Last Horse-Pulled Cart Leaving for The Edge of Town

I speak of water too much,
long to wake, late to sleep;
I tell myself tales,
how I once and still grow gray, 
cursed with worn paths, and moonless.
But now, a drive outside my city 
is like the ocean in my mouth
blessed deep with horizons.

I went down to the old movie studio,
sat alone in my hotel while
cars moved backwards,
white noise of anxieties; 
and the people I wanted to know 
travelled to and fro. 
My laptop lit the room
and I tried to decide if I could belong.

Odyssey of Reluctant Magic(Ariadne's Poem)

I work in a comfortable chair,

like a throne of losing oneself

when all I want is plumes of hallowed falls,

force and light, diverting,

merging, mixing and swirling our escape;

let's go now, cut through cityscapes

out into dark Georgia, north, 

up through Blue Ridge and those Elven places

we easily lose in the day-to-day.

My lovely Aria...remember lighthouses—

how they pulled your spirit to water.

Remember your fingers were like branched diamonds,

how your grip craved mountains,

and you knew your thoughts could create worlds—

ones your mind showed your heart how to love.

Remember days, before you knew language,

when strong hands meant love, when your smile

was a precious gift to your mother.

Remember when you ran with force,

your blood like a storm,

feet mighty on the earth.

Within you are unwritten poems, love songs,

words you wanted to speak to your father,

wine barrels, unopened, aged to reason,

a hoped-for memory of a tiny pull on your breast.

You, once called bright eyes, swan song, sacred star,

now, a temple of a billion burning suns.

I know you said you wanted to be a strong woman,

and I'd rather war with you and know you

than be alone with a half-smile face.

Let me take your hand, walk through black ridges

till we find moonlight, clear,

lay down in the way 

you wanted to be overcome; 

we'd bloom as ancients in Appalachia. 

And you'd tell me at our camp fire

you only felt vacant because the world

sometimes makes us forget our names.

And I'd tell you the only someone to be with

is someone who doesn't make you feel alone.

***

When the day ends, I want to be a flowing fire 

mingled in our blood till we can't help but run,

our hot skin seeking that dragon— 

the one we knew we had to face.

And I want to touch you 

in the way I worship a sacred place,

kneeling to find reverence 

in the slow moments,

your music in me, and I in you.

I'm told blue stars are the hottest,

and they burn out the fastest,

but a red dwarf can burn for ten trillion years—

I don't care if we're red or blue, 

I just want to be with you

for whatever time we're given,

and I want us to have purpose,

the kind that only comes about

from a life of mistakes and chances.

Isn't it odd how we hid for fun when we were children

and now older, we hide when we forget our strength.

But we are elemental, and you know Bowie said 'wild is the wind',

and wild are we meant to be. 

So let's walk away from sounds and cities,

hard workers and the ambitious, 

let's go visit desert wraiths;

let's seek ghosts who rest as nightingales

on a salt-burned earth.

 

I've not been a traveler in a long time;

I never wanted to go alone,

perhaps too cynical, perhaps afraid

of this world and my own shadow,

or maybe I just wanted a good enough reason,

other than curiosity, to go forth into the chaos.

But you, I'd explore with you, just to watch your face

witness the reluctant magic of this life;

let's go find auroras and places to rest,

and we'll find monsters to overcome,

and with each other, we'll be overcome,

as we write our names on each other's bodies,

with what is seen, and loved, and vanquished, day-by-day.

Of a Mutual Bright Burn

When I was young 

I loved a black sky,

cold grass and the swirl of sunrise—

and those things still, as an old man,

but now my toolbox and machine-cut metal,

or a chair and a pill and a drink.

My parents divorced after twenty years;

they said, "Son, do well in school."

"For what?" I thought;

“A good grade never made her look my way.”

I admit, I'm a sleeping man,

searching for the roots of a dark Eve.

I would say I'm sorry to my mother,

I could never be a Navy man,

and an apology to my father,

I could never be a scientist.

I may have traded my birthright 

to a revenant, or a delusion.

I'd say we should tremble at our existence,

burn till we ignite another,

and sleep like old ships—soulful; 

I believe there is a mutual bright burn,

a source of all life and madness 

sought by both aborigine and pilgrim.

Frost From Fire

I put my love's bones in the black furnace,

watched the roaring fire like Jonathan Edwards

once described flailing fear for the school children,

or maybe it's a sermon of John Owen, which instilled in my soul 

a despair, eyes-of-a-bird hollow.

And so I thought of calmer fires:

winter fires, camp fires,

or even the high fires of Wuthering Heights

which also roared, 

but with a wild dance.

These were not the Puritan abominations that sent

screaming angels to heaven;

and I thought how different the same

transition from lightning to death,

entropy turning life to black,

warmth to new soil,

and was that difference simply an overflow?

I would say I want to open my mouth,

take in light by the starful

until I'm burned into a new being...and yet

I stretch these thoughts back around

to once again walk the forest paths,

chilled night paths, with my love

as she flowed like water through the crackle

of leaves under an old moon.

I held her hand when life was possible,

and that memory calms these modern anxieties,

takes me briefly back to The Grange, where I remind myself

I'm not and never have been Edgar,

but nor am I Heathcliff 

...or Lockwood.

How might the plot have been different

had instead of Edgar Linton there was 

Edgar Allan?

“Catherine! Catherine! At my chamber door!

I walled up memories in the wine cellar;

Help me forget my love, this inner war,

And forevermore not speak of lost Lenore.”

And so I am...a ghost without a raven;

I walk the moors, always in between

the settings of this fairy tale

long after the author's spirits went

to rest quietly in the earth.

1g

After a long sleep

I named the black glaciers,

stretched my stride onward

toward Ursa Minor,

seeking the sylph who woke me.

I remembered the blood dust

of Martian canyons,

the thick folds of nitrogen

in the eidolon shades of Titan,

where I trekked in dreamscapes,

swelling as Ganymede through approach. 

The sylph smiled once before 

vanishing into her bed,

where she lay Nymphaea lotus petals

for her skin, for her lover,

before becoming wind.

And I woke from this dream

no closer to the stars,

but moving once again.

(Originally published in Sand Hills, Vol. 46, Sept 2022.)

8-26-2021

I watched a movie about a man

who knew faces, bodies through touch,

who tripped in both the dark and the light

to fumble and discover;

and I thought about your legs,

your stomach, your cheek bones

your hidden ears, and your laugh,

how I'd love for us not to fuck

our first night alone, but talk

and touch so I could lay with your curves

and hear mellow sadness drip from your mouth,

learn you with my hands while you tell stories

of how you longed to be loved

in some way that made you feel whole,

and I would tell you I broke so many rules

just to find you, so my eyes could know

the right darkness. My ears, your laugh,

my hands, your body—

you, the woman who walked, explored, 

loved, guarded, fell, and succeeded

for thirty-five years

so I could touch you to know you

the way a blind man shows 

he's in love.

A Morning Ferry

Clinical speak detailed the science 

of her death at 6:02AM EDT

in a cold-linen hospital bed, fourth floor,

lights traversing a sole aperture of declination;

I imagined her spirit on a morning ferry

crossing thick currents in liquid luster

where the cresting sun poured out

reflection after reflection,

scattered rays birthed and rejoined 

as islands of flowing fire, 

cast in abundance toward a land 

supine in its day-to-day.

Doctors of a steady bearing warred,

minds ablaze by blade and vow,

while the prosaic calmly tossed pills

behind a mask of plain and distilled humanity;

I felt small in my chest

as she was languid in sterile hands,

when they folded her clothed and naked body,

pulling and bending as the clock slowed,

then stretching her anew

like black robes of the bronze age

preparing their offering 

to a burning salt lake.

She once told me she would paint a new earth,

dip brushes wildly, soak canvas at the ecliptic

because gravity left long ago;

she said she could love in totality,

melt the old worlds, distantly resplendent

as the chaos of an O-type star appears 

like serene sparkle light years away;

she showed mathematically and

through collimation, a life after death,

and diminished the parallax of our perception

when we watched the way orbed fire 

sank gently into the transpose.

At dawn she slept in the truest way,

a tallowed hull, gliding on a glass ocean 

blooming with citrine at the horizon,

while Mnemosyne and Ourania composed notes rising

from the tide-pulled seas, upward and onward,

her spirit destined to pass the skies

and the dark expanses and through

star after star after star,

beyond dimensional boundaries

where all is coded and quantified and known,

and where the eternal light from her body

returned peacefully to the source.