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Sorelle 1d
The oracles don't whisper to the living
They chant in vapour
In marrow
In echoes only heard when the self has softened
You must forget your shape
To bear their song
And become smoke to listen
I walked barefoot on salted glass
Between two moons, arguing softly
A crow watched me with seven eyes
And every blink re-wrote my spine
I asked for peace
It offered vision
I asked for answers
It offered mirrors too honest to survive
The oracles don't whisper to the living
They speak in rust
In moth wings
In teeth lost to grief
Their tongues run rivers underground
And you will drown before you understand
I saw a god blink once
And galaxies collapsed inward
Distracted, not cruel
The veil is not a curtain
But a membrane of remembering
I pressed my face through it
And came back less human
More true
The oracles wove their riddles
In the seams of my ribs
Now I hum when it rains
And dream in reverse
The oracles don't whisper to the living
They wait
And when your voice becomes dust
They will answer in wind and meaning
Not words or mercy
If you hear them
You are no longer asking
You are becoming what you once feared to know
When silence teaches you more than mercy ever could
-Sorelle
yıldız Jul 20
Inside me, starlightdust descends,
A gentle glow that never ends.
But as it gathers, thick and deep,
It fills my soul, I start to weep.

The weight of stars, so cold, so bright,
It pulls me down into the night.
Until I drown in endless glow,
Lost in pain I cannot show.
Appassionata Jul 17
“What is not to be had in haste, may yet echo on the grieving wind.”
— Su ****

The pallor of the desolate plain —
a wound torn by void.
Those great swathes of barren earth,
laid bare —
are my chest,
yellowed and cracked with thirst.

She holds her head high,
nonchalant —
dragging behind her a hem
as lucid and dark as eyes
that have seen through dreams.

The snowy lace, pure as accumulated frost,
stirs up dust —
like the tender light at the horizon’s edge,
trembling into dawn.

I thought it was the sweet, silken whisper
of a love just waking,
mist-drenched and dizzying…
I wandered deep into it,
entranced,
never to return.

Her steps —
mysterious as the sea’s dense murmurs
when dusk is full.

Each footfall
layered with gentle unrest,
floated
toward the dimples of innocent laughter,
ever deeper,
until freedom itself
seemed just a breath away…

And my fevered imagination
scrambled and stumbled blindly,
thrashing with futile longing.

But oh — the great ironclad of love!
Launching its voyage!
And with cannons that shattered the sky
proclaimed:

Heaven, red with blood, is boiling!
Let the burning Utopia blaze in delight!

But her steps —
her steps are also
so firm,
so forward…
As if from the unreachable gleam ahead
some force of fate
pulls her onward,
irresistible,
unmatched.

And I —
I am helpless.

Forward…
A paltry mayfly,
daring to stop
the eternal rise of the sun
with one trembling day of life.

My proud, resounding cries
were silenced,
crushed into a choking hush,
into shattered bone…

She paid them no mind.

With unbearable grace
she brushed aside the clamor —
brushed away the storms —
and moved forward.

Her heels,
cold as the blade of an axe,
hacked into my flesh.

And the rustling of her skirt
drifted farther, farther still —
until only the groans
of withered grass remained.

The moon, pale and ravenous,
devoured every ember of warmth,
and night,
black and intimate,
caressed my spine like death’s quiet hand…

I was calm —
calmer than I have ever been,
like the pulse
of the already-dead.

In vain I turned again and again
to lick the bitterness
from every grain of this earth —
each one once soaked
in the sweet sweat of youth.

And her scent, receding,
took with it
my last ray
of sunlight.
Inspired by Su ****’s line: “What is not to be had in haste, may yet echo on the grieving wind.”This is the final music of a love that could never be held — a cry scattered in the dust, a heartbeat fading into the barren wind.To the one who walked on, and the silence she left behind
I felt my wandering spirit kick up a dust that rattled in my bones.
Spirit speak, hungry as you are...  

-Rhia Clay
To start living,
you have to shake off the dust of yesterday
and refuse to let it define you.
We are not our failures, we are not our mistakes.
We are not our incomplete sentences or lost words.
We are our future,
shining bright.

-Rhia Clay
The 101 slopes like a spine bent too long.
Camarillo yawns wide in the morning hush,
valley stretching slow, hills bare-shouldered,
fields glistening, half-asleep, half-prayer.

Lemon trees blink slow, bruised gold in the mist.
Figtrees call a name behind a rusted gate.
Sagebrush whispers gossip through chainlink,
its breath full of stories that outlive the tellers.

To the east, the nursery stirs,
plastic sheeting *****,
row tags flutter in the wind.
A thermos, abandoned, rests by a wheelbarrow.
Mud boots, discarded,
stand like sentinels
against the wood plank wall.
No footsteps follow.
I never asked where they went.

Matilija poppies raise their paper-white heads,
and the raspberries, furred with morning dew,
shiver, just slightly,
as if remembering friends
they were no longer allowed to say.

A coffee roaster hummed somewhere distant,
low and steady, warming the wind.
That scent I never could shake,
burnt and sweet.
I could almost belong here again,
but it’s not mine without them.

I worked inside this valley with my back.
With my knees.
With the same hands,
now soft on the wheel,
muscle memory steering roads
as if nothing ever left,
as if the ghosts still ride along.

I pass a strawberry field, stitched in silence,
no voices rising in laughter today,
no corrido escaping from a shirt pocket radio,
no teasing between the furrows,
no calloused hands tossing tools,
only the soft ticking of irrigation
and the hush of work
that now waits for no one.
This silence has been swept, labeled,
nothing out of place but sadness.

I was here with them,
but only as a pair of eyes,
that never opened wide enough.

The strip mall stands like a broken promise,
painted stucco, faded western wear,
alongside roadside markets
missing the opening crew.
Still, the hills lean in to listen,
velvet green with memory,
quiet as folded hands.

Even now, under this sun,
the dust knows who knelt here.
Who sang into the rows,
who fled before sundown,
their names erased from the ledger
but carved into the earth.

And in soil’s hush,
their names still root and rise.
In the aftermath of the immigration raids, the migrant workers I knew in Southern California, especially in Ventura County, began vanishing overnight. Faces I shared shifts with, broke bread with, waved to across the nursery lots and strawberry rows, disappeared without a word. Their absence is not abstract, it’s in the empty chairs at the diner, the shuttered produce stalls, the silence where songs and stories used to rise. These are the hands we rely on, the hands that shape the harvest, and now they hang suspended in uncertainty. The fields remember them, even when the tourists do not.
As a spec of dust
I fell
So slightly
Drifting over
Time and space
Then
Through a ray of light
From the heart
I fell through
Into being
They reside on the other side.
They bathe in fertility.
They own yard-keepers and servants;
Dogs, cats and charming plants.

They breathe the camphorated air like us,
Swallow the transparent dust,
Cross over and fall in the muddy rivers
Like our siblings living under the tiny tents.

They reside on the other side of town,
Over the mountains.
They bathe in tranquil fertility
Of the country-side.

They ignore that we are the same
And that we experience daily the same dilemmas.
One day, them and us, all of us will answer
Present deep in the river, under the karmic bridge.


P.S. This poem was originally written during my college years. Nelson Mandela was still illegally and wrongfully jailed, spending (wasting) 27 years of his heroic and precious life unjustly incarcerated. Mr. Nelson Mandela and my African brothers and sisters are the sources of my inspiration.

Copyright © circa May 1984 Hébert Logerie, All rights reserved
Hébert Logerie is the author of several books of poetry.
Laokos May 26
weight.
that’s all I feel now.

the weight of silence.
absence.  
thoughts like boots
stuck in mud up to my knees.

thirteen thousand nights
pounding out of my chest like a riot mob
choking on my life
and staring down twenty thousand more.
****.

the searing void
of an ancient sugared kiss
sends tears down my face
like tiny iron weights—
a silent guillotine.
you’re so far away now.
or maybe I am.

dusting off dreams
like they’re old pictures
and setting them back on the shelf
in this violet desert.
mirage or memory?
who knows.

I’ve become a warm corpse
mumbling “no”
to the tired lives that want to ride me
like an old horse
one limp away from being glue.

who is there to tell?
who the hell would listen?
who’d step foot
onto the interstate of my heart
dodging semis
and roadkill potpourri?

doesn’t matter.
the dreams look clean again.
and that’s enough
to keep the lights on in the cell
for another thousand nights.

so keep that duster handy.
go back to sleep.

these nights are hungry.
and they’re not going to eat themselves.
Why are we drawn
to lust,
to the hunger of flesh,
to devour food
as if the body remembers
a hunger older than time?

Because we are soil!
And we desire
grain,
flesh,
which too rise
from soil.

Like calls to like.
Atoms seek atoms.

The universe obeys
its own silent gravity.

Our lust,
and longings
die
when we return
to the dust
we came from.
But even then,
it’s not over.

Our atoms will scatter
into soil,
into seeds,
into skins.

And somewhere,
in someone,
they will long
again.
Not with our name,
but with our echo.

Maybe, the bodies you see
are echoes,
of echoes,
of echoes...
of echoes…

..
.
Dust remembers the shape of longing...
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