Balustrade

After a week's worth of outings, I'm glad of my introvert-night. I had a fantastic week, but I needed an eventual unwind, and tonight's learning journey was worth the wait, even with much of it spent following wikipedia trails and researching the last several poet-laureates. Honestly, sometimes the greatest nights are those with candles, books, music, and blankets as soft as dream-clouds.


an anodyne reminder that life boils down
the fault-lines of souls, to a fragile
ash-wooden sacrifice, one story all-told,
whose spiritual timbres creak and groan,
filling the dark eyes of a child on barrow hill -
I see them still, frameless,
no mountains, no forests , no fields balm
the pain written in runneled lines
down the blind boy's fair face
standing before a sudden grave -
for the ocean, and the motion of waves,
how silent the mountains?
to the valleys who bow beneath,
how wise the lofty peaks
the clouds ever drown in violence?
but the mountains be valleys be dust
in the end, back where it always begins
where we begin again, anon -
I greet the rising sun over a city of glass,
and automobiles with their dumb-eyed daffodils
searing through the fog -
above and beyond all the earth, where
lovers and trees neck in the woods,
here, from the oculus of dreams
we follow the railroad ties of sunlight
struggling between grey seams,
illuminating what our ears see:
a high pitched squeal, a soughing through,
laughter
beneath a chestnut tree high as yggdrasil
in the girl-child's toffee-gaze
joy, I know thee well.
And caught between these siren-stares
I step precariously along the balustrade
one stare at a time.

Envisioning Wisdom

I don't want these eyes, anymore. Why can't I see the earth as Mary Oliver: a gentle mother scooping me up in her skirts, revealing her pocketed lichens and seeds, flowers and trees, and cradling me to sleep. Or Walt Whitman, when a child asks, what is the grass, and he sees a flag, the uncut hair of graves, and knows the identity of grass may be beyond understanding. Give me the surrealist mind of Van Gogh (maybe not the sight. He probably had enough chemical poisoning he actually saw the sky like he painted), that I might see the heavens in surrealist splendor. Open my eyes, so even a cut like Sylvia Plath hath had, might reveal a pilgrim, redcoats, a turkey, or a Plath-ian macabre element.
I don't see the world like Martin Luther King Jr, Gandhi, Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglas, or Mother Teresa, but I want my sight opened unto that world, tragic and devastating though it may be, for all I see sometimes is fog hovering over the little pond of my world, and a few concerned frogs croaking on lilypads. I want to see people's souls like orchestral movements - the violin is hurting and a bit bitter, playing a sharp minor movement in cut time; or joyous, dancing between dam-bursting crescendo and frenzied, whispering mezzo-piano, allegro allegro! I can't tell if a river is a dance, or a mountain a ballroom dress, or if the world might make less sense with ever metaphorical pass-around.

Wisdom?
Words aren't working, anymore, and perhaps never again
I forget, friends, what breathing is and isn't,
though a mist rises in my gorge, is this it?
a statue sits in the courtyard of a city street,
eyes scrunched shut, hands pressed tight, kneeling
he never opens his eyes, never sees,
but even he knows
visions exist so beautiful that, if truth hides
another more resplendent sight, I may be made blind -
shush, I shush, and shush again the silence
it bellows in my mind and a fearful fire rages
in appalling quiet
is this, Elijah, what the wind-passing-God -
oh God, she's so divine - is like?
My heart begs the mendicants for spiritual alms
and mother God plays the accordion
while urchin Jesus tugs at her drab dress and smiles
where is she -
there is something here so imperfectly clear,
you must let the mud in the water settle,
if you want to see your reflection -
(I want to see the sky)
I don't want these eyes anymore, I want yours

Eyes

Can you teach me to open my eyes?
In high school, someone affixed a horrific media image to their locker: a teenage girl's face with her eyes stitched shut with thick, barbed binds, and a tiny scalpel hovering on the right, ready to slice through the ties. The locker was near the front of the hall, so each passing into and out of the main hallway resulted in a brief glimpse of that image. I don't even remember the message, but on the scalpel were the words, "the truth". The truth about what? Smoking? Prostitution? Pornography? Abortion? Cultural propaganda?
Whatever the aim, the image has been seared into my memory, branded there so I mightn't forget.
Eyes are so vulnerable, so unprotected before this dangerous world. If I fall and bloody my knee, I'll be fine. If I scratch my eye...
And it's bad for me, worse. I can't stand watching people put contacts in, or using eye droplets, without my eyes watering in sympathetic misery. Eyes are magnificent and fragile things, and they make me nervous.
But I still want them open, even when the truth - the scalpel - terrifies me immensely.

Tell me how a fly sees, that I may understand - a blurry world of pieces, unfocused. And the bee, you ask? In ultraviolets transforming white clover into royalty. And what of the puppy, with her missing colors, or the hawk with sight piercing many miles. But I want to see inwardly, and the colors and motions of people as the live and love and breathe. I want to watch when your heart beats for what you believe and the turnings of your soul.
Can you help me to open my eyes?

Am I all cogs and wheels, gears and grinds?
This machine which every even unwinds, and winds
again through the night, is all of me, isn't it -
but I want to, long to believe in something beyond
grief and joy and disbelief, the mystery thereof
enticing me with nectar and honeyed wine
slipping into these toothed wheels -
sticky old clocks are a broken design -
so the bees buzz and pendulum keeps ticktock time
all cogs and wheels, when it's flowers I desired
it's only clocks I got,
and time is forever blind

Moon Phases

panning for gold in driveway gravel, an industrious escape from the mind. A glimmer, false hope, what did I expect to mine? sifting stones as memories, these pebbles are more than pearls, than precious jewels.  the sandbox of my spirit, shifting - entropy crumbles mountains to rubble, but cannot destroy what it finds. Moon rides high, tonight, pulling hearts like tides and dragging silver trails behind on its wedding night. The moon in its futility races west to east, but looks like east to west. I'm sifting pebbles from my pile of gold, is the moon's existence mine?

I can only hope to reflect light so bright, hopefully with more consistency. 

It's a limbo I feel, a between time. Like I have five minutes until an appointment, but nothing I can finish, or start, in those five minutes. I'm tractionless, racing forward-backward like the moon, and doing so in circles. How, after Eden, could Adam and Eve settle for less? No choice, there was no choosing perfection, anymore. I see what, to my eyes, was close, but beyond reach. 

Oh, such tiny arms and lofty dreams.

A plan, then? Or destiny?

I'll sigh until you hold me high

Love? Or I'm deceived.

Broken glass between each toe

shark's teeth and barnacles

chances in a mantis hold

No, this is what it means

carpet rides on starry nights

daisies on a bed

of downy grass and reading

poems sweetly singing

of mountaintops and raspberries tasting

moonlight in your hands gossamer

as gliding swans

tiptoeing across ponds 

silver, holy night

slipping into a shell to see 

the sea tides whisper gently

press your hand to mine

and jarred awake, a dream

an electricity.

in beginnings a death

in ends: retreat

opportunity or perfect impossibility

love's broken like the moon

Now, every puzzle piece fits poorly, inadequate. Something always wrong, and standing out like a thorn in the thumb, scarlet stains on white cloth, oil on the ocean, burn patches on the ground, barrow in a field of flowers, vulture in a flock of doves, weeds in fields of corn. But even perfect blue eyes sparkle with flecks of gold, flowers grow in street cracks, and in the darkness there's a moon, sometimes.