Twilight Gospel

Please forgive me if i seem a little
        intangible
these days
i’ve begun to think that maybe
i make a better story
        than i do a person
If my touch seems cold
it’s only because
Life is for the living
        and i might be a ghost
                of some past time
Forgotten now.
These here fingers are still out there grasping
but all words have become weapons and
        even just asking
Feels wrong.
Life keeps on slipping through me
like liquid/sand down an hourglass/drain
and i’m grabbing and clutching
but fingers slip
        like a mask
and suddenly exposure is deadly AGAIN…

Please excuse me if i sound a little
        irrational
these days
i’ve begun to believe that i might
make a better statistic
        than i do a human
I’ve already survived a Plague, don’t you see?
i got it but i lived and yet now the whole world
        is dying
What if memories
are all we’ll have left?

I listened as Nikki Giovanni read:
I am cotton candy on a rainy day
  the unrealized dream of an idea unborn

(I was barely 18 then
but her knife cut to the bone
that my heart doesn’t even have)
I share with the painters the desire
  To put a three-dimensional picture
  On a one-dimensional surface

How could you even hear me
if i just keep
        writing?
It’s not as if these words
could be touched, even if spoken aloud.
The “i” who is:
  a writer
  a lover
  a statistic
  a story
All these are still contained
inside some Dorothy, looking for home
there’s a heart, a brain, some little bit of courage
lots of shoes but aren’t enough of those heels
already clicking out there?
Just as these fingers keep clicking across a keyboard,
a body if not a voice that’s screaming into the void.

I think i might’ve been young enough someday to believe
that i had all the answers,
but i’ve read a lot more books now so i realize
“the master knows nothing.”

Reality might become virtual but that won’t stop
        the howling
of the wind, the void, the wolves, or the voices
of all of us who always knew in our souls
that a better future awaits.

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