What’s the statute of limitations
on my obligations
as a son
on my victimhood as a
semi-orphan
on my blamefulness as a
father
When does it end—these yet-to-be-seen effects of the mundane
I make now?
When do I not carry them
the strings
of the yarn map tracing
my endless encounters and tacking
not into cork but
into my soul stretched pulled
in four dimensions.
Length times width times depth times time. I coexist
in every manifestation of
myself simultaneously.
All time all me, all tacked,
All pulled, all stretched by
more hands than my own. Vibrating
into my marrow reminding
of the inescapability of the
contracts I didn’t sign. Most of them.
Each day the threads move.
They swirl and choke or puncture
taut and pull. pull. pull
me back, back to them.
To early morning and late nights
every day
That old house of repressed
memories and façade bonds
of newspaper-wrapped electric
circuits waiting for the
spark
to finally incense the
old aged kindling of other
string maps of
other pasts of
more and more disappointment.
My heart is a prism. a rock.
set in the stone of my
chest compressed
by pressure into endlessly
juxtaposed edges of glass.
An edge: a time a place a person a me. Surrounded
onyx black
but yet
Reflecting. It’s deep
yes
but shine deep enough
yes, go
and it will reflect
go on, go on
fluoresce
yes yes yes go
myriad colors of spectrums
of me
torn out of the mine of
my own construction of
the muscle memories of
the past pains of
the unceasing variations of
the crude black shit I’ve
made before.
How long
will I be responsible for
her?
For you?
Was I ever?
Am I at all?