And I closed the window to preserve the distance. And I ran my finger across the chainlink lock. And I shuttered the peephole so that the only sound heard was metal against metal and the absence of breathing.
And I looked at you through the thickness of the wood. And ran your image in my mind, imprinting it like a stereotype. And I drew my conclusion in the hastiness of prejudice so that the only beating I heard was bone against bone and the absence of a pulse.
And I felt your stare returned, And ran my hand across my face, touching it in a Greeklike blindness And I closed my eyes tight to free myself from the judgement of your eyes so the only darkness creeping forth was my own within and in owning it, it owned me.
and so, I preserved the distance and felt your patient stare.
BarSpace
I thought I might reinvent myself, with a decor reminiscent of exotic meeting spaces far off...far far off...beyond the realm of possibility, where the shell of the cold artic blasts whitens out the darkness of emptiness, and where the heat of discussion simmers forth on the prong of a three legged stool, supporting with precarious precision the weight of the silent gruff stoicism of a glazed over shadowy figure, who grunts out a smile, a greeting of sorts, a warning of sorts, a shared communal bonding of sorts to those who are out of sorts over a barspace adorning my distanced imagination.
Bar Space
Bar space. Bar void. Bar empty. Bar vacuum. Bar distance. Bar none. You are the one.
Bars' pace
how fast is a jailcell. bar after bar like milemarkers, in the dizziness of the swoon of intoxication.
how slow is the moonlight casting long shadows beam after beam breaking the unity of lunity and in the dizziness of the swoon I am trapped between the pacing...
space bar
space bar. the longest key. not the dot of the period. not the comma's sloping slide - an inkstained comet on a ride. not a letter, not worse, not better, than so many sonorous keys not a number, that counts out sheep for slumber, not a function, not a creator, but the longest key for.... nothing.... for nothing at all...
twice opened
You guard it like the once opened Pandora’s box
with the allure of its gilded edges
Your eyes betray you though as your lips do that press together the way a child attempts to be brave
For a moment they think you are smiling, but then they see the moisture on your lips trickling down from those glossed over eyes.
You cradle it like the twice opened Pandora’s box
and create a space round the emptiness inside
Although I know not its content, I do know where your secret lies.
It lives round your fetal-ed shape and the indent on the bedsheets that remain whereas that which left it is now gone
It lives behind your closed and moistened lids that scan back and forth in an REM frenzy but only see darkness
It lives in your inhaling because this same air, these atoms and molecules were once inside him, were once a part that oxygenated his blood, that expanded his lungs
But this secret dies slowly when you exhale… so you refuse to do so…
Instead you close your box and lock it in your firm, delicate, interlaced fingertips.
First Days of Summer, 2012
June 10, 2012 Summer, by its own admittance, is a nostogia upon itself. How long have we longed for the longest day, only to have it slowly dying upon its arrival, and twighlight creeps upon its edges like a cancer and that blackness is more pronounced as the summer stretches on, whilst we basque in its already disappearing memory.
Our love letters to life are scented in pomegranate, And the envelope of truth remains unopened.
We live, we love, we lose all by the expectations set forth in a past deed.
June 11, 2012 It was the ashen snow from the chimneys that made me think of you. A white and black photo reminder of spirits and ghosts, of ascensions to heaven, of dismal judgments that counts Dante's circles as measurements against those who threw themselves against the fence, who lost the echo of their whistles somewhere beyond the guardtower and traintracks of cold and rusted iron where the poppies, despite the stench, undisputably grow.
June 12, 2012 Let me be the one to tell you Life is fair.
The feeble perish The resourced blossum The angered retaliate The loved comfort The disenfranchised get tired The dominant get empowered The mistrusted mistrust The trusted believe
and the day is as long or as short as the firmaments allow.
This is life. And life is fair in its equal inopportunity equal injustice equal bias for all
We salute the brainchilds of fairness and justice and feel the impact of their harsh and heavy hands, stained in nondiscrimnatory ink and sweat that follow the ribbons of veins that circulate round an imperfect body, while the teacher, stiffling a yawn as the dreaded darkness comes, moves aside his books of Gandhi and King and Carson's Silent Spring To nail to the wall the prim and proper gaze of Robespierre, lips curled slightly like Mona Lisa's, eyes as gentle as the torrential rain.
June 13, 2012 (written 2000, reworked 2012)
I read tea leaves and you read palms, but you drink coffee and I wear gloves, and our eyes never meet when we talk.
June 14, 2012 the feather flies straight the arrow that shoots the fowl that supplies the feather.
and so, feathers beget feathers, and yet, we believe we can discriminate between power and pity.
In the kamikazi dogfight of the heavens, only the dodo survives . . .
June 15, 2012
you can not love ha lf a person
you can not take the muscle s and for get the bon es t il the hyenas come and fir eants overtake the chasm
you can not accept the h and but not the fo ot the live r but not m eaty he art the ha lf a person that you enjoy to dis regard t he r e s t. If a pers o n i s a person.
you can not sel ect from the men u so that the ch ef must cu sto m ize the or de r m ake an e w the di sh
you can not love ha lf a person If a person is a person.
Else we a re but frag ments of sen ten ces sans me a ning s con junctions wi out anyth ing to link the h andbutnot the fo ot and the dea th wi th out the life. like a candle blown out by the emphatic reading of poetry, where we think we understand the edges, and feel the inner meaning, where letters combined, though misspelled, take on whole new realities, and judgment is as consensed as an artist's dream.
June 16, 2012 Socrates was right, His lips now glossed over in hemlocked marble, so I will again become illiterate so that I might read the world.
June 17, 2012 It is as if there were only air and dreams, and then you came to be. As if there was a conversation during a forest walk, with adolescent music filling our walkmans, and ostensibly deep questions on values, and dreams, and judgments and then, with a passion and a pressing close, you came to be. the idea swam into existence and planted itself into the wonder that is you. but how you outgrew the idea so quickly is a wonder in itself. how my brain had no way of envisioning you is the miracle of your majestic and inconceivable birth.
You are beyond all our walks beyond all our values beyond all our dreams beyond all of judgments, a wonderment in yourself.
June 18, 2012 (Written 2003, revised 2012)
Walk past the killing fields, the oil spills, the famished, the residents of the streets, the unemployed, the smallpox patients, the corporate scandals, the greed, the human rights violations, the court battles, the domestic abuse, the racial inequality, the prejudice and bias, the nuclear weapons buildups, the arsons and rapes and abductions and media blitzes, the jihads and crusades, the cold war, and the hot war, and the war without words that sucks the soul out of the living...
Walk past it all, and you have a beautiful world.
June 19, 2012 It is not as if I do not know where my memories are kept, somewhere above, in a cobwebbed attic bed, between the hot boiler and the cool air condenser, amidst the pipes and the squeeks, not far from where the morning dove roosts atop a cracked shingle.
They are kept atop a shelf of my own making, with the remaining planks of warped wood, salvaged from the rain, and the rusted nails I picked up from the carnival that left town in a rush
They are in a dark and musty place where eyes sit between arhaic legs that scurry deeper into the dark shadows where no light, no heavenly beams, no celestrial shades have time enough to penetrate.
That is where my memories live and hopefully die, in the duct-taped box, with a faded lable and a layer of dust that suggest that the box itself had been forgotten amidst the steam and frost in the foreground.
June 20, 2012 (revised August 27) e E e x x x X x x x I i I S S T . . - . . - . . .
June 27, 2012 And so it begins with not a word, but an utterance a sound connected in dipthong to produce a meaning coloured in intonation and indulation. It is the variety that makes meaning, the up or the down, the discrimination between left or right, the dichotomy that says this is this and that is that... or more specifically, this is this and this other thing is not this. This is our safety, that which separates us from pure biological instinct, it is the ability to define ourselves by what we are not.
So, Silent Ones, utter something, or live and die in the vague misnomers of others.June 28, 2012Adam's first job was already the precursor of our doom. He categorized like a great library of the mind those with fur or wings or hoofs, segregating so that he might distinguish, stereotype, assume.... protect himself through knowledge.
And that knowledge took the shape of an apple, and it dripped a juice that made its way down the crevices of his face, following his muscles in his neck down to the wound where the rib once was, and yet, it tasted good and it satisfied a hunger, even for a small while...
but that hunger would return periodically and with it the dissatisfaction of the ages, the ability to want something that is beyond the reach of a simple stretch of the hand...
that knowledge is the ultimate of discomfort, because it is at once satisfying and wanton, fulfilling and emptying, and perennial like the rains that create and destroy.
July 1 Woke up in the evening With the pound in my head Trying to recall When I crawled into bed.
But the stop watch stopped Froze all time And my dreams and reality Were in perfect rhyme.
until my thoughts drifted back to that thing that got me into the sleep and out of the ring.
narcoleptic escapes just postpone the inevitable and problems without solutions just make things fall apart.
If I could only live in the hypothetical have solutions without problems and things would come together.
But dreams without reality and reality without dreams are biased and hurtful, are never what they seem.
So help me escape from my escaping.
Because narcoleptic escapes just postpone the inevitable and I don't want to just live in the hypothetical.
The Grammar of Anniversaries
December 15, 2014 There I Am
there i am with my hat, with my gloves, with my fur-lined boots... wrapped in the designered superficiality of the world,
readied for the crunch of winter's icy-boned chill.
and yet, your glance, the miniscule way the pupils draw back, the ever-so-slight way the fleshy underlid lifts, the infinitesimal way the corners of your lips dimple inward, the molecular way invisible breath dances seductively out of your moist lips, alters your visage, so that I am now looking at the soft intensity of a Monet painting, animated with your every movement... the very definition of art in life standing there in this warmed up cold.
I see myself there. Indeed, there I am, alive when you are present, because you have a way, so miniscule, so ever-so-slight, so infinitesimal, so very molecular, that makes me forgo the looming winter and strips my soul of all its undue wrappings, and releases me freely into the heights of the warm air rising up and up and up and eternally up.
November 28 My Love! You are my comma, my dot ... dot ... dot ... "my open quote that lingers my dash - and my underline and i can but turn the page in fear and trepidation to read the wisdom you write that will interupt all my punctuation until then - as I await ... "I am stuck in that pause that is dramatically you
and before my hand turns the leaf, I already know that the desire that is born from you is satiation enough to ignore the rules of full stops and parenthesis
December 7th Grammar Tenses
What is the past tense of dreams? with you it is memories
What is the present tense of Commitment? with you it is i do, i do, i do....
And what are the future tense of us? their names have been writ on birth certificates, and first birthday cakes, and lunch boxes, and soccer balls, and driver licences, and acceptance letters, and mailboxes they build with their own hands, and paint with colours of their own choosing, and the scribbled signatures on their own hopefilled ultrasounds, and birth certifications, and so on and so on...
And when i think of the flexes and fluxes of time and space, i think of all these things. the us the dreams the commitment the memories and the daily i do i do i do
Ode to J At first, my tongue tripped over your foreign name... it is odd to think how quick it now comes, like a breath, how it comes out of me from the deep without me needing a thought... making you my instinct.
it is odd to think how quick it now comes, evertime I see a sunset, a snowcap mountain, a firmament black and starry
it is odd to think how, when i see life and lovely, it your name that i breath out.... and you define all that surrounds me ... and you define all that I have become.
Extended Metaphor Like the silken taste of chocolate melting becoming one as it glides down - Like the gentle caress of a summer wind, warm, refreshing, calm and vibrant - Like the scent of lilacs wafting down the alleyway, decorating the cobblestone with its ambiance - Like the glow of fireworks, echoing on the faces of the children whose necks crank upward to the heavens - Like the sound of the sleeping, resonating from the chests of the tired, that proves that life and love have another chance -
These feelings are my metaphor, extended by reality, blessed by dreams and tender touch, and realized in the five senses that are you.
Literacy you taught me, who had chubby kindergarten hands, and worries about crossing the street within the lines, and happiness that was contagious, and my colors that fit into a rainbow, and a zipper that refused to up, the concept of word.... and it lived in the womb, warm with the liquids of life, and umbilical cord reality - which is safe and innocent, and naive enough not to know that "word" can be broken down into letters and sounds, and when it is not whole, the bursting of life bustles forth and interupts the secure and loyal feelings that dwell in your body's embrace.
Prison Imprints
August 27, 2012 back from alaska after a long graveled ribbon of road led me home,
and already i miss the need to cover my head from the midnight sun the frosted rains edging away at the glaciers that in its icy blue obstinance and that peculiar rebellion of geological time beat me in a staring contest.
back from the mapled nation of unforseen beauty and wonderment - where i did not have the imagination to know the world that i was missing, the foam of whitehorse swirling in the summer chill.
back from the artic after the mud of tundraed barrenness remains in the treads of my tires and now leaves a trail in my driveway every time i pull up from my daily chores, perhaps just to remind me where i am not.
yesterday we climbed in silence teetering on the edge of the alpine trail calves of our legs dusted over, our stomaches anticipating the summit chalet where we could open our packs and nibble in a welcomed exhaustion that says we made it we survived
and despite the fact that the descent is approaching we are comforted in the knowlege that the days are twenty plus hours still- not admitting that this pleasure would not, cannot, perhaps even, should not, last beyond the fleeting of our cold and rainy summer.
August 28, 2012 She hides behind the podium;
just as the wordsmith hides behind meaningless semantics;
just as the actors hides behind the pompous strut upon the stage to end only in second childishness and that other mere mentioned thing that must not be mentioned to those who wish to ignore the seven Shakespearean stages;
just as the principals hide behind their prescribed lines, dictated motives and motions to live only within the brackets of italicized words;
just as the understudies hide behind the hope of sweating under the spotlights;
just as the audience hides in the lives of the characters, chastisizing their children to the existence of a shush and a mindful slap, so that they will not disturb the suspension of disbelief, or worst yet, interupt that all anticipated cathartic moment when the music builds and the opera soars to new heights...
that is her.
the forever carpenter reminiscing over a floor full of shavings, where the podium once towered over the crowd, hiding her liver, her intestinal tubes, her kidneys, and her spleen - all damaged in over exposure to a love that has proven itself true in its hurtful and destructive path.
that is her.
and her promise to her walled off world is to love... love... love...
just as she had been loved.
August 29, 2012 (written 2008, revised 2012) Here is my shopping list crumpled in the corner of my mind.
Your smile. Your caress of your thumb on mine when we walk The fall of your hair as the sunlight dances on our windowsill Your laugh bubbling forth. Your gait which has a spring inside. The way you pause at the warm wind in your face. The tilt of your head as you rest it on your palm.
Your glazed over look when you are tired, the way you reach for me in the bed when thunder strikes. And how you let me love you.
These are little things, grown big with remembrance, grown fatigued with absence, as I attempt and attempt and attempt with worn out palms to smooth out the crumbled list in the corner of my mind.
August 30, 2012 At Oswiecim, with the rows of black and white photos glaring back at me, behind the double gate of Arbeit Macht Frei, I stood and thought of the ghosts that were captured in life, understanding at once in a thought so remote that it almost disappeared upon existence, that the pinstripes themselves were a reminder of how we wear our prisons for the world to see.
August 31 Last days make us remember the first, make us contemplate the middle, and make us regret the folly of too much time.
Laughed December 2012 And we laughed at the noose as it intertwined with the Spanish moss, and the guillitine as it gleamed silver in the sun, and the scaffolding as it creaked in new, untrodden plank, and the irony of the wind that seemingly cleansed all blood and guilt and shame...
and they laughed at the risk the heroes took and the arrow that was shot to mark the gravesite and the monuments that were built to remember the dead and the ocean that lapped against once bloodied shores that seemingly cleansed all memory of grey overcast and stained seashell
and he laughed at the silence and the irony of loneliness and he crawl into his cave so that he could be neighborly with his own echo
Haiku: On rock Formations
Rocks, Unbalanced, Stand.
Rocks, unbalanced, stand. Leaves in icy whips of wind Foreshadow the fall.
Chipped Shale Skeletons
Chipped shale skeletons- Obstructions to the moonglow- Sunbathe in gold light.
In Rocky Window
In rocky Window, Clouded azure's gentle lift Prompts introspection
Insignificant
Insiginicant, Unnamed painted signatures In permanance stay.
GALA 2015 darkened stage no spotlights now audience members untying ties unhooking pearls reliving the highlights as they drift away...
but i am here still here on this stage recounting my footwork imagining the lifts perfecting my lines executing the dreamlike movements you have spent your life teaching me....
you too have left left for another place a place above the stagelights a place beyond the confines of the arthouse a place i can only imagine now
and i am here now, on this darkened stage, without the glory of the lights unwilling to unlace my ballet shoes wanting only one more dance before you drift away....
before you drift away....
Walk You say You want to walk the pilgrim's paths Travel afoot over cobblestones It's in your bones, in your bones You say you can't take me with you With you to the place of your dreams But I know we do not need to travel far To make it to the rooftops of China Cause that's closer than your heart is now... I have to believe, you and I, we'll make it somehow.
You say You want to walk unabashedly Through the wind, through the fog It's for your blog, for your blog You say you can't take me with you With you to the place of your dreams But I know we do not need to travel far To make it to the valleys of Tierra del Fuego Cause that's closer than your heart is now... I have to believe, you and I, we'll make it somehow.
You say You want to walk in solemnity without me To gaze upon the White Cliffs of Dover You say, " I love you, but baby, it's over" I've spent my life searching the four leaf clover, So you say, you say, you say and I say, I say, I say, "what does it matter anyway?"
You want to walk away, But my soft kisses keep you here, You want to run away, You're shaking in fear And I know we'll have to travel far to be shaded in Kilimanjaro's shadow But that's closer than your heart is now... You'll have to believe, you and I, we'll make it somehow.
I say, we need to talk, Your eyes, they are muted You say you want to walk I have been refuted.
You want to walk To a place that's farther than us. I say, I say, I say, Let's catch a bus. For the road less traveled is a road unsigned Through the wind, through the fog of each path's wind Means I don't know what is after that turn, My aching heart burns But I know that we won't know together. I'm holding your hand in the fields of soft heather, You say you want to walk away, So we'll walk away together You say you want to run away So we'll run through the heather You say you want to fade away So we'll fade to forever
Chasm
Guillotines gnaw their teeth on the necks of depravity, Gallows grow like gardens to the heavens, Blindfolds practice their darkening savagery, And billfolds empty and fill, empty and fill, empty and fill in a sick lottery between the masses and the amassed.
People gather like silhouettes in the shadows; they whisper their unadjudicated verdicts amidst their mis-tempered mumblings.
They loosen their ties, Roll up their sleeves, Unbuckle their whip like belts. They get to work, Rummage for lumber that would survive the winds, Pick like ripened fruit the pillar, the cross-board, the binding rope, and Christen the wood with piercing nails, sharper than sermons, sharper than sermons.
One of them, the old maid, perhaps, laments that poetry belongs to the poor, that it is the nourishment for the soul. The others, though, scorn, replacing the crusted beeswax in their ears with a fresh coat. "The dead need no nourishment" The soulless need no solace, The disheartened need no heart" They laugh under a heavy breath And thus, the great chasm of life and death Widens in a swoosh of the dangling blade.
GG2 GALA 2015 darkened stage no spotlights now audience members untying ties unhooking pearls reliving the highlights as they drift away...
but i am here still here on this stage recounting my footwork imagining the lifts perfecting my lines executing the dreamlike movements you have spent your life teaching me....
you too have left left for another place a place above the stagelights a place beyond the confines of the arthouse a place i can only imagine now
and i am here now, on this darkened stage, without the glory of the lights unwilling to unlace my ballet shoes wanting only one more dance before you drift away....
before you drift away.... -EDM
GG5
Charlottesville, August 2017 (In Memory of Heather D. Heyer)
Heather was walking Walking down the C’ville Street Street where the pavement mixed with bone Bone that took a lifetime to grow Heather was talking Talking with a loud voice Voice overpowered by the rev of an engine An engine that took a lifetime to grow Heather cannot lift her head Headlights glaring. Heather cannot raise her flag. Flagrant violations. Heather cannot tuck her child. Childhood stolen. Heather cannot softly whisper. Whispers of a Revolution. Heather cannot eat, or drink, or breath a new dawning Heather cannot smile, or frown, or laugh, or cry a new prayer. Heather cannot scoff, or cajole, or bore, or stare into the emptiness. The emptiness that is somehow filled with my sadness. The emptiness that is screaming out my unjust silences. The emptiness that is emblazoned with the memory of Heather walking With the memory of Heather talking. With the memory of memories not yet gone by.
-EDM, 2018
Your Cannon Truth Your cannon Truth Singularly Targets Us Velocity’s spin spinning my head into a frenzy. I’m wondering which way is up. Which way is down. Which way is left. Which way is right. Just seeing your cannon truth throw spitfire at us, Just watching your ostensibly logical bullets bore deep inside, Just hearing you rifle off your “facts and figures” Makes me wonder which way is down. Which way is left. Which way is right. Your cannon Truth, With its preemptive strike Triggers my misunderstanding of this world. And I’m left Wondering which way is left. Which way is right. Just seeing your cannon truth fire up the crowd, Just watching you take aim at the “enemy”, Just hearing your arsenal of arguments Makes me wonder which way is right.