12.16.2009

Minimalist

Take a look around this cluttered, scattered bedroom
A desk with four unread books, stories frozen at the place which the bookmark sits
Two extra bookmarks without mates, a journal and a pen beside
Door ajar, a coffee table full of books, movies, an unused lap-harp
To match the unused keyboard against the wall.
This place it seems messy, like unconnected thoughts and

unfinished sentences, words collected together that don't match
No punctuation, no end, merely all unfinished piled together
A sketchbook, two books to
release demons and understand how the Evil one oppresses
Empty soda cans, a camera, a collection of essays on gender
All these scattered like shells on a beach, shrapnel on a battlefield

I sift through it all like sand, I search through each piece to understand
Try to organize what can only exist in chaos.
Where a lover should lay, rests my bible,
and Pablo Neruda's haunting words that haven't stopped speaking since 1970
There my dog sleeps, her chest in a careful rise-and-fall, whimpering until I nudge her
and near, a remnant of childhood, a game meant to remind me how to be
carefree and that it's okay to be unproductive sometimes.
I feel like I have rested in this room forever, this room full of clutter and
incomplete thoughts, incomplete definitions, incomplete goals
In this room I feel there is too much, all the answers too complex.
Yet I fear the day when I gather my backpack, my clothing
My bible, my pillow, my blanket, a few luxuries, and my companion
and leave the rest --
all the rest...all the useless rest --
to drive away from everything I have collected in my life
into the grand unknown of
a clean slate, basic survival

homelessness (for a while), skipped meals, saving change
sleeping in the back of my truck like a vagrant,
where next to me will lay my bible, my poetry, my journal
and my sleeping dog, her chest in a careful rise-and-fall.

Ly Hansen

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