Status Updates From I Wrote Stone

You’ll never make up
a day you’ve lost,
the world went on,
you stayed behind—
your hands empty
your eyes empty.

You sit on a park bench
staring at an ant,
but even it went on.

You were left alone.

To walk away
to slam the lid of silence
or yet again
to take up the effort anew

to free the throat from the stranglehold
to fight to breathe
to pronounce a word
to utter a whole sentence...

I know you’re waiting
you
who listen intently

[A choice]

...
and I know their consciousness is paralyzed
even more than their frozen bodies.
They’re possessed of that thought after which
no other is possible,
no humanity.
They tell themselves,
our torment, our drudgery is not so terrible,
somehow we will adapt
so long as it will not get worse.

always under pressure of contradictory desires

hence the wandering
about the sky
the hesitation

where to take refuge

[Cloud]

Why
did the world
fly past me
so quickly
it did not let itself be held
approached
addressed in the familiar

it pursued
the vanishing point
in fire and smoke

You write about the man in the camp
I write about the camp in the man
for you barbed wire is outside
for me it rankles the insides of each of us