Rip exultation from
its spreading point
under your skin,
sprouting upward from the heart.
Nurture this, DO.
This is a day.
This is Death, Birth
and Eternity
in one exalted moment.
Feed from this, batten on it,
hold hard
without crushing
long piano fingers
touching sparks
touching life
You are more than flesh.
And you, And you.
There is a thought
below the surface
hovering
underneath my tongue.
Darting forward, it retreats
hummingbird speed.
It shouts across this landscape
of my dreams,
this pendulum
strung between envy and relief.
Smoke fingers across
the far scape of the mind
find it hard to grasp the referents;
hard to grasp the rents that make a psyche,
hard to sleep, but hard to wake.
Harder still to see time as linear.
that one and one
is often
more than two.
As most easily evidenced
by a baby,
but also
ideas turned plan turned
action
turned item; in tumblling waterfalls
of multiplication.
A want is not always a need
nor a need a want.
Hummingbird hovers
somewhere between the two.
We are voices in the wilderness
privy to a different song.
We sing rondelet,
duet,
a mighty chorus
of small voices,
linked to odd perceptions.
Often, I am a mouse
sometimes a wolf,
but I’m never what people see,
still; I’m only me.
It’s enough, I say,
more would be too much.
I like small things,
most bugs, snakes even.
Tie my mood swings to the moon,
predictable, tidal,
but wildly divergent, even so.
The temptation towards self destruction
ebbs, and flows.
I wish I were more poetic about this,
but grief has stolen in, unbalanced me,
my feet ache from walking,
my ears, tinnitus.
My center of gravity seems gone
and thunder rumbles loud, then soft
before crashing right above my head
with a sound like a bomb.
He is certain I have a death wish.
“Look,” he almost shouts
“Do you know how close that knife
came to landing in your foot?”
You couldn’t pound the dull thing
in with a hammer-blow after blow-
even so, the foot bones at risk
twinge slightly at the idea of the knife.
I wish the storm would break.
The pressure kills the ears,
the head pounds behind crossed eyes.
Exhaustion set in Thursday, last
time it was a simple promise
that neither of us thought would crumble
or explode in hot sunshine and yet, Yet
it all makes twisted sense.