Begin your life,
bundles and sheafs,
thumbtacks and tape,
carefully leave
each picture, placed,
level, straight, spaced,
accordingly.
Chronology.
Apologies.
Each haunting me.
Image-angry,
pain-memories,
beautiful things,
vacationing,
“Drive cross-country!”
Explorations
of those ancient
pits and canyons.
“These Painted Rocks…”
accumulate
the wishful thoughts
of travelers,
condense wistful
longings into
petrified marks
on this map’s course.
Memorial.
Hall of the Lost.
Once I had walked,
to the wall, pinned
each of my thoughts,
and at the end,
my hands? Empty.
I am bereft
of attachments.
I am lonely.
Gone. The absent
left impressions,
but poured blackened
grief into holes
once gleaming, gold,
like a deist’s
idol, dethroned
…and, at the end,
despite such loves,
raging, roaring,
my hopes emptied,
as the sheafs thinned,
and the bundles
gusted, winnowed
away. Aching
hands hold nothing.
© CG Tenpenny, 2022.
Art generated by AI.
