Watchdog

This is the touch of an untried pencil,
This is the preamble to my life's new constitution:

I will never again slight a stranger for being needy and hungry,
for I am needy and hungry.
I will no longer take the absence of kindness as a token of malice,
for kindness waits in everyone.
I will no longer string the yarn of my sadness in hopes that it bats
the eye of a passerby.
I will no longer dilate my eyes to speed the passing of light
through my body.

I go to write in the field, and plant my feet where the ice once started.
I step to the plate and hear the cheers of forked leaves and knives of grass.
I step onto home. Anywhere I step I step onto home.

I walk the one minute walk back to my door, take a shower, losing myself,
mess up my hair precisely so, and walk towards the coffee shop.
Oh the trepidations of affording the cocoon!
Would you not welcome steam in your face if it was offered?
If it was offered would you take the nearest exit?

I am not making this about me — this was made for me.
I am lucky to be awake 'cause I routinely resist the resetting of the day.

My ankles and shoulders are weary and wellish
but I betcha can't tell just by lookin'.

I am sitting on a bench now made for watching,
no longer the bench for those sitting waiting to play the game.

I walked straight past the coffee shop.
I cannot afford to sit where the delicious sun does not embalm me.
This wind is the best hug I've had all year.

Was this the truth of me that you were after?
Truth be told I am glad I passed the coffee shop:
I saw a baby reach to touch a flower.
And if I could contain myself,
nothing would be lost except you reading this.

Friends that are firm, and friends that are forgotten!
From this moment forward I suffer no distinction!
I invite you all to reacquaint yourself
with the one you once loved.
I am told love is a cuckold in him.
And if being insatiate sounds savory,
quit wasting the limelight of your life
before it puckers in on itself.

(That same old thought! My god,
how did you get in— how did you know
where I have been all these years?)

That here a patch of sunlight descends
upon this patch of my life
and I must make of it what I can—
will I when the darkness advances
realize my whole life was made of sunlight?

And that I at every corner fussed and grieved
over every inch of shade I happened upon?
Rapidly aging relentless fool.

I know I am meant to arrest my idleness,
to prolong my purpose until I have
achieved a completion, but what for?

The farther I push myself,
the heavier all things unsaid weighs on me.

I push myself to stay awake some hours longer,
waiting on a completion. Will I strike out in search of it:
a sharp purchase, a calculated meeting by chance,
a journey where every step presses pins to my back
and my limp learns its language word for word?

The filling of my lungs with air,
The filling of my heart with the reasons I want to live—
They are useful, I have had their services contractually employed.

Never again will I be convinced by the word never out of my mouth.

Are these not the thoughts I have thought before?
Are these the same thoughts of my father, my mother,
my brother, thoughts my sisters will someday find?
What are these but the thoughts of my friends codified,
the thoughts furrowed into strangers' brows articulated?

In the blank spaces, as I try to pull lines
like pulling teeth without anesthesia,
I hear the milling of my teeth gently grinding.
I return at once to my body to scold myself.

You may notice for all my talk of the light and dark,
that I keep at the fence of tragedy.
My life has been my own, I have known no other like it,
yet it is far, far removed from tragedy.

I do not avoid discussing tragedy because of that distance...
Or because it has no place here, because of course it has a place here,
I just have not found it. Perhaps it is because tragedy
is best felt, heard, held and known from within.
What is expressed more than the smile of that man or woman suffering?