I return
After an interminable intermission
No one knew if the curtains would
Swing back again
Like the overlong bangs I brushed behind
Red-tipped ears
With impatient fingers
Or what would be left on stage—
(Some hollow hello feigned and flume of eyelids
With desiccated pupils drawn forever
In unoriginal forms)
If they did
I return
To the poised pointer fingers long ago laid down
Directionless
Over a barren stretch of keyboard
Relieved / reluctantly Mid-paragraph (now pencils
Down don't fuck around this is the way to
Catharsis / consensus / cuts away okay)
With no page breaks and poor
Punctuation
To set the pace past third-person singular
Lacks the insistent thumbprint of a period
Or curling index finger comma
(...)
I return
Charting new colors in my closet and unheard
Music mellowing trouble / treble clef
Vibrations picking up good god it's hot
In here up in here up in here up in here
Sweaty teddy torn above the knee I see
No straight lines from Judith Butler to did she really
Get pinned
I return
Drudgingly downward through dreamscape territories
And artificial snowcapped stanzas
Terrified of missteps and toeing the margins
Of syntactically circumscribed safety in numbered metaphor
Combusts but I've never heard cacophony without chaos
Or symphonies that didn't make my feet fall fast asleep now
Coming home again is harder than never
Have I ever needed directions to access the mainframe / systems failure
I will fit them into fourteen inches
In scrolling papers scattered on the ceiling below