Monday, August 24, 2009

At last.

I'll throw my two cents in
pay the river toll
and from this bank of styx
I'll cross my Rubicon
standing on the bow 
i choose this passage for myself
like prophecy or fate
but taking instead the mantle
of the wolf for its loneliness
and the single cry
that no one understands
but fears nonetheless
with the primal shivers 
that shakes them down from 
indivisible numbers
into the loneliest one
and then we together are alone
in this wide grey shore
Dido and I again 

one by fire
two by sea
and so we'll stand together
on the Styx's far shore

Thursday, August 20, 2009

Sunny.Meili

i lift my glass to you
and you to me

finding comfort through
the distance

and seeing you from so far away
makes the stranger at the table
next to me seem farther still
a foreign thing who may sit
but cannot understand the swell of secrets
that i throw and you catch
as a matter of fact, and fiction
and the weight is sometimes the same
because we don't always dream first
but sometimes live
and later dream of the time that was.
and how it was to be with you
in the morning with your smile not awake yet
but stretching across your face
in an attempt towards altertness
and how we laughed as you stumbled across the room
to find the tea i had already made
knowing, as we do, the answer before the question
and the questions that don't have answers
but are answered all the same
with this, and we are happy,

i love you. forever.

so raise your glass to me
and i'll raise mine to you
and we'll stare through the screen

this time, next year?
i'll be here.

Sojourn through the sea.

when i was standing in the sea
i watched the horizon
and imagined it bending and bending again
an eternal enigma, the final joy
to reach and discover that this indeed
is the end
the final frontier
i watched and lost the sand beneath my toes
with the tide sliding around me 
the wind's liquid cousin
in the midst of it was something else
that pushed against my legs as against an intruder
and gave in the face of my firm flesh
but surrendered under duress and with protest
i looked and it was clear through
a plastic bag of the sort that mothers slide sandwiches into
and that are discarded in the midst of the sand and sun and freedom
it had wrapped itself with its open mouth
around a small portion of sea and then sliding shut
with its red zipper of a tongue
claimed it as its own and set it apart
i was amazed at this
a creature of identity so clearly defined
this then is me and this other
it is not
water in the midst of water
yet set apart
and suddenly i was afraid
for what i was and was not
a thin skinned bag of water 
in the wide sea of waves
in the hungry sea of others just like me
stumbling and standing and swimming
against these things not us 
and by running into them finding that indeed
they define us
they define me
and suddenly i am unsure of my skin
this wrinkled sheet that stretched so taut 
once
and now shrugs across my stiff insides
like an old habit long bereft of meaning
i wonder if it too is transparent
if for the others wandering the stretch
my coiled sprawling insides show through
a mess of unclarity 
a semi-system of insecurity and sureties 
how terrible to be revealed and unsure
to be caught in the act of identity
and at the crucial moment
the final horizon
to fail

i stepped from the sea 

at the end i plan to stand
upon my brave craft weary and worn
and quiet with courage 
answer this.

who are you?

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Summer Souls

it was you
you who of all people
could sing a lightning bug into a star
bend your magic around and around its glow
its wavering steady dance
until i, enraptured, watch the summer bugs 
flit amongst the tall grass
like an astronomer with a new universe
and i am struck with hunger 
to understand it all
and in the second blow awe
in the face of all I could not see
and still you sat there
 humming against your blade of grass
like a mountain, or cloud, a thing unaware
of its strength or size or power
while beside you i got twisted in the warm air
turned and melted and shaped
i died and was reborn

taking my first breath along with the dawn
the first dawn, if ever there was one,
and realizing the scope of this new universe
i dared to name it

i called it love.

Thursday, August 6, 2009

nimue

sometimes i suspect that just after the dark of night-
i am most suspicious in the dark
it is when i am most awake, and most afraid
because i cannot see you
and you cannot see my fragility
the thing i sometimes think holds you to me
more than anything
and so you, being so clever and young, wait
till the beginnings of light lull me into the half-sleep
that i wake angrily out of because it is the mark of the old-

i suspect that is when you do it
take each of my careful brushes with their slender spokes
and spin them gaily in your slim hands
dipping voraciously with all the hunger in your swelling soul
into my thousands shades of oil
smudging your mouth with charcoal 
 coating your hair in the soft pastels
and laughing, laughing like the hungry wild thing you are
at the thought that all of this could ever be denied you
that anyone could cut you off from the heat of your desire
with your starving need you wait and wait and then
in a blast of shaking speed vanish and reappear
beside my chair proper and pale when i awake
wheezing with the angry indignity of age that robbed my hands
of their steady pace and my eyes of  their open strength

you are quiet but i can hear the tantalized joy thrumming
beating through the hollow in your throat
and i know one day soon those small hours will not be enough
that your hunger will take you by your willowy throat
and you'll do the unthinkable

I'll die easily,
i know what it is to be dragged by destiny
and to be starved for your right place in this world

I suspect what you do in the hours after dark
but i do not stop you 
even with your slender hands descending
and the silent pillow encroaching upon what is left
of my feeble spirit and flickering genius
i'll smother under the weight of this fate

i love you. and i knew it would come to this.

Tuesday, August 4, 2009

daisy dear.

she plans to steal a million
what
a million atoms 
a million dreams
a million things she doesn't need
she tells me this on the porch
with her tongue twisting languidly
over and around the red cherry stem
she has the art of collapse
someway of disconnecting all the corners
in her body so she simply flows
over the chaise like an extension of her white dress
or perhaps the dress is an extension of her milky skin
and therein lies the answer 
she is the ex of all tension
the loose strand that this rushing world forgot
to bind up in its weave of stress and crush
and watching her here in the southern shadows
i begin to believe her 
that this limp form holds within her
all the latent force the world forgot
focused now on twisting the cherry stem
that stains her red mouth against her blanched face

it emerges a delicate knot
tied in against itself holding nothing but air
and i suggest a different prey 
realizing with my reaching even that i am lost

she reaches her hand to the notches along the wall
and notes
478,908,

a million hearts will do.


Monday, August 3, 2009

sojourner

i'm tracking my travels across the map
with small red pins
that bend when pushed like willows
and snap back to attention
my crackling soldiers practicing the art of piercing 
as they march across this outspread page
and one by one they punch
their sharp metal spears into the resisting cork
that sticks and then with a pop
peels away allowing this foreign invasion
these shining soldiers waving their red flag
and i am the grand generalissimo 
with the wave and thrust of my hand
i throw myself across the lines and colour blocks
and inject some portion of me into the taste of these cities
these black dots that infect the map
like some pustulating rash, 
the result of a pestilent disease
and here i place myself in the midst of it
and walk about with my mouth open
my arms stretched wide and hoping
to catch some of the scent of these places
in my secret crevices to carry away
a stolen treasure, an heirloom of national importance
and they'd never know
such a silent thief i would be
leaving as my only evidence 
the stiff red pinhead 
planted firmly  
pricking the pustule
and let the pus bleed out

the disappointment poisons the skyline
swells in thick milky waves till the whole place drowns
and i keep walking 
leaving the waste to fill my footprints

in one of these cities one of these days
i'll find you and finally hang this map
on the wall of one house and leave it

we'll heal the city

Sunday, August 2, 2009

a slip of the tongue.

i woke up today with a mouth that stung
the corners of my mouth were raw
my lips swollen and sore
my tongue found the marks my teeth had left
and tasted the rusty salt
that comes from blood and tears


i'm tired of telling my secrets in my sleep
sick of letting slip the things i hid
to make silence worthwhile

its what i do when we sit next to each other
and don't say a thing
i practice not telling you 
all the things you don't know about me

i line them up neatly in my head
i'm afraid of thunder 
because of the way it shakes my bones inside of me
like the windows in a house
and reminds me how easily they shatter
I buy people i hardly know christmas gifts
and hide them around the house
so i don't have to give them
just know that i have them 
i kept the note you gave me wrapped around
a piece of dark flavoured magic
you promised would protect me from the night
like a treasure tucked away

i touch my lip carefully
watching the swelling dip beneath its weight
in my mirror thats speckled and stained
wondering if its worth it
every night accumulating these scars

just in case you learn
the secret of my silent smile
when we sit next to each other
and say nothing at all

one day 
when you're kissing me
i'll whisper, i'll ask you

can you keep a secret

and you'll say yes
you always do to whatever i ask
and i'll laugh and stay quiet
later you'll ask what i meant
what i was going to say-

so can i. 

by the way i don't love you.