Desire held tight, as beautiful and delicate as blown glass. Clasped so close holding and held lose distinction, your own heart beat the weight of hand upon your skin. That feel of clothes removed with breathless purpose, the touch of moonlight spilled down your spine. The soul unwinds, so hot and hungry. Your eyes are lit and the very air is appetite.
The motions of reaching, the whispered incantations, the certainty of your ritual tongue. All these moments of utter purpose, the stretch and gather of thought so furiously held to the bones. The passion grasps and fills you, warm words listing in your mouth. That kiss, the brittle pungency of being, dissolved slowly, breath trickling down your lips. All the meat of this magic, taught and absolute, as cleansing as a shower, as resolute as stone.
Your soul is the gnashed teeth of intention, leavening time and matter with cloudbursts and bite-marks. It is folded, again and again, the origami work of such furtive repetition, until each wish and sentiment is tucked inside itself. Every crease brings you closer to the opening of want, each litany teaches you the shape of spirit leaving. Light each candle, shroud each secret. The spell you cast is written upon the insides, not of your eyes but of your seeing. The shine of brittle desire, woven into your knowing bones.
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
the tide
The day bends to the visible spectrum, bright and blue and vaguely missed. A cat makes a run at some blur of a bird, children chase each other, screaming beneath an open sky. Surprises remain mostly surreptitious. I step outside to blow an ant off the back of my hand. In a world where most paths remain unseen, it seems the least I could do.
It is another long unscripted scene, where the urge to improvise is largely absent. I don't say much, I do very little. Every simple gesture suddenly seeming alarmingly grand. Acting is all about choices. I am still and quiet and blank. I stoop slightly beneath a bough laden with apple blossoms. I stare into the broad and dimming distance, aware that something is missing.
The feeling is typical. The feeling is in character. The slow enduring ache, the aimless restless longing. The light diffuses in my flesh, splitting heat and bright, changing bandwidth as it mingles in the shallow end of these veins and capillaries. I close my eyes, taking in what warmth there is while it lasts. The sun lingers on the horizon, out where the sky bends over mountains, out where an unseen ocean is lit, blazing and bright as it turns and roils. I turn my back and walk away, eyes open, awaiting the inevitable shadows, that familiar and enduring tide.
It is another long unscripted scene, where the urge to improvise is largely absent. I don't say much, I do very little. Every simple gesture suddenly seeming alarmingly grand. Acting is all about choices. I am still and quiet and blank. I stoop slightly beneath a bough laden with apple blossoms. I stare into the broad and dimming distance, aware that something is missing.
The feeling is typical. The feeling is in character. The slow enduring ache, the aimless restless longing. The light diffuses in my flesh, splitting heat and bright, changing bandwidth as it mingles in the shallow end of these veins and capillaries. I close my eyes, taking in what warmth there is while it lasts. The sun lingers on the horizon, out where the sky bends over mountains, out where an unseen ocean is lit, blazing and bright as it turns and roils. I turn my back and walk away, eyes open, awaiting the inevitable shadows, that familiar and enduring tide.
Monday, April 5, 2010
etiquette
How soft seems the fever when it finds you, overwrought and full of murdered angels. How kind seems the cold that tries to break your bones, shaking you from your life on out. These ripples that enclose us, these tiny fires and brittle lights that abound despite the empty. These echoes of imperfect solutions that fill and and flow through all the holes that make up the soul. How hard the fist, how sweet the tooth, how divine the writhing. As goes the beast, so goes the ghost.
Head split like kindling, thought as splinters in the spirit, I worry away at the seams. Every third stitch or so such a leap as to make faith seem steady, such a patchwork of failings and regrets. The ministrations of keepers of secrets and keepers of scores, the confusion of every wearing of the earth with a path until the dry-river becomes the road and we all seem to be walking on water. When a species of generalists become troops of monotone specialists, I fear for every step we take. Everywhere you go, there is a throne of bones for comfort. Clean hands have muddied every heart left beating.
You unfold the napkin as you begin another long lunch, your lap laden in freshly laundered cloth, a trap prepared for stray crumbs. You work the cutlery with delicacy and grace, each wrist full of elegant strength, each hand wise in these gustatory skills. You speak with knowledge of custom and manner, you listen with intent and wit. Every prayer you breathe is heard and answered. Where ever you dine, whatever the fare, you are grand and meticulous: civilized consumption's own poster-child. Another soldier set upon an enemy so guileless that it doesn't know it is at war. Another beautiful flawless victory for the abyss.
Head split like kindling, thought as splinters in the spirit, I worry away at the seams. Every third stitch or so such a leap as to make faith seem steady, such a patchwork of failings and regrets. The ministrations of keepers of secrets and keepers of scores, the confusion of every wearing of the earth with a path until the dry-river becomes the road and we all seem to be walking on water. When a species of generalists become troops of monotone specialists, I fear for every step we take. Everywhere you go, there is a throne of bones for comfort. Clean hands have muddied every heart left beating.
You unfold the napkin as you begin another long lunch, your lap laden in freshly laundered cloth, a trap prepared for stray crumbs. You work the cutlery with delicacy and grace, each wrist full of elegant strength, each hand wise in these gustatory skills. You speak with knowledge of custom and manner, you listen with intent and wit. Every prayer you breathe is heard and answered. Where ever you dine, whatever the fare, you are grand and meticulous: civilized consumption's own poster-child. Another soldier set upon an enemy so guileless that it doesn't know it is at war. Another beautiful flawless victory for the abyss.
Sunday, April 4, 2010
company and keep
Gray compounds gray: the air, the sky, the blank slate cement and the gathering of shadows. Walls painted the color of wan abandon, floor clotted with these collapsed notions and murdered ghosts. Cold air settling in these small gaps between walls, cold flesh closing its hands around these remainders of blood and bones. The silt-laden light spills in through open blinds, drowning any dream that fled from sleep, following me.
Always odd to feel the wires upon somebody else's holiday, all the weight of hope and heart dashed against natures cages. All the profound mechanics of some magical cosmos wound in congress with some human machines, the year ticking away, familiar and comfortable. This cave was empty to begin with; no pointing angel can make that a miracle. The promised land is Disneyland with hellfire and partisan gunfire; I will stick with the wilderness, thanks just the same. So here I am lit uncertain, the spill of vague light, the shine of this computer screen. Sometimes lost feels so much better than what there is left to find.
This is that usual sentiment. Awaiting the rain, watching the rain when it falls, living in the remote moments. Wandering to the fields that are left fallow, companion to the atmosphere and the gleaning flocks. Settling down with the strays and the outcasts, finding new ways to be alone. Listening to the chorus of silent multitudes as they weave this world into being, insect and chordate and arachnid, the unfathomable legions of bacteria and fungus singing in joy and hunger. Deaf to the sermons of the holy and the saved, I listen to the rest. Awaiting whatever salvation or inspiration they deem redemptive, while for me, waiting for the rain is enough.
Always odd to feel the wires upon somebody else's holiday, all the weight of hope and heart dashed against natures cages. All the profound mechanics of some magical cosmos wound in congress with some human machines, the year ticking away, familiar and comfortable. This cave was empty to begin with; no pointing angel can make that a miracle. The promised land is Disneyland with hellfire and partisan gunfire; I will stick with the wilderness, thanks just the same. So here I am lit uncertain, the spill of vague light, the shine of this computer screen. Sometimes lost feels so much better than what there is left to find.
This is that usual sentiment. Awaiting the rain, watching the rain when it falls, living in the remote moments. Wandering to the fields that are left fallow, companion to the atmosphere and the gleaning flocks. Settling down with the strays and the outcasts, finding new ways to be alone. Listening to the chorus of silent multitudes as they weave this world into being, insect and chordate and arachnid, the unfathomable legions of bacteria and fungus singing in joy and hunger. Deaf to the sermons of the holy and the saved, I listen to the rest. Awaiting whatever salvation or inspiration they deem redemptive, while for me, waiting for the rain is enough.
Saturday, April 3, 2010
another word
Were there sunlight, I wouldn't have seen it sooner. Had my eyes been opened, there was nothing I would have noticed until noticing was no longer enough. The changes that set upon you move with brutal agency and little regard. There is no negotiating with the fated or the wrecked. Splinters lay spread upon hasp and hinge, the doors having long been demolished. The roads back are pitted with rock and fire.
The ancients knew not to fight with fate. Prophecy was wound into the way the telling took, the way the words nested in the hair of happenstance. The way these swarms fell from the sky, the way these flocks unwound the dusk. Wings in the sky, bees in the blossom-- every single thing seen and unseen a sign. The possible lies coiled everywhere, awaiting the choice moment to strike as fact. From thought to thing, the paths are bountiful, however badly we might have forgotten the way.
From some change glance, I saw you, and I knew already I was beat. Worn down by some paroxysm of beauty, like the world suddenly shuddered and cast these glowing bouquets of radiant faces all around, witnessing you in graceful concentration lost me any illusion I had of choice. My bean creased with such a brick, it was all I could do to hang constellations in my eyes and cartoon hearts in orbit, a halo revealed as comic despite every sincerity loosed. Would that I could have closed my eyes, and shut out my longing. Would that I have known enough to identify a dream crossed over. At least to have recognized the significance of those wings, before waking walked across this spark. Before choice became another word for destiny.
The ancients knew not to fight with fate. Prophecy was wound into the way the telling took, the way the words nested in the hair of happenstance. The way these swarms fell from the sky, the way these flocks unwound the dusk. Wings in the sky, bees in the blossom-- every single thing seen and unseen a sign. The possible lies coiled everywhere, awaiting the choice moment to strike as fact. From thought to thing, the paths are bountiful, however badly we might have forgotten the way.
From some change glance, I saw you, and I knew already I was beat. Worn down by some paroxysm of beauty, like the world suddenly shuddered and cast these glowing bouquets of radiant faces all around, witnessing you in graceful concentration lost me any illusion I had of choice. My bean creased with such a brick, it was all I could do to hang constellations in my eyes and cartoon hearts in orbit, a halo revealed as comic despite every sincerity loosed. Would that I could have closed my eyes, and shut out my longing. Would that I have known enough to identify a dream crossed over. At least to have recognized the significance of those wings, before waking walked across this spark. Before choice became another word for destiny.
Friday, April 2, 2010
every telling
The rain returns, filling the street with damp questions. It drizzles from the eaves, it sways in the stride of wind struck limb. It paints the pavement and changes the course of all these rivers normally small and dry. It taps on my window, a small tattoo of rhythm freed of the conspiracies of music. Ever so softly, it calls me.
I like to be there when the hard cracked clay first begins its transformation. I like the feeling of the air purged of this sullen dust. The color of the scrub jay as it sweeps down into weed and gravel. The thought of a candlelit blackout night over twenty years ago. I like to walk without the hesitance of waiting for the world to dry. Settling into some parallel rhythm as the cold water seeps through clothes and shoes. Enjoying whatever portion of the day is left to bless.
The air is chill, and I am sore and weary, awakened from a dream of puzzled contentment to the world that will have me. The clock panders to those with means and plans, eking out each morsel of you are already too late. The rain spatters the glass, it spills and it charms. From the sky to the earth to the gutter, bound by tradition and precedent. The stories always run out a little before the end, changing skins and theme songs. Every telling reshapes every breath and bone. Every ending met with sadness and rejoicing.
I like to be there when the hard cracked clay first begins its transformation. I like the feeling of the air purged of this sullen dust. The color of the scrub jay as it sweeps down into weed and gravel. The thought of a candlelit blackout night over twenty years ago. I like to walk without the hesitance of waiting for the world to dry. Settling into some parallel rhythm as the cold water seeps through clothes and shoes. Enjoying whatever portion of the day is left to bless.
The air is chill, and I am sore and weary, awakened from a dream of puzzled contentment to the world that will have me. The clock panders to those with means and plans, eking out each morsel of you are already too late. The rain spatters the glass, it spills and it charms. From the sky to the earth to the gutter, bound by tradition and precedent. The stories always run out a little before the end, changing skins and theme songs. Every telling reshapes every breath and bone. Every ending met with sadness and rejoicing.
Thursday, April 1, 2010
continuity
It should be said that I didn't plan this, although the frame work is always there. Three paragraphs, each devoted to another direction, their separate gods humming along to the same sad song. A few lines of atmosphere, a rhetorical question or two, a few broad conclusions tossed in for good measure. Whatever the resulting flavor, after a few hundred words, it is soup. The recipe changes, but the meal is much the same. Every day, the plan is the same, plan or not.
Mostly I am blue, inclined towards the pitch end of the hue. So it is with sorry eyes that I scan each fresh sky, with a blunt and bruised heart that I carry whatever measure of water I manage. Sometimes I catch some bird in flight, or watch drugs and money exchange hands, or try to dull the fierce self-destructive stories that exude from my flesh like sweat. Other times I evoke some lost or imagined love, my poetic license particularly paid for by seduction and romance. Then some days events unwind without my planning them, and I navel-gaze as my fingers hit the keys. Whatever the cause, whatever my motive, things end up the same on the page.
I am only writing this because I wrote a rule for myself that says I must. I only wrote the rule because without that rule, I would have far fewer reasons to write at all. When we run out of reasons to continue, inventing a few to keep some flames flickering away hardly seems like much of a conceit. Each day I adjust the balance between ghost and blood, between word and whim, between language and the lands above and below. I compound further evidence of my lack and my limits, posting these poems and errors. Every day, these sentences must be served.
Mostly I am blue, inclined towards the pitch end of the hue. So it is with sorry eyes that I scan each fresh sky, with a blunt and bruised heart that I carry whatever measure of water I manage. Sometimes I catch some bird in flight, or watch drugs and money exchange hands, or try to dull the fierce self-destructive stories that exude from my flesh like sweat. Other times I evoke some lost or imagined love, my poetic license particularly paid for by seduction and romance. Then some days events unwind without my planning them, and I navel-gaze as my fingers hit the keys. Whatever the cause, whatever my motive, things end up the same on the page.
I am only writing this because I wrote a rule for myself that says I must. I only wrote the rule because without that rule, I would have far fewer reasons to write at all. When we run out of reasons to continue, inventing a few to keep some flames flickering away hardly seems like much of a conceit. Each day I adjust the balance between ghost and blood, between word and whim, between language and the lands above and below. I compound further evidence of my lack and my limits, posting these poems and errors. Every day, these sentences must be served.
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