Setting Traps

All these worlds, windings,
all these memories,
articulations for wanting.

Spinning traps,
setting them in reticent
aural sites to catch

what is, would be,
has the language to contain us,
name us.

Smell of blood. Sweat of angels
straining against the weight
of ignorance we bear

to gain mastery of it,
and the blood always draining
through the channels of thought

winding us out of ourselves,
out of memories,
out of worlds unvisited.

Fragments of words, splintered
periods swept up by the blood:
shattered remnants

of the traps we spin and set.
Felt deep, searing us --
the unvoiced.

Spitting into the Wind

the weight of oblivion I carry
around -- the whatever of you, of me,
of any of it -- keeps growing,
a sack bulging with naughts
that will one day engulf me whole.
You too if you're not careful about
holding on to your figment.

I try, lord knows, I try,
piling up memories, tastes,
opinions, loves, hatreds,
text on text of gilded lies.
And the time I spend staring at
my face in the mirror, to fix it, define it,
distinguish it from abstraction !

An observation or two across
a page -- spitting in the wind.
What I turn to: carving out
a niche in time and space
and smoothing out the rough edges
by tickling my fancy when possible
as I slowly empty in the sack.

-- Marvin Glasser