THE FRACTAL LIE
                                                            for Gustaf Sobin
“Do not allow yourself to be imprisoned by any affection. Keep your solitude.” --Simone Weil

My sleeping dragons, figurines,
and walls:
all around my fears are
breaking up. Things outside
this room are things
I used to think I’d need.
I’ve taught myself to be alone.

I now define myself
with thought and
                 know that objects
really aren’t the things I need.

I reinvent myself each time
I look around
                       (as if I were
a clock or changed with every
shift in tone).

Ruskin had us say that color,
form were not enough, and he
was wrong. What we need most now
are mirrors or a lake. Just enough
to hold us


for one moment
still.

As Heraclitus said,
all is change.

But here I compromise, for it’s much more (and less) than that. In truth, I never need to keep my promises or count on those I hear. Nothing can repeat, no matter how I’d wish it otherwise. Each season is a free-for-all. The water’s always sweet. I see my flowers growing in an amber air. I make believe it’s August with young boys playing soccer in the dawn. Then the air is full of locusts, and then I stand beneath Sophia’s dome, listening to the rain. Forms of dervishes fill my room with light. I cannot live without my words and yet I feel a cadence bringing back my image to myself. The anger in my fingers passes into air.