This next one, I think, is addressed
both to people who have ever felt totally burned out
and totally tapped out at one point
or another, which is most people out there who
live a human life have gone through that.
So this one is about that, to some degree.
And it's also about how those sources of inspiration
in your life, those things that made
you start doing what you're doing, they don't abandon you,
even though you may feel abandoned
by whatever you call it-- by the muses, by your motivation,
by your sense of spark or energy.
You may feel like it's abandoned you,
but it hasn't abandoned you.
You're just unable to hear them or feel them for a time,
in those down times.
Those exhausted times.
So the title is about those muses, those sparks,
and it's called, "For all their disembodied namelessness,
they sure do talk a lot".
She wants to crawl into a cave and wait for her breath
to catch up with her.
Breath on the mirror, breath on the sidewalk,
breath on her hands.
Bus breath, book breath, formal breath,
known in academic circles as balustrade breath.
Aire de cuevas-- it's an illness, they say.
When you have the aire, cave breath,
they say, you can't stop wheezing.
They say your voice melts into a sticky layer that
coats the floor like guano, commodifiable, potentially
cosmetic.
They say, blessed are the breathless and the emptied out,
for they shall inherit as a billows, as a bowl.
For they shall respire on pure flame.