“Statics, Hugo, is the study of the equilibrium of forces, of stress and strain in supporting structures. Without statics you can’t even build...”

None of the girls would be happy,
the light is sweet,
about the decision we decide to make,
it pleases the eye to see the sun,
I don’t know what I am doing,
however many years a man may live,
I can’t tell what I am feeling,
let him remember the days of darkness,
Who is this “I” we strive to know inside? Inside each.
for they will be many.
Everything belongs.
Everything to come is meaningless.

Stamp you feet little bird, this
is one of those questions
to be lived, never answered.
I want to ask you old man,
how to be fully in and no longer trapped?
I would like to ask you old woman,
for guidance, for help, for discernment, for patience—
pleading for a word.
I can feel the bridge move with each preverbal step,
I start jumping and a particle of a rumor of wisdom
breaks as I start to walk again.
She whispers,
‘If you do not bend you will break.’
“I got to my feet, fell again, again got up and doing this jerked skin and shirt apart, stuck them together, pulled them apart, over and over, and the pain, like thorns being stuck in my back again and again, made me half lose consciousness.”

They were married some years now
decide to build a house together
decided to go down to the river and wait.
She is dead now 40 years
and he, where is he?
Down by the river still waiting.
“She was the prettiest girl I had ever seen.”
“She died the day we were to move in.”
He liked to talk to me, to tell me stories,
One day we were going down in to town so I asked him,
“You want to go downtown and look for some ladies?”
“I don’t know why I would bother looking, I already had the prettiest girl in the world.”
I don’t know why I would bother.
“Give back your heart to itself, the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.” –Love After Love

“...the pain was greater pride I took in my wounds.”
In a deep bittersweet voice healing from the resentments,
daily sometime moment-by-moment forgiveness and embarrassment
this is what I say,
There is a voice that creeps up to my side
as each friend, stranger and neighbor
steps on this cut
of earth.
Once by my side it strives to grab
my attention by whispering,
‘You fool, you fool.’
Embarrassment will flood this body
if you ask me to tell you a story.
With a consent open wound a bloody
reminder. And I feel foolish and dumb,
childish and insecure, petty.
Yet I feel a deep root in my body
and these roots as much as I despise them
arrange the direction I lean and stand.

I want to fix these, get past these, but most of all
if I can’t fix or get past
I want you not to dictate my behavior
or how I feel inside.
‘Go by, go by, go by don’t come inside
go past smash the wall behind my back
slither to the floor-go by, go by.”
I want to feel redeemed, that I have learned
and even grown a gray hair, a strand of wisdom or insight
from this mess of a year.

“I’ve made a lot of choices
Most have not been wise
But I have some really good friends
I’ve been fortunate enough to find”

“I felt no desire to calculate the differential of their kindness, to count off the rosary of my pain.”