Cyclyc

I am enraged to know only this:

that I’m congenitally periodic

and jammed this way forever,

clanging my angry head

Clang away, then

I could drown myself in my sleep,

plunge to where light hides

Like your vow not to speak

till it all worked one way?

A dream

But your desire to wrap this small life

in a sheet of The Times, ball it up tight and

dump it on your way out

is not?

Until joy swings through in a blaze

and you want so ferociously

to live, you’d rip loose the hinges

from head and sky—

I want

joy and all her

jangling of the keys

to have no door

to leave through

Everyone knows that joy

has no shame

She takes my shoes when she goes

and I’m left circling the bed,

my bare feet aching

The shape of forgetting is a circle

lived and relived, until I am ready again

to begin what has no beginning or end

And rounds out

your life, its twice-broken

line.