Edgar Gabriel Silex

Where Want Blooms


I used to chewed my nails till they bled
each finger a past I was gnawing down


I used to bite the inside of my lips till they were open sores
each tiny bit of flesh a piece of silence swallowed down


as I child I rocked my head from side-to-side saying no no no until I slept
now I talk yell and ground my teeth at the self inside my dreams


each night before I fall asleep I try to kill someone
in order to wake up ready to try and love again


every day I write a poem full of fear and self loathing
before thoughts of awe or wonder alight in me


when things go too well I get angry at myself
the more I undermine myself the more I know I want to live


if I wasn’t always chary always looking for something else
if I wasn’t always falling carrying stardust through this world


I once believed all things contained something of the divine
now I just want to exist in the mystery through which I’ll exit


if I had eyes that could see through space-time distortions
if I had eyes that could make dark matter visible


if all my presences and encounters were non-manipulative
if I could talk with the nomological creator


I would ask when will I have the courage of the flea that bit the lion
why must the roots of the terrible create such lovely flowers


can one’s gentleness contain the sum of all one’s pain
aren’t scars injustices and wars laid down


why is all love just letting things fall away
into the emptiness where want blooms


***


Rock Paper Scissors


Rock


the blood belongs in the river
the heart in the wind
the mind in the fertile ground


the rock
grows dark and heavy it dams the river
demands the wind go around
and hardens the fertile ground


the water swallows the stone
consumes it slowly makes its bed
the wind embraces the rock
scatters its dust till it lies down
the rain drops it gently to its grave
it knows the rock
will go on making more rock
it’s all it knows it’s all it cares about


Paper


lies flat and perfectly still
like a Buddha on the desk thinking
thinking of its vast blankness
of its nothingness
of its nothing seeking
of the way it finds its way
out of nowhere
then it is
maybe one of Einstein’s midnight epiphanies
or a suicide’s last note to the world
and in the suddenness of becoming
it gets lost in the benevolent
indifference of the numbers words
and symbols written on its blankness


the paper thinking of its blankness
wonders if the words and symbols
give it meaningness
and it finds what is written
has little to do with paper beingness
with being a slate


of nothing-seeking blankness
the paper being the thinker learns
what was written on it cries out
just the same
to the indifference of the world
as his blankness


the paper with its ruminating mind
with its nothing-seeking emptiness
finds its meaning in the margins
in the little spaces permeating every thing
that was written on it’s blankness
the symbols words and numbers
and their meaniinglessness


Scissors


were born from the demons of man
who tear and sever and rend
who divide cut and rule
long ago though they were just
separate double-edged knives
before man conjoined them at the heart
creating twins with dagger legs
that sound like sniping snakes
whenever their cleaving thighs rub


there is no good in either one
the only thing they like more
than slashing each other’s wicked thighs
is having something between them
to close their legs upon


if it were up to all those hollow thoughts
inside those hollow heads
they would destroy the world
they’d clip the wings the tongues
the eyes of every living thing
before they’d snip the head
and they wouldn’t need a god


being cast by man’s own rigid steel
they’d hesitate a tiny bit
you’d like to think
before they lopped us off
but oh you couldn’t be more wrong


***


In the News Today


a black man tired of racial prejudice killed eight white people today
there isn’t much moral ground there to stand on or to condone
when a white murderer claims his 16th dark skinned victim that same day


five of which he stabbed to death the rest survived somehow got away
do they cancel out is there an unseen hand a moral law that isn’t known
that explains why a man killed so many of his coworkers today


whose crime is worse whose motive most condemnable can you say
it’s the media’s fault too many bigots with radio and tv megaphones
that creates a murderer who claimed his 16th dark skinned victim today


is it cops whose crimes are lessened or those who target immigrants each day
in crimes where we see injustice get its way is hate leveled by that lone
man tired of racial bigotry who goes to work to kill eight people one day


he wished he’d killed some more he said before he blew himself away
the cops said to stab repeatedly involves vicious hate he picks men alone
the serial murderer who claimed his 16th dark skinned victim today


is the thirst of hate being quenched by knife and gun and moral sway
of fools with megaphones or is it something worse to condone
the man tired of racial bias who kills eight white people the same day
a murderer claims the 16th dark skinned person that he slashed or slayed


***


Portrait


in the shot glass that holds the lead
and ink through which I see the world
she stuck some stickers of a smiling little girl


letting the dog out I realize
his bathroom is full of day lilies to sidle up to


there is no soul no spirit only the intuitive
a force that through the flesh informs us
of the presence of an unknown past


sometimes my children remind me
I am mirror with a poor reflection


it’s not the flowers I’m admiring
but the emotions of their colors


the future is a commodity
I have to keep buying shares in
even though I will always keep loosing


how can you give your heart to one
in a garden so alive with birds and bees


the only promise in life is the flower
we are the water and the seed and the desert loam


the tyranny that suffocates the mind has a name
god how can it be the truth is always a riddle
requiring repose or faith or both


outside my window a vulture circles
over the beggar on the street


through tragedy and struggle the mind remains
an evanescing puddle full of sky


after Dostoyevsky and Neruda
you find yourself standing on temporary islands


the pupae of forgiveness feeds on human hearts
and cocoons in a recurrent dream


a human gift is something socially unacceptable


and can be so reprehensible it can ignite a revolution


perched on the sill flipping dinner in the air and catching it
listening to the sirens of the city open and close doors


***


Villanelle #2


something unbearable made her hands so delicate and nimble
some things she couldn’t touch the texture was too much
not just her fingertips but her soft voice made me tremble


despite my love at times it irritated me made me feel terrible
to later learn her hearing too was so sensitive I had to hush
my voice and train my stubby fingers to be delicate and nimble


she wore evening gloves around the house and it wasn’t simple
living with the windows closed the curtains drawn but I blush
at how in the dark those fingers and voice would tremble


such sensitivity to sound and touch became a suffocating symbol
for what I couldn’t have a normal voice the rush
of rough sex an indelicate moment respite from the nimbleness


teaching me acceptance of all I couldn’t be taking me to the liminal
edge between my own desire and every tenderness that brushes
you with invisible fingers and whispered voices that tremble


still my words and tone became a conscious violence an inimical
consequence of the sheltered silence and the cacophonous crush
of the life that wounds you against such sensitivity and nimbleness
the whole world tingles and every sound makes you tremble


***
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