Decontextualized (Deux Fois)

DECONTEXTUALIZED in 2000

i am my only
frame of reference,
i swallowed the world
when it wasn’t looking,
my edges are hazy, my outline blurry,
i exist only provisionally.

my feet are inventing
where i am going,
my hands are molding
what i am touching,
you are a drawing
inside my eye. how lonely.

unseen, untouched
unheard and unspoken,
i’m hanging by threads
of my awareness;
i’m writing myself
into a poem.

DECONTEXTUALIZED in 2009

at 12:10 p.m. the WC stall is blue, a look down at the corner hinges holding the walls together, and a big-lettered, blue-markered LOVE sprawling on the metallic rectangle

the exhaust fumes settle low at the red light, a glance to the right, and a rolled-down car window, with a male arm bent in the elbow, with a grey teddy-bear wedged above the wheel

a jam in the bike lane, waiting for pedestrians to cross, a whir of the bike halting to the left, a quick glance down, and a suave gecko curving around a delicate female ankle bone

a sustained whizzing of the wind, running wild on a downhill slope, caught in the interstice between helmet, ear, and earring

jeanne-mance & milton, an unexpected friend pasted in yellow rubber onto the asphalt, sending encrypted messages throughout the city, squarely, connecting everything to everything