Like a drop of ink | diffusing through water | in a warped | glass bowl | we | swirl round each other
Lying in your arms, I fend off | far-off | brutalities in the world, the | lost and the lonely, the | disappeared | despised | the abandoned
In love, embrace them, uneasily | half | hear their voices, because | I feel the breath carrying your voice softly | as it | brushes my ear, and | surely by these acts of | tenderness and selection, are we not | inviting others | closer | asserting our | covert humanity, which is | a quality we share, like a language | meaningless if | hoarded only by | one?
Too | fragile | these little forts of | skin and glances | who can hold them?
Their spindly gates | smashed by a | stroke of fortune, the | tiny mines in the blood, a moment’s | inattention | the path in the forest not leading | where we expected, the first | typhoon of the season…
To shut them out, to enjoy | ourselves alone | we kiss, but | what kind of kiss is that | that stops only on two | mouths? and does not | invoke a | sweeter and more desperate | bond?
To keep the strangers out we | hold each other closer, but | even in that quiet | enclosure | or rather | perhaps | at its heart | I hear | the new voice of the old | stranger inside me, the one | who was alone and found | in the emptiness of a floating life | a friend
Trying to carry the weight of the stars alone, to hoard them or to own | their light – a sad, heroic, futile fate | To reach their meaning, we need | just a glance upwards as we | shut a car door, or | for everyone to share them by | carrying their word | together for a little while•
•
from the series hypergrammar (open-ended, 2012–present)
(this poem, July 2012)
hypergram 