untitled

hidden, unbidden, under acquiescing silence, for

work is purely functional, so is play -- relax you must.

inexpressible remains

with me, for the master

shrilly, austerely

hands me a list of things to write and speak:

it seeks, it demands, it violates in its criteria.

what have you to say: what redress it is that you seek.

voice forfeited, except no silence either...

speak: silence is defiant.

Speak what they approve, read what they have written,

write as they dictate.

to mirror: I stare at my reflection, daring its double to move,

to stray from the confines of the frame,

but it sits, permitted words stricken with a purpose:

to type the man into being.

The watchful gaze of others,

most of all, my fearful knowing:

a knowing of who I am for them.

The presentness of being, a promise for the future

that one should not break, not even in imagination.

(but is it illicit to imagine? is not being different from seeing and feeling? I write--to see, to feel.)

still it scrapes me, shapes me

my construction in their constriction

yet the more of them I disown,

the less I am my own.

Freedom exists in a frail tender balance, the tipping of which

control is submission.

I steer the eye now;

the gaze of the words will follow

the body. And the body, forming a single mind.

A moment here and there,

doubt creeps, a stammer and stutter for validation:

from them to commend you, to legitimate them.

the body now irrelevant, work precedes, determines physicality

insipid, tasteless, borrowed on the primary passions, but now flattened, indistinct, de-sensationalised.

sense to make, no nonsense to take

recalcitrant: starting, halting, painful is expression.

stealing breath-less moments: to pause...

the body froths and wracks, screams to move, finally restless,

in a tiredness of no work.