who are you? who is the you I talk to when I come here, feeling some sort of responsibility to the invisible person – the pretend person that my mind makes like a mirror or a camera so I can turn and wink when the bit is good?

this is the record, i suppose. notches in tree bark or ink on journal page – the same nothing, the same game, but still – the impulse.

i came to say that i am still moved, that the travelers mean something to me. i read the early pages and the hidden chapters, read them like a stranger, decipher them. i understand better what he was saying, what i’m still trying to say — because the word is simple, the tale is elemental. strange to find myself still on the path, still hiding the same riddles and humming the same tunes.

i understand that you’re also real. there are people that see, there are perhaps eyes out there that have seen, ears that have listened all the way from the beginning. it feels unfair to hide so much from you.

there’s more of the story out there now – locked away in time and space. (where you will probably never find it?)

oh, i feel it now – the revulsion. the gut-sick that comes when i make claim to…what? it’s not about the act of revelation, it’s more about the…temerity? the poison in my blood to say i made this i own this i am owned by this, connection, connection, connection.

i stood behind the ancient cloth, an arras, i stood and felt the heat pour out of the machine, felt the vibration, felt the world blink, felt it stumble, felt a heartbeat, felt two heartbeats, felt the lightning passed from hand to hand across time across blank days and eyeless months, felt the right to say ‘i win, i won’, my hand on the cold iron, the same place but now mine again. brief impermanent glory, brief impermanent love.

heart of silver

blood and stone

sing of lost gilead’s

cinderblock throne