Flies
The path of the Sun is a windshield wiper across the face of the mountain,
And they aren't big enough to show the pattern,
So we say they drop into shadow,
Or that the shadow rises to cover them.
But light isn't more than a collection of bugs on a windshield,
And night a brand new plastic arm scattering and splattering them
That the drivers might see where they can't during the day.
Valleys are for dark things,
And peaks for the isolated socialites
To escape their sundry sorrows,
Dream of wingèd canopies.
Of feathery ceilings below their high gaze.
I dream of wildfire,
Where one silvery head circles before,
Gazing into the water spared of the haze because the wind is kind,
And gently dodge the diving terror from above
That cannot see its sovereignty.
Not much left now; the bugs have scrambled back into the sky,
And soon I'll see them perched far away,
Making shapes in the black,
Waiting for the wiper to return its odd, swinging arc
That they might alight anew upon the mountainside,
Upon the meadows and rocks and trees,
Gather about the waters to eat us,
And we'll curse them, kill them,
Summon the winter darkness.
But for a time they'll stare at us unblinking,
And we'll call them ancient, memory,
And never invoke their insectile nature,
Nor confess our bifurcated tongues.
Being Here
Looking out the screen door that never quite closes,
I realize that color does not stick in my mind.
I could not tell you whether the building to the South is green or brown or blue,
Nor the amount of snow on the mountains,
Nor the shape of the trees that line the path at the foot of our stairs—
Are there any?
This music is a cloud in my mind,
Except the few songs that rise above the storm,
Or dive below it, dodging raindrops and lightning.
I feel so empty here, and I shouldn’t.
I have love and trust and wilderness at my door,
A universe of wonders and mysteries to unravel,
Yet the spirits have gone a-wandering.
The ravens appear so infrequently now.
They are indifferent toward me, who lingers
A ghost forgotten in the summer Sun.
Even the Moon hides his face from me
Until his power wanes.
I suffer the heat, the light, the unending days,
Miss the cold, the dark, the long nights.
I don’t belong here, this taxing season,
Where my skin begins to darken in tandem with my heart,
And Memory becomes a memory instead of a god.
I can’t undo my confusion,
What I’ve created in this past winter spell.
She is beautiful, and I know this.
But my eyes glaze over and forget desire,
Incline themselves toward closure,
Seeking solitary incubation,
Slumber until the days grow short enough to endure.
I am static on a TV screen,
A jagged wave of energy in an inferno of sun beams,
Arrows, arrows spinning me about,
And I keep breaking them,
So the bathers in the grass are dismayed
By the scattered shadows.
Trap me in a jar and I’ll thank you;
Clip my wings and I’ll hate you;
Tell me to leave and I’ll spin in circles
Until my face splits in two
And there is no more difference
Between all my tears and all my laughter.
A breath on a tremulous flame
Dancing afraid on a thin lake of wax—
Cover the dark with a rag
And watch it melt onto the glass
Before its sparks can escape
Into the summer Sun.
Tomorrow is a Making Day
Your happiness lives because you have walls.
And not solid walls, neither stone nor clay nor wood,
But something like glass, transparent,
Maybe cracking in a couple places,
Or slightly open in a room you’d forgotten existed
So a draught comes through and stirs up the air now and again,
Saturates the over-oxygenated environment of your waking reality
With a little arsenic that still hangs in the air
From the tailings across the water.
Silly scares in basement freezers,
And bypass difficult weather with clever zeugma,
Make me laugh at my unbidden rêverie
And watch my face grow still.
What is a summer camp to us?
Here, where the evergreens cloak themselves in white
While these temporary souls slumber in other worlds
And we drift like ghosts six feet above the ground?
What do we do when they play their music around their fires
And send their children chasing after the squirrels,
While the faun behind cabin seven cries out
To feed the bear, and its mother looks on?
But my friend can play into the joke,
Bring laughter to your seasonal clambering,
And know in some other less-maintained section of their mind
That it is a wound that hasn’t yet been made.
We trace our scars before their genesis,
Welcome them in with a smile and a nod to the wind at the edge of town,
And we ask for thunder to come rolling down the valley,
Because, God! it’s too hot, and the days too uniform.
I feel like a child,
Not trusting in the strength of the windows
While the storm rages just beyond.
Yet I know it is not without sense,
For the glass is not glass,
But a visage of Time,
And my body a vehicle that passes through.
This is not a room separate from the world,
But a single perspective, and all our walls
Are portals to worlds upon worlds
That have passed before or follow after—
Tell me, tell me to turn away,
And I’ll fall backwards over my shoelaces,
Into the—into the—into another room,
Surrounded by other walls,
And you’ll be on the other side of the glass.
But tomorrow is a making day--
Making art, making stories, making love.
And for now, our hands can still touch,
Our laughter can still be heard,
And the windows, though lined with cracks,
Remain intact, while the storms beyond rage and retire,
And rage again.
A Bear Killed a Faun Last Week
Some time,
When the Sun comes from the South
And all your words are so many movements
To salute a reflection,
I feel a pain in my stomach, in my throat,
Knowing even my eastward gaze will meet nothing but a memory,
And far later than your flexible ceremony.
In time I'll wander cobblestones on another coast,
Wearing red shoes and a new name,
And the book in my back pocket will whisper lies
About how frequently we lay in bed together.
Some time,
When the fire across the lake draws me in
And the rainbirds chatter their anxious showers
On the earliest mornings I've ever explored,
I wonder at the ingredients of the soup yesterday
And think they must be macerating my brain,
For my body rests under a shared blanket,
Yet my mind, though fatigued, is wide, wide awake.
I make the bread, you make the bed,
And we drink our basement cider in the future setting sun,
Toast to the Oak King crowned in summer glory.
Some time,
When you've let yourself drift into apathy
And I've floated away in a zen passion play,
The music in our ears an old bell for who-knows-what,
We'll nod and ache in future days,
Wishing, wishing... for who-knows-what,
Because it is what it is and still something's off.
Another life--we call it beauty, nature, joy--
Will start among the withering roots that presently starve.
But we'll remember it was/n't wanted when nourished,
And slowly (quickly) we'll disappear, and you and I will be.
Because it hurts.
You can't always listen to my music,
And I can't always listen to yours,
Even played by your hand,
If it snags on my brain in that way,
I might just have to disappear.
You'll wonder where I've gone,
What you've done,
What I saw that you missed,
Or imagined in the corners of your mirror.
Can't go East or West anymore,
Not without passing through brambles,
And my notebook is small
And has lived too long in my bag.
People are scared,
And I'm petrified.
I'm not sure what else to say,
How to explain,
Whether to apologize
Or just start walking at night since
The daylight isn't safe for ghosts.
Even when I look at you and
My face is a hollow mask,
You kiss me beneath my jaw,
And you offer me tea,
And I turn you down,
And I leave, because your mirror is staring,
Because I can still smell him in the hallway,
Because the thorns are getting into the house,
And our gardener hasn't yet woken from her Winter slumber.
I'll lie in a spiral of arrows,
Unsure which to pick up, which to fire,
For every word lands wrong,
And after so many hours of speech,
I'm still unknown to you.
Milk in the Library for Want of Open Sky in the Time before Dawn where Dark Things yet Respire
The pines glow in the fireside haze
Of little lonely houses amidst the dark,
Snow-covered mountains.
A ghost-cat wanders somewhere
On the trail to the North
Up away towards the ridge
And the coffee saturates the air
As water pours over into the mug--
Spirit for earthy track-finders.
With a little effort, I find my
Eyes remain open long enough
To see the dawn-patterns emerge:
The glow of the snow on the trees;
Check coffee, pour more;
Wait, wonder; write a bit;
The Sun is in the wolf's belly--
His energy low, sun-sick brute--
And with patience I see him move
From his hidden den to his
Short path in the South,
Where the mountains conceal
His bristling, thinning fur.
The sky opens up soon,
Tomorrow and next morrow.
Are you ready? No.
Are you? Not at all.
Well, then the time must be right.
Soule
Bright as day they say,
bright tonight over the pines,
outshining the stars,
kissing my ears with ghost stories,
haunting each other: astral rabble
in the witching hour.
But brighter still in Winter's blanket,
shining like the Sun-- if the Sun
weren't such an ass.
But you know what I mean,
you see me
reflected in the fringes of
your speech patterns,
and I hear many thoughts in your voice.
Brighter still they say,
and peaks to summit
and dharma-bumming in the
copper mines with our eyes to the sky.
And I wonder that some brilliance
chases me from candles
in shared spaces,
while still other
makes me grin and warms the pit of my stomach,
makes me feel my skin's alive and longs for you,
and then: the Moon.
And the fire burns in the cold air,
dispelling shadows from before me
that they might stand behind.
Neibhouring cries; the strix and striga,
and I solved your puzzle
while the candles gave chase,
smiled as the pieces aligned
and the ground shook to the fire-pulse
and I--
forgot my name again.
I could remedy my riotous neck
with a simple construing of sinew,
or strike in over-eager smartness---
but what for?
I fear the fire's smothering by cold,
yet I look and find
the heart's a heavy burden
and so, so worth the weight.
I have no desire to put my eyes out,
no hairpin temptation in self-revelation.
Only a shower after four days on the road,
a rambler,
a philosopher,
the hanging moon,
and a heartbeat flash of my word upon your lips.
And all the while, your mind, it
creates another world
for all your other thoughts I am
so privileged to hear.
And I watch the fire's light
reflecting on your face,
hear the poignant sound of butter
being scraped over too much bread,
watch the waltz pass from day to night
where the fire still gives beat
and my hand searches for yours
amid the folds of a two-thousand mile bed-sheet.
I salute the Moon with a half-smile,
climb in through the window,
and spin through the night
in nebulous spirals of arrows.
Road snacks.
Sudden shock of breath
Horror cold; fluorescent lights
Now the mirror glints.
Cult of candle flame
Individual, grab hold!
Grow, but never change.
Skeleton haywire
Ascend from fire-shadows flat
Cursèd sleep no more.
Words without a home
Stray hairs---grey; and hymns to thee
Vagabond errant.
Styx and stones to mend
The boat; gaps between your teeth
Here and now. (refrain)
What Might the Doctor Say?
What was it that brushed my face last night?
Old spiderwebs? Dim spirits? Soft hair?
None of these, unless in mirrors.
I felt the scattered fragments of your mind
In wave after wave of rising and falling and gyrating
Chest-pulling movements to travel between worlds.
I have no power but my awareness,
No reformations but my memory and its
Repeated malformations.
I have no time-machine save my words, my paper,
My word processor and usb drive,
My notebook with the thought of you and
Universe carried---dust and pollen---through
Transience and in/convenient broken-down mechanisms.
But I lay there, breathing, forgetting to breathe,
Laughing in the darkness,
And realizing I had foundered my way through
Another clumsy dance, without knowing you were
Moving too, skittish, afraid---
Or was that just me?
You heard the same song at least,
Or something like it.
I could've sent myself to oblivion,
Asked you to come too,
Wrapped in promises and impositions;
Could have drifted into false-god-ness like a
Hell-bound tyrant, implored you
To change me, change you, fix the broken sky,
Bind the moon to its position above the treeline,
Whirling dervishes---endless gyrations
To praise a deathless lie: Permanence Almighty.
I've done it before! Again and again
And again, watched the world come to be
And thought I'd catch it, sketch it,
Dissect it, perceive it, keep it
Safe and sterile and unchanging behind the glass,
Pretending it's alive and flitting about
And not pinned down by its wings,
Because I couldn't tell when the life left its eyes,
And thought perhaps this was just
How life looked from the outside,
Wondered at its value.
I wasn't there when she was suddenly
Not form, turned to dust,
No longer ever alive, and I couldn't figure out
Why I couldn't see it, when ever and anon these
Others like me (but not like me) cried out,
"Oh, and she has passed away,
Gate, gate, pāragate, pārasaṃgate..."
Why they waved goodbye and I still stood
Upon the same shore, but saw naught but horizon,
No boat, no ferryman, no mystery unfolding, just
Puzzles unsolved, memory corrupting as I watched
Like the files on my flash drive---did they ever exist?
Were they ever written?
Was there ever a world?
Ever a light?
Ever a flutter of wings in the yawning cavern of my chest?
Or had I forgotten to click 'save'?
Was I too late... too late...?
And here is a stirring,
A file re-opened,
A memory awakened,
From the time before I ever drew breath.
And inspired, drawing light, bending it around
Our heads and exchanging it between our mouths and our fingers,
I take in the spirits and remember---I remember!
Ah, gate, gate, pāragate...
You and I and others
Contained and released---too soon!
A whole twenty-three minutes early, imagine that.
A whole twenty-three months too short.
No-- No, perhaps not.
I stray into godliness.
"Repent, He roars, for Sin has caused the plague.
But we say, 'Dirt---so wash.'"
I drew a bath, burned it out,
And exhaled myself until I sank
Deep into the ground
And drifted above while I
Dissolved below.
Why rip the world in twain
When it yet spins so delicately upon its
Relative axis and displays all its magnificence
Within the movements of each other's eyes?
Knowing all the while the same wonder
Exists everywhere---but noticing,
Pulling,
Being pulled,
Spinning about in this moment---
This particular moment,
This particular space in time,
Short as the straw that spells death---
By and with each other,
For here is the All and Nothing-at-all
As it has manifest now:
A word, the repeated cry of a far-drifting bird,
A thought shared a thousand ways,
A conversation scattered across the stars---
Your words, new constellations in the cloudy sky
Seen in the darkness, worlds apart,
Records in the black,
Flowers on glass, blanket on grass,
Can't tell the birds from the blossoms...
Jasmine-scented way-station
And too soon: the impatient night
Slipping under the sheets.
I would have slept beside you,
Talked until we fell asleep,
Listened until your words became
Whispers, sighs, yawns, and
Gentle silence in the morning light.
I do not know yet who I am,
Whether devil-god or only human.
But what would it profit me to know?
I think I'll just let this world turn
In all its subtle poison-remedy.
No cognitive retreat.
No soulful desperation.
And with a child's wonder
I'll let it in and let it go,
And will not tear the world apart
Just to pin it down behind glass
And hang it on the wall.
And West, I Couldn’t Laugh
Followed the sky
but not the sky, because the sky was
way up there and I was still
down here, down.
Ever-sparse and filled up with
not-space space, that less-than-desirable void,
the wrong stuff taking up too much of
Not Much Here,
It catapulted me without me noticing
through the same the same the same
until--
the rain began to smell of mint
and i remembered the last
flight from/toward/in/while
that led me to that unending catharsis
--terrifying, Jesus fuck--
on the mesa beneath those endless, glaring stars.
Odd perception,
mixed privilege and despair at
un-welcome centers, despise
the homeless and keep the others
tired.
.. suspended
...
I might be-
running out of anticipation.
...resorting to expectation.
All the same same same!
Always and unchanging!
And no teleport or drug or shitty poem is ever going to
even scratch the skin of Abraxas.
Yet I do it anyway.
I must.
Lest i forget and commit the
sin of worship.
Clambering after the constellations
I move my words into mysterious shapes
and place them in a jar.
Maybe the one I need to find
will notice this inky spagyric
filled with knucklebones and old love,
red-to-brown, doused in blue-gold desire
and placed in a dark corner of the cupboard to find
a shadow-spark:
my own personal Frankenstein
awaiting the end of the universe
to remember it's never not lived--
to bleed rust and drink dry wine--
to cut its teeth on broken glass
and watch the mess of its body
drip down..
down...
down.......