this is the end of a broken story about being perfect and having it all. it’s precisely here, at the end of the world, that the hero’s journey comes to an end; not with a tragic twist in the script but with a few blank pages: smooth, mirror-like, hungry. 

i am what i see:

the blank page - mirror of an improbable epiphany,

the wintry february days opening before me like a leporello book

written in the language of the winds - i’ve witnessed it all

over and over again in my little life.

a peculiar kind of darkness bleeds into old age;

the entropic inevitability of decay and forgetting

invents its own alphabet: tremulous asymmetric patterns

masquerading as eccentricity - je vous explique tout:

these stories i tell so well,

they may have never truly happened; there were also

some letters from the future, journeys in a haze and

so much waiting for the right moment,

but everything everything aligned 

precisely as the script required.

now words crawl like ants, scattered all around,

carrying crumbs and falsehoods; they’ve made anthills

from those unfinished sentences i penned on a piece of paper.

there’s no place for me in purgatory like in the dream of gerontius;

tonight, the North Star will close its eyes upon me;

and during that eclipse

a trail of black roses will guide my way.