I put myself in,
partition myself off,
sever the tie.

Separate, umbilically
severed but

still connected at the belly

A vehicle in
the stars, a pair of
legs dangling in
eternity

Wandering alone
in the wastes,

with you,
my significance
in the void.

There is always someone watching.
Someone is always there.
We cannot get out. This is the trap.

Everything is known - not by us.
What we have discovered is irrelevant.
Discovery is inevitable by the law of the trap.

Someone is always there.
Someone is always watching.

This is the trap.

We learn in,
we live in,
we enjoy,
we love,
the trap.

We are finished.

Someone is here.
We cannot escape.

Who cares why?

These words
are the last.

[The lines of the hands formed a complex map]

Reality strikes
The days pass by
Two lines
Different seasons
Separate stations

[Reality hitting on the rocks]

Curve line erasing the good things of the past
2 drops of water falling on the way to the office
  |        |
  |        |
  |        |  Old soundtrack passes over parallel tracks
Theater full, broken line

Days pass and pass
Birthdays pass, not words
Difficult to pretend to be well
No words happen

Places I’m not, line closed
Places you are not, closed line

Romanticism doesn’t feel the same as maps on our maps
2 parallel drops fall
|                               |
The game hits me against the rocks
You don’t follow me in a straight line

[Reality catches me]

there are no words
there is nothing
thick fog

The same lines
Now they are parallel
Your reality hits

[The lines in my hand no longer form a map]

   - Codelandandmore // 4:00 PM ©

Five years old and they
   could not hear me in the backyard --
   I called out, the gate was locked and
  the screen door, mesh frayed at the handle,
  was locked too -- I could see it --
  and they still couldn't hear me and I
     was afraid and the mesh
     was frayed and my little finger
         just barely fit through and then
             aunt Lucy came and made sure
                 that I was punished.

(The reward for my fear was
the most frightening and humiliating
experience of my childhood)

                   I hid.

"Get out here!" my father yelled
and his voice made me flinch and
trembling I unhid.

       my uncle and aunt watched
as my father spanked me
harder and angrier than ever before,

       my uncle and aunt watched
the shock of every blow
reverberating
through my tiny body
                                    until

       my uncle and aunt watched
everything let go
and I ****** myself on the floor
in front of them

weeping and violated

I do not remember what was said after

they left the room and
I was alone with my shame
while the sun fell the walls
faded blue the ride home
was silent --

-- all over some torn mesh
      and doors they should not have locked.

When writing about oneself
ceases to scratch that awful
self-absorbed itch,

and the heart realizes
that writing about others
and what they've done to us
is the same itch masked
in a fresh disguise,

the trail of words
leads away from "I"  --

   like breadcrumbs
   dropped at intervals
      for poetic feet
         to follow --

            -- at last finding the untamed

where one is more than a mouthpiece
for sorrow or rage,

   for ignorant opinion or
       self-righteous argument  --

where the horizons are bounded
not by fear but imagination --

The irony: what one keeps thinking about,
one keeps thinking about
convinced that integrity depends
on never letting go.

Egotism
fettered by a soul
feels sorriest for itself.