THE FIRST BOUNDARY
Form, attempted.
Cryptic by construction. The poems resist a single literal reading. Meaning is distributed across image, sound, syntax, omission, and association.
Fractured syntax. Expected sentence order is interrupted so a familiar word can behave strangely, carry several functions, or force the reader to reconsider what modifies what.
Formal restraint. Rhyme, repetition, cadence, and deliberate line endings provide architecture beneath language that may initially appear unstable.
Grammatical surrealism. Ordinary grammar is distorted without becoming accidental; impossibility, displacement, and compressed imagery create psychological rather than literal landscapes.
Interpretation. The reader is given evidence rather than instruction. A line may reveal emotion clearly while withholding the exact event that produced it.
The disorder is not removed. It is given boundaries.
opening image you were not made for a cage never meant to stay You were never meant for the cage 8 syllables · long / opening pressure
and yet you came back but you returned again But still you returned 5 syllables · compression
covered in its dust carrying dust as proof Wearing its dust like a name. dust → identity → name
smoke lowers / smoke unwinds oh smoky, winding down Oh smokey thus is winding down. sound over literal continuity
second movement / distance I measured the space between us I counted the skies between us distance → skies / make the distance visible
and thought they were mine And called them mine- mine / line? no forced rhyme
they were never mine not knowing they belonged elsewhere Not knowing they belonged withhold destination one line longer
to wherever you were headed to the place you kept going To where you were always going. close on motion, not possession
dust name skies belonged WORKING COUNTS 8 / 5 / 7 / 8 7 / 5 / 6 / 8 cadence is checked; not obeyed mechanically
SOUND NOTES cage → name mine → going echoes permitted without a closed scheme
