The boy dissolves
wrapped in wire,
natural colors fading –
to set the stage for new ones,
bright reds – sober blues.
His whole right side – slips,
a landslide of flesh,
falling out of place,
roughly hewn.
Broken, broken.
The boy dissolves,
replaced by insults.
Humbling offenses,
that drag the gaze down,
as if from a collar – a chain.
What can be found there
between locked eyes –
is only shame.
Mind, grab a shovel,
bury it, bury it.
That head cold of a place,
claustrophobic like asthmatic lungs,
a beginning, an ending,
depending on where you look.
In that heaving chamber,
a body stands misaligned,
like paper planes fumble folded,
the right side crawling away,
desperate for the solace of shadows.
The rest of the body too, one can assume
(but know nothing).
Where secrets grow like hair,
even as the source will never do again.
Another figure is inhaled,
drawn deeply from the darkness.
A reflection of the native,
lunging towards its chiral twin.
The folds of space between them thin,
become thinner still, non-existent,
a monstrosity of osmosis.
A tired rage erupts from the forebearer,
one ‘good’ hand emboldened and armed,
vomited out from the disheveled shapes,
plunging a dagger into the aggressor,
again, and again, and again, and again,
until, together, they slump away,
retreating from life, reality, everything.
Life is the sieve that filters our passions,
straining them thin;
permitting only a few freedoms – here
or there,
until the flow of it runs clear.
With a lattice like maze of obligations and tollgates,
keeping all the big dreams on the other side,
our mind desperately scours for starbursts;
reflections of light caught by precious minerals,
hidden amongst all that dirt –
salvation.
Poetry,
is life with cheesecloth.
What thread could be suspended
between these two points of light;
the seams of these worlds brought together
by a string of moments ad nauseam.
Mountains rise like waves;
crash into the earth-
peaks, valleys, ranges.
Life explodes in jubilation,
dancing in the rain;
collapses beneath its own weight,
pulls itself back up again.
A cloud of chaos still warm from the womb,
desperate for purchase,
finding order, each other, everything…
and then,
nothing
except these stitches in the darkness,
that imperceptible sparks of cognition
will embrace as fire
firmament
stars
longing
future
and sorrow.
Never wrong or right,
merely eager to learn the light…
to quilt together existence from distance
and rest in relief as long as time permits.
Like cracked crystal
broken lines questing
obscuring the path with the journey
on the other end of the beginning
there can be found only resignation
the planting of oneself.
Forgiveness, nurturing and
eventually dead dreams decompose
flourishing in the compost of our lives.
Enriching the time we have
sending our leafy limbs outstretched
embracing the sky
Like cracked crystal
broken lines questing
obscuring the path with the journey.
Where the clouds drop
and dip into the streets
they find mystery;
city blocks that disappear
as a tree felled against the river
carried away with it’s rage
dragged beneath the surface.
In slow drama
the world becomes a blank face
wholly unforgiving.
From within the current
we can only ask
“is this what always has been,
blinded by a sea of clouds
severed from the world?”
The city
through the fog can only reply
in a hurried whisper secreted away,
“All dreams die in the sun.”
These days,
if you’d seen him…
If you could freeze a man in time
you’d call him a cowboy.
that’s what he looked like
a ghost in a graveyard of mythos
seeking asylum in the present.
But…
John Wayne he wasn’t.
Even the most brilliant of the ephemeral
will disintegrate
when the somnolent wake from
slothful slumber
to find the dream to prosper
dead and mangled
hanging from wires
dripping with joyful progress…
each drop that falls
grows wings
swarming the sky
blotting out the sun
the earth
it’s comeuppance.
Indubitably, this was his curse
a wide brim hat
the shade of dying dreams
the ages echoed in his footsteps.
The well waits open to the sky
a placid barrier below
silent bait for the passersby.
What water patiently poised
would want of the world above
only dreams will ever know.
The meager coins that violate the surface
swallowed by depths of darkness,
are but emissaries of whispered words
that beg of fate a future to bestow.
They gather amongst the sediment
an ancient glittering congress
perpetually pleading the case
for ambitions that died long ago,
lost to the unknown abyss
where light is known only by shadow
and purpose found only in fools.
Distant cars passing
their stories told in the wind
the dogs give chase in dreams.
Where does the wind go
when we so oft look away
to find solace in stillness?
Perhaps to our dreams
to revive with nature’s breath
our hopes for brighter futures.
Grow Gray With Me 