LOST CONNECTIONS                                                         

There is dignity in the dark, the unmoving:

nothing can hurt any more, nothing can

fail again, nothing can be misunderstood.

no residual good can desert me, nor my words

spill sloppily, a mild vomit, alongside those

orators all around, silvery sounds, ever on song.

I long for lost laughter but I chase after the

smoke of a fire dampened, cold, inert.

 

It’s all in the words, the ones that I no longer hear,

words imagined, pulled from life’s lexicon when it was

full of itself. An arsenal of hooks to keep hold of

what I wished: in my arms, at the tip of my tongue,

in my bed. Now I’ve let them disengage, heard them

tinkle on the ground, a hollow sound; then some

unknown hand hangs me up on those same hooks,

a hollow body, dripping empty, nearly dry.

 

I find myself asking why, though I know why:

you see me no longer; you see a shell into which

I have crawled; and from which I make out a

narrow bore of light through to the world, though

still I shut my eyes tight. It pains me to feel you

getting used to your loss, coping as always, in

more ways than can be imagined. You are

learning to live without your man. But can he?

 

Not such a good learner, in a whisper he rants and

rails against the now barren trail that he won’t step off –

the trail he would say was the only one worth

being on, the trail through the orchards when fully ripe,

fruit plucked hungrily from beckoning boughs, each

year while the body allows; and deep panic should the

harvester be turned back at the gate because he is

old or diseased – leaving unanswered again

the question of who closed the gate? Or was it

open all the time and he just wished to be

debarred while drowning in his melancholy?

 

Will the face in the mirror be my sole companion?

He has no more ideas than I and he serves only,

at best, to second-guess my mood, to

remind me of what the world sees – better to

know than not. Better not to carry a basket of

tissued banalities, not belonging, mixed with a

boast of deep thought; for if that is all I have,

all that is left of me, my clever constructs will soon

uproot and scatter upon any light breeze.

Leaving some dignity in the dark, the unmoving.