cultivate anything outside the sorrow engrained

gary lundy

inside the emptiness between ideas. we try forgetting but then their insistences linger more loudly. avail themselves of the silly gifts collected over sporadic days and weeks. a single pink shoe a cheap bronze buddhist figurine. many variables dropped scattered on the floor.

all a pretense of clearing out cleaning up. we still already eat breakfast the same as every day fantasy ambiguous. we halt the floor of surfacing memory. attach ourself rather to the long strum of a relocated line. a note discovered stuck between pages random in a shelved book. while outside a young lover looks around awkwardly.

elongate the suspense in our carrying on thus as if they are present to caution and encourage. exactly the same way we suggest. like the others we seek absolution precisely when the next idea returns to its unaccompanied doubt from which it for a moment stood in naked lightness. run errands monotonous chance given planning ahead.

all the colors then they factor by four. they fool us with their lack of seriousness but not the other way time vanishes. it’s been a surprisingly accomplished day. they recall one particular point of reference then quietly cede to their other friends. stop to check the time moves at various speeds. while others attempt to speak over the music.

their shoulders shudder as we fail to enliven. when initially meeting it is difficult to follow their evidently random thoughts. later we miss that surprise enormously. unable to agree along adjacent trajectories we conclude nothing ever lasts beyond a momentary lapse. as when we judge their work as lesser and thus invalid.

theirs really by numbers a larger scales. who only takes the time when to say goodbye. we are always leaving them they say. on the note is written displeasures. that’s not all we know how to do to this melody. they don’t feel that hungry but we know they are. given a slightest nod of encouragement. fold in halves trim sides occasional to stop.

other melodies
digital landscape from photos
©2017 Michael Dickel

we want to argue. no the words would be the same

gary lundy

whether or not. that their departure moves language into new forms of old clichés. nevertheless they are right to correct. to punish us by keeping the lines between pleasure and the pain of the too quiet slack and off key.

they fly upon a quiet ceiling. then jump back in refusing surrender. we go about our day collecting. gathering asides and snippets of sound. at last waving toward another. insist that time varies by degrees. a child wears their hurt feeling as normal.

and nakedness late at night beneath the covers that prevent blindness. out there other melodies argue and fight against one another. nothing in life that memorable. not even when dreams of ocean waves break down our personal barriers. those other wars lovers wage continuously.

their lips glisten as their hips and thighs mark the down beat. did they love that hard as to hold back forgetting. their face in a photograph calm detachment. we may yet return to that another day. next week maybe. or the one after. solve the model prior to solution.

they choose their books carefully as words swing in and out of the room. gland swallow choke the suspicion of taking nothing granted. more than two violins slap against their window after noon on a friday. given time to digest the otherwise toxic idea of staying apart.

removing stains from deeply worn clothes. a year many years pass flowering toward unrecorded stories. or mirrors placed deliberately in order to fracture the practiced seeing. a familiar melodic outburst stuns us taps lightly. their heart aware more once.

fractured mirrors
digital landscape from photos
©2017 Michael Dickel

a sour flavor going down wrong.

gary lundy

they are alarmed by such uncontaminated appetite. this made us laugh with few lines of melody left unaccompanied. where hyphenated grows into surfeit of pleasures. strike toward the one who displays knowing clear as morning haze fire season sky.

take it all in we support every last inch. they itch to leave once again with even fewer words of departure. strum a sadness against a left knee or fallow chest. they are handsome in a marked for extinction way. now a curve unsettles complacency.

where have we gone they seem to resemble. greetings shared among strangers in joyless gathering. for here we are heard saying. thrum of absent violin stiff out of tune. did we just say how hard is their meat they ask. in an age when what we say never means what they hear. pleasant confusion cooks us all in either zero or none.

gary lundy

gary lundy‘s first book, When Voices Detach Themselves (Is a Rose Press), delves deep into personal space and comes out with cultural revelations. His most recent book, Heartbreak Elopes into a Kind of Forgiving (Is a Rose Press), dives even further, if possible, into the heart of matters, uncovering the space for forgiveness and a desire for continued connection—even from deep within introspection. We feel the power of pausing in order to understand how the outer world shapes us, especially through the ideas of relation/ship and loss.

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Three poems
words refuse to unfix themselves
we dream we are young