|
|
|
your damaged life kept leaking out of your pen, in your inescapable quest To reify who you were, who you were not, anagrammatic ancel, the murky Seine drank you at last, your death-- a poem;
confess, reveal: what is greatness? does it matter? the pain is raw, you can feel it, ganz und gar nicht hermetisch, it lasts and lasts, in a string of words, long after the almond is enfolded again by mother earth.
Blue wave suspended Miles above, Sun burning a hole through The surface of thought, Clash of a nearer wave Yanking my body Back To this jut of granite, Muscles clenched, my legs Less strong Against an inexplicable force The thick muscled shoulders Of the sea Barrelling through the narrow Chute Below Between the jagged Rocks--crashing-- Wrenching a broken rope Of kelp Back and forth Forcing Its thunder through my blood-- I was giddy, strangely caught, Looking down Into that sucking froth, Though the wind seemed Light, The surge Was fierce in this spot, Dark water heaving itself Inward Then madly ripping out-- Haven of starfish and mussels-- If I slipped into that cleft I would be pulled Under fast I would be gone.
Not far away Was a safe stretch of sand, The surf benign, The sunbathers relaxed, Minds lost inward, Eyes riding outward On a veneer of rippling light, A postcard dream Undisturbed by exploding Supernovae, Upheavals of distant space Or the bones of the dead, Breathing in time And out-- An almost natural rhythm On the floor Of a star-scattered sea--
Yet even in these moments When beginnings and endings Drift together, There is still a distance Unreached Thousands of feet deep At the bottom Under tons of water Where earth's furnace vents up, The crushing blackness Unknown Down there-- Undulating tube worms And eelpout fish Quite content Being In a world deceptively full And complete
They were live jelly beans With eyes and a mouth-- Sort of fat roundish Rubbery slippery things Waggling and wobbling Their life-stuffed bellies Teasing the crayfish Churning up clouds In the warm dirty puddles-- Too many to count-- And we were their gods-- Though we hardly Gave it a serious thought-- While all around The crickets thrumming And little winged bodies Flittering inside Our dream-filled heads;
We scooped a bunch up Dancing in our hands And plopped them all In empty pickle And mayonnaise jars, Then reverently eyed What we'd got-- Ripe throbbing balls More head than tail Some with teeny knobs-- The promise of feet-- Circling in a dizzy With no way to get out;
We handled the tykes Gingerly for the most, But now and then We'd accidentally Drop a few And a small black urge Would grip our hearts, Seeing them twitching And jiggling like fools; A poke With a pointed stick-- A test, that was all-- To find the frog Hidden Inside the pollywog;
A tiny pop--it was done Breaking open The skin That kept the insides In And the outside Out-- That strange Dividing Line-- We already knew-- Once you stepped Across-- You could never Ever come back--
Entranced we watched As a thin White Spaghetti string Uncoiled And spilled While the rest Was still Squirming and flopping In the steaming muck--
Strange to say We felt slightly betrayed-- In that moment A glimmer of truth, A wince of disgust, And turned Our backs On the sickening heap Of gelatinous guck-- Then as quickly Recovered what we'd lost: A bigger pool bursting With even bigger wogs--
*
We slid into summer Fell with the leaves Slept through winter Melted in spring, The brimming creeks Waiting there for us; Yes, in that curve Of newborn light, Despite the pulling Inside our limbs, We let go as much as we held In those perfect transparent Days of forgetting And finding ourselves.
*
I stood there remembering The tangle of thistle The milkweed, the chickory, The sunny buttercup, the whirl, the buzzing The throb, The eternal leaping frogs--
All chewed up--
All choked under--
Tons of gravel--
A field of asphalt
Now smothered the earth Where once Time had filled our lungs.
It wasn't these changes That were so unsettling I haggled with myself,
But
The steady unwinding--
The unstoppable
Backward
Drift.
JamieRawxx · Tue Dec 27, 2005 @ 07:54pm · 0 Comments |
|
|
|
|
|