You Inspire Me

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You inspire me
to remember walls of stone,
dead-end streets,
the razed hill where
the bulldozer sits idle.

Back at the house a man
is tuning the piano while you
and I walk over clumps
of dirt beside a cold lake.
I keep an arm's length between us,
knowing how thin my skin's become.

Tell me . . . what's the use of it?
One more step toward an abyss
where there are no words,
just a sucking gravity and darker dark--
and heat that sears old wounds.
That's the composition of emptiness . . .

I stand here with you and see
twisted, broken forms littering
the ground we walk upon,
and I can calculate the distance
between us by measuring the span
between me and the ragged moon.

What's the use of it? I take
my own hand to lead myself home.
Bridges burn behind me on the lake.
I can feel the flames; no need to hurry now.
Nowhere to go. You inspire me . . . so.

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