I wrote this mostly from a cut-up but like Kerouac said, it finds its own form. First real 'beat' poem?
All these moments, however whatever,
however cracked, however discarded
settle at the bottom of my lungs,
in the silt of all unspeakables.
I'm coughing soil, everything is dirt-
dirt on my shoes from not watching my step,
dirt on my name, and in my memory.
Dirt on my hands from trying to bury it.
My mouth is filled with it.
I find roots in my throat, crawling growths
up the piping of my oesophagus,
and when I breathe it's
which is to say, silence /
taciturn(cowardice)stoicism(grief) /
Any way it does it, it will do it.
That which is given no voice will manifest
there- in the mist of a car window where
I'll draw a flower with my fingertip
dipping into the fog to feel clean, a touch,
at the end of autumn. At the end.
The end to the heart of me, I feel it most
in my fingers
(whatdidyoutouchwhatdidItouch
whattouchedeadtoucheswhatdididodidit)
it will be tucked between them too
and fluttering in silence, plucking
the tendons of my hands, making them twitch
and make their own fists.
It will gather in the pockets of my coats,
not weighing enough to notice
but still felt there
like a receipt from a long-ago pharmacy stop,
crushed into a ball, or a phone number
written on a crumpled slip
of paper, never dialed.
It never died, this past world of paper
tracing over today moment to moment
was ripped out of the past.
What happened to the future at my fingertips?
They said it would be there, where it aches
at the point my pen bites blisters into
the nervous hand
that holds it. The dirty hands
from digging graves for secrets,
The bloody hands for the not-me-forgets
