The Advocate

(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