We too pass in shadows;
on walls --
headlights stringing patterns
perpendicular from the street
pulling us forward
as we shift back
to our rightful shapes
to be averted again.
We are neighbors going in and out of each other
behind blinds
like the shallow end of a home
to those who come to the foot of it
as bits of light lap up the pools
of shapes in concrete
breaking from their black
just light enough to receive
the steps of an early arrival.
In the day we are never
as receptive to vases or glass bowls;
the softness of us hardening
to paperweights
fallen upon the world.
But you,
there is still a bit of home in you,
scattered in it co
Flamingo weather vanes
are a tackiness
even the rains can't wash away,
as will be the remains of Christmas lights
around rows of palms
while the north remains
sophisticated
in the glares of her sunsets
through bare tree trunks,
and graffitied bridges --
the browns and golds of past autumns
blowing into the folds of her scarf.
So the dawn works hard
to stitch a new pattern--
the thin reed against the milk of a cloud
as the stars lie witness,
glance towards the west with its canyon sunsets
who know better than anyone
that when the world sheds all of her green
she is just another tentative arm
reaching out to the sky.
Over Highways In Twilight by Moonbeams, literature
Literature
Over Highways In Twilight
The sky holds history in its blue breast
like a crying child
expanding over distances.
The wind over the lake is tentative
like a ghost
in its first freedom,
a testament of how time
grieves the flesh,
and tired face
it was given.
There is the swell of old hearts
and new hearts
unhinged
on long roads--
the loss of chivalry
in the stiletto heel,
in the trail of exhaust,
the heavy burlap,
the murder of anything,
leaves tripping over themselves
behind taillights,
in years, in minutes,
in a new kind of armor,
a new kind of breaking.
In the park
dandelion fluff skirts the wind--
lands with seeds
and wishes
stillborn.
The merry-go-round spins,
hatches a laugh into the air.
In the clear blue,
the bird's long, strangled cry
fetches a soul.
In the evening,
Electric rings in the filter--
the low buzz,
furnace hum.
The steam horn sounds
into the train
before it passes.
I sit in perfect atrophy,
turn out the lights
and bury the moon
like some sort of God.
And home is still not silent
in its settling.
There are no curves
or angles in your stillness,
no wave of anything
that fusses over your shoulders;
no sliding serpent
of light
that scales through
your form
like time's hand
skimming across the sky;
no sun streaked through strand
or pupil
that draws love.
By spring
your heart is outside of you,
a frenetic of blooms in the casts
of your soil,
rain caught with resignation,
the wind smoothing your alleys
like an intruding arm;
echoes falling to the distance,
the backdrop of a watercolor sky
where you are content to remain winter.
Only in frustration
does Spring emerge from you like a moss,
a settled static--
giving you distinctions
The setting matters
for such a word;
it has fallen too casually into silk,
entangled itself in lace,
and skittered past the private lights
of lamps
before it found itself upon the ground;
and it has worn different patterns;
the pink tint of empty streets
made it more meaningful
over the crowded blue skies of midday;
and it has died in the coffee cups
of pellucid mornings
after the flame danced erratic in the breath
that set it free,
hacked at shadows on the wall
as it fell to me limp on
hot precipitations.
and as it was tossed from a departing cab,
and stumbled in newspapers
over tracks,
the sunrise gathered patina stains.
So never as
The Sun Only Hugs The Ground As It Arrives by Moonbeams, literature
Literature
The Sun Only Hugs The Ground As It Arrives
The visage of you already hovers
around the edges of town,
your scant form rushing along
while the fog moves in to ease
the pulp of us
lying sans branch, sans tree
as the hour dresses itself
with the suit on the door.
It's funny how dawn always adds the finishing touch
to dreams while awake-
the walk still gone,
as birds flock to their seed
as the wet shoal only briefly gets the gold
before the sky fills
with it--
makes the tangle of nets
a part of some private heaven,
and then the morning remains on the horizon,
and everything you walk by
also seems to flourish before it dies --
the overgrown, flowers falling upon themselves
to wa
Maybe random has a mind,
that line I avoid,
or step on,
and then bargain
in numbers, or perhaps prayer,
or even candles and bay leaves
and the potion in the air
that holds the world together
in my steps
as sirens sink into the spaces
I span.
This talisman
won't tell me about when it lived
and saw the earth quake--
its rivers rise,
and ground open
to swallow the fetal masses
like a belly taking back its births,
unwitting of the fact
that we'd already begun to love.
I keep love in its nest,
build roads in my mind.
They are in between the cracks
that keep me busy,
the untended growth of trails
that become uncertainties.
My presence is th
There'll be cascading white stoops
coming upward from the sea,
bowlined shores leaving their cool compress to the mind;
a sea blue gauze spread white-washed
across miles, swelling through Doric columns
to loll over mountains.
I'll walk with monks in clouds, forgoing
the sympathy of flowers
rooted in disingenuous hands--
water from tepid pitchers,
as the fever seeps into the firmament
in hopes that cells can be forgiving,
jostled from their stagnancy
with memories I never knew I had.
There are canvases whose depths
cannot be observed in a lifetime.
His room has a glide he cannot see.
The clouds sauntering across the blue,
a slow and steady turn of the world
as the tint drains from his walls,
leaves arcs of shadows in its place,
rising and falling--
the world and its elusive brushes;
so tender the application,
the ebb of tides, and tidal waves,
the people he meets.