Yesterday folds our vital documents
into its briefcase and steps onto a busy street.
Busses lunge on asphalt, rolling
knotted muscles and emptied pockets deeper
into roads where dogs and paper
blur the lines between news and ****.
Lovers, condos, taxis, and sidewalks
pray to scrape up rent. Tomorrow crouches, ready to spring
and ****** us back into the boxing ring.

I sit at the Earth's end,
an old, fractured, water-worn dock
cradles me and fixes the scene.
Yellow sails swimming the jetstream
hang on to the red dinghy whose wake
sets my eye upon the far shore.

     Coney isle ‘cross the murk-warped sea
     holds ancient homes like a tapestry
     holds ancient threads that you can see
     in some museum for a fee.

For the residents at Rosses Point
this is no end –
                          wit starts their children’s dreams
and holds them to life,
roots them in communal grasses
that grow and will always grow.
                                                       I didn’t know
that where the ****-stalk masses
life’s abundances overflow.

But where are their riches?

Cast in ditches by roadsides
where three hundred years of smiles,
vein-pulsing beliefs, busy thinkers,
sweet upswept streets,
all put wealth –
                           the heaping of coin
upon coin till nothing can breathe –
aside and laugh. They live,
surviving as they happen.

Inside the crumbled watchtower
I fling passion onto thought
onto nerve onto pen onto page
and then am limp,
like the carelessly treaded sage:
a child’s footprint.

     What anguish did the watchers know
     looking through the barred stone walls,
     their travelers still gone?

In the swirling, swallowing night,
that drops like the judge’s gavel,
I write images of the sundry
numb-fingered seaside –
                                          the birds call through the salt-stained air.

Fly, fly till you reach my words
that are split among a thousand minds and cities.
Fly till the grass overcomes the tread,
till the sun succumbs to lead
poisoning and dawn’s jaw drops dead.

The lighthouse, the sprinkling showers
from the clouds that shroud and mask
the would-be sky, guide
the heart that falls inside my throat –
                                                                two hundred tons of blood
beat through its bulge –
                                         I’m alive
and live on, like this unhampered ground.
The sound of ripples and the rustle
of reeds bring me back
to the time-broken dock.

I sit and remember my friends –
                                                       calmness soaks in and through my bones –
I am and will always be;
and when memory fails and fades
I will float the channel of everything,
beach upon this shore
and will be the grass and nothing more,
till history becomes the future
and the first layer becomes the core.

If you don't like the weather
Just wait fifteen minutes
Quick as a bird to feather
This blowing April snow will finish

In a minute it'll drizzle
About the time yer tired of that
It'll get so **** hot
We'll throw an egg on a rock to sizzle

Its the freakest thing
Now it's so muggy
It feels like we're swimming

All in a day for Indiana weather
Don't like it
Just wait it gets better

The jetstream-cut clouds we see-
atop twisted trees and sympathy
when the sun gets low speaks to me.

I'm taken back by the beauty
when the stars awake and start to hang down.
The clarity of its being is a distraction
to the things that we think matter.

The sand and the view
and the things that we do
for the shine of all of its glory-
is subsequent to the things that we feel
and the plans that are piecing our stories.

Fill the void of life with me and this and that and this.
Please cherish the thought of a blessed place:
the place where we exist.

Sung and did not miss, watch this, where'swung
a dub when we need vees lots and lots of vees

the first friendly used many vees where we use double yous
vees and bees sound so much alike, s'ard to tell

Simultaneous, as always,
other-ther things begin and end while I am contrating on
a single point being made

on a single pin,
which is
bearing witness to my assertincertainty that at least
one thousand three hundred and ninety-two messages in lieu of angels,
numbering in the billions if Sagan was right,
fit
per pineal node post initial exterior inhalation and that first draft

look at this will you wontyou willyou wontyou
one thousand three hundred and ninety-two
guitar pickers in Nashville,

Ten percent of whom are sworn to sing Rocky Top
at every open mike in town every Saturday night

and we survived, didn't starve or go plumb crazy, though we tried.

It's good to be alive and remember imagining being

abundantly more alive, and
you know

or not, I can't say.

Did you read how Paradise, California burned for lack of rain?
We heard, Down here in the Lagunas.
All kinds o' folks prayed all kinds o'ways, and it rained.

Mud-makin rain.
Is it wrong to think the rain was called, if you can't imagine
rain obeying a request for the jetstream to dip?
Not here, we think right happens
right here on purpose

if you can imagine that a prayer,

wave of a wing tip, an eagle's
with permission.
this is the eagle wing effect, rightused,
should any attribute this to butterflies in China or Brazil.

The eagle acknowledges the Pine Valley hummingbird
who consented to make its final migration,
so the rain had a path to follow.

It’s a simple, mundane day, yet busy with an absolute slew of schoolwork
I take up a table in the library, high up on the 4th floor, overlooking
The shapes below with different work in the same time and place
There’s a large model airplane, an early model,
Suspended by cables that attach themselves to the far walls,
Yielding the illusion of mid-flight

It appears I wasn’t the only one with the idea to seclude myself this high;
Around me are the detached murmurs of still more students, bent
On the conclusion of their labors, some more eager than I, some less so
And closer to me, on a juxtaposed table, is another student, about my age
Shuffling through what looks like math
But I don’t pride myself much on intrusion, so I let him be

For hours we all toiled, us in the 4th floor and us down below
The music of light concentration, fluttering pages, a utensil,
Swathing through those immobile wings and dwindling on the propeller
The time is rapidly becoming the enemy in all our bingo books
And of the books stacked in the cluster of cases, some of which will no doubt remind one
Of the timeless saying that ‘time waits for no one’

The student of the table next to me is still at work, and I’m still at work
And people file in and out of the door which leads downstairs,
Faces going in with indignance and a foreknowledge of what they’re to do
Faces leaving triumphant, secured in another day’s duty crossed off
I steal a look at the student close to me
I see him pass a tired hand over his eyes
(I agree with his plight)

By now we’ve been swarmed with a million like us
Jumping from table to table to seat to seat, in groups or in respectable solitude
A veritable mosaic of people, a timelapse in ironic real-time, elapsed second onto second
The darkness crowds the unlucky surfaces of the windows, tries to push in
And like lichen stuck to sea rocks amid a terrible tidal storm we remain
Jaded and mentally broken down, but finally we see each other

He looks at me dully, I return it with a shrug and the slightest smirk
And I think we both understand it
Though no words needed to pass through the air, nor signals of the eyebrows,
The hand, the heavy persistent  sigh
We’ve seen the lapse, just us and the jetstream of the world unending
And he looks away, and I look away at the suspended plane, still as it ever was

The lighter breath of air
Sends shivers through the spine of weeping willows
As dragonflies flirt with kindle crackle
I sit somewhere under the arch of Orion
Surveying all that is mine
Blink one, on
Blink one, off.
It is lonely in the dark
Yet, here in the solitary freedom
I freely think of her
So I may be lonely;
Though I am not alone

There is a civilised glow to the horizon
As I shrink with the Jetstream of those little lights
Blink one on, blink one off
Blink two on, blink two off
I am my own trail of smoke
En route from the burning tip of a slowly decaying cigarette
How the paper wrap burns under a heavy breath
Conceding to my need of escape
Dancing in rings around the wisp of haunted words and subtle strings

I find hope in the sky that looks upon us both
Lowering clouding allowing me inside its gentle comfort
Carrying me north,
With the distant sound of memories converging as a guidance runway,
Blink one on, Blink one off
Blink two on, Blink two off

Home, within sleep, within the air
You draw breath and take me in
The seagulls are silent in honour of your first sleep
As life assimilates dream
The brain picks into memory
Extracting the clouds, leaving stars
The belt of the archer as secret camouflage of the world around.
We are dandelions, free from anchors
Sailing through the tips of reeds and listening to their silent hum in the breeze
We sail on swan back and climb interconnecting necks
They shadow a symbol of love upon the rippling stream

in moment of lift
Together into air
Over bramble and bush, teasing with the bark of trees,
Escaping greedy fingers that wish to pull us apart
Balance on branches and rest
Somewhere in the sky.

There we stay
Between the moon beams and starlight twinkle
Sleeping softly together in the arms of an archer
Blink one on, Blink two on
Here we fail to fade
Our own pollen rejuvenating us into a million lifetimes
Forever starting and ending with each other
We are the centre of calm
Sleeping softly together
Under the same sky
Above the same earth
In the blink of an eye
Blink one, blink two
You and I

At sea level once,
I placed myself on a pedastal,
but the nosebleed was a river,
a torrent greater than
one found
in the jetstream
& now I stick to the ground,
keep my feet plastered
firmly on the ridgeline
& stare up
into heaven
graciously.

I used to be terrified of flying
Until I saw the sunrise on a 7AM
Chicago skyline
Rumors of clouds, whispering across
A grey cityscape and trickling into sidewalk cracks

And I saw through the window crack
The very crack of dawn on a newer day than the last
Call it pristine gray
My fears are now framed pristine gray
In blankets of doubt and navy blues
Like her pristine navy blue hair as it uttered secrets in the streets.
A small girl with a horizon smile, opening up as a jetstream
With streamlined pristine bright eyes
Poking holes in hurricanes
With her hands made of golden snakes, shining like a Chicago sunrise
Wrapped in my clutch
And if you say she doesn't shine
Then spit the pyrite from your teeth
And tell me what it's like to
Bend the truth.

Now, those snakes have long since shed their skin.
And her pristine color schemes have long faded into rippling cascades of green grass and smile-light vibrance.
Oh, I will wash my hands endlessly in my lifetime, but those colors will never run.
And to learn from a color is to love another, and to love another is to see the color of her eyes in the sunrise that takes away your worst fears.

I lost my worries in a pristine scheme,
Beautiful eyes, her hair, and a smile.
I am on the runway, waiting for my flight to depart.
These colors will not run,
And neither will I.

We floated on
a sea of clouds
hovering over
checkerboard
greens & browns
& spots of blue.

I watched
dots
traveling
to and fro
on endless ribbons,
people
living out
their lives
in steel.

And I wondered
if they only knew
we were
way up here
above the clouds
in the jetstream,
would they wave?

My life, ma vie
Floats the currents
Jetstream from afar –
Dare I spread my wings?
Dare I go to where I know not?
Ah life is tiring here
Watching others fly
Some crash, others disappear
Meh probably nothing better there
But really
What’s good about here?
Сучка.

winding roads pull wind from lungs
green blossoms decay summer sun
ignorance and bliss unravel wordless memory
forbidden touch forgives absence of leaves
dividing sky like flashback film souvenirs
i breathe blades of grass
drink sweet constellation cobwebs of morning dew
wanderings deep inside a sleepless dream
you know you love him
so let him go, the riverbed buried warming sun
into soft dirt we dug our toes
garden trails, empty minds
gently killing time


//
Keep the score, ever widening and chasing circles
Capitulate false aggression,
Vibrations in flowering emptiness
Rapids sweet and clean
Glass-smooth rocks
Cut and sewn in fabric of water
Buoyant bodies shift in waves
Memory shaped on skin
Widening irises illuminate you in the dark,
Your bedsheets, ambient lights above bed
Surrender to aching pull
I’ve been walking a familiar line, painted fingers
I’ve been thinking in murmuring heartbeats
And painting you sleeping
It’s more trouble than you think it is
Up all night, pushing my body across the line
Unfamiliar horizons, how do you know you really ****** up
Trees on the sky, wind in the earth
Fire in bones, the magnetism of you
Suckle colors from hands
Delicate honey nectar
Draws breath from my chest
Jetstream fog hangs lucid in your room
After a fresh rain,
Leaves fall and stain the ground,
Imprints of your hands
Streams trickle down the walls
and pool in between our bodies, still in the night

***

Seasons turn the birds
like pages.
V's in the slipstream,
deny this place as habitat,
when Canadian airs
slump down in the jetstream.
Pelican pouches gone,
black tipped twirling
thermal phrases gone.
Stilt legged herons,
still and balanced on a single bone,
like prophesy, a blue note
scribbled in the margins.
Egrets, orange-beaked
and wading,
slow stepped
and stabbing,
reading slow
the ditch water
for movement,
paddling boats
of the many ducks,
wood, ruddy, mallard and wigeon,
gliding bloom algae scratchings
of summer, gone.
All the fattening
cushlings gone.
Even the Kingbird,
stout-shouldered,
Maltese,
relinquishes its kingdom,
surveyed from the fastening post,
The cunning moves Othello,
on these crisping griddled plains.
Dark-eyed Junco,
black over white,
return the wintering hedge,
to the shrivelled berries,
road grit, given seed
and stubbled white pages.
Great grays and redtails
lurk these simpler plumes
in simpler plumes,
and wait the white plunging.

Born on a mote of dust
Aloft into a deep blue sky.
High, high , beyond the white performing clouds, beyond the very mystery of the stratospheric jetstream;
Into the deep velvet ethereal zone
Where life cannot exist.

From thence to gaze down at the innocent blue globe, far, far below.
At the swirls and banks of striated cloud, at the deep green of lush field & forest and the tan of dry sandy desert lands.

Oh the spasm of love and longing I feel for my beautiful pristine orb.
The warmth and pride that I am the child of something so wondrously
Perfect and unique.

Momentarily I float in this absynth
Sweet cone of beauty and delusion….

And then I think of my brother man… I imagine all of the scurrying, teeming humanity below, preoccupied with individual importance and absolute deadlines and priorities and the withering urgency to maintain appearance….and the competitiveness and heartlessness which breeds that eternal, savage, ****** awful phenomenon of perpetual warfare!

I turn around …and above, the cold ink void with its myriad pinpricks of white sparkling starlight…A cataclysmic leap through time & space to God knows what….

Can innocence be retrieved from there?


Marshalg
Mangere Bridge
5th March 2008