2013

Day Thirteen. Heavy petals feel of heaven’s feathers Like an angel’s wings Plucked from the fresh body of innocence Shorn of shame leaving you bare and naked Before the eyes of the sun and the melody of reason Screeches like a snapped violin string Even your upturned palms Cannot bear this burden Of eyes unseeing peering down upon you This gaze will crush you and your will Leaving you the shattered broken form A wingless angel stripped of all that didn’t make you human This is the disease ridden world Where the grass against your cheek Feels like shattered glass ripping into skin That has never before felt the graze of reality The voice which is pulled from you is alien Horrified by the essence of self pouring from you There are horrors in these hands.

Day Twelve When the fire came it burned a hole in the porch, like a portal being opened to the far below. Sissy used to tell me that if you dropped something in it you could hear it fall all the way through to the end of the earth. So one day I took my collection of eucalyptus buttons and threw them in the blackened pit below; the jigsaw teeth of the burned out boards like ivory appendages ripped from bodies of great beasts. I didn’t hear the sound of falling like Sissy said I would, So I just stood there with my empty jar, bereft of years of good keeping my collection was swallowed up by that black earth leaving me with the wasted anticipation and the heavy empty jar. It seemed so much lighter when it was full even though it weighed down my arms. So I walked away from the yawning abyss that swallowed my eucalyptus buttons whole, with a heavy heart of disappointment. When we moved away a short time later I left the jar with its emptiness beside the pit the inferno had left behind; standing upright on its own, the jar was the only thing left in our gutted out home. But when I grew up and years had whittled my cheeks with age twenty maybe even thirty years later I went back to the place where the fire started late that night, hoping to look that darkness right in the eye and ask the questions that haunted me for so many years. But when I pushed my way through the gutted cobwebbed remains of a place I once called home and made my way to the back porch the darkness was gone, replaced by the outstretched trunks of eucalyptus trees. The trees rose up in the middle of our porch the new trunks breaking through the old planks of wood pushing upward and upward as if to show that they could. I walked across the deck with slow awestruck steps my eyes turned upward in reverence of the great canopy. Drawn back to the earth from the skyward reach I heard the crunch below my feet. Lifting my foot I held below, the ground was littered with buttons like a fresh blanket of winter snow. I knelt by the edges of what once was an abyss and touched the base of new life that grew in the face of darkness and refused the decree: do not be. To my amazement, as I knelt there, I found it beside me Unchanged except on thing, this time when I picked up the old glass jar it was far from empty. Filled to the brim with fallen eucalyptus buttons the trees had replaced the source that had unknowingly given them life.

Day Eleven. Sifting coffe beans through withered fingers like they were smooth rocks found on a beach without pebbles. Feeling each delicately, as if they would crack crumble and fall away like the shell of a robin’s egg. Sorting each bean on the counter top of a diner lost in an age of countless coffee stains and waitresses with smokey voices caught in the cloud of cigarette ash. The old man waits at the counter with an empty bar stool still left spinning from the years of memories weighed down upon it but vacant for these remaining days. He waits, not wondering for a time to see her again.

The night spent in the goatskin tent felt like an eternity, even though we actually slept for about 3 hours total due to our late night jam session. The ground was hard, the air cold and thin, but even through this, it was still a great feeling to wake up and feel surrounded by new-found friends. It really was after that night that I think we all stopped being people on a trip and became friends. ...

Day Ten. I can smell the mandrake in your veins Thick as molasses and light as a sea breeze; It runs from your cracked edifice like a deluge Of cold glances cast down lonely roads Caught only by the spider’s web Left to the whimsy of the wind; But theses white walls Will not be washed clean of me. No bleach nor paint will draw me from the cracks That keep this house whole Because the fibers of the brick thatched roof Has been slowly woven into me This macabre patchwork of my being Has been interlocked like the roots Of a mandrake that stretches out Like a child’s hands Reaching out for the nightshade Not knowing what this shadow will bring. Mandrake melody sing not too loud As the fire consumes you Some sacrifices were necessary, my darling And the dark was closing in before the day was done What was I supposed to do?

Day Eight. Fire found its feet in the coals of yesterday’s ashes Nestled amongst the darkening stones With a greater reverence born from dependence Between the one who needs all and has nothing And the one who has all but gives nothing Folded in on what can never have a life of its own This is an implosion of eternity This dying ember cannot be awakened By the words carried on whispered winds Only the hands brave enough to reach in And bear it upwards from the forgotten flame of yesterday Into a new lightness not born From the consumption of everything in its wake But from the kindling of hearts that bring new light

Day Nine. The sidewalk is lit like fairy circles under a full moon, But the spaces in between are darker than the deepest deluge. It is in this space, between the moment of whispered words Held in the bitterly cold night’s breeze saying Let there be light; That I find myself staring at you. Moving quickly by, briskly marching to the beat of an unknown cacophony Like the heartbeat of a thunderbolt, your heel crushes the ground. Step after step draws you closer to me. I feel my earth quake and the air tremble as the space grows smaller Until you are right before me like a hurricane making ground. The tension in the air between us as the eyes of this storm Share a sudden and incalculable gaze Your eyes were the darkest shade of azul. A storm brewing in them, that once released could never be stopped I swear I could smell the scent of Petrichor on your breath. That moment in the eye of the storm where we passed one another In the darkest of spaces between the light of this earth I knew you as the destroyer of all things the earth had made in me I saw deep inside of you as you looked into me I could see the smile in your eyes and the smirk on your lips Somehow I always knew it would end like this. With the silence of a storm and a solemn shared stare, As the void of you, that claimed power over me, saw through my disguise And knew only me; knew of the guilt in my heart, and a forked tongue held behind clenched teeth. The words lingered there as well, Without ever sharing a word, our worlds where made whole Bringing back full circle where my beginning made their end. Our eyes spoke of failures neither of us could forget. Your eyes cast across that darkness and shook me to my core And in that darkness the final sonnet of sorrow sung from the dust of me: I am so sorry.

Day Seven. The way the water rose to me was more than a ballet of perfect harmony It was the ballad of a Thursday lost in Monday’s news, The unprinted page of a love note addressed to you. Never was a song more sombre than the taciturn sparrow afraid to sing- but on that day that rang out a glorious rhapsody the burden of the unsaid was ransomed from me.

Sorry forgot to put up Day Six last night! Here it is! The birds sat perched on tree tops that never registered their feather weight But still, I wonder Do birds sit in tree tops for the view?

Day Five. Found on the outskirts of you, A new being began. Born from the puddles of summer rain; Constructed from the petals of May flowers; Lost in a season not of its own kind But of a colder climate that strips beauty By the roots and plucks petals placed on eyelids Like coins for Charon on a cold winter day. This deification of displaced days Is lost in the blur of a summer breeze Caught in the heart of a winter waiting on change. But without a place to lay their heads The tulips bow under the weight of a season Celebrated too soon.