First Person: Interrogation

Hang this on your wall,
it's what you've always wanted:
something to show.

And when I'm through falling apart,
when the vivisection's over
and the dissection done,
which parts will you keep for souvenirs?

          Which relics will you claim
          in the division of goods?

          My lungs, still full of hot air?
          The brain full of ideas
          that fascinated you
          till you possessed them?

          The fingernails I bit off
          wondering where you went?
          Or the blood I left behind
          in the wake of our last argument?

Hang me on your wall,
it's what you've always wanted:
something to show
for my efforts.


Second Person: Introspection

She's gone:

          You can still count
          the loops in her fingerprints
          as she traced histories-in-the-making
          across the world that was your back;

          the strands of her hair
          as it fell between the light of the window
          and the darkness in your room.

                    You can still count
                    how long a night is
                    by the breaths she took sleeping,
                    still count the days by her sighs.

                    You know how many seconds make the day
                    by the number of eyelashes she lost
                    between midnights you spent

                              measuring her.


Third Person: Interpolation

He will find no equations
to extrapolate from this,
no patterns, no statistical norms –

only endless archives,
bottomless databases,
irrational numbers

forming countless correlations
without a cause in sight:
a failed regression analysis

with no curve left to fit to.

01/28/2010

Author's Note: Rebuilt from half-forgotten notebook scribbles.

Posted on 01/29/2010
Copyright © 2024 Richard Paez