memoir for a revenant star

pockets filled with dust - crushed
petals and low glowing solar
detritus.
moored beside a dozen other
souls in the crown of a very
tall tree. for different reasons,
each of us immune to
the earth's pull.

a spiral staircase around the trunk;
I descend, alone and slowly.
a relief to reach solid ground but
in some way I may never
be able to put to words
even for myself,
there is a thick disappointment.

it is as if,
when my feet touched firmly,
I lost something
very dear.

i have been,
ever since,
interpreted by the wind as
something fallen -
something ever
half way
between.

saddled to
a slipping space -

perhaps most of us are stars
knocked off a loosening sky,
wounded by
the freefall -
amnesiac revenants
forgetting and forgotten.

if i reach deep enough
there's an anguish for which
i can't ascribe a source.
i can touch it,
if i grip it in fist
and rip -
if i palm the lofted bereft,
then punch through,
to shed the name and attachment,
and be left with

with what?

something beyond, something NOT,
not,
systemic recognizable repeat-ables
networked on a desert floor

crosshatched edgy fissured lines
fanning from an intuited
SOURCE

shadows slipping from frost;
arguments for the stillborn beauty
in geometric rhythms humming
intimately and deep into sight.

not this, but

a road cut through it all unbound
by end goal - simply for movement's
sake through and then past
the system - close to the rim
of gentle rest,
a frank yearning to be lost
in a forest dark
lit only within by a memory of light.

I return to the sky
and glow.

just another phase

expansive -

a wall without a room -
a serving for thirst,
takes the shape of
a glass,
the glass itself
trickles down my arm;
silk across my skin,
then gone.
pooling and soaking in
about my feet to re-emerge
on the moon's nether side.
no longer a satellite.
a ball of stone,
it's central planet, that
gravity's pull,
long dead.
its light, replete but
its loyalty
sustained.

hope without optimism

this river, quite far from the ocean,
still flows to the ocean,
becomes the tide that will carry
your ship home -
to me.

this river water,
touching my bathing body,
collapsing my breath to pull
it away as my lungs hold beneath
its surface.
its skin, my skin.

this very water
will comprise the singular wave
that will bring the fore
of your vessel to shore.

that point where wood
and steel first touch land,
that press, a kiss -
your metal against my earth.

you will not be lost.

i dream

no compass, no guiding star, no
host, no haunt or guardian,
no father, no,
no whispered
instruction …
only my newly severed thoughts …

a guilt I can't phrase or source;
I am not a blank slate -
men have never tended towards
generating objects or patterns
of much value for my life.

dream #1

I dream an old, red velvet
theatre -
huge felines bound off the screen.
I run sickly slow -
my legs in amnesia
just shy of paralysis.

a pion (panther-lion) overtakes me - '
I fall
over and over,
landing always jaw first.
the impact,
a glass needle shower …

I cannot use my broken mouth.

I cannot ask
for help.

dream #2

a pillar, an
edifice, something very simple
with human vanity or remorse at its
underpinning - fairly well out of sight
but if you can feel, you can feel
it there with room to grow with
room to spare adjoining rooms in memory -
what trembling, toothy lock across
two places in time might be wiggled
just so, to gain access to old
dreams?

?

why do we remember
when we remember
what we remember

it's not up to us
is it -

I dream
a sparse structure
with no share of glamour for its
low buildings.

the morning I visit, its grounds
are quiet - a man in calm
work sweeping - a feckless older woman at a front desk
grudgingly tells me the price
of admittance - I don't recall
what it was, only that I feared it was not
worth it -
even as I paid.


I am the only guest.
my footsteps make no noise, though
I feel they should
and wish they did.

silence knocking against
silence

then the chatter
of 2 staff members
echo from … somewhere

and
one voice
singing ...

moving closer

I find her,
she sits in a corner with a hymnal,
ignoring me until I take out a camera
to capture the image of some object
which struck me as important,
trapped in dust just beneath
a plastic screen.

"is not allowed."

"i'm sorry?"

"you cannot snapshot. it is forbidden
what is for memory must be from
memory - no interference - the circle
does not include
you, and you cannot find your way free
from it."

she points, flaps her hand, whole and open
and erasing - fixes me with a stare.

I don't understand but of course,
understand - her tone colorless
acid, reductive - immediately changing back,
she picks up the verse left off.

sweet resumption - her disconnect is absolute from the
cramped room,
spatially unlike anything inside me.

I turn my back and
then back again to ask more from the singer,
but of course
she is gone
and so too
my camera.

lines i found in an old notebook:

a notebook that just sits there
on an old desk
- things get scrawled there
between tasks
like a net across some
far sky hung
to catch then let go
unharmed,
winged things - lovely, odd and/or
creepy:

a slow descent into trust -
more intimate, more ambiguous than
faith. it won't be put to words and
all those clashing versions
… something underneath.


your face, to hold the sun in
high planes and angles,slanting down
to blue shadow.
a sureness in its intuition
like the sureness
of the ground where twilight falls
past itself.

a heat blurred horizon -
objects go indistinct then
vanish while my vision
holds on
~ maybe I can still see
a pinpoint form -
maybe breath,
however slight,
is not fully gone.

black and slick

it is not late enough and soon
will be too early
- a black door at the end of
a corridor -
we try to leave it closed but
it is a door after all, so
it ever suggests itself.

the shadows of bees on the grass,
the roar of private sorrow
rising from every single one,
from everyone, so loud'we
cannot hear.

mobius ribbons of moving blood patterned in
a place that is described as
inside me - but it is all so committed
to so much other than "me."


grey more surely grey,
wood more surely wood,
light as light as
light can be, and
you and me
more tender, embarrassing,
fierce ... storm hailing
sorcery from the mundane,
rearing up to crush me back,
scrape me from the flat and pack me
into a box more surely box.
a push without pause,
a dense field of feeling,
ruined by interpretation -

music dies ...
the diamond forsakes
predetermined grooves and erupts
in a scratch straight line screech.


the groan of heat swollen trunks
holding high a failing afternoon
- my heart clasps itself for comfort
and squeezes.

verbal rummage sail

antiquated rhythms

~ unpublishable verse
released to an audience of back-rhythm
barking bored dogs, lawn mowers
and slamming screen doors.

once released,
there is a heart shift
to wall-less,
generous "this-ness."

gentler and thus, strong
enough to softly
interdigitate with
the sublimity of
dirt, the roots, the bees,
candle wicks, stones,
hunger and
waterlines.


YAANGST -

A bit past the half mark
of a day too long already;
light so, too brite,
old, slow, heavy.

the 12th toll still hangs
low amidst numberless beginnings
for anystory.
a tone strung signature
we assigned to tell time of its character

and what counts for a certain number
of a certain hour.



time persists beyond and without
endorsement through our incredulous
stories of credible certainty.
we tell and tell and
tell until
we then believe and
everything is seen through and
finally perceived within
the particle board frame
of complicated human
arrogance.

inhumane

current event full optimism
- historical current of errors
saturating myopic visions with
repetitious hyperventilation -
the very air we over-breathe,
fuels
exponentially
a narrative
that still cannot see
what it cannot see.

YINSIGHT -

solidarity with uncertainty,
caring to cross the ubiquitous "t"
because misunderstanding so easily
flourishes; every letter I set down hints
most towards all that's left absent
in its presence. this is why
they are important.


YINQUIRY -

my curiosity, shapeless
sanguinity, cooperative with
shadows … we exchange favors,
those shadows and I,
turn by turn, and i
ask them
questions that want
asking:

why do I feel unbelieved?

what if there are words forgotten
by me or my species,
(I very much need right now)
that might offer completion
of one open end moment.
words of value, not for what they signify,
but for their freedom from chain reaction,
for their capacity to sound

satisfying

and whole

while signifying

nothing.

(?)

I sense them
so, so close but
still inaccessible.

I feel them napping on the other side
of a curtain where they won't be woken

… not by me.

I cannot reach them.
will they wake on their own,
a bit groggy,
perhaps in favor from and for the shadows?

will they, if I relax into graced stillness,
humble and fearless?
or by dice, whim, coin toss?
by their own quiet quite deliberate choice?

will they ?

find me
between a bell's tone configured
half past the fortune telling doves
and the precious ashes that
still hold breath
enough to offer compassion for
one illstruck match.

parade

how do I grow?
how do I yield?
how do I serpentine,
unwind and reel through
the numbing ungeant urgency of
the unreal?

the gap between dim rain and sane stillness -
the gap between listening to one's body
and biased interpretation -

what do I feel and
how do I stand to watch marching bands
tissue flower coated floats
plastic smiles that gorge on mediocrity
pretty limp wrists turning in waves
of insincerity while a point in space
below and behind my rib cage
is doubled in on itself and weeping


did the rain turn the dust to mud or did the dust turn the rain
to mud

?

the shower pulled oil up from the asphalt
confetti catching in the spill,
later swept in rush clean up to
street edges and gutters
post downpour -
dyes bled out

dried there
forgotten

one girl was struck by lighetening
a witness noted her barretts started glowing moments before the hit

as if batons and crepe paper could manufacture
happiness

as if the rainstorm itself
wouldn't have been enough

simple enough

the moon's drawn closer to the earth;
her latitudinal lines fall in whimsical whorls ~

the matter of mass:
tap my heart and hear opening
solidity, scars
echoing, and not
just
sawdust compressed into walls.

interrupted narrative,
never resumed ...

love's ingenuity,
more ingenious than loved.

SOMETHING alive and old,
neither kind nor un,
existing in the contiuous webbing of
sleep's golden threads - whatever phenomenon,
physical and holy, whatever first wakes me
into dull morning's subdued flesh tones
(look close or miss them)
riding and shifting through the cold,
thinning sky.
.

across certain glass store fronts
or full length vanity,
I feel my image (not mine) pulled from
me (not me).
I have learned mirrors to be dangerous
so I let it slide off and I don't look
- something wrong there,
made acute by my instinct
to turn away, though the mirror image,
it does watch me. jealous I suspect,
and preoccupied perhaps, with raw desire to
do it better than I do -
being 3 dimensional solid -
ha - as if I were.

it watches with wet hush yearning,
sighs in search for something finer
than wit or beauty.
it just wants
to be touched.

touch mysterious,
ineffable -
silk spark contact whispered by socks
across wooden floors,
whispered under music where night still and
always resides.
skin on sheet and sheet
unwinding the dream tide.

mirrors, not dark in themselves,
illuminate something they can never be -
a margin wan and shadowed, or warm and ever near,
but never quite arrived.

my protest is muted with intricate
grief.

loss is thatched like a window - compartmentalized -
compact- 3rd -bird's eye view of a lifeless live stream.

I am onlooking on and looking out, on and on,
I am rapt and riveted by the scenery
brought to me - the audience, once seated, ushered in and
orderly, becomes the show.

and me again, utterly speechless

and wondering, amidst humanity's applause for its SELF,
how being well adjusted in a sick and dying world, signifies
success or mental health.

I postpone sleep, and then too,
waking - the pier-less space between planes,
the too plain too brite day,
overt and accusing with curtained
shadows, waving thin and roomy and ever at vigil
-nocturn devotion even through noon.
their mood loiters, nervously slowed to deliberate
distortion; scavenged shimmers of the riptide
currents filled with work weak busysounds
and its caved in undertow …

they don't know
I am here.

Sometimes I feel this way:

moments elongate ~ bone in skin compresses to a pinpoint beneath
touch ~ a fingertip barely brushes surface yet
embraces
everything.

ink runs low and begins skipping through my words fading
in out ~ I am nowhere near done patiently attending to broken
thoughts strewn together too quick but not fast enough.

Grasping slows to careful, brave and different
attention ~ sensation without narration nourishes an at-oned
agile mind, outmaneuvers paradigm one elongated word at a
time ~some times I feel this way:

spirit perplexed by specificity, my soul without gender or boundary,
pivots in anonymous
air ~ heart-steeled and wildly gentle
~ armed with a fistful of tender, nestled in a deep need
to offer.