I try to show her the universe without a telescope
I take one of her hands-
This bracelet opened up is the Milky Way galaxy; these spheres of lace
woven so intricately

And the knitting needles are the star beams
The fabric of space is seamless;
Look, inside your eye is a wayfaring nebula
Far from it's home constellation

Our heartbeats are woven from the dark spaces
Between the conjugated matter,
Frozen into time and dimensions

Love is the singularity;
Home is where the heart is beating,
And light is the substance that sings
The background song of creation
And how we are covered with it, inside and out-

Take a breath, and then see
That you are moving only light-
I stop and kiss her hand
And her eyes light up with understanding.

Once I took one of those blot tests, the ones that that Rorschach guy invented.
Or maybe it's Rorscarch.
I don't know, but I call him Roar-shark.
Anyhow.
The ones with blots of black paint that you're supposed to find pictures in.
There was this one blot, and I saw the profile of a lady's face, with long windblown-looking hair.
I was supposed to find a butterfly.

I've always had a different take on things, a weird memory association.
Well, I guess I can't call it memory. As far as I can recall, I've never seen that Roar-shark blot lady in my life, or anyone like her. At least, anyone that I can remember. And I only remember the truly remarkable.

I had these really great microwave burritos that I would eat after school, before rehearsal so I could just pop them in and go.
They were warm and gooey and really realllly bad for me, but hey.
I'm in a hurry. I'm allowed to be fat.
They were soft and I could eat them in the car on the way to the theatre without spilling things on my rehearsal skirts.
But then my grandad got throat cancer.
I was house-sitting my Nana's house one day and opened the fridge to get myself a glass of milk while I fed her cats.
Those very same burritos were in their freezer.
The other day I shoved one of them in the microwave so I could grab it and go,
and I hopped in the car and took a bite
But I couldn't eat anymore.
I looked at it and my stomach turned and for some reason I could not eat that burrito.
My mind had decided that if I were to take another bite out of that food,
I would be eating cancer.
I told myself that I was being ridiculous and stupid and I was hungry, so eat it.
But I couldn't shake it.
So I threw it out the window.

My mind's ALWAYS doing stuff like that, playing tricks on me.
I can't touch the page numbers on the pages of a book. I think they're spiders.
Sometimes I think my oboe reed blades are actual blade blades
and I'm afraid to put them in my mouth.
Weirdness doesn't go away.

So now I've switched my before-rehearsal food.
Tortilla. And milk.
I don't know why this strikes me as appealing, but it does.
My mind equates tortillas and milk-- warm and cool-- with happiness,
just like it equates my face wash to orange and honeysuckle.
(Though it smells like neither.)
and Christmas angels to pillows.
Rugs remind me of Egyptians.
Theatre seats are associated with a certain animated clownfish.
Leaves are reminiscent of the Sistine CHapel.
Pleas don't tell Roar-shark.

Once my English teacher told my class to write everything important in ink,
which brings us back to that one guy,
in pen.
Since everything I write is important, I write everything in pen.
Of course, you can see everything I scratch out, too.
The unimportant of the always important.
I like to think I'm not afraid of mistakes.

But sometimes, when my iPod is on shuffle,
it decides to get inside my head and play that song
that reminds me of you--
back when I bit my lip,
back when you owed me a slow dance,
back when I actually LIKED the scent of apples and pine trees.
And my mind does this "freeze" thing that
makes me stop breathing for a second.
and I hit the next button really really fast and then
fly off to the kitchen to find a glass of milk
because nothing can go wrong when I've got happiness in my hands.
But it's no use.
The thought gets to me before I can stop it.
About
my
our
YOUR mistake.
And then I just get angry and the milk quivers in my glass and I have to set it down before I throw it at the wall or something drastic like that.
Because I am dramatic, maybe.
Because even though I have played it over in my head
because even though I try to think it's my fault
because even though I try to blame it on myself
I can't.
Because it's not.
Because I'm not afraid to make mistake.
But I'm afraid to remember you.
Because
Even if you were remarkable.
You aren't.
Roar-shark would have a field day.

there is a hor  i   zon (the spine)
and a sky (the cold azure cape)
resting upon it’s back
there are
black birds
tearing
small, soundless holes
into the blue

this is my version
of nothing,
so call me poison
I dont care.

The houses are haunted
By white night-gowns.
None are green,
Or purple with green rings,
Or green with yellow rings,
Or yellow with blue rings.
None of them are strange,
With socks of lace
And beaded ceintures.
People are not going
To dream of baboons and periwinkles.
Only, here and there, an old sailor,
Drunk and asleep in his boots,
Catches tigers
In red weather.

The sun fires down, oppressive
and I decide to have a break
from my slow trek towards the West and
take a table for a drink—

the conditions being so extreme,
I prepare to indulge myself,
order pizza and green tea
and toast, alone, my youth and health—

there along the subway wall
surrounded by the heights of old cuisines,
the best of ancient cultures crawl
to beg and sell from on their knees

to me, the *** of modern times
who orders pizza and green tea,
who stands to pack his books and lines
then, rising, slow and sluggish leaves—

yet, as I resume my heat-wave march
the décor reveals itself bit by bit:
a spattering of bullet holes—stark
shards from old slabs of wall been ripped

I met a genius on the train
today
about 6 years old,
he sat beside me
and as the train
ran down along the coast
we came to the ocean
and then he looked at me
and said,
it's not pretty.

it was the first time I'd
realized
that.

Why is it, when I am in Rome,
I'd give an eye to be at home,
But when on native earth I be,
My soul is sick for Italy?

And why with you, my love, my lord,
Am I spectacularly bored,
Yet do you up and leave me--then
I scream to have you back again?

I watch spring bud from my window.
I watch my life go by without a flicker of hope from my window.
I watch summer blossom from my window.
I watch and wonder why from my window.
I watch autumn turn to a spectrum of color from my window.
I watch as time starts to die from my window.
I watch autumn fade from red and orange
to winter white from my window.
I watch as I die from my window.
I watch but can not see my window.


© 2010 Charles Dennis


http://www.charlesdennis.netne.net

In the dour ages
Of drafty cells and draftier castles,
Of dragons breathing without the frame of fables,
Saint and king unfisted obstruction's knuckles
By no miracle or majestic means,

But by such abuses
As smack of spite and the overscrupulous
Twisting of thumbscrews: one soul tied in sinews,
One white horse drowned, and all the unconquered pinnacles
Of God's city and Babylon's

Must wait, while here Suso's
Hand hones his tack and needles,
Scouraging to sores his own red sluices
For the relish of heaven, relentless, dousing with prickles
Of horsehair and lice his ***** *****;
While there irate Cyrus
Squanders a summer and the brawn of his heroes
To rebuke the horse-swallowing River Gyndes:
He split it into three hundred and sixty trickles
A girl could wade without wetting her shins.

Still, latter-day sages,
Smiling at this behavior, subjugating their enemies
Neatly, nicely, by disbelief or bridges,
Never grip, as the grandsires did, that devil who chuckles
From grain of the marrow and the river-bed grains.