(no subject)

[greenstorm]

David Rivard

Welcome, Fear

For one thing I'm glad
the goal of enlightenment means being stupid
enough to slip out the door
each morning & live. With no second-guessing,
no poses,
just this leaning & slouching
the experts term hope.
So people like me cannot be held guilty.
In our travels
we'd never laugh at the passing streets,
we're not like those grins they have
plastered to the sides of every bus.
But what do I do, what am I supposed to
do when I want someone
to hold me? How easy it is, & inevitable
and paramount & sweet, to recall
how you would dress before the mirror—
in those minutes before the blouse
started to button itself on,
when sunlight from the window might rest
briefly on your back, & I'd begin
by tipping my mouth to your skin
the way the first imagined oar dipped
into an unimaginable sea.

Now nothing seems right. Between us everything
either finished or unfinishable.
Whatever I once wrote to you fills me,
torn into many small pieces. Sometimes
it seems as if that mirror I mentioned
has been lost, perhaps stolen, but by men I'd hired
myself, mistakenly.
I am my own bad influence.
Many things have gone wrong.
And I will never be what you wished me to be.
You will always lean toward the mirror,
putting on lipstick, kissing the air,
but since the mirror has been revoked
the kiss collects in the shape of space attempting
to kiss itself. Well
the tragic can go fuck itself. Even if, once,
in the middle of the night, I woke
because the smoke detector went off, signaling
its batteries were dying. Even if it's like that. Fear,
like that: walking naked
through a cold house, moving from alarm
to alarm, unable to find the right one. Even if it's like that.

(from Wise Poison, Graywolf Press, 1996)