Let those that can, lean away.

* * *

[...] the past seemed what, occasionally, it

still does, a version of luck when luck, as if inevitably,

gets stripped away: what hope, otherwise, for suffering?

When did honesty become so hard to step into and stay

inside of, I’m not saying

                                             forever, I could last a fair time

on a small while. Sovereignty sleeps hard beside me. 

 

self-portrait with a minor part of what I tore apart this year, 2015

 

[...] Let those plants

that can do so lean away on their stems, toward the sun.

 

two excerpts from this poem by Carl Phillips