For goodness – not –
Shall Lords divine.
Sweet melon nectar
Explicit: intertwine.
An eagle soars
With lengthy hearth
An eagle burns
As Pharaoh’s earth.
River’s dry
– A cracking grain –
To whither: dead,
Our fathers bane.
Of golden green
‘Twixt slender pains
Yell “Willow’s mixture”
Betrayal’s feign.
Yet heard – unspoke –
Gripped the sword
– A childless yoke –
Divine hoard.
You kind of end up asking the questions that resonate, that jive, that give way to concerned thought and pulsing consciousness. But this is ok, because we’re not supposed to be answering all the questions in monotone, in urban drawl.
Suicide mission.
And when you forget where you live like some kind of filtering drain spout garberating windowless dreams down conformity’s empty hole, you hesitate to ask the questions like my three lettered ‘why’.
It’s going to be ok because I’m going to strap on my wide brimmed cap and lift my eyes towards soulless sunsets and ignore the white short legged dogs roaming these parts. I don’t pat your back because I’ve got angels leaving dust spots, I pat your back because my bushy eyes have bat one – then the other – eye lashes; together independently.
How many moon cries, moon cries.
Leave my moonshine on the dog leash and flatten my glass nose-hips to rose my soft songs. I’m not a lover, I’m a lost song with in-articulate mumbles. I’m Bob Dylan relaxing on the beach with god-spoken sun beams brightening up my day. Loose my verbage you tongue tied nymph dancing about my state of arousal.
Who’s excuse is better? Who is remarkably left alone and wishing for silence. Who’s hands are rattling about the tin drum.
Who is resonating?
Where you bled upon my bed,
I cut out and left to air.
Which I did not care!
No, I did not care.
Into the furthest mirror I did look
To find no other but reflection,
Which mattered to me because
I built the house upon flattery.
I’m perfection left uncovered,
Laid down without much affection.
Broken by a snake
And the absense of power.
I was an angel;
Struggling against purpose,
Harboring desire
Deep within action words
That you could not hear,
You could not feel,
You could not understand…
But we floated
I was an angel;
Distracting minute details
Into synchronicity,
Juggling and balancing
And crawling beside
Straight lines
Wish-washing my roads
With gravel timelines..
Dirty bloody knees
I was an angel
Singing my love-rich song
With arrows and soft colours
Diluting my expression
Like overcast clouds
On damp, dreary days.
Long words lingering on,
Left behind in old thoughts.
What does it take to love you?
What does it mean to hold your heart?
Like a delicate silk perfectly folded
Into five evenly spaced sides
Without creases.
What kind of fingers dance, prance
About sticky honey-buckles?
Long strands of hair into the deepness of my soul.
For forever was a long drive
Straight West into sunset’s romantic heart.
What kind of foot pierces clear waters of a hidden brook?
What does the water taste like
After it drips off your tentative toes
Recoiling into giggles, riddling squirrels
Into silence.
For all that I could remember, for all I could ever remember, for all the times that I dusted off my aching knees to build up my power of love that thrust my gold into the clear blue skies; it was all I was, all I cared to be, all I had dreamed of being, all that was allowed to rest – to be the remnants of some hard played game digging into worn parts of my gloves.
For without these delightful glories (curdling my cream and harmonizing my deep south Presbyterian choir) I was merely a soldier. A hard edged, fine tuned, stainless steel blade of America’s finest earth (plus of course the blood, sweat, and rock hard fists heft my direction). Hardly left a consequence upon my check-marked debriefing.
Here I stood in future’s year, inhaling deep to remember what it felt like laying on the freshly mowed grass in the heat of summer, slow moving cars rolling along manicured gravel. An itch, creeping in and lingering a while as momma’s freshly squeezed – and heavily iced – lemonade tinkled around inside a transparent and sweating summer repair.
But now I wasn’t heading here or there. I wasn’t coming or going. I wasn’t even known amongst the squirrels and bluejays and Chester, the neighbor’s dog, had wilting flowers.
You cannot crush what once lived inside a boy. A man can not fall flat and lie upon his back and let these thoughts turn and turn and turn without the understanding of what has come to pass. Much like Tchaikovsky’s flurrying madness, torrent thoughts arrest my secret moments until the uneven dice with blank looking stares roll the number five five times in a row. To end a second chapter but never ending. Never an end. Never to be ended.
Without knowing then, I was knocking at a door I had left without looking back. A door that still had a mesh pane to keep out the flies. A door that creaked and banged shut no matter how slow it was released. A door that acted as the liaison between country folk and their well meaning manner. A door that punctuated my knocking and brought old – as in aging – footsteps squinted hard to recognize the stranger the stood just on the other side.
There was fear sealed inside a glass
Sparkling like a nimble angel
Until I popped the lid
And out spilled my memories
From which truth had never lived
Where dizzying spells
Slowly pulled me around
To break sound echoing
Of morning Woodpeckers
Resting my eyes
Into the darkness
Into the evening
Into my soul
That searches endlessly
As torches blaze on
In the far off distance
Awaiting our great Mother
To signal once more
That daybreak is upon us
Rupturing tranquility
Into a heavens daze
A fresh smell of lilacs
And signatures begin their drawl
The little lover knew no other
But all she had was fits and slobber
The man she loved was much too clever
To hold onto a dying ember
To which begins the sad sad tale
Of the little lover and her
Quest of building ever stronger
Which she blossomed into a Queen
Who loved to laugh and delight in grandeur
And in the end she was much brighter
For being the girl of fits and slobber
I have got angels.
They dance around naked with long blonde locks
And sing amongst each other banging a drum.
Whenever I stand up to join the chorus
They stop and they wonder and stare at me lost;
It’s not a ‘what the hell is he doing’ stare,
But a ‘caught in the crossfire of beauty’ look.
They tell me my voice is why they stay
Dancing around here, naked as they play.
I have no reason to not believe my angels
For when I am lonely, they are my commitment.
They are what brushes past my face after tears flow,
They are what flickers in my early morning eyes,
They are the cinnamon spicing my sauce,
They are what smooths my sleepy brow out.
My angels cannot do me wrong.
No matter what song perches about their supple lips,
Their fingers dance nimbly through the air.
When they dream of things I cannot yet see,
Their drum echoes through my heart
And I imagine that I can indeed see their spells,
– Woven upon me so tight –
And I hear even in daylight they’re not far away.
When I begin dancing, when I share their dream,
I know I have got angels, and they have got me.