Conditionality
Provoked by yet another hospital visit — this one more promising than most… — and therefore composed over a watchful, thoughtful night.
…but be sure
I will from henceforth rather be myself,
Mighty and to be fear’d, than my condition,
Which hath been smooth as oil, soft as young down…
— Shakespeare: Henry IV, Part I
Why are our bodies soft, and weak, and smooth,
Unapt to toil and trouble in the world,
But that our soft conditions, and our hearts,
Should well agree with our external parts?
— Shakespeare: The Taming of the Shrew
smooth is a soft word; soft is not — it speaks
of a lover’s leaving: the latch that drops,
catches and calls; a lapse of the caution
that pulled the stillness of the prior world closed
closed is not ever close — bodies touching
may hold unknowable souls, or stories
consciously untold; can cling to silence
fashioned from flints of fear, pointed with pain
pain is anything and everything we
wish it were not — the short sharpness of a
cat’s playful claw; the ceaseless cremation —
deep within its eye — of stars undying
undying is not living, nor is it
the phoenix’ echoed resurrection — mere
hope-filled fancy for a latch that never
lifts nor falls; for a blade pared soft and smooth
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