Left Untouched: Prose Poem
Wednesday Prose Poem: what we leave untouched
The week-old porridge, an avocado, the burnt-at-the-bottom rice, unopened Xmas mail — confused by the hegemony of the garbage bag, I left the room, thinking it might clean itself —
left untouched
the monsters of reality descend, then fight up from the belly of the earth dirt—how do we counter so many demons… — like the guy with the sign on the corner with whiteboard sigh, sloppy Sharpie writing, in the wrong fucking tense fragment…? — what holy spirit moved him to gawk at people driving past…asking himself, I guess…
along with those who don’t look and won’t see— that’s the loss, sensing the roots that twine round hearts and help us get paper but buried buried buried and — you sometimes wonder if you could have stopped collecting — remorse has a prettier stamp than the lonely — a smaller footprint too —
but the energy of shame carries pitchforks and lightning, sending grief to the shelter — just when we should have left ourselves to the lean-tos, to the leaning on rocks instead of burying time and skin and dust and old food beneath concrete over head—
our passion could keep seeding the ground — but maybe that was just a thing of yesterday.
