I have convinced myself
That chaos follows me
As if a companion
Or a stalker I can not shake
Until today’s revelation
That it is merely disorder
Of my own orderly creation
Like the roiling waters
Left in the wake
Of a vessel underway
And I am always underway
Though always looking back
Focused on the havoc
Left behind
In the lives of self and others
Manufacturing in my mind
The spiritual narrative
Of a Job-like tragedy
That relieves me of responsibility
It was impossible to know
If her composure reflected disoriented shock
Or disdain for the physical danger
She had not yet entirely escaped
Until she let the hem fall down her thigh
Turned her attention toward her destination
Determined steps splashed a path
In a straight line through flotillas of shattered debris
Which seemed to have drifted in a pattern
Intended to allow her unobstructed exit
Books, papers, and various other shards of detritus
Drifted in the eddies of unsettled water
Which she cleaved like a great ship through choppy seas
In countenance and action
She exhibited a formidable and resolute presence
Like the war film fantasy of the battalion commander
Who leads his troops through a barrage
Of bullets and shrapnel
Upright, undeterred, intent not on the enemy
But the objective beyond their defensive lines
Yet between us
Always
Undeniable light
Exquisitely tragic love
A grand delusion
At the end of a road
A wrong fork taken
Many eons ago
Because he tried so hard
To place features
On their bodies
On their faces
Which he just couldn’t recollect
Over time he’d lost
The recollection of the places, too
How odd
That the one crystal clear element
In this one otherwise tortured image
Was the frame shop
Filled with photographs and paintings
Recorded for eternity
Police stations
And hospitals
Apartment buildings
And condemned spaces
Secret headquarters
And schools of magic
In torrents
Of mud
And rock
And trees
Wiping away bridges
Wiping away people
The road broke down
So access broke down
Progressive
Political
Psychedelic
Spiritual
Pix to Words 