TALES FROM EARTH

BEFORE

   Before, when joy was scarce and labor ran high; I was as curious as a bit of loose change and the bluish grey lint ball at the bottom of a forgotten pants  pocket. Curious as a hatter gone mad and a smile with a disappearing cat. Even as curious as that, I could not fashion the world to give me my chance.

   (Note: It never gives anyone a chance, the bright ones just take it. They just believe. They run, jump and fly; effortlessly and golden-winged and should they ever start the tumble to Earth; without needing as much as a second-glance the net always appears.)

   Peter Pan’s Shadow once came loose you know, and before; I too had fallen under the illusion of the separate shadow piece of me and fell asleep, dreaming the dreams of a person I would have liked to be upon waking.

See, I was born wanting to see things from atop the world. So my privilege and one-of-a-kind-ness both came naturally and upset the pH balance of me. In order to fly that high, everyone knows, you have to agree that you and the vault filled to aching with crisp $10,000.00 bills, the lover of your dreams, effortless New York Times Bestsellers, black Lamborghinis and summers in Monaco are you; one and the same; that the … space fabric which bore you both still beats, still runs through and will bring you back together if you remember such things in a Certain Way.

I did.

I could.

I think.

At least up to the time of the first stumble. Then it became clear. Not until after I’ve given the very flesh off my bones, until the whole lot is left gnawing on the gristle bits left behind after breaking this tinted meat of mine; then will I have the rest. Until my dry, desert-cracked aching feet have dragged their last step, then will I have my rest. Until the wilderness has given me its best. Then. Until they have all had their fill of me, siphoning and re-branding me to suit their ethical pangs, then.

Maybe now then.

This time the flesh of my bones held the ideas of my ‘self’ and this temporary robe of skin-clothes. Between the breaking dust of earth, tread old, undeserving, crooked framed tiny ideas of “I” and “mine” and “you” and “here” and “there”. The wilderness of time was waking me up to find myself in a land where mud walks on two legs and speaks in cuneiform code; eats fruit from trees and calls her Sophia.

Before, I thought my name was “Meek”. I stood in line to inherit the earth and no one came to give it to me.

I cried my eyes not knowing if anything I said for the last 280,512 hours had made sense to anyone outside the boardroom in my head. “You are always playing the martyr”, she said. The martyr is misunderstood by Mary, who is far to noble and known to muddy her hands with dirty things which need peeling to be properly understood. Or maybe I was as depressed as slaves were psychotic; with bouts of delusion causing  their persistent desire to escape plantations.

I enjoyed enrobing myself in the martyr archetype as much as tigers enjoyed eating store-brand ground beef by the kilo in place of the sweaty gore of a live bloody kill. Paint these characterizations from a distance. Toy with diagnoses as a cat with yarn, as white mice that sponsor human experimental programs; and white bunnies down hare holes.

The trouble with being born ahead of your time is that you wake up out of place, and 10,000 years before your language has been accepted or understood; you spend the meanwhile wading through mechanistic classicism and pregnant women who smoke Marlboro lights while chatting over bridge. You watch children starve and 600-lb people present reality shows, and yes if you were wondering they eventually find the inner strength to eat only just one chip.

Expressionists are manic, exceptional children; strange literature is read and not felt – it’s all a factory floor of clockwork tidbits, cogs, wheels, hourglasses and keys. Look there how time is flying, hang on. Here it comes then.

There’s a Universe contained within my brain. The eye through a picture puzzle patterned door. But, sadly any consciousness within this society that is not related to the production or consumption of material goods is stigmatized. And it takes time to throw off these anchors of impossible. I just remembered. I am a fractal.

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“All courses of action are risky, so prudence is not in avoiding danger, but calculating risk and acting decisively. Make mistakes of ambition and not mistakes of sloth. Develop the strength to do bold things, not the strength to suffer.” Niccolo Machiavelli

four am boy & girl phone calls

i’m sixteen years old today, again and 60 ft tall

he stirs something

moves me

a black cauldron bubbly pot

white magic bitches brew

pauses between stirs to say things like

“jump in the teleporter and bring yourself to me”

some things though

we leave unsaid

those things to hang light overhead

crawl above us across ceiling tops

as we craftily weave silken spoken word thread webs across time zones

exchange memory stones we’ve collected

this for that remembrance

a hand, a mouth, a kiss, the bat 

of an eyelash

the birth of Venus trap

a rainy, misty fog rolled in and watched him fold up all the pieces perfectly

a watercolor world in front of me

hold on

hold me

carry me out under a bold, yellow moon, take your time but lay me down soon

drive away the monsters under my bed

recount Shakespearean couplets to the ghosts in my head

be what you have to 

stand, leave or do what you may

i will count gladly, whatever marks remain on this garden’s high green walls

the lines that mark the days of the invention we made to keep out the cold

the days you stayed, 

the days you kept my heart from growing old

May I steal a second of time
A fragile, fleeting kiss
Smile
A tender touch, intensity’s tempered skin sin
The portion of myself that I’ve now given away
I need that back, at least
How safely he stayed, hidden there and away
Days turn their back on stakes that high

Moebius strip pole climbs
Hands reaching out from behind smoke and curtains, carnal carnival show
Throw me shards of smashed longing, I have them reassembled, and they still refuse to look the same
Come out, come out what hides in there
Should be that much disclosed, it’s only fair
Watch me resist, like this
Come through, closer reaching
Stay back, unsure
Puzzled and too much to consider
Pray twice for decisions, then treat me like the stranger that I am
It’s
Mercy for me
For myself, for others
Little girls have much to learn of the world
And how she spins round
Slows photographs, keeps tabs
And leaves us holding what remains of breathlessness in the palms of tiny, waiting, nervous hands
Grasping at clever things to say
of life exploding on canvases of small envelopes and postage stamps marked for electronic delivery mind methods same
Chemical markers and pheromonal   signature blocks
Let me learn these lessons quickly, pack them tight and move along fractal potions in purposed perpetual motion
12 across, 7 letters; the treasure of ambiguity, novelty dissipated under the weight of heavier things

Feed me your fruit,

Tempt me away

Ride the wings of butterflies

Ride the butterflies inside me

Only sense kept me from running

To - away from you

With equal unfettered measure

What have you done with me?

Is each sweet treat a pomegranate seed?

planted and seeded to keep me prized for your hand

reach out and paint me well, then

release me from the world of your imagination

create me a living, breathing portrait of all

love’s delirium candycake wishes

if this is your canvas, and I your eager projection

a player,

a vagabond,

a poet’s fellow,

my name remains formless, a silent scream

a bleeding whisper

cloaked in compilations of previously lost loves

and mated spirits that only pass for ships cargo in the night

life leaks onto the page, scrambled phrases and fractured pigments

I have a secret too beautiful to tell, a cipher too spun

won’t break

a tempest to quell

a raindrop, a cloud form

I called you 7 as i slept, waiting in the brush and the ink

you came to me and called me sacred seed

fed me, let me live with you; crushed my skin and made me juice

on the altar of what you seemed