"it's now after all" ( lyn hejinian )

What stars fall on you? Is your horizon still? What rules do you break? Do creatures in myths live for you? Have you watched Orion sliding westward in the ten o’clock hour? Do you twist your hair as you watch TV? Do your dreams have orchestra scores with violas and contrabassoons resonating like human voices? Do your ghosts glance into the distance for you and name troubles that are barely spectral and flutter harmlessly? Are you haunted by the river, its hurry and eddy and snags, bald eagles unsummoned and pressed against the distance, and the sound of water flowing and fish plopping that you cannot catalog but only be continually surprised by? Do merciless memories visit you at night, mirages looming with awful, distorted faces made of slapping words, and do you sit like the shadow of a bird on a wall as the lamplight keeps the terror at bay? Do your cats pretend they’re in the circus, performing astounding feats of feline grace as they leap to catch super balls in their mouths? Does disarray or revelation come to you unexpectedly? Do you have toys from your childhood hidden in the back of your closet or the basement? Do you lose track of time when you explore the dictionary, page by giddy page? Is your life wondrous? Is your body a map, a color-riot of lines, freedom to see the world openhandedly, or does it inhibit rebellion? When grocery shopping do you write poetry for the squash and apples, the clamor of the floor wax machine, the 40 varieties of tea? Are your thoughts apparitions until you pull them down ravenously in solitude? Would you throw your alarm clocks to the wind if daylight could wake you by softly calling your name?

Will you tell me again? Will you tell me all your stories again? I was curled up in a rocking bed full of broken bottles, talking to what-never-did-exist. Sometimes all I do now is turn from side to side, not knowing my fate, or if I have one. My eyes are full of tears because I’ve just caught my breath, or do I mean I'm trying to set it free?