Aaron Weiss: Likeness

“Elephant refused to swear the oath,
Said, "I don't know anything about truth,
but I know falsehood when I see it,
and it looks like this whole world you've made"”

“Daniel broke the king's decree,
Peter stepped from the ship to the sea,
There was hope for Job like a cut down tree,
I hope that there's such hope for me.”

“We've both been untrue but i'm still counting on you like an invisible rosary”

“There, strapped like a watch on my wrist
That's finished with gold but can't tell time,
Was all of what little pleasure exists
Seductively sold and uselessly mine.”

“You made this world to look so nice
I wonder what the next one's like?”

“I was dead then alive,
She was like wine turned to water then turned back to wine;
You can pour us out, we won't mind,
As scratch around the mouth of the glass, "My life is no longer mine."”

“When I satisfied each need invented by my eyes,
I was a nest by a fox's hole or dirt underneath your boot soles.
Then I satisfied each need invented by my eyes,
Till it was nothing like I'd imagined.”

“I threw the stones down at the reflection of my image in the water
And it altogether disappeared.
I burst as it shattered through me like a bullet through a bottle…
And I'm expected to believe that any of this is real?”

“She put on happiness like a loose dress over pain I'll never know.”

“You strike the match… why not be utterly changed to fire?
To sacrifice the shadow and the mist of a brief life you never much liked?”

“And You surround me, You're pretty but You're all I can see,
Like a thick fog…
If there was no way into God,
I would never have laid in this grave of a body for so long.”

“Shadow am I!
Like a suspicion that's never confirmed
But it's never denied!
Wolf am I…”