the question of books

process/form: approximately one poem per day, written on impulse without revisions, mimicking the basics of Neruda's form within "The Book of Questions."

about Neruda & "The Book of Questions":
"The Anglo-Saxon root of the word "question" is kuere, which meant to ask or seek, hence to gain or win. In Latin, it was quaerere and questum; in English it became quaestor and later "quest," "inquest," and "question." Other off-shoots of the root became "conquest," "inquire," and "acquire."

Neruda is interested in inquiring about the nature of things, a process initiated by asking questions rooted in experience, offering us what he intuits as true and does not understand. Rather than remain in control, he submerges himself in not-knowing, in the unknowable questions that enter the imagination. The poet is intent on distinguishing between what he believes in his heart and soul (gnosis), and received patterns of thinking and feeling that limit imagination and growth."
-- William O'Daly

Is it possible to love
only one taste,

only summer
or only spring?

To love only afternoon?
To live without

the color gray,
or hesitation?

What unfolding murmuration
occurs in the cold

field of your palm
& crease of your eye?

could you could you
could you love me

could you love me like a rough draft?

how closely
cuts this horoscope?

What meaning has a life
lived without risk?

What meaning has a risk without passion ?

What meaning has faith without
despair to push against its edges?

Can't you feel birth & death
singing within your pulse?

If silence in music
& breath in poetry is

what lends itself to beauty,
do we not understand

the same of love?

Why did I drag wet leaves
over my sleeping child?

Why does absence
overgrow gardens?

When did I stop
writing with my blood?

Who can tell
the stillness in me,
bloom?

Desire, won't you slip
off your silver heels & sleep?

Will you cease your breathless
whisper, your desperate promise?

Why did you plant
a tiger in my hipbones?

Why did you leave
the arms of my Love?

Were you tornado
or hurricane to my heart?

Was it your hands of wood or words
of glass that splintered?

Was I the hammer thrown
the rock tossed to your open body?

Have the shreds of our letters
begun to blow against your doorstep?

Is all we share now regret?

How proud the crow?
How cruel the peacock?

How dumb the robin?
How sweet the sparrow?

Why is it that man can be
the ugliest beast of all?

Is it because he can shatter
with his silence?

Or is it simply because of
his masterful camouflage?

Didn't we mistake
one another for angels?

And although mistaken,
did we not eventually clip one another's wings?

Did the absence of speech
speak for the fullness of our sadness?

Is a prayer not always a question?

Was home always
just a symbol?

When we called one another home,
weren't we overlooking lost keys?

Didn't the keys unlock
a system of ever-present sadness?

Didn't that system spring
from mistrust in God?

Could I begin
to speak unselfishly?

Could I begin to sleep
without expectations?

Could I begin to give
without betraying myself?

Could I balance here
on the skyline, until dawn?

Why is romance so gruesome;
why is romance a flightless bird?

Wouldn't we choose, if we could,
one day to be invisible?

Isn't regret a door
that won't stay shut?

Isn't your comfort
a collage of illusions?

Why are we lions?
Why are we broken?

How are we failing?
How are we fickle?

When your arm curled
to gather my ribcage,

didn't you hear
something like the sea moan?

what is the cost
of seeing so much?

what futures were sacrificed
for a chance to heal?

and what’s left unsaid,
and what seems broken;

was not this also predicted
in the palace of winds?

Will the bus leave soon
from this uncertain place?

Will we passengers sing
in mourning or joy?

Will we pretend ignorance
in the rustling of baggage & bodies?

Will we open ourselves?

Would you know solitude
if it fell upon you?

Does solitude fall
like sleep or a flowerpot?

How does one leave busy avoidance
& be still to receive solitude?

Would solitude not speak to you
with a universal voice?

And could you hear that voice
with all the clatter your fear is making?

Will our life recover
from this blind choreography?

Or will it move always shuddering
like a starving dog gone deaf?

Or will it's ribs heal
to ache at approaching storms?

Will the color it once was
fade also in memory?

And which epiphany was lined
with emerald poplars?

What does God make
with the problems we turn over?

What shape is left
in the brief absence of desire?

Why did my soul persist
its narcolepsy in your presence?