F.I.N.E.

(Credit: Zdzislaw Beksinski, Untitled, 1994)

Slowly, very slowly, working on my 3rd book. Another collection of poetry that has somehow shoved my novella to the back of the queue. Here's a small, not-final-draft piece:

fear shapes thought
like whetstones sharpen knives
and bars paint prisons
and the edge of a cliff beckons as if
it were a lover’s whispered gesture

irrationally as dreaming it begins
with a small pebble of anxiety
cragged as an old face
then lovingly polished to a fine smooth
rounded goose-flesh-down dread
and how that uncertainty creates a certainty
of what i am worrying will happen
as if reality were nightmare's despondent whim

how powerless i am in my terror
the irony is palpable that
i can put pretzels to shame with the twists
but not so strong as metal
more like a spider's gossamer
and just as creeping across my face

i suspect with a bondsman’s surety
cashing in my doubt like the zealotry believes
with such despair as only lost hope could ever know

until that knot is Gordian
or something equally convoluted
and prophetic