Friday, 17 November 2023
Sentences come stumbling down the alley
dripping of lite beer
a mouth trying to keep pace with one's thoughts
is never clear
yet there is something here
warmly glistening
like amber
The last of leaves fell from the trees
And clung to a new love's breast
The branches bare like a banjo moan
To the winds that listen the best
Lay Down Your Weary Tune - Bob Dylan
Keep straight what must be kept straight, let go what can be left alone
There are no such things as weeds, there is only vegetation in great variety and abundance, what may be of no use to you may be of use to something else entirely. Don’t chop down trees because of their Autumn clutter, likewise the weeping cherry is just as grand after its blossoms have fallen in circumference, there is no great purpose nor reason in making sure that every last thing is kept tidy. Let the brambles grow full of blackberry thorns let poison ivy thrive where you never go, let the grass grow high in unused pastures, let unknown plants spread their unexpected blooms, let trees cast shade and shield from violent gusts. Let the wild grow up around you, let it nest among your sinew and bone.
Starchild
Where did you go, my brother? Do you remember how we dreamed, plotted and schemed to break from this world? There was the three of us huddled from that same school, burning in the off hours, turning poetry to lyrics, writing music while learning instruments, searching for drummers, putting bands together, we were so young, so young to be so driven. But do you remember how they cheered for us, how we couldn’t believe it, the sound was almost as deafening as our amplifiers, do you remember? And do you remember that girl who hung from your neck saying “I love you” over and over again that time the stage got overrun with dancers, do you remember how there wasn’t even enough room to take a step? I remember, I remember you in your glory, a glory you never even had a sense of until we saw it in you and put you out front to sing, strumming that Fireglo Rickenbacker 360. And it was terrible the day that our dreams grew apart and our history went on without you. But I always remembered and will always remember still, now that you’re gone, my brother.
To seek and be sought
to be sought and then return seeking
that’s the nature of it
that’s what endures
everything else withers thankfully
Lazing rose eye of amorphous petals
like an eye falling back into the head
the eye of dying
the eye of ecstasy
the same
There are times when you’re not aware of the complexities, as if your thinking drops into the appropriate gear to match the speed of circumstance and everything becomes clear, easy, simplified. It’s then that moments progress without resistance or stoppages and all the storms you watched gather over higher land causes you to be swept away through a network of rills and gullies until you arrive somewhere you never imagined you’d be.
Go back to sleep
it’s raining out
as if it were that easy
as if I had that sort of life
Stay your oars then
return to shore
I am out beyond the bar
Do you not see
the flash of my flare
across your evening sky?
Speak to me in oceans
abate my crestfallen waves
or don’t speak to me at all
From what I gather
There was that I took from you
your limbs bent low
heavy with pears
Fielding your jubilant Spring
walking the wet grass
gathering tulips
My ladder propped into your bower
reaching your heights
cherries sweet by the bushel
My hands gliding softly
through your rivulets
snatching handfuls of watercress
Weaving a wreath from your willow
with pine cones and Autumn leaves
hung upon heart’s door
Torrential days beneath the canopy
holding my cup at arm’s length
catching drafts of your fragrant rain
There was much I took from you
when I had nothing to offer in return
except the humblest of payments:
a chest full of complete adoration
and a song for the wind of days
Opaque
Mist clings to a twilight edge
fear abandoned, walking ghost-like
out to this glistening evening shroud
quiet, all is quiet
everything hopelessly lost among each other
still beauty, still and lonely
this world like life viewed through a cataract
everything known
yet little is discernible.
I wonder if any of the planets dream of finding a different solar system to orbit in?
And this day yet again
It’s still March and it’s days past the beginning of Spring, but here puddles are still frozen solid even with the sun shining as it is, bright cloudless sky, and I’ve had enough, we’ve all had enough or at least those of us who thrive on seasonal change, I want to start a fire of myself, not to perish but to live and not a fire under myself meaning to make my life busy on top of busy with goal after goal after goal, I mean a fire of myself, a defiant flame to the persistent cold that has asked me to shiver too long, fragrant cherry and apple wood smoke - an incense to choke out Winter’s breath, hot on the skin like a Summer day, soaking into the soil to reach every dreaming bulb and root, I want to burn as an effigy of days to come when this brown stick landscape boils over with deep green froth.
Of wind and words
It is enough that a wind once blew causing so much language to balloon and be carried aloft, and even after the doldrums had begun, spherical notions still formed to hang glassy in the heavy air.
It’s a dying thing now, it retreats to stillness, I’m as obsolete as the stayed weather vane, but breezes never truly die do they, they just carry themselves someplace different, pulling along everything they once caused to rise.
So I wonder, do my whispers still tempest around the breath of winds, do my words still spin as a circling of orbs with tangent spurs that glisten jewel-like? - Assuming they ever held such gleam.
What does it matter since the past lays forever buried beneath the present, what significance could there possibly be in knowing that a line from my lips still lingers where I am not?
My pen only responds to the prevailing gusts and sensory words keep in primordial piles when there is nothing present to stir them, but it’s enough to know that there once was a wind and someday there may be again.