A Healing Word
In writing now--as catharsis,
I read the blankness of a stare into a mirror
as currents of malice, unease, mockery,
extend the stare as greeting, resentment, defense,
regard the mirror as boast, testament, tether.
I have no truth, no advice.
I refuse the necessity for proofs or polemics.
Vanity reshapes any question into my answer.
I follow the compression of a line
to civil war Spain, to the blues,
to the snare of free association.
If I lose the line of curative logic,
in revising, if I forget my point,
I sacrifice sense for image,
image for rhythm,
image and rhythm for neatly coded curse.
I make closure a demand.
R. T. Castleberry
Dialogue and Appetite