Shadow of the future

 

Words

The floor of my mind is littered with words—scrawled, scribbled out, crumpled words. I hear them whispering to one another—shifty, resistant as shadows in wind, as bugs in cracks, as sprouts growing in the fetid dark. Some are annoying—sharp rocks under bare feet—others threatening as broken glass. Some are photos fallen from a collage with little value of their own, pennies on the ground. Others are blobs of paint that did not make it to the canvas, beautiful, dry and beyond recall. Others are worlds orbiting their own remote stars. Observed they change. They do not obey the rules. They float, switch polarities, attract and repel at random, sometimes swirling, sometimes playing dead only to suddenly reappear with new meanings.


asha

Red Fish

A red fish
the size of a child
startles up through the trees.
Who sitting around this stone table
will remember this for me?

asha

Priestess

Having found no suitable priestess
I have become my own—
transforming
and transforming myself.

asha

Torn Page

What do I begin with this ongoing
omni-directional conversation of ours,
these fever dreams where meaning
evaporates just as everything is about
to make sense? So many doors but—

turn back and the hall becomes a maze.
Going forward solves nothing.
I begin again where I fail to be.

The fever breaks. I am in a strange room.
I am no longer afraid. The white sheet,
which is the wind, caresses me naked.
Fire cools me. Everything is in reverse
and unraveling. Finally, I can breathe.

A hummingbird flits through my rib cage,
pauses on my sternum. I have no sugar.
I know the passing hours by their colors
and sounds, and I with them—
an ancient tooth in the tide, visible—then gone.


asha

Reconstruction

One word, one sentence at a time I will reconstruct the story. 
I've done it before. One world, one sentence at a time I will
reconstruct the story. Forgive me. The original order has been
lost amid a countless succession of beginnings. I rely on you
to restore the details. One word, one sentence at a time I will
reconstruct the story. Forgive me. The original has been lost
but I promise to stay true to its drift. One word, one world
at a time. Forgive me. The original version of this story does
not exist. One world, one sentence per time, this is the drift.
The notes are scattered. No. Not scattered. The notes—hastily
jotted down, scribbled on scraps, scrawled in notebooks, penciled
on flaps, saved in a succession of files—are lost. They were
seldom read. They were never read at all. They cannot be collected.
The words, disjointed, were set down and abandon. No. Not abandon.
It is a story in threads and tatters—images, ideas, phrases, paragraphs,
the disembodied alphabet reverberating, returning haunted—
but I digress.

asha

Shall I bend or break...

That is the question.
I am like a word
that has been overused.
Daughter.
Sister.
Cousin.
Friend.
Student.
Girlfriend.
Boyfriend.
Member.
Stranger.
Mother.
Father.
Aunt.
Uncle.
Teacher.
Expert.
Ruler.
Grandmother.
Grandfather.
Confidant.
Castaway.
Enemy.
What do I purchase
in exchange for my integrity
and my freedom?

                                                               
 asha