Encased in Irony

This is simply to inform you:

that the thickest line in the kink of my hand smells like the feel of an old school desk, the deep carved names worn sleek with sweat;

that beneath the spray of my expensive scent my armpits sound a bass note strong as the boom of a palm on a kettle drum;

that the wet flush of my fear is sharp as the taste of an iron pipe, midwinter, on a child’s hot tongue; and that sometimes,

in a breeze, the delicate hairs on the nape of my neck, just where you might bend your head, might hesitate and brush your lips,

I painted my favorite quote by my favorite poet in my sketchbook.

From "Wild Geese" by Mary Oliver. 

So much sawdust on my glasses, I stare at the wind

with the eyes of a cedar, one I cut down when it grew too tall and took the far field away from me where I want to be a horse, severed it into boards for a dresser I dragged to the spot where the tree

had thrived and said to myself, can you imagine being as innocent as water, drawers full of rain and rusted keys on top from cars I never owned, collected from the mechanic whose son died last winter, two years old

and wandered to the river, the ice gave, then sealed like a window above the open question of his mouth, there was already a rocker from an oak that also got in the way of my vision, I will populate these woods

with an absence of woods if someone doesn’t stop me, a sleigh bed sleep-deep in snow, a bassinet full of crows, I have wanted to drag my wrist across the scream of the table saw

for no other reason than I could, there I’d be, different, evolved, a self-made thing for the first time in my life, I am afraid you formed the world for the same reason, Lord,

can you imagine something as dangerous as desire: language, I guess, that cuts one thing from another and breeds the distemper of comparison, a man looking at the crooked horizon

Jordan van der Vyer in “Question de Genre” Daniel Thomas