Monday, October 20, 2008

"The Instruction Aubade" ~ Charles Jensen

Charles selected words provided by Joy. Thanks Joy!

The Instruction Aubade

Wake slowly. The light through your bedroom windows
Has a vertigo slant—your body alone in the bed
Has not a limb to cling to.

Bathe, prepare breakfast. Pull a shirt and trousers
Like loose teeth from the dark yawn of the closet.
Put them on.

Descend the stairway like a cloud—

Attend your job. Make things, move things.
Cradle and uncradle the phone if it speaks.
Place paper in envelopes, discuss television with colleagues.

Reduce your walking speed to a stroll:
You have no where urgent to be
And there's no one to anger with tardiness.

At sunset, draw the blinds. Your body, streaked with night,
Will be weary. Examine the television to prepare tomorrow's small talk.
Straighten the stack of magazines in their nest atop the coffee table.

If you plan to eat dinner,
Be sensible. Order salad. Skip dessert. There's no harm in looking good

Even if no one's looking.

Joy's Words:
salad, sunset, streaked, stroll, stairway

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I never want to be alone again. Ever.

Kate Evans said...

Oops, I put this comment on the wrong entry. Here tis again--and this is in response to Charles' poe:


gorgeous, melacholy, haunting.

Anonymous said...

I feel there is something wrong saying how beautiful that is.

A story: many years ago when I was waiting tables in a cafe, an intensely wild-looking man who sat alone writing music on manuscripts left a pencil sketch he drew on thick brown parchment for me.

I still have it to this day, hanging on the wall. It is an icon in the simplicity of detail - a ghostly object with a gravitational force always tugging within me.

You have somehow managed to create it with words.