Ripping

roaring and fucking tearing the sheets
apart,
I jump out of the bed

in which I have (almost) lived
for weeks on end
entangling myself more and more
in the covers
reading, folding laundry,

looking out at the world through
palm leaves
writing, sleeping, dreaming,
letting the violin sounds take hold.

I have been off of him for a full week now,
and there are these limbs growing
out of my eyes and ears and mouth
that are about to bud.

The fences around me begin to teeter and rot
so I make paper from them
and I cut and fold myself into
tinier me's, then get frustrated
balling us up,
tying us in knots,
and then trying to fix us.

Disentangled paper dolls
still crumpled,
but hanging once again
overhead

like the ripped sheets,
now tacked to, cascading from
the ceiling.
I walk through them with my arms
open.

I design a garden here,
in this new place-
(out of the bed, into the dirt)
planting myself
so my branches will keep growing,

and I go back to the beginning
back to the all
back to God.


The last stanza comes from Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse,
and this poem was truly inspired by that book.