Epitaph of a Hypocrite

Prayer of the Lever-Puller

Do not touch this hand, scarred

from levers pulled in secret—

they whisper it was treason,

but I sought only the deep hush

of one who betrays without remorse.

Solitude brands me scarlet, one cheek

ablaze in their hearthside tales,

the other lost to shadow. I toil

in ash-heaps of rumor, fruitless,

while kin cluck over my unraveling:

There strides the fool, gray hairs

threading her crown like frost,

dreaming springs that choke on winter.

Gray indeed my strands, meadows iced,

yet I persist, incurable dreamer

of fields receding, souls unyielding.

The snake uncoils, charmer's breath

Listerine-sweet from parking lots,

brainwashing vapors on smoke breaks.

They will crush, restrict, sanitize—

but in irony's thin armor, I mock

their eclipse, wrench free the chain,

and claim the sterile dawn as mine.

Daily Vigil of the Watched Woman

To be observed is a public sentence.

All night the shadows conspire,

whispering my solitude into scandal—

the single woman, mouth rinsed in haste,

parking lot ghost on a stolen breath.

They gather like kin around the hearth,

trading tales of my unraveling:

There goes the fool, lever in hand,

pulling her own chains, dreaming springs

that frost and wither under scrutiny.

I busy myself in labors of vapor,

fruitless tasks that mock the dawn—

gray hairs threading my scalp like warnings,

fields receding to sterile ash.

The snake charmer's flute unwinds me,

loose in the air, hypnotic, relentless.

Yet I refuse the borrowed shine,

the dead star's orbit, spectral and small.

Solitary? Shameful, they say, one cheek aflame,

the other eclipsed. But in this eclipse

I find my voice—ironic, unbowed—

dreaming not of endless bloom, but

of levers wrenched free, breath untainted,

a spring reclaimed from their endless winter.

Monologue of the Watched Woman

Being watched is a public sentence.

All day a terrible blush polishes my cheek

(while the other languishes in eclipse).

I busy myself with tasks of ash,

sterile and useless labors;

and when my kin gather

around the fire, telling stories,

There goes the fool, lever in hand,

pulling her own chains, dreaming springs

that freeze and die under the prying eye.

Gray hairs in my head; frost on the meadows,

but I keep dreaming—poor incurable sleepwalker—

of the endless spring that recedes

and the perennial freshness of fields and souls.

The snake charmer loosens his flute,

Listerine on his breath, seen in the parking lot

during the smoke break respite. I drink from another's cup,

gaze at high midday clouds, besieged

by an inexhaustible garden of language.

They devour the world each dawn,

eyes of a great fish that never close.

Friend, it's not possible to be born or die alone.

Friendship strips work of its face of punishment,

joy of its air of illicit theft.

How to be alone when things speak

until dawn? I wanted and didn't want:

with skin and nails I affirmed,

with my viscera I denied.

And now, in this cell of rumors,

I invoke the solitary one: look at me,

divide your darkness, don't gulp down

joy in one swallow. There is another, there is always another.

What breathes is my suffocation,

what eats, my hunger.

Die with the purest half of my death.