Even in the dark

My eyes open slowly,
as the first ripples of life
in a fresh-cut tulip,
sucking up water like
it's been starved for days.
The world's been changed,
heaven brought to bear
upon those who never
knew better, those who
only trusted their instincts
and felt the heat of the Devil
waning in the throes of love.

The trenches are dug,
made dangerous at last
and spiked to spite some
caterwauling temptress,
so criminally beautiful,
alive on the open ocean.
She has called out to me
more than once, loud cries
I've instinctively filed away,
preserved in ancient amber
as fuel for a former romantic
when all other lights go out.

My new home is kept
in the highest greenery
of the old mountainside.
Perhaps here the savages
will be too tired to climb,
too downcast, commanded
by the nature of the new world
to stay hidden at twilight,
lest they fall victim to the
many new hungry impulses
of whatever happens to be
more desperate than they are.
_________________________________________________

Playing on my iTunes at this very moment:
The Staves, Winter Trees (simply gorgeous)

Different

See how she knows her own words?
They mean something to her. They mean
that when these gates close in her face
and the people who gave her life
cast her bags out beside her, cheap with dust,
that she will not be alone; not really.
She'll have the others, the ones who
know better than to be afraid of the way
someone else is made. And when the
undecided reach out with, "To each
their own," her words will mean more
than theirs. She knows she isn't better
than them, and she knows that acceptance
is a hard thing to come by, and she's
seen the true depth of human hatred.
And yet, she loves. As hard as she can.
_________________________________________________

Playing on my iTunes at this very moment:
The Tallest Man On Earth, The Dreamer

Time to be alive

photo by Kevin Lindridge

We'll group together in the darkness and then send out a flare:
          Sound the alarm! it cries, tears and spit cast
          like fire to a casket -

          before the apocalypse, that is - and to the tune of the three
          greatest symphonies every written, left in
          stone on the steps of

          someone wise enough to copy them down and keep them.
          Until our teflon-coated wings unstick from
          the pavement, consider

          our home a prison. The joyful noises you hear from the
          basement sound out in protest, stand-up guys
          who only mean to send

          a message, not to burn the whole place down at the drop
          of a lighter emblazoned with silver expletives
          stolen from a harder age.
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Playing on my iTunes at this very moment:
Neutral Milk Hotel, Two-Headed Boy

One day, you'll all be gone

drawing by Brooks Shane Salzwedel

A wiry breeze sews through my ear,
calls me to savor the taste of my time
and to lower my eyes to see beneath me.
Stand with me, grasp at dancing straws,

watch how our forebears stand so tiny
beside our potential, greasing the wheels
and bathing in the warm current of the past
until they shrink to historical invisibility.
_________________________________________________

Playing on my iTunes at this very moment:
Neko Case, Ghost Wiring

Do or do not

Look at these marks.
Each one is a story
and each story
is a self-inflicted wound
borne on the sharp side
of whatever instrument
was handy.

But wounds soon heal
and stories grow to be
outplayed even sooner,
fibrous tendrils of language
we'd rather see buried,
languishing forever
in the far, green deep.

Together we've made silence
out of imaginative calamity,
a dark feat that shines
as a new pearl,
trapped in the world's gaping maw
until it is held, at long last,
on the steps of a lifetime.
_________________________________________________

Playing on my iTunes at this very moment:
Menomena, The Pelican