Styrofoam triangles cross hatching
The floor, ceiling, and every wall
Squeeze the room in an anechoic fist.
“Will I die in here?” I wonder aloud,
Craving the comfort of my own sound,
Hearing my voice only after it rattles
Flatly through my jawbone to my ear.
I start to think about that oak tree,
The one growing in Louisiana. Alone.
-T. Weeks
(A response to “I Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing
You ruined my night, Donald Hall,
With that poetic time capsule
Of tectonic anguish,
Pathosed, pasted, penned
And packed for a day impossible.
Now, as I watch my beloved
I feel the long searching eye,
Reminding me that loss finds us all.
Already mourning the inevitable,
Loth I am to walk in your poem.
-T. Weeks
(After reading Without by Donald Hall)
In the way there are many ways
Many travelers, many destinations.
Along the walk I travel, at times,
With pilgrims sharing the road.
Companions by fortuity or design,
We share a fleeting communal path.
But when I turn left and they turn right
Are we strangers anew, diverging?
To all my comrades on the path
I send this standing invitation:
When I find myself on the middle way
I will look for you, friends reunited.
-T. Weeks
(A response to “Behold This Swarthy Face”)
Here I sit at the park,
Children, women, men,
Tessellating about me.
Space vs negative space,
Transposing symmetry,
Tumbling familial motif.
Do I, can I love them all?
I feel warmth as I watch,
Maybe that’s just entitlement.
-T. Weeks
(A response to “City of Orgies”)
If I were to invent a monster,
Fantastic embodiment of terror,
A creature hideous to behold,
I think I’d forgo the fangs.
There’d be no claws or howls
Or capes or hollow-eyed hunger.
This beast would not lurk darkly
Or seek nocturnal dominion.
My monster stands unblinking,
A beautiful face cast in sadness,
Following and just watching.
It’s victims turn but always find
The melancholy gaze.
In the mirror, on the street,
At the cafe, or in the theater,
There it waits focused on just you.
This is no hallucination,
Everyone can see it watching,
never responding, and staring at you.
-T. Weeks
(A response to “Trickle Drops”)
Static on the line,
Crackling consonants,
Warm and empty.
There is no me here,
Just the hissing void,
And now that I’m lost
Please don’t pick up.
Starved, I detach
Set adrift to white noise.
I see friends about.
Are they mine?
Does it matter?
Do I love anything
More than having it?
-T. Weeks
(A response to “Not Heat Flames Up and Consumes”)
Hello little traveler.
To where do you go
Fetal elements afloat?
Your payload fertile,
Your potential mighty,
Off you sail subject
To breezes oblivious,
Furtive fate awaiting.
-T. Weeks
(A response to “Roots and Leaves Themselves Alone”)
Everything you see
I am.
If you see me happy
I am.
If you see me cruel
I am.
If you see me lazy
I am.
If you see me brave
I am.
If you see me bright
I am.
If you see me sick
I am.
And everything you cannot see
I am.
-T. Weeks
(A response to “Are You the New Person Drawn Toward Me?”)
Exhausted, hangry, horny,
Behind, beset, worried,
Impatient, nauseous, confused.
The day was spectacular
But my view kind of sucked.
-T. Weeks
(A response to “When I Heard at the Close of the Day”)
Driving west on a high desert highway,
Ranch land stretching to the distant hills,
I passed, on my right, a small family
Pulled over and smiling for a picture.
Against the golden grass and knuckled trees,
The young couple held a young child,
And hope, aloft for a selfie worth 1000 likes.
Alone, on the left, just back from the road,
A slumped cross, gilded in faded silk flowers,
Looked on, nostalgic, rustling in the breeze.
-T. Weeks
Life Immense 