I followed my dear friends to the edge of a cliff
and was greeted by a peculiar thing.
There, standing on the edge of the earth
was a swing set waiting just for me.
Her thick black seat and strong metal arms
cradled me while together we flew
into the starry night canvas, sprawling
dark blue, except for a splatter of twinkling
firefly-speckles, from the cityscape
to the moon.

Each time she lifted me I felt closer
to the heavens. I raised my chin
and let the gentle kiss of raindrops
wash away my sins, cleansing
and revitalizing my body like a baptism.
I’ll never forget the smell of the rain
on the freshly-sprouted grass, with dew drops
made from the breath of my friends
hanging delicately in the sweet air
like glass beads strung on a wire
while the crisp wind carried me higher and higher
and the most brilliant masterpiece ever created
was painted across the entire night sky.

Vacancies left by death
are realized in life.
We wander across worlds
over time, dismissing the old
but there are some worlds
which we do not leave behind
and its the collection of these speckles
that make us realize the symphonies
camouflaged under the monotone of mundane.
Its these speckles that intoxicate us into nostalgia
and dejavu .
and yet its that one speckle that covers our eye
a rising sun that romanticizes the sky

.
In a costume of conflicting emotion,
of crossing diamondic colour,
with regal posture in grief,
the Harlequin and the King,
a display of opposites
creating a composite being,
that eases her body
gently into the waiting water,
to float away serene,
on her journey to the nether.

Midnight blue and emerald green,
the regalia of ermine,
both ostentatious and humble,
robeing the aspects,
understated in crowning splendour,
the gentleman King bows,
and the Harlequin laughs,
the bi-polar reaction
to the tragedy of misfortune,
with a sting in the myth-tale.

With the dark hues of mourning,
a legend passes on her way,
across the streams of time,
on a voyage to discover herself,
carrying her Harlequin in a purse,
holding her King to her breast,
owning them both in her heart,
the medicine wheel spins,
knowing the grapes of wrath
yield the wine of spite.

The motley speckles of attire,
a starry parody of night skies,
lighting the decorated funeral barge,
gliding along the rivers of space,
worn with the mantle of sorrow,
and it sails into the sunset,
as the Harlequin and King observe,
the mandala turns,
the bier of the Queen departing,
bears their sadness forth.

The Harlequin laughs and laughs 'til he cries,
his heart grows cold, then withers and dies,
whilst the King, statuesque, memoirs his life,
lamenting the legend of a Queen, his wife.



© Pagan Paul (24/07/18)

I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
Whatever I see I swallow immediately
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.
I am not cruel, only truthful --
The eye of a little god, four-cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.

Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.

The Redhead.
The little auburn braid
wrapped across a freckled forehead,
revealing the natural orange and blonde streaks.
The china doll face,
with porcelain skin.
Pale lips, pink cheeks.
Eyes like the sea,
turquoise with speckles of green.
A crooked, imperfect, perfect smile.
A constant smile.

Feet pressing
into soft ground.

Bits of wet soil
paint our sandals.

With the incline
rises my gaze.

Mud spots legs
and freckles appear.

A smile touches within
seeping out.

Receded then as
a spring in cold months.

Suds soon would
wash away the
speckles of folly.

Pennsylvania, 1948-1949

The garden of Nature opens.
The grass at the threshold is green.
And an almond tree begins to bloom.

Sunt mihi Dei Acherontis propitii!
Valeat numen triplex Jehovae!
Ignis, aeris, aquae, terrae spiritus,
Salvete!—says the entering guest.

Ariel lives in the palace of an apple tree,
But will not appear, vibrating like a wasp’s wing,
And Mephistopheles, disguised as an abbot
Of the Dominicans or the Franciscans,
Will not descend from a mulberry bush
Onto a pentagram drawn in the black loam of the path.


But a rhododendron walks among the rocks
Shod in leathery leaves and ringing a pink bell.
A hummingbird, a child’s top in the air,
Hovers in one spot, the beating heart of motion.
Impaled on the nail of a black thorn, a grasshopper
Leaks brown fluid from its twitching snout.
And what can he do, the phantom-in-chief,
As he’s been called, more than a magician,
The Socrates of snails, as he’s been called,
Musician of pears, arbiter of orioles, man?
In sculptures and canvases our individuality
Manages to survive. In Nature it perishes.
Let him accompany the coffin of the woodsman
Pushed from a cliff by a mountain demon,
The he-goat with its jutting curl of horn.
Let him visit the graveyard of the whalers
Who drove spears into the flesh of leviathan
And looked for the secret in guts and blubber.
The thrashing subsided, quieted to waves.
Let him unroll the textbooks of alchemists
Who almost found the cipher, thus the scepter.
Then passed away without hands, eyes, or elixir.


Here there is sun. And whoever, as a child,
Believed he could break the repeatable pattern
Of things, if only he understood the pattern,
Is cast down, rots in the skin of others,
Looks with wonder at the colors of the butterfly,
Inexpressible wonder, formless, hostile to art.


To keep the oars from squeaking in their locks,
He binds them with a handkerchief. The dark
Had rushed east from the Rocky Mountains
And settled in the forests of the continent:
Sky full of embers reflected in a cloud,
Flight of herons, trees above a marsh,
The dry stalks in water, livid, black. My boat
Divides the aerial utopias of the mosquitoes
Which rebuild their glowing castles instantly.
A water lily sinks, fizzing, under the boat’s bow.


Now it is night only. The water is ash-gray.
Play, music, but inaudibly! I wait an hour
In the silence, senses tuned to a ******’s lodge.
Then suddenly, a crease in the water, a beast’s
black moon, rounded, ploughing up quickly
from the pond-dark, from the bubbling methanes.
I am not immaterial and never will be.
My scent in the air, my animal smell,
Spreads, rainbow-like, scares the ******:
A sudden splat.
I remained where I was
In the high, soft coffer of the night’s velvet,
Mastering what had come to my senses:
How the four-toed paws worked, how the hair
Shook off water in the muddy tunnel.
It does not know time, hasn’t heard of death,
Is submitted to me because I know I’ll die.


I remember everything. That wedding in Basel,
A touch to the strings of a viola and fruit
In silver bowls. As was the custom in Savoy,
An overturned cup for three pairs of lips,
And the wine spilled. The flames of the candles
Wavery and frail in a breeze from the Rhine.
Her fingers, bones shining through the skin,
Felt out the hooks and clasps of the silk
And the dress opened like a nutshell,
Fell from the turned graininess of the belly.
A chain for the neck rustled without epoch,
In pits where the arms of various creeds
Mingle with bird cries and the red hair of caesars.


Perhaps this is only my own love speaking
Beyond the seventh river. Grit of subjectivity,
Obsession, bar the way to it.
Until a window shutter, dogs in the cold garden,
The whistle of a train, an owl in the firs
Are spared the distortions of memory.
And the grass says: how it was I don’t know.


Splash of a ****** in the American night.
The memory grows larger than my life.
A tin plate, dropped on the irregular red bricks
Of a floor, rattles tinnily forever.
Belinda of the big foot, Julia, Thaïs,
The tufts of their *** shadowed by ribbon.


Peace to the princesses under the tamarisks.
Desert winds beat against their painted eyelids.
Before the body was wrapped in bandelettes,
Before wheat fell asleep in the tomb,
Before stone fell silent, and there was only pity.


Yesterday a snake crossed the road at dusk.
Crushed by a tire, it writhed on the asphalt.
We are both the snake and the wheel.
There are two dimensions. Here is the unattainable
Truth of being, here, at the edge of lasting
and not lasting. Where the parallel lines intersect,
Time lifted above time by time.


Before the butterfly and its color, he, numb,
Formless, feels his fear, he, unattainable.
For what is a butterfly without Julia and Thaïs?
And what is Julia without a butterfly’s down
In her eyes, her hair, the smooth grain of her belly?
The kingdom, you say. We do not belong to it,
And still, in the same instant, we belong.
For how long will a nonsensical Poland
Where poets write of their emotions as if
They had a contract of limited liability
Suffice? I want not poetry, but a new diction,
Because only it might allow us to express
A new tenderness and save us from a law
That is not our law, from necessity
Which is not ours, even if we take its name.


From broken armor, from eyes stricken
By the command of time and taken back
Into the jurisdiction of mold and fermentation,
We draw our hope. Yes, to gather in an image
The furriness of the ******, the smell of rushes,
And the wrinkles of a hand holding a pitcher
From which wine trickles. Why cry out
That a sense of history destroys our substance
If it, precisely, is offered to our powers,
A muse of our gray-haired father, Herodotus,
As our arm and our instrument, though
It is not easy to use it, to strengthen it
So that, like a plumb with a pure gold center,
It will serve again to rescue human beings.


With such reflections I pushed a rowboat,
In the middle of the continent, through tangled stalks,
In my mind an image of the waves of two oceans
And the slow rocking of a guard-ship’s lantern.
Aware that at this moment I—and not only I—
Keep, as in a seed, the unnamed future.
And then a rhythmic appeal composed itself,
Alien to the moth with its whirring of silk:


O City, O Society, O Capital,
We have seen your steaming entrails.
You will no longer be what you have been.
Your songs no longer gratify our hearts.


Steel, cement, lime, law, ordinance,
We have worshipped you too long,
You were for us a goal and a defense,
Ours was your glory and your shame.


And where was the covenant broken?
Was it in the fires of war, the incandescent sky?
Or at twilight, as the towers fly past, when one looked
From the train across a desert of tracks

To a window out past the maneuvering locomotives
Where a girl examines her narrow, moody face
In a mirror and ties a ribbon to her hair
Pierced by the sparks of curling papers?


Those walls of yours are shadows of walls,
And your light disappeared forever.
Not the world's monument anymore, an oeuvre of your own
Stands beneath the sun in an altered space.


From stucco and mirrors, glass and paintings,
Tearing aside curtains of silver and cotton,
Comes man, naked and mortal,
Ready for truth, for speech, for wings.


Lament, Republic! Fall to your knees!
The loudspeaker’s spell is discontinued.
Listen! You can hear the clocks ticking.
Your death approaches by his hand.


An oar over my shoulder, I walked from the woods.
A porcupine scolded from the fork of a tree,
A horned owl, not changed by the century,
Not changed by place or time, looked down.
Bubo maximus, from the work of Linnaeus.


America for me has the pelt of a raccoon,
Its eyes are a raccoon’s black binoculars.
A chipmunk flickers in a litter of dry bark
Where ivy and vines tangle in the red soil
At the roots of an arcade of tulip trees.
America’s wings are the color of a cardinal,
Its beak is half-open and a mockingbird trills
From a leafy bush in the sweat-bath of the air.
Its line is the wavy body of a water moccasin
Crossing a river with a grass-like motion,
A rattlesnake, a rubble of dots and speckles,
Coiling under the bloom of a yucca plant.


America is for me the illustrated version
Of childhood tales about the heart of tanglewood,
Told in the evening to the spinning wheel’s hum.
And a violin, shivvying up a square dance,
Plays the fiddles of Lithuania or Flanders.
My dancing partner’s name is Birute Swenson.
She married a Swede, but was born in Kaunas.
Then from the night window a moth flies in
As big as the joined palms of the hands,
With a hue like the transparency of emeralds.


Why not establish a home in the neon heat
Of Nature? Is it not enough, the labor of autumn,
Of winter and spring and withering summer?
You will hear not one word spoken of the court
of Sigismund Augustus on the banks of the Delaware River.
The Dismissal of the Greek Envoys is not needed.
Herodotus will repose on his shelf, uncut.
And the rose only, a ****** symbol,
Symbol of love and superterrestrial beauty,
Will open a chasm deeper than your knowledge.
About it we find a song in a dream:


Inside the rose
Are houses of gold,
black isobars, streams of cold.
Dawn touches her finger to the edge of the Alps
And evening streams down to the bays of the sea.


If anyone dies inside the rose,
They carry him down the purple-red road
In a procession of clocks all wrapped in folds.
They light up the petals of grottoes with torches.
They bury him there where color begins,
At the source of the sighing,
Inside the rose.


Let names of months mean only what they mean.
Let the Aurora’s cannons be heard in none
Of them, or the tread of young rebels marching.
We might, at best, keep some kind of souvenir,
Preserved like a fan in a garret. Why not
Sit down at a rough country table and compose
An ode in the old manner, as in the old times
Chasing a beetle with the nib of our pen?

as clear as ice, in night or day
reflecting faintly, a soulful reverie
reminding its presence subtly
dewdrops dripping rhythmically

standing in the way, an invisible wall
trying to reach the distant horizon
of which, birds appear and disappear
like speckles of black in orange canvas

eyes—blank and expressionless
mournfully staring in quietude
of the distant mountains and hills
and clouds floating idly

in monotone silence,
a hand reaches out only to be impeded by a cold caress

.              Part One               .

January
I wake up in a hungover haze that seems
Irrevocably unending. All the places I threw up,
That stiffness in my neck, the emptiness in my love;
There is too much to feel
So I feel numbness
And I feel remnants
Of ***** in my throat, only manifested fully
When my friends and I make fortune cookies,
Singing along to songs that we’re hearing for the first time
Amidst the chaos of exploding poinsettia plants and nascent tattoos,
All of which litter your mom’s otherwise bare counter.
I don’t make much mention, in my fortune cookies,
Of that girl who still leaves me hungover;
I fill them instead with cruel jokes
That send me cackling
Until my dehydrated headaches pass into

February
When I’m moonlit tipsy stumbling
Through a campus-wide coniferous forest in Washington State
With two strangers that I soberly think
Might be my future.
We arrive at the clear polluted waters
Of the Puget Sound, our boots all
Sinking into deep-mud as we walk past broken bits of shells
To low tide.
Even as the full moon sinks and I realize
That those two strangers can never be my future
(That Athens, Ohio is my future)
I still walk forward
Into the Puget Sound
Knowing that the water will stay with me
In my lungs, on my skin,
In my mind, and although I don’t tell a single person, I fear,
So rightly,
That the water from the Puget Sound,
Set to perpetually accumulate in my lungs,
Will one day come to drown me.
Even as I cry to my mom in our kitchen,
Relieved from that seemingly endless indecision
I’m not surprised. I’m not surprised
By the choice I’ve made, I’m not surprised
By the fears I still have, all that surprises me
About any of this
Is the immediacy with which
My conclusion’s future culmination begins, as I begin
And continue
While always feeling like I’m concluding,
An infinite

March
In spirals, spirals, spirals, leaving trails
In subconscious sands, someone paints
Blue spirals on my body, and when
I drive back to Lake Erie later,
To retrieve abandoned items and moments,
The road looks much different.
Less swirly, less threatening at first, and when we get there
We eat pineapple/onion pizza on my ****** cottage’s front porch,
Just barely shielded from the snow, and just barely
Shielded from one another. And even those
Slim shields between us begin to fall
When we stand on our melting Lake Erie.
Because the whole world
Calls to us.
The sky screams, the wind explodes,
The thin layer of water above ice rushes
Blissfully, almost hallucinogenically, towards you and towards I
And I am howling
Into the face of it all,
Fearing nothing—not even
The absence of that girl’s palm in mine
Or the water from the Puget Sound
Or the cold of the air
That is tearing at my scalp; that is tearing
At my whole being and

April
Is best described by a rampage
Home from a campsite
That I only ever saw
Drunkenly, in the dark, and under the pressure
Of Allan Ginsberg’s poetry and an ultimately failed ****.
On that rampage we steal tombstones,
We steal memories for ourselves,
And we steal crass glances
With crass jokes that sound sort of
Like the crass fortune cookies which somehow
Never went bad.
Someone notes during that drive
That the air is getting warmer
With regularity now,
And while I somehow can’t bring myself to cry when my cousin is shot to death,
I have to struggle to hold back tears
In our high school’s only classroom when you tell me
That you’re quitting that play we signed up for together.
I guess it’s cuz I’m concerned—
Cuz I’m deeply
Deeply
Deeply concerned—
That it’s a lack of dedication
To me, to what we do together, to everything
That will prevent my rampage from concluding quietly
Amidst the smells of Indian food and the soft light
In your future dorm room
Where I will hug you
And where I

May
Finally
Let all the tears
Flow freely.
I guess it’s the unnecessary intensity
Of this collective celebratory anticipation
That preemptively reveals to me
That the moment of walking across a stage
To receive my high-school diploma
Won’t be quite as transformative as I’d hoped it might be,
And when I make out with that girl who still has me hungover
In the bed at my dad’s house where I lost my virginity
Almost exactly one year prior, I realize that in fact,
I’m still marching the same march, and
Both magic moments of idealized transformation in that bed
Were just as illusory.
Somehow though
Your no longer nascent tattoos have not yet faded
And I can’t help but worry,
(As sweat pours from my forehead and drenches these bedsheets;
As my finger nestles itself tiredly between the folds of her ******)
That I have, and in

June
When all my anticipation is realized,
People clap in the audience despite the fact
That it’s the same stream of sweat
That’s trickling down along my spine
To reach my ***.
I stare into the spotlight
For just a moment, amidst those stale applause
And in my squint, I think briefly
That none of it ******* mattered. I mean,
Despite this perspiration, I’m
Dehydrated. Hungover. I guess
Drinking more alcohol
Isn’t the best way to get over it, but I can think of nothing else,
So even when I acknowledge
That all my attempts have not even been half-assed,
But, like, one-quarter-assed
The only resolve I find is in distraction, in
******* my other ex-girlfriend instead
And not until that distant

July
When I’m ascending through Never Sink,
Does my head finally
Feel clear, yes,
In that glowing blue pit
Of bioluminescence,
I feel the whole world slow to a stop,
Embrace my body with its taproots
And whisper
Playfully and
In a child’s voice,
“You are the whole world” and I know that I
Am the whole world.
I breathe heavily, the only sound for miles around,
And for a moment I feel that the Puget Sound,
Along with everything else that is so ******,
Has fallen away.
For it is not my body
That is climbing on-rope through the stars and galaxies of this great sinkhole
But my mind,
But my soul,
Because Never Sink
Is not a landscape
But a mind-scape,
A soul-scape,
And it is one which is never dark
Thanks to the blue lights of soulful- (not bio-) luminescence—
A glow that is strong enough to see
Finally
A singularity
In the form of an unlocked lock,
Appearing with grace upon my driveway
After I return home
From ******* my other ex-girlfriend
For the last time.
It is only when I stop the car,
Open the door,
And hold that unlocked lock in my hand that I realize the extent to which
I am being
Un-defined.
The ethereal being in Never Sink’s soul-scape,
Alone in the blue grace of the night,
With nothing in my breath.
The thought is terrifying.
So in

August
On the night of my eighteenth birthday,
The girl I’m hung over and I
Send magical, sparkling lanterns into the sky
With a wish so brilliantly bright and simultaneous
That even I am able dismiss the slurring drunk words spoken next to us—
“Here’s hopin’ that you two get married some day”—
As superfluous.

.                Part Two               .

The winds above Lake Erie carry me,
Along with that lantern, into the foreignness
Which Never Sink foreshadowed.
But with the lantern as my very being
And the Puget Sound in my every breath,
Athens, Ohio does not become my soul-scape;
Even its gorgeous autumnal rolling hills
Are just land-scape, and I don’t know
Whether things would have been different
Had I not walked into that stranger’s party
For that terrible beer
On one of my first nights there, but regardless in

September
I walk up endless hills and stairs daily
To get around this hellhole where the only genuine people I’ve yet found
Were prepared to leave from day one, like I
Wasn’t. I wasn’t preparing for that at all, but the Puget Sound,
Lingers like phlegm in my lungs and distorts my regular refrain
Of “I can be happy here, I can be happy here,” keeping it
From ever loosing its hypothetical but eventually forcing it
To loose its conclusion:
I can be…
I can be…
I can be anything that I want to be and I am still here,
Sitting on the top terrace of this weird-assed biker bar with some girl
I just met, with some guy
Who seems cool, but in both cases
I drink one too many Blue Moon’s because I know
That neither of these people
Will ever loose their hypotheticals and will only ever
Loose their conclusions.
Gazing upwards towards the stars in the fading summer,
I try to ignore the physicality of all that’s around me,
But the alcohol churns in my stomach like violent waves, like in

October
How I rock like tides between the shores
Of two continents, of two
Acid trips.
One, on the floor of my dorm room, staring at my ceiling
In an attempt to make patterns
Out of patternless white paint, all the while holding hands
With that guy who seems cool, who has been dancing
In and out of hypothetical.
And the other acid trip with you,
Who somehow in the face of everything
Became one of my only certainties.
You, with whom I stood on Lake Erie
Howling into the wind in an unrealized epiphany.
An epiphany
That is now realized
Because the beers on that top terrace didn’t matter.
The white speckles on my dorm room ceiling during that first acid trip
Didn’t matter.
Hell, that girl I am in love with
Didn’t (doesn’t, can’t, won’t) matter.
What matters to me,
As I’m dressed in drag on Halloween,
Lying in your dorm room that smells of Indian food
With 120 dollars of drug money in my pocket,
Is what’s ultimately present. Right there.
Right here. But then, lying there, the time
Clicks over into

November
And at two in the morning it becomes
One in the morning.
I don’t know which of those hours wasn’t real
But when I hug you and cry in the soft light
It is a moment too brief.
It is a moment from which I am pulled straight
Into a hotel bed halfway to New York City,
Where I lie with that girl who I guess I’m in love with
And I’m kissing her, and I realize
That blue spirals still linger on my body, but when she groans,
So softly
That “we shouldn’t be doing this”
I pause before saying “I know,”
And in that pause, my pixelated, televised, and falsified image of reality
Briefly turns to fuzzy grey static, its finite infinity like the trance
Of meat on a rotisserie; I’m waiting
For this turkey to cook
In my friend’s mom’s home—funny
Because I’m still a vegetarian
Who sometimes likes to think of himself, in quest for definition,
As a vegan, but man
I’m beyond definition, I’m beyond anything,
I’m beyond even my darkest imaginings of myself, so when I get wasted
At a 2am that doesn’t click back on Thanksgiving morning,
I have a slice of that ******* turkey,
Cuz the vegan chili my friend and I made at school was good and all,
But I had to bike through freezing rain to get the peppers
And even though I’m starting to feel
Like I’ve found a few people who I can take in with permanence
Nothing feels more like permanence
Than this home-cooked meal
Of turkey and cranberries and sweet potatoes at a granite counter
Where, on January 1st when the ball dropped,
We all took shots, leaving me drunk, stumbling
And eventually
Hungover.
And of course in

December
I’m still
Hung over it all.
Part one, part two,
The futility of that division is so obvious now.
It’s the same poem, same sentence,
And when two not-so-new-anymore friends and I sit on a rooftop in Athens
With a bunch of still so-new I-guess-friends
Right before exam week,
Right before this emotionally excruciating semester comes to a close,
Right before I prepare to head home,
I realize that even though this place
Hasn’t quite become home yet,
My ‘home’ isn’t really at home now either.
I am without a bed in which I feel comfortable,
Without a body next to which my whole life makes sense,
And I am driving to go swing dancing—
An activity I can’t believe I’m still trying to like—
When I finally tell her that I’m in love with her:
Words that don’t matter despite
How much they do. Ultimately,
To me, to her, it’s just
A quick red-light phrase
And this poem is, without too many layers of resonance,
Not even addressed to her,
But to that girl with whom I stood on Lake Erie,
Howling into the wind,
Imagining part two but preparing
For part three, so
With that lantern still floating skyward, “here’s hopin’ that”—
                                         (No. No. No. Start over.)
Here’s hoping that
At midnight
On this New Year’s Eve,
When the ball drops and when we all take shots,
Perhaps around that same granite counter-top,
These clocks
Won’t click back again.
These spirals
Will fade.

When the spit leaves his mouth like acid,
Speckles my face with scars and tears,
Insults are last place in my minds marathon.

The self depreciation is a serrated knife,
Plucking at the strings in my chest.
And with each snap, I am closer to collapsing.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Infinity's Mirror by Nat Lipstadt

Two mirrors, set in opposition observe created notional blending,
a reflecting pool of bonding's of unglued, contrary compositions.
Mirror to mirror, his imagery, fuses to Sylvia's images, hers,
faintly recollected, now living face, face to face, with his past insurrections, alters his future visions.

From cold water lake she's drawn, impaled by refracting regrets,
retrieved, drawing her words upon him, an awakening slap to drink,
beloved, tragic magic, infinitely captive.  But this old man's tiddlywinks, land-locked words, blunted instruments, needy for release & salvation, are neither silvered or exacting, just stains on a dulled, tarnished brass spittoon, except for the brunt'd bunting of lines across his roughened terrain'd face, black and white, pen and ink etched illustration of howling agitation.

His words worn down, hardened, red faced, purloined speckled pellets, damp to roll on down her rutted, almost ancient, tear streak paths, disbelieved superstitions, sacrificed for one of her living morsels of words.

Man, here to her, pledges allegiance, audaciously defiling her poetic sanctity, a visage endless repeated, delivers her shiny poem-poised countenance, even though no forgiveness from time can a mirror afford for either, from her words,  confession born, terrible truths beyond, beyond the finite.

                                                
~~~~~~~­~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Mirror by Sylvia Plath

I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
What ever you see I swallow immediately
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.
I am not cruel, only truthful---
The eye of a little god, four-cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.
Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.

It is
And it's changing
The wind into summer shower
Into mushrooms and birds mouth
From river to the sewer
It is and it's changing
From dark to light to dim with
Speckles of sun born by the
Mirror in you childlike hand
You are catching dust bunnies
Sneezing and laughing
And the dirt could be followed by magic
And the kiss isn't greased by the notion
Of sin and the sin is only a word from the book
Death and insanity
Are frightening and profound
Your world is built from
No buts but ands
And they flow into peace
Just as well as the film of oil
On the ***** puddle
Astonishes you with
An iridescent rainbow
Duality is born by fear
You split and separate so
Caught up in the survival game
To keep that face and partake
Of wealth and fame
Empty is locked in the dungeon
And the words interlock
In plain patterns
Yet alive as they produce sounds
And the smell of tangerines
On a tree by the coast of Sicily
Reminds you of the day
When you could still enjoy
The warmth of sun
It absorbed into its juicy flesh
And there's no need to run
No need to stay
No need to cut off the ties
When life offers you more
And the heat and cold are feelings
That gets names as they replace each other
As they flow unstoppable
Dripping reactions
Burning like acid and smooth like milk
All in one glass
And when you have no thoughts
Ask questions
And when you feel the pain
Stay present and consider humanity

Like the faint speckles of light
piercing through fabrics of black silk
upon the fore of flickering flames
from an ensemble of a thousand tealights

The obscure vast extends beyond our perspective
opening our minds, birthing visual imagery
brought upon by this vivid intimacy
between the light and of the dark

Like ornate embroidery, leisurely sewn
as clouds transform while traversing the temporal expanse
revealing our past through portraits
of familiarities once anew

The romantic serenity politely interrupted
by wisps of wind that softly whisper
feeling their breath; as a caress of silk
delicately brushing against our skin

As the warmth of earth upon which our bodies rest
holds us closely as our souls explore
the everlasting and exclusive wonders
under the night sky

Bear with me, I need to gather up the nerve,
to completely shower you with the love that you deserve.
You're thinking how to best throw the ball into a curve,
and I'm sinking, drowning in the words I still reserve.

We're sailing through the air
like rose petals from your hair,
lining the path to a room we can not enter.
We're beautifully torn
but the petals lack the thorn,
but still they ***** me and I bleed;
beauty claims the role of my tormentor.

Live with me, I'm not sure I can do it on my own,
keep me breathing, if you got an extra lung to loan.
I've been seeing stars and speckles in this twilight zone,
this struggle's repeating, look at how damaged I am,
and how quick I've grown.

We're sailing through the air
like rose petals ripped apart bare,
leading us to a door we could never open.
Our connection was born
but the petals lack the thorn,
the ****** and cuts come from all left unspoken.

The bouquet of your skin has dissolved
and the stems stretch further than we admit.
If nothing is started, it can't be resolved,
and I'm holding baby's breath; my stomach a deep pit.

I'm trying to solve a puzzle of invisibility
but my hands are broken and I lack the ability,
to decipher if the hues of grass in the pieces change shade,
if there's a side that's greener or just shadows cast on each blade.

We're sailing through the air
like rose petals without a care,
leading us into a trap we can't escape.
I tried my best to warn
that the petals still had a thorn,
it just seems now that it's a different shape.

I own an ugly sweater
It has tatters and tears
Misshapen patterns
And holes everywhere

From the missing tag
That’s been savagely clawed and cut out
Why companies make them so scratchy
I have yet to find out.

Cheese grader sized holes
From where hungry moths attacked
For their personal enjoyment
Or a midnight snack.

A perfectly good sweater
And being prone to sharp corners
Don’t pair well together
Just ask my unraveling thread
That’s been caught onto edges
And hideously snagged.

It’s humorously sad
Go ahead, you can laugh
Your sweater is next
The moths are coming
I promise you that.

The bottom frays like a hippy
I would say it looks cool
But that style died in the seventies
Just wait, that that trend will recycle
I’m not in denial.

The fabric and material
What’s left of it
Is a delicate cashmere…

Alright fine, it’s a scratchy wool
Ancient, archaic, and feels like Velcro.

Sometimes leaves cling
So I look like a tree
The optimistic side of me
Just says nature loves me.

But I could do without the bees
Ohh so many stings…

The insides are bumpy
From being cleaned on high heat
Now my sweater suffers from dwarfism
It’s challenged vertically.

The wrists are stretched out
From being rolled up and down
Permanently smells like dirt or meat
Depending on my activity
Or what I had to eat.

Blackened mascara speckles the sleeve
From dramatic tears
Or being too lazy to grab a tissue
As if my sweater doesn’t have enough issues
I drag in my problems
My pendulum swinging emotions
If my sweater were human
I swear, it would leave me.

It’s been thrown on the floor
Tossed in the back of my car
Tied around my waist
And forgotten in stores
I always say sorry
I hope it forgives me.

From the sleeves that cradles sneezes
Hugs are completed
Sharing germs or sharing love
All becomes one experience.
You’re welcome.

The front like a canvas
A Jackson ******* painting
Ubiquitous splatters of coffee stains.

Missing sips that dripped off my lips
From being scolding hot
Or scarce concentration
But nine times out of ten
It’s my deficient attention.

Looking like it’s been through hell
And no denying it has.
Sure, I could donate this human sized rag
But they wouldn’t know the story behind
Each stain and frayed thread.

They would see the sweater as just ugly
Dismiss there was even a journey
They wouldn’t ask
The why’s or how’s it came to be.

This sweater is not just fabric
It’s a memory
An extension of me.
…
..
.
But seriously,
I should get this dry-cleaned
It’s disgusting.

But I love it.

The shells lined up nicely.
"At attention," the conch yelled.
He was curled black, with boiled blue spikes.
And so they stayed, in a perfect line against the wall,
until the wave,
washing ashore, it plucked three.
One was an abalone,
almost full grown,
with five holes descending down its left side.
A sheen of gold and silver out,
murky indigo and forest green in.
He lost grip first,
and was pulled into an incoming breaker.
The second was a conch.
Chocolate and vanilla swirls coated the outer layers
leading in to slight pink.
Her name was Neapolitan.
She was once an adult shell of the queen conch,
washed ashore and set into a line by small hands,
that were gentle and soft.
Zander
A soft voice called.
Inhaled by the mouth of the ocean,
exhaled into a bout of seaweed.  
She was lost.
The last,
was a cowry shell.
He was old,
or at least he imagined so.
This was not the first time he had washed ashore,
nor had he figured, would it be the last.
His back was ivory white
with brown speckles,
in such a pattern
that he imagined himself to be, at times, a turtle.
He had first felt and then saw reflections of himself in sea glass. He was gathered in a bucket and rubbed so that his design reverberated until he felt, every shimmer of himself.
Knowing not what lay ahead,
but understanding,
he held no grip and went where the ocean led.
It's getting dark Zander.
The others gasped,
in horror their screams rasped.
"Save us. Plea...se he...l...p."
As another wave crashed into the wall and stole four more,
again,
till all were cast away from the wall
to be laden across the expanse of sand.

Soft brown eyes stared,
at the empty holes,
where shells had been placed,
as decorations to a most deserving sand castle.
Turrets and towers,
hard packed by child hands,
with a red flag flapping to the sea breeze.
A crude skull was drawn,
for it was a pirate fascination that encapsulated this year.
He had spent hours seeking and finding,
the perfect art,
to be the binding,
to hold his wall against all defense,
but all had fallen in the first wave of battle.
"Oh well," he muttered.
He would try again tomorrow.

It would be when the air would feel like silk or like the hues were almost brighter.
It was when the hills felt lower and the low felt lighter.
In the speckles of day when I would sing to the tune of another’s brass,
Somehow my daydreams would still hold a conversation with you.
You’d saunter in with kindness and class;
The kind of attitude that sometimes I wish I had.
Your tone and diction were hard to imagine,
They lacked the luster and the passion.
They were all the corridors to every phrase.
They were all the oddities I wanted to praise.
I can feel the wax melt from my wings with just the thought of knowing you in abundance.
You are a Sun to my sand with a depth I should never learn.
You’re a distance that feels relaxed and at a level I could never convince.
At your hand would I bloom into my hyacinth petals or would my roots begin to rot?
Would I compliment your warmth by offering a place to rest or would my minerals begin to harden into a glass for my next cathedral?
It’s necessity the keeps the unknown locked in a mental maze that which I have mending to wrought.
Still, my stargazing will end when I fall.
Those feathers left to remind me of how little about you I’ve ever actually known;
And yet how bittersweet to imagine having ever flown.

There was once an
Angel
A young one
wings as white as snow
Smile as bright as day
Cheery
Optimistic
Happy go lucky
Bringing warmth all around

As she grew up
Her wings began to get darker.
First it was a few black speckles
Starting from the very tips
Through many storms
She went
The smile quivers
Shakes them wings
But they stay

She grew a bit more
The cherubic round face
Growing longer
The black speckles now covering half
Like a shadow
She fought
Blood flew
Her own and others
It soon didn't make a difference

She grew up
Tall and lanky
Her wings are now black
Like a raven's
Her eyes were guarded
The bright spark
Now a hard glitter
She barely smiles anymore

And when she does,
It isn't
The same

Leaving a trail of
Ice
Wherever she goes
An icy fire
Burning within
Keeping her going.

Her Father's old wool jacket,
from Johnson Mills,
in creamy white,
dark forest green,
golden amber,
in a lovely patchwork,

A soft dark winter tuke on her head,
that dark green in the background,
with rusty speckles on her cheeks,

Wet snow falls silent,
the sky is a crisp Winter blue,
the air is cold and clear,
& intoxicatingly clean,

As she breathes life in and out,
then,
looking down at her black Sorel boots
and her worn black denim jeans,
a nice old holey wool sweater,
and a maul,

A **** lumberjack?
Maybe...

Dressed to hack the wood,
the plumber thinks so,
he stops by,
a friend of hers,
sorta,

Huh?

Not invited,
but no one is around here,
we all do it,
so he helps too,

Hey I'll make lunch,
harmless flirting,
I suppose,

Because,
wood warms you 3 times they say,

Once to chop it,
two to stack it RIGHT,
three to bring it in & burn it,

But if you count the starting of the,
cantankerous chainsaw & the guy,
helping you,

And you hafta arrange & rearrange, everything,
cleaning the flue and chimney,
I'd say a few more than that,
& don't ferget to pay the man,
the cantankerous one,

Yeah he got lunch too,
and about them ashes,
could be pretty hot,
take 'em out regular,
that stove cranking too,
OUCH,

She ends up gets burned,
a few times each year,

Taday,
she's on step too,
as she picks up the heavy maul,
not to heavy for this gal,
all the way back,
watch yourself,

As a neighbor winches,
a woman chopping wood?

Yup.
That's right,
a way of life,
for her,
always has been,
poised and ready,
swing and smack,
if you hit it right,
you hear a crack,

Just like a baseball bat,
hitting a homer,

Big pieces,
are made more manageable,
when you don't try to control the force,
when you let the sharpened maul,

Do all the work,
for you.
Cherie Nolan © 2016

Golden speckles that capture Sun’s graceful face;
autumnal blue, like mist settled on soft silk -
a mystic painter’s mixed colour palette!

Colourful dream floating on the breeze,
dancing as it flits through the flowers,
cosmic rhythm in every flutter,
the Universe in a butterfly.

Is it real, or
is it a delicate dream flowing to me
from a mysterious planet?

Because I wanted to be the shade of lace
that hugged at my arcs and ridges,
blushing deeper as you peeled it away
from my skin.

Maroon,
because it painted the
the constellation,carefully planted
down
my
spine

and coloured the speckles of tiny stars,
huddling beneath the fortress of my jaw,
while the others were lost,
but cradled safely
in the dimple of my collar bones.

The sky resembles the robin's eggshells
                                                      scattered across the ground,

a blue so seemingly infinite                     yet fragile,
cracks running between understanding and madness

       complementing each other

as divine truths in their own right
to conquer my mind,
to unhinge the doors,
making it unnecessary to pick rusted locks

      letting thoughts fly free,
                                       releasing love out into the horizon.

If frozen within caged snapshots of mildewed expectations,
      it will surely die,
                 but even so,
  I was willing to strangle it by holding on too tightly.

    
    Until I saw the sky and eggshells today


      Peppered clouds reflected on the water,
                                            paralleling speckles on the eggshells,
                                    remind me of the freckles on your face.

  We need to be wide-open-free,
                                                we need to fly,
         without focusing too ******* shells of yesterdays.

We need to unclench our fists,
unclench our tongues,
explore the vast blue peppered sky
                                                
                                                      on wings of letting go....

so that we can once again feel with purity,      
so that we can hold each other ever closer.







05.24.12

If a pen could relay all my thoughts
All those tiny speckles and threads that get often lost
My eye would like to describe the tinest details
And my hand would want to draw all its artistic tales

If my heart could realy what it thinks
All those flutters, its strongest strings
My beats would tell those feelings,to share
And my touch would make the world watch and stare.

I love the smell of your skin
When I wake at 2.40 am
Your sleepy face unaware of my eyes
Sinking slowly in

The way you look when you wake
Momentarily all dazed and confused
I hold you tight against my chest
And hope that I don't loose

The speckles of brown dots
Smothering your face
Creeping around your skin
I trace each freckle very carefully
And beam a secret grin.

*A.R

There was a child went forth everyday;
And the first object she look’d upon, that object she became;
And that object became part of her for the day, or a certain part of
The day, or for many stretching cycles of years.

The dew laden grass became part of this child
And the fresh daisies and lightly scented lilacs and
the song of the morning sparrow,
And the crisp air, the mud puddles and the tall, tall tress that rained water droplets, when the wind passed,
And the magic world within the reeds, waiting for a curious someone to discover all the twists and turns and available hiding spaces.
And the yellow skunk cabbage and weeping willows, with their gracious locks—all became part of her

The golden grassy haze became part of her,
And the anthills poking up from the red Earth,
And the shaded creek, loosely singing.
And the freshly picked strawberries, dirtying any white shirt.
And the content busker sharing his music and stuttering his words, in a most peculiar manner,
And the passing grandmother walking hand in hand with her granddaughter
And the Jamaican man kissing his pipe and the funny odor that followed
And the old Italians bantering about soccer outside small cafes and coffee shops, that dotted the street like lanterns on a string
And all the changes of city and country, wherever she went

Her own parents,
He that had father’d her, and she that had conceiv’d her in her womb, and birth’d her,
They gave this child more of themselves than that;
They gave her afterward every day—they became part of her.

Her mother’s care-free ringlets, falling past her breast, her open hands and thin arms hidden behind an over sized shirt, the strength in her voice,
And the youthful, naive nature woven into her giggles.
The father, klutzy and drunk, the sudden change from a hearty laugh to an unsettling yell, the large hands and the lost feeling that showed through the anger. The confusing elixir of love and hate.
The landing in the stairwell, the black dial phone, the old tarnished green oven, the stapled on carpet, the Rug rats pillow cases and the laughter so good it hurt.
Never ending love—the difference in words and the actual inner emotion felt--wondering if dreams are reality--and if perhaps the real world and all its conundrums is a carefully devised skit.  
Who decides a mirage is an illusion, is it the same inhabitants who crowd the streets?
Do the rushing people, passed from one generation to the next, think the same thoughts, do they laugh at themselves or the passed on jokes that follow their age group, and are the sparks of people just mirages themselves?
Men and women crowding fast in the streets—if they are not flashes and specks, what are they?
The bakery windows, row in row, the fake cake in the window, the names of the streets and the differing decals hanging from car's indoor mirrors.
People being within the cars zooming by on the highway, the jingle of the Popsicle truck and the sticky hands following. The feeling of trying to wipe away the stickiness on tall grass, walking across the peeling yellow paint of the highway divider, left to the side of some lonesome road---the wooden train set and the carefully maneuvered tracks,

the orange morning sun, the rising steam from plants and houses, the comforting sleepiness cast over the whole town, settling upon rooftops and curling into closed arms, The mid-day beaming street, seen from the city bus window,
The fresh ocean and the old ferry boat, the smell of oatmeal and scrambled eggs and over buttered white toast. The balance between the clouds and sky, sharing the space, the dry feeling gathering around the eyes, the white waves forming from the ferry boats side, the gentle rocking from side to side,
The cold feeling the window casts as the face, leaning against it, gently surrenders sleep to the lulling gesture—knowing the world is round by glimpsing upon the horizons edge, the thought of explorers who sailed the same sea only years and years ago.
The innocence beaming down from the heavens and leaving speckles of white on the ocean’s surface, the cluster of yellow beaked seagulls greeting the arriving boats, the distinct fragrance of the earth and sea joining together, the salty barnacles and shore mud, the leaning  grass with  crusty sand clinging to its base.
These became part of that child who went forth every day, and who now goes, and will go forth every day.

You hate me. I know you hate me.

You tried for so long to forget me...

But you loved me. I know you still love me,

You tried for so long to reach and to hold me...  



I see in your freckles

A dead sun dust speckles

Imprinted on your skin

Like distant galaxies

with nothing in between.  

The more I've looked

The less I've seen.  



The glow in your eyes

Fueled by stars and lies

Lit by endless skies,

Is waiting to reborn

From this silent storm.

The more I look the deeper I go

The more I find the less I know  



I read on your lips

All that I've missed

The secret of bliss.

Waiting to be told

In this endless cold

Dwells the curse of the gold.

The more i hear

The less i fear

For the end is near.  



When i feel your touch

Nothing seems to much

The despair is gone

All shivers to the bone

Are waiting for the dawn.

The more i wait

My selfish own

Will turn your heart

Into a stone.

    

And all I've become

Are speckles of a dead sun

Imprinted on your skin.

Whispers denied by a silent scream

Waiting for a dawn

Which will never come

For the end has already begun.

And all you can do now is run

Our future is gone... Please run.

I used to like you a lot.
i don’t know what ******* happened.
we’re children and you pushed me off the swings,
off the playground,
out of the park.
And now my best friend only wants
me for what i can say about you,
you sea urchin.
bouquet of prickling spikes
piercing my jagged rib bones.
rip through me,
feasting scoundrel,
you *****, you fox.
you viper.

wipe her from my soggy slate.
dinner plate? it’s empty.
everyone is the garbage disposal,
grinding my teaspoons of self-worth
into dusty pieces. i am the garbage.

and i never pegged you as one
to leave me in a  
dark parking lot,
shadows curling their bony fingers
around my purple lungs,
but she found you making love to
him in the same car we sat.
the bull frogs saw what you did.

i’m warning you to stop pretending
like you’re still a fawn.
a doe-like female.
i can see through the speckles
on your face
and your mixed tapes.

i don’t have heart left for you,
you ******.
kneel in front of his  knobby
knees. beg,  
*****.
muck him up and then
lick him clean,
feline.
slink past me in the night,
in the broad daylight.
you are not a spy
i can see your arteries.

wound so tightly around a pinky
tangled in promises
bittersweet commitment
mesmerized by dusty pink skies
glistening speckles in his eyes
banished from the garden of eden-
ever after
from just a taste of longing

I thirst to be a water droplet

dancing on your skin
to kiss across your face
as I run down your jaw and chin
in the shower, we'd embrace

starting at your crest
I'd drip through your hair
and play along your chest
always handle you with care

meet you at your waist
I've fallen for you hard
what I'd give for just a taste
of speckles or skin, scarred

deeper yet I'd dive
just one lick with a smile
to be with you, I would strive
I'll spend thirty years, a bare while

when with you, time loses meaning
floating weightless in your ocean
the feeling of our hearts convening
connected in effortless slow-motion

and even if I reach the lake bottom
and even through hardships out of the blue
and even when my summer turns to autumn
more than anything, I long to be with you

Shimmering
Disillusion
in the darkness.

Dancing
Bright lights
Cast tiny speckles
of colour.

Rain drops
on glass panes
Are,
briefly,
Illuminated.

Dew-dropped night
stands
ever-hushed and empty.

Heavy clouds
weigh on sky, in
Anticipation.

Two thousand people sleep
And only one
Watches the lamplight.

I always get up early. Early, early, early and it’s Saturday morning. So I scooted over to “Donut Crazy” and got myself 12 sugar donuts (and a selection of treats for my suitemates - I’m NOT suicidal.)

At 8am, I’m in the suite common area, on the couch, binging “Ladybug and Cat Noir” on my iPad and I realize that Leong, one of my suitemates, is sipping her coffee and staring at me like I’m a bad pet. I look around to find myself sitting in a shower of confectioners’ sugar speckles.

“In my defense, I was left unsupervised.” I disclaim.

ebony flowing from your scalp
like a river of never-ending night
a rocky river bed staring at me
with water verdant and cool
a curvaceous figure draped in ivory
with gentle speckles dusted across your cheeks
rose petals part while you speak
words leaving them like music

Naturally her hair is always up
when she catches you sneaking a glance
she pulls out her hair tie with a tug
her hair falls all over her back and chest
framing her tanned face

her hair is deep chestnut brown with accents of caramel
but when she moves into the sunlight it glimmers a gentle auburn
her eyes glisten curious from the attention she gets
the bright green orbs with speckles and a ring of hazel brown
seem to get bigger as she stares back

her curls bounce as she completely turns to you
her face glowing with a perfect contentment
her cheeks flustered with a light pink blush
and her lips a faded red except the cherry red spot
where she keeps on biting her lip

as you savor her every bit
the long jet black lashes
her playful smile
you realize she already turned around

stealing your chance to take in her allure
her curls calmly rest on her back
oblivious to her enchantment of you