It's Elemental

Tag: Memory

  • falling horizons

    today I stand on the horizon
    beyond the vast, known spaces
    my steps tracing a Moebius membrane
    as the white sea pours through my heart
    no there, no past, no unwanted memory
    –all swept lovingly into the waves
    seeds for waiting oysters

    did you know that I could fly?
    I didn’t either until the wind caught my wings,
    and the rock’s weighty tomes fell ponderously away
    like the unexpected removal of an atrophied, forgotten limb
    the only thing between my life and some great height

    it was the sound of the air rippling behind the gulls wing,
    the inevitable pulsing call of invisibly present stars
    –shining. always shining  
    and I eagerly ask

    who is singing the song that calls the fruit to bud?
    what whispered word ripens them? why must our ears be so ignorant?
    does not silent nature speak with my mouth?
    touch with my porous skin? cry these salty tears?

    nature, like an atrophied, forgotten limb, has been removed
    –or perhaps I am the limb of nature,
    which, only newly awakened, cannot yet know its mother  
    for I usurp her ears, her skin, her tears,
    assume them like a mask stretched taught over this shifting body
    while I forget how my wings lift me up
    though their rhythm ever flows on

    which is why I am here, cradled by the rocks and wind
    endless waves spread out before my dangling feet,
    waiting to reach the horizon

    sea meets sky


  • the world, seeking

    shadows fall on shadows, aghast at their own darkness
    times keep falling out of place, surprising themselves,
    trailing numberless atrocities like the dust of a comet
    sweeping ominously across a shrouded, weeping planet

    the forces are arrayed, the engines started
    words have been spoken, in earnest, in fear, in foreboding
    the percolating matrix of desire is abroad
    spewing the churned filth of age upon age

    grasping through coated vision, sickly sweet with unknown blood
    mine? or is that just the fading of words in the rain
    a forgotten calligraphy of music and coincidence
    swept into the tragic dust of memory

    we are all the friends of death
    we have slipped our milky white hands in his
    threaded our fingers into the dying bones of the future
    and now hold on for dear life

    know then benevolence, you royal heir, the polarity of spirit
    awakening with the sound of inversion upon inversion
    every coming forth speaking through white knuckles
    shaking your being, lighting it on fire

    death isn’t waiting for you
    you are the one who shall transform
    you are the one to phosphoresce in embrace
    while all the world casts off from your shore

    unshackle your breath
    unmoor yourself from the known
    take wing, rise up,
    you are the gift