In Search of the Miraculous

I won’t be the first to admit it

But I could be more discriminating

With mercy        the sea a fever

Of emerald    I stand and ask the wave

What I would any other emperor

How palindromic the kingdom

I never thought to name the cloud

Outside the tradition of storms

Piecemeal    I am building a boat

Out of what parts of me want

To endure beyond the changing hue

Of elegy      I must be some kind of  boy

To meet the verdant apocalypse

So unadorned    Everything about me a loud

Fuck it       I’mma go out in ball shorts

I have been searching for the exit

To shame maybe      but also simply my wrists

Since I learned to talk I have always sworn

There’s a seam to everything     even loneliness

Even in Eden green translated to abandoned

How palindromic the kingdom of an eye

Vision always drowns the seen so why seek

Reflection before anything else     The new world

Stays feelin itself        At the end of everything

Who will manage my fade    My hands will only

Ever meet each other again         I lied earlier

I haven’t always wanted anything and yet

Here I am at the death of always    and somehow

Its birth      how palindromic the kingdom

Of always    I am searching for the old world

In which I was miserable    but I knew its name

Absolution is in my hands by virtue of succession

The lethargic green moan surrounds this self too

Each crest’s feeble music beyond beyond beyond

But I’m acting painfully human again     an elegy

For what does not elegize    an elegy for what struck first

Where are her bones now

Waves brief petals like the muscle tissue of a forest

I am mocked by another man’s Eden so long as I allow it

The green surges in and if she is gone how long before

She is merely a word that I loved      From where I stand there is a seam

To everything but want     This is my new always: searching

For how to forgive being the last of anything

Notes:

Audio version performed by the author.

Source: Poetry (November 2022)