Category: writing

Creature

And creator.

It lives
by the distraction
it makes
before it dies
at the insides
only to emerge
as task: one sole
task given me
out of time.

Here I am again
afraid of running
to enact the small
body of infinite
infinitesimal
purpose given
to each, a creature
alive, scratching
for release
from suffocation
by a world yet
to know how
it breathes.

Dominions

With Time and Space and the Babies.

Time’s madness had its origins in a wrong story, the flaw magnified by the velocity of its spin. We were about to lose him. He was losing himself. His voice broke and its fragments arguing inside him were a constant racket.

Still, it seemed possible that their dissonance might resolve into music, the birth song of a new Adam, wizened by the bitterness of the strange fruit of experience, to taste with less abandon and more care, his assurance of righteousness tempered by the memory of storms that still quaked in his muscles. Any pointing he did now was a movement akin to wing-flutter or ecstatic dance, hand in flight like the feathered messenger of history blown forward by the heat of the accumulated blasts as it looks back with sobering understanding of the danger of the spark that so delighted when it came.

We liked him better this way, the wilding rhythm of him in pulses we could recognize. 

“He can play better now,” Space assured us.

“How?” We had reason to doubt. 

“Look,” she said, pointing downhill. “No history that justifies those rivers of blood can hold. If that was his organizing principle, he’s better off making less sense.”

It was true. When we laughed, he would not take offense, but would laugh back, singing our new names. He didn’t even think to tame the voices quarreling within him, and because of this they grew fond of his presence, and would sing soft songs to him when he tired of his own chaos.

And then she breathed into us, her eldest daughters, and bathed us in the waters that knew our origins and our future wombs, and it was then that we heard we, becoming.

Fictions of Kind

Study of the world: views from below.

Amidst an immensity too vast for containment, one vessel’s first heresy was division. The sorting into kinds: an exhilarating project for its heroes who were––(un)naturally self-proclaimed. From their abdomens they emitted the substance of webs of significance, and from these spun stories to support conclusions about which were to be marked for life and which for death.

So here we are. And now.
But who, we? And when.

If what is to be done is freedom for all, we move to unwind the choking snake of this original heresy from its tail/tale, to return to the beginning of the Word.

Perpetual Presence

And time in pieces.

The woman we called Space because she held us was talking about how she managed to survive. “Performance, mostly,” she said. We were waiting for Time to get ready, but he was arguing with himself again under his breaths. “I’m no monolith!” he was saying, and then, “Hah! Whatever you say!” Watching himself through splayed fingers: now a bright hope, now gone; now horizon, now barrier, now blank. And what of tomorrow? And tomorrows. 

O Valiant Now

Remember the ancient tragedies.

Careful, hero. You are sometimes too sure. It may be said that your ancient predecessors, the ones you often mock for their backwardness, were in fact possessed of virtues you have yet to learn to recognize, glutted as you are on delusions of progress. These knew at least––or learned to see (sometimes after the eyes were gone) in the (tragic) end––the danger of confusing what would save with what would destroy. They understood that they were understudies to passions, the lead actors preceding their entrances and following their exits––and how none of the worst crimes could have happened unless they were believed to be good. To go on acting anyway, without becoming paralyzed, in full knowledge of blindness, leaning into doubt well enough to hold loves close. For protection, and to protect.

The Hearing Shell

Leaning in.

Sheltering at the end of the last song, fingers splayed as weather comes but I want to remember radiance and rescue and first this question: what city is this and if I reach for her hand will she know me? If my mind would return to the gapped flesh of my flesh to mend itself, how far until the next note and will there be room enough? Inside us, to hold it.

Progress in Pipeline

Flow without ebb.

How to stop the rush of current pushing toward––? What is assumed to be an exit from which we can finally fall from this concrete pipe into fresh water, into sunshine, to stretch beneath the dappled light filtered through dripping trees. There is no entrance, only more volume to increase our velocity. How far until light, until water, until air? Our breath, too, is caught in the current so we hold it like our questions, like our limbs to keep from breaking.

To Begin

With amazement.

Speak to me of ongoingness, of the atmospheric nature of objects, of astonishment; of the vertigo of finding yourself in an image with no context or memory of the moment. Let the speech of the hour open with Stop, let us weep. Let the ruins of the moment leave us pierced, undone with memory. Let the past cut a deluge into now, not to be consoled. That we remember. 

Where is the horse? And the rider. And that time. When we plunged into the cold sea, ready to lose ourselves.

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