Fire

Every morning I am alive
While the world burns around me
When will the agony come
To take my feet before my tongue
As the leopards, the moths, the children of birds
Are all devoured by flame
We feast on screaming ashes
We bathe in the horror of millions
I still take 3 cups of tea daily
And wish my face were younger
But brother, my heart is in despair
For I feel it NOW
I hear- the roar
I see- blood in the eyes
I smell- death
No bones remain to read
These are not dinosaur days
Where we imagine ourselves standing
This is the day for the fire
It will claim the whole damned earth
Fire has no concern for the innocent
Its spirit does not weep
Not even as an evil man weeps
Fire does not repent nor forgive
Fire does not remember-
To change is all the fire knows
And it will show us too late what destruction is
I know I will rip my skin
When it comes for me, at last
I will cry out "when I was a child I warned you"
1 final time, before my tears dry.

Tied Down

They are out There making lives

I sit in the regular haze

rehashing old addictions

Bed couch chair

Again!

Wishing for a Body I used to dwell in

Wishing for an Earth I never knew

Crying for the future that blinks away

when I reach out

Every grasp is never found

And the others party on

Braids and red berries

Theater and galaxy pants

Moves and the music

When do they ever cry?

When do they want to scream through the pain

the way I feel the soul of the world screaming

not wanting to die

missing herself, her beauty, before the children

Forgot

and tried to build again from her blood

to make grinning habitations

confining roads that burn her skin

And still they want to feel alive

as do I

not held in this old web

of yearning

5/19/19

Two stinkbugs were crawling along the bamboo shades. They were dim and heavy in the shadows, like tiny Jim Henson puppets- manually animatronic. A storm was gathering and the air moved with hungry vigor from the west. Some moisture was sent down from the dark line of clouds, like the spray from a cock pulled out at climax, or a boy spitting watermelon seeds with acuity.

The exhaustion of a few bad years hung around low on my forehead, and the purple wool blanket scratched my chest. I wanted to sleep through the rest of the heavy, moist afternoon- but that was every afternoon, for me. I was worn out. I wasn't thirty yet and already my hair was falling out, I swear it gets thinner each time I notice. My eyes were heavy and dull, but my mind raced with possibilities. Never shuts up. It thinks it knows everything.

The storm front passed quickly and there was a lull in the trees. But the wind- the beautiful, pure, magical living air, breathe of the earth, moved in bursts. Thank goodness for trees, they are prophets. People don't love trees the way they should. They don't even love one another, usually.

Then the sun shone, and rain fell down with a bright gentle sound, and the day changed again.

5/19/19

Remembering what I cast away in Scotland

One eye to see ahead
And one to search what's left
Through cracks in the glass

Only your own self
Soft-vision-lined in crystalline
Definite and obscure

Many lenses in a lifetime wasted
Used to retrace
The patterns and faults

The unseen felt more vividly
Than any glimpse of frozen time
Keeps me watching

Susurration

Vanished beauty better than
Varnished beauty made to seem-
Get your pastel claws away from me!
And give me the tiger tree,
The sharpened toothy stones of time
And I will help you see
The blazing extraterrestrial light show
The beetles shining brow
And the blood in your own soul
Pumping for a reason you cannot know-
But not for bitter weeded blossoms
Choked by superimposed nature...
Give me the tiger tree!
Signs of life and past and no more
Let me rest my bruised bones
Where the dust roams wild
So I may disappear beautifully

Thoughts Before the Grave

Do not focus too much on the healing.
You will get there by being mindful, and with practice will notice when you need to do something.

Every relationship is a story, and always one worth being told to anyone that is interested.

Your best performances are always when you are alone, totally alone.

Futility can be its own motivator.
In that abject hopelessness and despair, what truly keeps you alive will come through to you, and you will see clarity.

Vows must be renewed every day.
They will be broken every day.
The vow is to pick up the pieces, grind away, yourself to a fine and glittering sand, til you have arrived at your goal.

No state is permanent, certainly not trying.
This is why we must strain for change, and accept our rest periods as rejuvenation and discovery.

All is beauty, all is connected, all is tragic, all is art, all is to be seen.