If you give me a softer edge
I will believe in your touch
For in the grasp
Of a summer day
I remember all these dreams
And I can hear the buzz
Of the honey bee
Singing in my ear.
But if the edge continues to hone
I’ll find my sharpness cutting knots
Deep within my root stricken back
Holding me to gnarly strength.
I am the fire
Should I be struck
For I awake within my heart,
I am the dirt
That crumbles with
A slipping fist no longer clenched
No longer fighting back.
I chose the path of a broken arrow
Bent and fragmented
In the soil I grow
For once I was mad
With hate so hot
Spent life speeding
From spot to target
With venemous fuel.
I was long and straight,
I fought a great battle
Now I’m bent
And given away
My grace and beauty
For a place exposed
To wiles and whims
Of nature’s fancy
Where the guise of time
Will swallow me whole
As a man in slippers
On a dirt path
For tomorrow.
(part XIV)
But there were still people
Who roamed outside of Safety.
They were the sinners
The witches
The vegabonds
The immoral
They were hunted
And killed upon sight
For it was Fearful
To look them in them in the eye.
They existed as people had existed
Long before Fear had set in
To the hearts of the Fearful.
They hunted for food
That ran wild in more quantity
They grew their own food
In the dirt that crawled
With worms and beetles
Maggots and flies.
They made friends with dogs
And sang to birds
But to be sure they were unsafe
For they were outside of Safety.
(part XVI)
Ten shades of a broken arrow
Stretched across the sky
Moon and sun both couldn’t hide
So they raged, no dawn, no dusk.
A peddler man came walking down
In a suit quite unknown in that world,
Had two tones of gravity
Two handfuls of pure dirt.
In each promise the hook was set
Deeper and deeper it took
Just like moon and sun,
They raged, they raged, they raged.
The end became, the gone be gone
The rules left written down
Nailed to a city square post
Discarded cloth and plastic close by.
The moon became calm and laid away
A soft silver spoon for a tomorrow,
The sun, alert, smiled peacefully
And awoke children so sewn.
I sat there understanding nothing
No question to my mind
Yet sorted out was a figment
Lost in a region I wouldn’t dare enter again
For I had fought that battle
Recklessly
I had lain that flying Dragon down
With my Sword I had wielded mighty
Patiently sitting
Understanding nothing
And staving off the thoughts
That raced around mine head
For inside of them
Lurked what voices I had yet to recognize
Some surely to be Saints
Some no doubt to be Dirt.
This is not a rain suit
This is a cloudy mess
Of insanity
Flooding onto the streets
And washing away the dirt
Drug here from those leaving
From where we are from
There are no marks that turn around
We have not begun
We leave the traces of our hearts
Laying in the bed
Falling helplessly
Lifelessly
From the sky
Into the waking hours.
You are the tenderness
As I move in this world
Sunlight
Hitting every curl
You are the sweetness
In every touch
So that when I hit the dirt
I feel its every moment
Into my bones
Calling me home
Like the kingdom inside
You are on the edge
(You are of this stone)
I’m not singing for my lungs
Though they burn with desire,
No, the sweetness has left me hoarse
That burns like whipping dirt
Blowing about this barren desert.
It used to come in fits
Where I’d collapse in imagined euphoria
I had never before experienced.
My dreams lay me still here,
Though I cry out
With the neighbours howling hound,
As singing awaits
Within the embers of my soul
My fire remain unconvinced
That this landscape
Deserves such escape.
I hope that I have not become
A garden of your worry
As lost have I found myself
To most of what was once
Have left the tool for another spade
A new life on the rise
Here I toil, finding myself
Dotted with more depth, more dirt
More truth to become with you
A fruit that groans
As seasons play upon our habitat
Delay the day, gone away
I’m missing my river roots
Dirt lessons I swam in to
I caught the biggest fish
That took back what I had thrown
Surprises out to sea
Moonshine and a little gin
Kept me warm within
Sitting on a rock so thin
I danced into another.