Poem: Faux Pas

 

Faux Pas

 

i laughed as if there

were nothing worse than to laugh.

to be free on the wings of an answer

that no one else wanted to find in the code.

nothing in my effrontery

could be kind or even stable;

and the ceremony behind the dinner plates

and the places at the table

simply played on--mouths as broken records,

living to thwart new ways to exist;

the rubber stamp of the tongue

sealing to encrypt, to entomb,

the supplications of the mind.

i had had to laugh.  and in that act,

for a faltering second of minutiae,

the course of the mundane

was broken.

an ephemera of ripples

marred cold cheeks and chins,

making it obvious--down inside

those hidden ponds of still wounds--

i was a stone.

 

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6/25/26...changed a line