Two Poems

life as a social pariah

                                       { I am the lone bird tied up:

                                       the kite in kite strings

                                       the falcon in chicken wire

                                       beating, bating, waiting for someone to notice me

                                       the ticker banging away while the thinker

                                       screams }

        it wasn’t too bad as a stint, so i’m telling

        myself the complete anthology will be more

        of the same; difficult, as living is bound to be.

                                         wassail up up and away;

                                         break waves ‘gainst the current.

                                         leave one tugboat at port (painfully cold),

                                        one shape on the wire.

(but think of the children!)

think of the child

inside of             me? not pregnancy—

dawn will be quietly adopted

when the roots run thick

and the pomegranate turns ripe.

rather than literal hearts thrumming

within my womb i mean to reach

the metaphorical child cached

in the crevices of my psyche

(unwilfully solo).

vision loss (gradual)

the day where minutiae escape my awareness

slides closer: a wraith, translucent—

silent. due to my eyes becoming so

weary i cannot catch the finer points

of the human condition. i slip up, wraith slips in, vision slips away.

                                          sliding down a slippery slope and i can’t even fucking see it.

will my other senses become

heightened?

will i regain my ability to smell tenfold;

       will my heart swell with an increased capacity for love?

if i become more capable of loving am i more human?

out of all the lives i have

criss-crossed in the americas,

it is my second roommate, legally blind,

who experienced humanity in the greatest

clarity—a sense that i myself had forgotten

how to feel.