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Oct 2013 · 493
Two Roads
Tyler Oct 2013
“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—”
I took one look at the impenetrable obscurities
That the distance concealed,
And another at the unanswering stones,
That consented mutely to mark the way, if not lead;
At the bending flowers whose faces I could not read;
And heard the equivocal vocalizations
Of ambiguously colored birds, and I—
I walked from the path to sit beneath a nearby tree,
And began to wait.
Oct 2013 · 465
Or Apology
Tyler Oct 2013
We were both there then,
Filtering words through humid air
That warned us not to hope,
This time, for an accident--
We both saw it burning,
Both felt the ashes brush our skin, as if in
Consolation or apology, as they fell,
As we fell to our knees.
Sep 2013 · 666
Piles of Grains of Sand
Tyler Sep 2013
Along the city’s second longest street
At the end of its second longest month
Walked a woman, in plaid,
Lugging an incongruous antique lamp
Toward the sun.

In the desert, the dunes,
The piles of grains of sand,
Are constantly rearranged,
Redistributed, reconciled by the winds--
Are, in short, in flux--
Are never what they once were,
And never will be again.

When the wind’s favor, for a while,
Aggrandizes a particular pile,
Does it look down upon its fellows?
Does it call itself a king, and proclaim,
“Bow before me, for I am the mightiest,
The grainiest, the sandiest
Of all possible piles of grains of sand;
For I have, I am more of nothing
Than you will ever understand”?
Sep 2013 · 1.3k
How Many Authors
Tyler Sep 2013
How many authors,
Unearthly meticulous,
Have left us symbols in scarves; or, say,
Surreptitiously submerged in salad dressing,
The idea of the priest confessing;
Clues folded carefully between innocuous lines,
So carefully that in ten thousand pairs of eyes,
Not one perceives the crease?

And what kind of beautiful sadist plants flowers in shadow?

I cannot bear the empty tears that they must shed,
The monstrous mute meaninglessness of these
Lessons taught, and not learned!
Worse: words, while wise,
Are not our only teachers.

So I look for the mirrors in smoke,
And in skies, in eyes,
In every word the wind spoke.
Until everything is a mirror;
Everything, however dull, reflects.

When I tried to ride a bicycle today--
And not just because I want that idiom to be true,
But simply because I want to learn how--
When I put my heart to the pedal,
And the wind bent down to whisper,
Unintelligible, but clearly intelligent,
Into my ear,
It felt like I had failed them;
I could not listen, but only hear.

On this generally generous June morning,
The very last of the Daylilies bloomed.
I saw it later, in an evening hour,
And I imagined, as I rode past,
That it (or its reflection) asked
“Might I be, after all, only a flower?”

“To navigate by mirror alone
Is to walk always in reverse.”
So the lily seemed to say
As it awaited, alone, its floral hearse.

I will not, without reason,
Deny a dying wish.
Sep 2013 · 406
Too Slowly
Tyler Sep 2013
Do you ever feel like giving up?
I have heard you say so, but your eyes--
Your eyes say something else.

I wish it were as simple
As asking how, after
Your ink and your soul
Should have been drunk dry
By pitiless papers piled high--
How, when mine have fallen to the floor
Your eyes are still so bright.

You laugh, finding limits
And leave them behind.

Was I ever so tenacious?
I thought so, only--
I thought too slowly.

All my own dim, damp lenses can see,
In that stark white lined expanse,
Is a darkness, darker than ink,
And deeper than night.
But your eyes are so bright.

— The End —