MoonOverPittsburgh

Some tiny creature, mad with wrath,

Is coming nearer on the path.

--Edward Gorey

Name:
Location: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S. Outlying Islands

Writer, lawyer, cyclist, rock climber, wanderer of dark residential streets, friend.

Saturday, December 31, 2005

Self-Portrait (Memento Mori)

The boomerang shadow under my jaw
weighs heavily this morning.

I flay one valencia orange
then another,

their viscera corseted
like hearts in sinew.

The mask beneath my skin elongate,
its merciless angles tautly upholstered,

nap unshaven and coarse,
I am six billion years

and thirty-two years
and, too, next year perhaps.

My left eye plangently pink
with nascent infection,

presses its corner, wary in the way of eyes,
cartographer of light and shadow,

peels back youth and age
to unmuffle mortality's murmur.

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Theodore Roethke you ain't (that's acceptable grammar in da 'Burgh). Good thing you have a respectable day job. Actually, I enjoyed perusing your blog (which I found totally by accident searching for something else work related), particularly the comments about Ben's fans and your lovely tribute to your law professor. I don't spend much time reading people's blogs. Are they all like this? People who should have better things to do with their time (like reading something other than blogs)? If you spent half of your time helping others (some pro bono work or soup kitchen ladling or just plain working--I thought lawyers worked constantly?), maybe your poetry would be less pained, less painful and more plaintiff--get it?

10:38 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

You, Anonymous, you should spend your time doing whatever you find useful, like cleaning the dirt, collecting rubbish...

I, instead, enjoy reading poetry and this in particular.

2:45 PM  

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