Wednesday, April 13, 2011

NAPOWRIMO #13: HAND

For 2011's National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo), Troy's Work Table is attempting to write thirty poems in thirty days without the help of writing prompts from other websites.

Many of these are still in some sort of draft stage, but that is the nature of the Work Table.

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HAND

I don’t understand why it’s happening.

Or who I am.

It’s as though a fibrous ghost hand is filling my mouth and nose and throat with its sticky threads, searching for a place to sink yet-to-be-revealed claws, still hidden away like those of a cat’s paw.

It’s stealing my breath as I think.

In this moment.

I try to think it away, but it’s stealing my breath away in the span of time that it takes me to think this very thought.

The panic makes it difficult to complete the thought, which is what the ghost hand wants.

It likes the longer thought.

It likes the panicked thought.

These thoughts provide it a life, it’s purpose, even though I don’t know what that purpose is, can’t know what that purpose is, for I can only know the thought that I need to make it cease.

One feeds off of the other and vice versa, symbiotic predator and prey, a delicate balance that needs to be maintained to keep both alive.

We are as though conjoined twins, although one lacks substance and the other form.

I think “caress” when it squeezes too tight, so as to loosen its grip.

It tightens, sinks its claws, searches and probes and fills another crevice when I have almost thought it out of existence.

It needs me.

It tries to get me to think this thought, this long thought, which feels like a panicked thought to me, although it feels like life to it.

Try not to think then.

That’s the next thought.

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Copyright © 2011 by Troy's Work Table

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