(no subject)
Letter to a Mute
If I could reach you now, in any way
At all, I would say this to you:
This afternoon I walked into a thicket
Of gold flowers that had no idea
What they were after. They couldn't hear a thing.
I walked among a million small, deaf ears
Breaking their gold into the afternoon.
I think they were like you, golden, golden,
Unable to express a single thing.
I walked among them, thinking of you,
Thinking of what it would be like
To be completely solitary. Once I was alone like that.
All the field was humming, brimming
With some brazen kind of song, and I
Thought that somehow I could disappear
Into the empty hall of your right ear,
Wandering through the slender bones of you.
But I knew that I could never let you know
That it is lame summer here, that I
Can hear the crickets every evening
Hollowing out the darkness at my window,
That you have vanished into a dark tunnel
Where I have tried to reach you with my mouth
Till my mouth ran gold, spilling over everything.
Tonight I looked into your face, tenderly,
Tenderly, but I can never find you there.
I can only touch your quiet lips.
If I could stick my pen into your tongue,
Making it run with gold, making
it speak entirely to me, letting the truth
Slide out of it, I could not be alone.
I wouldn't even touch you, for I know
How you are locked away from me forever.
Tonight I go out looking for you everywhere
As the moon slips out, a slender petal
Offering all its gold to me for nothing.
-Thomas James
*
Thomas James writes these poems, and I'm all like, "Why do I bother writing poems? I'll never be as good as this." You know?
If I could reach you now, in any way
At all, I would say this to you:
This afternoon I walked into a thicket
Of gold flowers that had no idea
What they were after. They couldn't hear a thing.
I walked among a million small, deaf ears
Breaking their gold into the afternoon.
I think they were like you, golden, golden,
Unable to express a single thing.
I walked among them, thinking of you,
Thinking of what it would be like
To be completely solitary. Once I was alone like that.
All the field was humming, brimming
With some brazen kind of song, and I
Thought that somehow I could disappear
Into the empty hall of your right ear,
Wandering through the slender bones of you.
But I knew that I could never let you know
That it is lame summer here, that I
Can hear the crickets every evening
Hollowing out the darkness at my window,
That you have vanished into a dark tunnel
Where I have tried to reach you with my mouth
Till my mouth ran gold, spilling over everything.
Tonight I looked into your face, tenderly,
Tenderly, but I can never find you there.
I can only touch your quiet lips.
If I could stick my pen into your tongue,
Making it run with gold, making
it speak entirely to me, letting the truth
Slide out of it, I could not be alone.
I wouldn't even touch you, for I know
How you are locked away from me forever.
Tonight I go out looking for you everywhere
As the moon slips out, a slender petal
Offering all its gold to me for nothing.
-Thomas James
*
Thomas James writes these poems, and I'm all like, "Why do I bother writing poems? I'll never be as good as this." You know?