mistranslations

i must be less afraid - of mistranslations, of falling through the sheets of glass that separate me from myself. perhaps - and perhaps - these various silences will come together in the sun and mean something again, something real and fearsome, something i can fold and keep safe, revisit.

maybe i'll miss holding the universe together.

i came back from the past to spit that at myself. how absurd. i always thought i was real but i am unseeing that now. the electric rush - the floating sky - the tremble and burn of writing these lines. the inside of laughter. the outside of sorrow. we must not be undone by these things. we must not be undone.

i don't think i'll return this time. i think the cycles work fine without me. i think i;
but not really. the syntax and semblance of structure, the falling through, the sheets of glass. the crumbling buildings. the refugee pictures. the tears i cannot untie from my eyes because they are not mine. it will always be a mistranslation. i am too happy to be sad. hegel scratches at my dialectics/ i scratch back at his. always a doublethink. my poem is a political manifesto. my poem is the knocking in act 2 scene 3. macduff and lennox never came. that is the secret. my poem is laughing (my poem understands derrida's jokes, i wish i did). these simple things.

these simple things. the script of a new language floats about in my head, leaves shadows on everything i see. a quick poem. i want to unlearn this nightmare. i want to learn this nightmare inside out so it cannot make me bleed anymore. i want to go home, but not home. how absurd. my sadness is never going to be sad white girl shattering golden at the wrists. my sadness is a brown girl. my sadness is giddy with joy. my sadness is shattering in my mind. my sadness might not be golden enough. these simple things. my sadness reads a lot. scrolls mindlessly. my sadness erupts in a mistranslation. these simple things.

this here

this here
is where i lose
my tongue:

this circling
this searching
this falling through, this always i.

of course:
weightless; alive; here;
there are always
various kinds of peace.

(where? peace lives in
freshly revisited poems;
monday afternoon sex;
songs that feel like flying;
long and lovely journeys;
gold shadows of dusk)

but always, there is
this here: this lonesome
revival, this returning, this
fog, these lonesome smokes

the fear of falling
this where/ more than here

this politics of form. this ache and sun.
this time that sits in my hands like air
and the hollows i carve in my throat
and the dreams i scratch in the sky
and the searching, the always i