Communal Sight #8: Double Vision

I see doubles

        doubles on doubles

                quadruples

multiplying into haze.

I’ve tried a lot of glasses

each lens ground into infinity

  balanced in space

  suspended on wire

  curving over my eyes

  sharpening vision

  clearing the air

  improving my world.

Now I see double in my head

        two eyeballs

                two hearts

                        two mouths

and endless grinning teeth.

Communal Sight #7: Identity Focus

There is a round still center in the human heart

it holds together all our minds' vague thoughts

like the earth's core fire

that holds the cold soil in

But when I twist my hands into a knot

and try to find the center of my heart

I only plunge into a darker dark

the core and center of my heart is smoke

it fades and swirls, falters but grows strong.

There's a Medusa in my soul's deep center

with gently undulating snakes of stone

The poets sound so sure there is a center

even the modern wasteland of new death

has a black core, foul-smelling ugly-mouthed.

I have no core, no center holds me in.

When I lie in bed at night

my body flies apart into the mist

I try to catch my wandering thoughts with distached hands

my feet sit mockingly beyond my reach

tell me, old poets, lying in dust and bone

where will I find a core to hold me closed?

Communal Sight #6: In the mirror

How can the empty face and eye

see past the darkened air?

How can the lonely one

go through the mirrored window and beyond?

What is the meaning of a thought

held tight within?

Is the lifeless image over there still me?

Or am I a strange imagined cause to dream?

Communal Sight #5: New Growth

Turn inward

  You are not what you were

I look at familiar hands

  and see cold stranger teeth

Who’s changed?

I am not a vine

  green-tentacled, wide-leafed

  turning and twisting my sticky-sapped leaves

  to follow the glowing fire of your sun.

Who’s changed?

What if you too are the same

  could I have walked wisdom with you

  and not known?

Even the greenest plant

may nurture, tenderly, a festering sore.

Communal Sight #4: Prophecy

Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. Isaiah 5:20

The words are small black spirals

delicate and strong

pegged up neatly on clothesline

like dead birds in a witch’s angry spell

they move no more

cold, dead, bitter, strange

their luminescence has drained out

long fingers pluck their flesh

they are empty hulls

  waiting

  fill them

invisible liquid soaks their cracked cold skin

they bulge, fill, flatten, bloat

soft curves become taut points

Each knife thrust bends

they are strung out in black, familiar patterns

they are still strange.

Communal Sight #3: Valse Triste

I have waltzed for a long time

spinning in emerald circles across the floor

my skirts stand out, my jewels shine

I have danced too long.

The world tips sideways

the music shifts

now I am dancing death

in geometrical, poison-green patterns.

my hands wither

my jewels cloud

my hair dulls

my flesh dries

"come, who will dance?"

join me in my crazy circles

patterns of a maddened mind

music from twisted strings

we all dance here

some are more shadows

some less flesh

we are caught in a skewed pattern

Communal Sight #2: Scherenschnitte

I have silver scissors

delicate as wire

sharp as ice

I cut careful circles and perfect squares

neat

geometric

separated

I cut out all the words you ever spoke

I cut out all the portraits of your face

I cut out all the moving scenes of action

            all the tears

            all the drama

            all the scripts

When they are all cut out

I will drop them into the deepest deep

and watch them float away like birds

  Then I will smile and smile at you

  and never say a word.

Note: Scherenschnitte is the German term for the art of paper cutting