THE NEW BEGINNING

like morning dew cried out in velvet silence
by the newly widowed night,
and caught in gentle comforting embrace
of sparkling spiderweb spun into lacy hammock
between two damp and wrinkled trunks
whose many long, frail fingers interlace above
impatience of the lovers found,
unlost;

like midday breeze sighed out by the endless sky
exasperated by its naked vastness,
wishing to fly away on swings,
instead, just twirling up the curls on golden-haired boy
whose joyous laugh will ring
in unison with squeaking of the swing-set chains
and childish clapping of the leaves above,
above it all;

like twilight grass, still warm from sun
whose trails of colors rich and vibrant so,
that birds oblige to sing,
conducting darkness,
sweet oblivion of dreams;

I’ll place my hand in yours, just so,

the new beginning.

DEAD ENDS

Dead ineluctably in under just a few more millions
grains of sand
slipping hastily through the pinch
of an ever-snapping waste of glossy shine,
soon-to-become-immortal,
we committedly build our vanity

shrine,
it will sing all the things that we wish
we were,
but had each nurtured a perfect excuse

to avoid,
to preserve
the essence of selves,
to protect
our self-beings from becoming a better of worse
worship
of blindfolding as a fine craft,
each clenched onto a perfect reason
to continue
the wandering of the dead down the dead-end streets,
lit just enough, by the lanterns dreamt,
to pretend
the horizon is clear,
again.

Repeat.

A MEMORY

Sometimes the longing
for the new,
for the familiar,
slipping through the frayed fibers of forgetting,
something that hasn’t happened,
ever, or just yet,
nostalgia for the je-ne-sais-quoi at the tip of the tongue,
tangled in the split ends
of a hairline memory,

stumbling on purpose across old polaroids,
faded and washed out, hinting at the outlines,
which could be this, or could be that,
and maybe you just want it so badly to be this,
but it is that instead,
you don’t know (you know),
in a way you don’t know the words
of this gypsy song,
but it tears your heart all the same,
picks it apart with long spears,
and hangs it on a cloth line
on Carrer Del Mar in Barcelona
to spell:
“I shall tear up trees with my bare teeth!
I shall crush mountains with my fists!
I shall go crazy – for love!”*


(*The last three lines belong to Terry Gilliam. )

SMALL GIANTS

realize,

the impermanence of a breath on a cold night,
vanity,
etched onto the elephant skin
of petrified sighs sung by the fire-breathing elders
to cradle their new-born sun.

realize,

the vastness of “nothing” is “forever”, “always”:
the finite scribbles in the sand whose grain
is each a mountain,
to each a name.

realize,

the distance between the Cold Giants,
molecules drawn apart by the sharp peaks
of the one true right over all the wrong rights,
to allow the wind to speak
straight into the hearth of your bones.

If only you would listen.
If only you’d remember how.

WORLD, UNRAVELED

I got the headphones
that cancel noise,
I wanted all the noise – gone,
so I can tune into the beyond:
its sabulous cobalts, its moody undertones,
with feathery fishbones and cotton candy piles,
thrown across in a careless spill;
the piercing ice of the hot pink sunset;
the thunderous exodus of the leaves descending underground;
the electric currents of the mushroom highways,
transmitting signals to the stars
their haloed echo resonating deep underwater
making the whales howl at the moon
in the belly of the ocean.

And then

tectonic plates shudder,
their iceberg antennae shatter,
winter sky crashes undone
into the ocean of lightning, rising;
time and space: the last of the witches, engulfed
in the catharsis of their tryst,

finally
silence

and the static noise of my own breathing,
inside a black hole,
deafening.


…

Lie down a moth, weightless,
on the steady waves of grass breathing
sand-color and smelling of certainty.
Close your eyes and soak in
mossy air, damp and green,
let your skin become chapped bark,
roots reaching deep within
what might have been,
what will be
darkness – always,
warmth and wisdom – also,
music,
home.