What do we have in beauty;
a closed mouth, a stillness?
Perhaps this is our own envy.
Trapped in moving bodies
within the dazzling barrage
of our own ideas, in "peace"-
we are incapable of a silence
we murder with every realization
that within we are "finally still."

The gazelle and the gymnast
the ballerina, the acrobat,
the birds and nighttime highways,
the crashing of the shores- all
with speed, and yet, their noise
is the sound of grace, amplified
with thier bodies, to be heard
with our souls- Some beauty
is the overflow of stillness,
the simplicity of being, now- a donation
to ease the dissonance
of all my roaring notions.


Can we carry them inside of us?
If the soul were a cage, we might-
but how do you feed a gazelle
if it lives inside your heart? How
might a highway run out of you,
the smog bringing you to tears?
Our souls feel too small to keep
an army of beautiful figures.

A tiny piece of you, and you,
you slowly add its layers
as you learn what you learn
about all its secret rooms, keys
found in silence- from the highway
when you listen, to the blur
of her movements, and mostly
from the way your eyes
scan the horizon for them-
a key will be revealed.
Where your mouth stays
lip to lip, instead of teaching;
you may find another one
between your clenched teeth.
Even the stupid woman
with the annoying accent
who looks at you all queer,
she has one in her pocket.
In the waiting room, a child
draws a map to one more.
A hurricane destroys your home
and look, in the basement,
there it was, all along!

Look, I promise you.
You'll get the hang of it.
You'll see them everywhere.
You won't even have to try.
Then your heart can trap
the whole world inside of it,
and you won't even want to.

-e.










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