Like an activist without a cause
Between the most iconoclastic explanations and the least naïve excuses,
beyond cynicism and bitterness,
lies The Question.
It hangs in the air,
so I dress the walls in paintings, postcards, magazine clippings,
until there is no longer any space for it to hang.
Suspended in mid-room, like an activist without a cause,
I put it in a glass jar to keep my dreams safe from wondering.
The question mark is familiar; it's challenged me before.
I am not grounded,
Free-floating like the red hair of a Botticelli Venus.
capricious like a Klimt water-snake.
I am only coming through in waves.
But the question is prying its way past the snakes and the hair.
- How come nobody gets through?
And nothing else matters, the world stops instantly.
Everything I love, the things I've achieved, the dreams I keep chasing- disappear.
As we stare each other down.
And then I reach out and grab his tail, put him back into the jar, closing the lid.
Wondering if I've won the battle but am losing the war.
