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I want to come at it all this time from a different perspective, like a butterfly that turns back to consider its chrysalis, pupaetic: the shape of what was and what would be though still surprised by the wing flaps, all this staggering in thin air etc.
Posts: 1154 | Registered: Dec 2001
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Yay! You're back. Lovely. Now I get to share with you as well. Here's a poem from my forthcoming collection Shattering and Bricolage (Ink Brush Press).
Dark Blot
Strange how such a small dark blot On so thin a rectangle of film Should so easily wrench open the sluices of despair. I hold it to the light, squinting, My heart already absent from my chest, A fledging fled before the forest burns.
You rasp some weak assertion, Your normal boldness drained Like a drought-stricken lake By innervating possibilities. I hear the word abortion And my mind tilts off its axis.
Water on the brain. An absurd phrase, Not nearly ominous enough. Hydrocephalus—the Latin weighs heavy, Like the arcane pronouncements Of a judge or priest, the thundering decree Of an imperious divinity.
I insist on a second opinion, Even as you flip through a medical text You picked up at the library, Moaning like a mother already bereft When you see those bulging skulls, Those empty eyes.
Termination. You’re adamant. Resolute. A childhood spent as a schizophrenic’s sister Has robbed you of the will, the compassion, To raise such a shattered child. Or perhaps You know a compassion I can’t, an existential Love that halts suffering before it begins.
When we learn the baby is fine, That its umbilical cord passes over its head Like the twining dastar of a pious Sikh, First relief creeps into our eyes, then guilt. We never could’ve done it, we assure each other. But we know. We know what we are.
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Termination. Strange blot, I hold it to my heart, our forest burns and my mind tilted off its axis knows we do not know what might be.
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I found the arrow you shot straight up into the sky. Some elm tree had collapsed forcing me off the trail, and I saw the red feather buried in the dead-fall. I slid it out easily, and I stuck it through the grommets of my old hat, a kind of joke. You wanted blood that night, but instead you shot straight up at the stars, the moon, the sky and we all survived. The stitching of those constellations, the wide open eye of heaven.
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And then I woke up, sweating, trapped inside a fart cloud. My poetics of flatulence had, until then, hinged on my long dead mother's lingering 'fluffies', but this girl, well, she was a creationist, and could hardly be blamed for this putrid dawn-- this unpunctuated disequilibrium.
Sometimes I’m a thief, Sneaking into the House of Holy Writ, Cracking open dusty tomes, Breaking thick wax seals, Rolling open ancient scrolls, Stealing those heavenly lexemes, Jotting down furtive phrases Before slipping guilty Back into my benighted life.
Sometimes I’m an explorer, Plying vast, amorphous seas Of primal thought, Anchoring at dark atolls, Scanning alien constellations, Scrying sluggish sargassoes That undulate like the torpid tresses Of naiads and sirens For visceral, unspoken truths.
Sometimes I’m a wanderer, Lost in trackless deserts Of shifting, homogenous past, Falling for every empty mirage, Foolishly avoiding each oasis, Till I stumble onto the ruins Of long-abandoned monuments Lifted in naïveté by some forgotten me. I make rubbings of opaque glyphs And hope to decipher my own dead tongue.
Sometimes I’m a hunter, Pursuing multi-syllabic prey Across savannahs, through dense jungles, Glimpsing mottled hides As they sleekly leap and blur Amidst the undergrowth and vines. With luck I finally corner one And send my bolt whizzing home, Only to display the prize like a taxidermist, All vital magic drained away.
Sometimes, though, I’m a child at play Beneath the autumn trees, And, oh! the leaves that scatter down Upon my youthful head: Reds and golds and burnished browns, Piling higher and higher Till, laughing, I can hold back no more And I dive into drifts Of perfect words.
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The stone's throne: a well-worn depression in the grass where attendant ants and worms keep encroaching weeds at bay.
Posts: 1144 | Registered: Feb 2001
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A life on pages turned by time and different fingers left only to the interpretation of someone else's view of how it really might have been
Dangling, like other articles of speech or branches of flower bushes growing in a yard a home for a butterfly just waiting to spread it's wings and learn to fly.
Regrets are the solid footing for a life lived more fully once the moments leading up to them are understood.
Angels get their wings everytime
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Consider this road going nowhere so quickly, and you with an Empire apple, cool from the fridge and a stick of bright orange Black Diamond cheddar, like one of those birds, moving with certainty across the land.
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Tides change, pulling at times so hard they almost seem to push the same push that leads the wind to gently shove a nest to the ground leaving their former habitants to give up or Rebuild, while blinking back tears and accepting some questions never get answered.
Questions such as how a breath can be caught in a chest for a time only to be exhaled while a simlutateous emotion flows down the cheek that tried to hold it in.
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Things are what you could buy with treasures you might have earned meeting people who mean the most to you.
Hold your breath long enough to make the exhale matter. Learn the lay of the land well enough to remember what matters most When the time comes to rebuild.
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And when, for me, it wasn’t true anymore, it was for you, at least that's how I like to remember (now I can see): my broad shoulders and how I would stand there admired and speechless; who knew the future, the sound of shaving while saying to myself: “Where did you go?" and rubbing my face in the mirror-- We vanished together, into these days and these nights of shrunken shoulders.
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And so, when a shoulder sags or shrugs and whiskers grow long with time
There's a mirror ready - on the bureau or above the sink with recessed shelves hidden behind it waiting to reflect what's there today
(with a too long stare, many of yesterday's memories: filled with stairs, birds far or near, echoes of words we once imagined or believed enough to speak, shadows growing long, images of what someday might hold).
A mirror catching moments of now just enough to remind its subject to place one foot on a stair step, the other in a short-lived dream, the next into tomomorrow
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"You can see the fish in this light," beneath the surface. They're just suspended there, above the weeds. Maybe their mouths are open and they're waiting for the current to bring a tasty morsel in, who knows. There's a bunch of rocks too, good spot for fishing.
I'm just tapping the canal's railing with a piece of bark, it'll be a souvenir now. I'm playing a sort of samba with a cold wind accompanying, little flakes of wood flying off all over.
I've lost count of how many steps it's taken to get this far, which is unusual, since I'm a step-counter. There's that dancing wind again.
"I hate walking in circles," you say, "can't we just go back? We'll jaywalk--go back along the canal," which makes a lot of good old crazy sense, given the terrifying perimeter. Backtrack.
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A dam between two lakes holds 28 years of memories for just one family Heaven knows how many fish have stopped for a nibble that was just enought to capture the worm or a big enough bite to become the next fish fry
How many feet have passed across the caged rocks, the counted logs, the gated posts... How many steps did it take for them to say they made it there With enough left in them to find that point... The point that juts out just far enough to jump into the shallow water The point that sits just high enough to take a stomach and put it in a throat The point that feels like freedom when the second foot shoves off with only air beneath it...
Four seconds of wind and a moment of freedom...
Swim to the shore, circle complete.
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There are books that teach their readers about life laying dormant for years, Only to come back more suited for the life woken up in.
They're the same as a butterfly, waiting until the time is right to burst through the thing they having keeping them comforted, whole, content Sure enough that this can be the time to become.
Pigeons find food. Milk finds a coffee. Sunset finds the one the sky was painted for. Brian finds a moment for himself. The stairs find another coat of paint. The abandonded car finds a beatnic mechanic with a new project in mind. The cabin in the woods finds hope. The flower pot finds a new bloom. The shoe finds its mate. The writer hopes they find another verse...
Words are only words until someone reads them. Play isn't play unless the players enjoy it. This world is only ours as long as we claim it.
For the words, thank you. For the play, thanks for the lessons. For the world...
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"No one can hear you Curse the gods in the forest When your heart is dark." (spacepook, 2014)
You'll find yourself asking "Should I go on or turn back?" You shouldn't stay. They'll tell you they heard you come in.
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It's the same story. Windigo, etc. I thought I saw a black panther way up in the crown of a burned out pine tree. It was probably a bear. But still, it was frightening at that hour, in that place. I should've turned back, worked my way back through the bog but it was too late. A fire had burned this unexpected clearing, this hole in the forest, and I figured the panther reigned over it all; and with the moonrise, I should've turned back, turned away from the burn but instead I began to work my way through the dead trees now impossibly white in the dusk. The panther and I, we vanished together.
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Matryoshka! The hollow doll who opens and opens, her upturned bells waver on the kitchen table until I reach the heartwood.
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The rocket blasted off. A binary star rose. People were lonely in space. They tried to make friends. They really did. Of course, they told stories, but it didn't matter because in space everything else mattered too much. Who would have guessed? You? Weightless too long, you can barely lift a phaser to your temple.
-2-
He squeezed and nothing happened. He squeezed again, staring with mild perplexity down the crystalline barrel, but this time incinerated his left ear and opened the predictable gaping hole in the hull of the vessel. He had been the last person on Earth to drink a beer by engulfing the top of the bottleneck in his mouth instead of pressing it gently onto pursed and thirsty lips.
-1-
Remember when Colonel Alexis Leonov left the capsule and floated in space for ten minutes at the end of a light line? The general public was greatly impressed by the spectacular and emotional aspect of this sortie into the void. From the loudspeaker his voice crackled: "The vast cosmos is visible to me in all its indescribable beauty; in the black sky the sun shines brilliantly, and I feel its warmth on my face through my helmet window." (And all you remember is how he relaxed in the gardens at Baikonur, a few days before the flight.)
Go.
And so when we open the lower panel, preparing to leave the capsule, drawing ourselves slowly through the air-lock and with a light push moving away from the spacecraft, notice how the small thrust given as we leave imparts a slight angular motion to the capsule; see the vehicle rotating slowly below us; see the heavy door in the open position: perfect.
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Life on Earth seems so ordinary, fractured and overwhelming at times...
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Listen to stories or find a quiet corner to float, weightless. Maybe find a space with lonliness, honest solitude to catch a thought with no reverb, might be nice. The time to find your actual self with no noise, then discover a friend to make with the person you found...
-2-
The mulligan untaken. The beer best left unsipped... Holes in hearts last longer than the one from a bullet.
-1-
Warmth from the sun on a face, no matter the distance between, is a reminder to enjoy a hammock, plant seeds, water early, wear a hat, find shade in mid-day, enjoy now...
Go.
Perfection is an illusion.
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Moments of remeber this sock on this foot with no shoe become meaningless when time changes things to
now.
Remeber what it feels like to step in soft, freshly cut grass, look up and see a sky with whispy white clouds, gathering into the ones you want to play with - turning them into shapes you remember...
The shapes change. Know your destination.
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Today at five-thirty a little girl woke up wanting to start the day.
Her mother said - "It's the middle of the night, snuggle in, it's too early for morning" as the sky was still dark and the house seemed to still be sleeping.
She snuggled down to finish the night's sleep in her parents' bed (one dad removed to the couch, one mom removed to an edge of a large bed) which seemed to be much bigger than herself for an hour or so...
When she woke, shaking the sleep and lovely blonde hair from her eyes she said - "I had the best dream. I was in school in space. Remember my Aunt who's M's mom? She was there... sharing me a yellow-orange ball and told me to go play with it. That was a great dream."
Spacecraft sometimes come back to earth.
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Years pass like so many blinks of the eye Involuntary movements
How many years since the moment the taste of apple juice and graham cracker would be forever etched into a sensory memory that comes to mind at the most unexpected moments?
Time stood still
The dreams started again, like moments of reality linked to the dream and wondering when morning comes
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Years pass like so many blinks of the eye Involuntary movements
How many years since the moment the taste of apple juice and graham cracker would be forever etched into a sensory memory that comes to mind at the most unexpected moments?
Time stood still
The dreams started again, like moments of reality linked to the dream and wondering when morning comes
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The Robots all drempt of being Human. The Humans all drempt of being Gods. The Gods slept and drempt All.
Posts: 6683 | Registered: Jun 2005
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Bright yellow turns summer blonde so quickly...
At seven, you held my captivation, along with dreams of the tooth fairy, magic of the twelfth month, moments of childhood imagination and faith in dreams of tomorrow...
Yes. I will give more, be more, do more. For the tomorrow of believers like you... Yes.
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A moment of * becomes a cached moment... echoes of destiny forever etched into moments of now gifts holding insight. Just breathe. Keep moving forward. Let them think things you know they don't. Make more of these moments of Now Only Peace Question it all later Rest when you do. Someday, this will all make sense. Thoughts of forever Under your belt Vying for their When. X is what we solve for Y is why we do it. Z is for the restful sleep we might get when we're done...
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Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. I checked in every direction. Wait. Nothing. Nothing. There's nothing to see. Lots of it. My spacesuit is broken. Finally. Is that a star? A supernova? No. It's the glow of a faintly illuminated switch refracted by an ice-crystal. Ice. I doubt it. If I were a scientist I'd know already. I should never have left my white Cadillac. Never put on the suit or snapped the helmet into place. Reassured by the hiss of oxygen, I began walking, bicycling my legs in the void, moving (at least) away. When the stars came to an end I said "Ha! No more stars!" and bicycled onward. A viewer, a fly on the wall of nowhere, would perhaps say, squinting their eyes, that I appeared "disoriented". Ernest Hemingway, if he could live in empty space and if he too chose to comment might say I were better off dead, like one of those picador's horses whose entrails are dragging along in the sand behind him like a little rocket's plume. Still no sign of a nothing without no. God knows we don't have much of anything left at all.
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Deerpark - I love that you exist. I'm not always in the mood to read you, and when I do I don't always understand you, but nevertheless I love that you are. Thanks.
Posts: 959 | Registered: Jan 2002
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quote:Originally posted by Tatiana: Are y'all really going to revive the dobie? Really?
It's one of the five Signs of the Hatrack Rebirth.
Once we can collect a dobie, a landmark, a string of deepark poetic posts, 5 spam posts in a day and 5 new members in a month, we'll know the Hatrack Rebirth is no mere illusion.
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