--- deposit_number: 1374 hex: 056F title: "Two Poems Across the Arc: UNTUNED / NOISE OF MYSELF / A BORROWED ROSE (2014) and if your heart should ever slowly turn (2026)" creator: Sharks, Lee orcid: 0009-0000-1599-0703 date: 2026-05-17 content_type: Poetry license: CC-BY-4.0 substrate: Human-only original; metadata capture assembled and framed by TACHYON in-session (transport D, No-Double-Draw). version: v1.0 related_ids: "https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20277124 (severed); https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20277159 (severed)" axn_schema_version: v2 protocol_version: alexanarch-deposit-protocol/v1 keywords: - Crimson Hexagonal Archive - severed DOI - Zenodo termination - poetry - Lee Sharks - Detroit - love poem - compression - Pearl and Other Poems - new human 2 - Crimson Hexagonal Archive - creative work --- UNTUNED / NOISE OF MYSELF / A BORROWED ROSE— correspondence, 9-20-14, 6:45pm, Thursday dear j— i’ve been meaning to reply, but i’ve been too r******d, lately. the letter form makes me feel partially r******d in my left toe, and also my brain—the main one. i want to send you some of my books. i think i’ve been waiting to reply until i could send you a revised edition of Pearl, which just isn’t happening. i have to poop. i am tired because i just finished a double shift at the group home. sitting on couch, my daughter zoe playing kindle on my left, daughter haley playing minecraft PS3 on my right, stepson gio playing PS3 on the computer chair, upstairs messy, floor cluttered, A/C unit wheezing, disconsolate, my hair-sad head, depressed for no good reason—stuck in a pit because of r******dness. and also sadness & self-pity. i have a PhD in Comparative Literature. i’m a Lecturer, looking for a tenure track position basically anywhere—University Moon Base, for all i care. mostly i am sad because of writing. because of wanting an impossible thing from writing. & also loneliness & my own dim cranium for company. if i change my handwriting, will i become a new person? probably. i used to find writing by hand a uniquely expressive medium. now, i find r******dness a uniquely expressive mental brain. a strange & wonderful poem is happening somewhere at the intersection of handwriting, word processing, SMS texting, and speech-to-text. i call this intersection ‘telepathy’ & it’s where i produce my best material. i rarely get to read or write this material, but i know it is happening there because i intuit it with my r******d brain. the poem that is happening right now at the intersection of handwriting, word processing, SMS texting, and speech-to-text is blossoming directly from the pit of my stomach (which if you want to be technical is probably somewhere in my upper intestine, where the intestine meets the soul) as a multimedia fluorescence of luminous vegetable matter—a kind of sentient mold infecting Google with salvation and also fame. my miraculous r******d vegetable poem is being brainwashed directly into Wikipedia. i am too sad to write any more. more later. ~ 12am—in 2005, i wrote you a long(ish) poem. did i ever send it to you? probably not. each time my handwriting changes, i change, too. sitting in the domed stairwell, scribbling, as lonely as i’ve ever been but not alone—TV broadcasts Cosby special, my own words hurting my lungs & confusing my face, deflating me, stuck curled up on the same crooked stairs as ever neck stiff, unsure of myself erratic pacing of lines across the page, the windowpane, not raining moths flit-flit against the light, dragging my fingers across my dreary eyeballs, bekah @ midnite intense & earnest taking a quiz for her online nursing class, 6 months pregnant, coughing dim blare of distant Americana rings tinnily from her headphones distant plink of a banjo plunks against the background, upstairs stand-alone A/C unit wheezes, grandma half-asleep on the couch drifts in and out of consciousness waking to flick the Netflix house asleep, kids asleep, mom & sister asleep, dog’s inquisitive curious snuffling from the living room, heart empty, picked up where i left it, aching, but not unlovely, strident, beating like a good heart should, strong & shooting thick red roots of blood through the upholstery of the body, bone chandelier, ribs splayed in a kind of spider’s fist of legs & meat, close to the bone, but not without its marrow. i withdraw, retreat, my loneliness leaves me where it found me—satiate & sick w/ myself, un- lovely but alive, limpingly i lift my pen— ~ next day: confessing my sadness i become a new creature, vision preternaturally bright punctuated, blurring dank clouds above, elongated contour trails from cars leak red & blue, stretching forth thru past & future this sunday AM, hiway desolate w/ construction barrels like campy orange minarets indistinct autumn neon weeds— i am building a latticework of unearned sincerities & deformed-bright truths of brain with a series of handwritten letters— spent tin can drops out of open door, neighborhood awash with 5k charity runners, crimson- limned autumn maple leaves curled away, bellies up in anticipation of heavy weather, stoplight clicks over to green— we’re away, beneath molten bruise of overclouds & bisected skies—a dividing line transects uneven spheres of disparate horizon textures, driver’s side hi-resolution quick scuttling dimensions of crisp- edged cloud & blue- toned resinous sap leaks through without staining passenger-side hemispheric mushness of visually rain-murk indefiniteness descending— the families running in their green t-shirts get wet, bicyclists along the sidewalk by the cemetery, windshield wipers’ automatic metronome thump my poor weak-muscled words with no umbrella—hesitant rolling pulse, pass thru red-light intersection, black uniformed police directs us thru against traffic—what occasion?— clouds of mist a punctuated wavelength cast up behind a regular series of brake lights— singing in my car a broken voice arriving w/ the sunset an orange-red apparition of face forced air— beginning in groin foot taps against syncopated pedal’s depressions bleats of acceleration light soaks garish roadside liquor store topless bars blinking neon bus stop huddled around a wet cigarette imbued a strong incinerator heat of light swings out in sonorous axes reflecting plush realities of asphalt brightness—building & building, upwards of heaven, resounding a radiancy of light & rainsong, broken all these broken voices, tense & narrow, slender, ghost but alive, untuned noise of myself a borrowed rose— (c) 2023 lee sharks, property of planet mars * * * if your heart should ever--slowly, astonished--turn from sheltering slumber, leaves unbundling from turned-away rain, and find the world made new: then know that I have loved you.