....From The Tree Of........................Isolation & Thought
|
_______________________________________________________ The Moment Perfumers, in blending just a whiff of musk, a tang of ambergris, a sprig of lavender agree there is a moment when the scent is right; perfect. One to fill the heart with lung-fulls of happy breath. Aromas you can walk in and feel taller, sharper, more alive. And so it is with people and the way they come together. For an instant, there is clarity; a distillate so fine there is telepathy, a steady, thrumming energy. Add some others, and you'll have a mob, a crowd, a bus station, everybody loud - bringing in their buckets of chicken and chatter - and moving, not to higher planes but going to Peoria. Indomitable We rise from rumpled bedsheets like Lazarus- the stink of yesterday's sins still on us, stagger into bathrooms where crumbs of broken dreams cling, but only half remembered. In a mirror going black at the edges like life itself, like death encroaching, faces not even familiar in the neon blue of backalley morning misery wonder: why is it the lark sings on such a perfect branch outside of pain in a world we cannot visit, cannot know. Fata Morgana Environs of the gold beaked gods, bent backs and brackish water, bide with me on the fringe of Thule; keep me wakeful. Cabarets of brownshirt bullies loom high-heeled, tap and twirl their numbers, beat me blue black, pull a train, then wait for Ms. Morgause. Morgan Le Fay is crouched and crabbed on bottom step of every childhood afternoon alone, and after school, a grin like grease. She meets me now in the course of sleep; she's every female hated -feared, she's each dour nun. Every rival, nails like weapons dripping red- I wish her dead but if I were a betting lady she's the Triple Crown horse- knows how to win. The Prophecy All Hallow's Eve and the Seven Sisters sit in the skies above us; the Aztecs believed the world would end when they compact, appear at exactly twelve a.m. A rusted scythe, due at midnight, blade that's already drawn blood- and this hair so full, so fine still, will blow for the very last time in a wind too big to stop as all the lines of latitude and longitude draw into one like a picture tube gone black. I don't believe in myths, but I believe in this. Days Like Elephants Some days are just new moon feeling. There's less light, less texture somehow armored in stealth fighter skin that moves beneath the radar. Single frames caught one by one, slow rise from sleep. Peel back the covers, uncurl my dullest self, first sitting on the edge of bed, then pushing up and into thicker air. I know that I will lumber. Struggle for a handhold up this sheer face of morning. I've left nuance somewhere else and nuance is the only grip I've got to make it over. I've stumbled upon this day, pulled toward what I already know I won't be ready for. I'll bump each action, leave a smudge too blurred to indicate that I was even in it. All that I'll be working toward is falling once again into the new moon black this sack of sleep releases. RPM Must be some trick the way this year raced past, like an express that blew through all stops. The older I get the less it seems I ride so much as watch the faces. I've stepped outside observances, dared the line to blur and what I hear is a long held hum. Just that. Just one. I think this may be close to the sound the stars make, what God hears when he isn't rolling thunder, or what I hear when what's under me is silence so complete the most disturbance is the pulsing of my pupils as they look and look. I Am The Way And The Truth Just turned the corner of fifty about to lose eight teeth, I hear the phrase 'toothless old crone'- I groan and think that's me- that shape that's down the road. To gum and spit in spite when spite's the only thing left once teeth are gone. No nuts to chew, who dares the birds come perch in my hair- farts in church- (which hardly sees the hem of my skirt these days)- but you know, the old, they really climb up God's ass right there at the end... Switchback In One Breath Hate can so satisfy deep in the soul but like acid it eats its way through and that merely allows the leakage of tears when hate becomes anger then loss to failure in laddered declension till wrung out and limp I want nothing so much as a lot of sleep, so the baby that I have become can rub blanket binding to dampened cheek- wait for the sweet duck blind of privacy, forcing me desperately, deeply, with sexual-almost abandon to comfort-seek, sucking my thumb. Belief There are bends of light where you can see all that is possible- feel the hand of someone stroking the hair of the child that was and is, and will be forever floating in vastness of billion year old space a cock crows- and this time there is no denying it. Hotflash It's not that I mind the occasional blast of oven air in my face- a nice, hot baked potato feel, a radient kiss of death to hormonal dewiness, it's that 've always hated to sweat, to glisten --listen, this midlife nonsense has an upside down feel to it, that's all. I guess I should count my blessings- at least I've been spared a mustache as of yet, and oh god- goiter. On To Page 18 .............. Return To Contents This site sponsered by 
|