Emancipation in Three Poetic Acts

ACT I

WITHOUT

Space without extension,
Creatures without Creator, Without without the minus sign
Beckon with freedom,
Liberating sense from
The common bonds of meaning.

Without isn’t a puppet-master,
Who teases, pulling on the strings of lack,
And withholds the desired thing. “Bloodless” isn’t “without blood”;
“Senseless” isn’t “without sense”;
“With less” isn’t “without more”.

Out with the negative!
How good it is to persist with the without,
With the outermost segment of the side
Excluded from everything and everyone!
Improbably dissolving into
Extensionless space.

ACT II

EVENT

If happiness is a
Happening that
Happens to be
Haphazard,
There is a
Hazard of Hazarding a guess
That it would
Last until the
Last
Lust is
Lost.

But when happiness is an
Event that,
Even though
Uneven,
Casts its glow on the lowest
Cast of characters in us,
Casting all
Caste distinctions aside,
Then it
Forecasts the advent of
Freedom.

ACT III

A-WAITING

the secret of awaiting is to vary
that which you are waiting for.
try converting
awaiting
into
a waiting;
give yourself some breathing
space by breaking down
the word and the thing.
the difference seems
negligible, but by separating
the “a” from the “waiting”,
you will be free from
what you are expecting and
from protracted duration.
for instance, you are in a queue
to mail a letter.
swap the anticipation of
your moment with the clerk
for a lingering foretaste
of an idea, an auspicious word,
an inspiration.
stuck at a bus stop?
transform the means of transport
to-come into an encounter
with the unknown.
on a bus?
awaiting becomes
a waiting for
the end of the line,
the end of verse,
of a poem,
of time