You are the primary colors in their purest form. The following argument explains why:

Red
People tend to associate red with danger,
but you are not a warning sign.
You represent the russet in a robin's
breast feathers, the imaginative crimson passion
only humans can produce. Constantly moving,
thriving, your brain is multiple shades
of garnet gems - I can feel it in your skin
when I finally get to massage your heated veins.
Your flaming vermilion soul is
the only one to match my own.

Blue
You are the calmest turquoise ocean, yet
you pulsate with every breath.
There are so many varieties of blue
found in nature, and I can hear all of them
when your fingers tap an instrument.
Your music turns broken energy into
waves and waves and a soft, steady breeze.
I will take a dip into your teal silk arms and
stay for eternity. Sapphire isn't a way to the blues;
it's a realistic path to tranquility and the deepest skylines.

Yellow
You are golden beyond all other beings.
The warmth of your smile, your
soft eyes are a glowing reminder
of your effervescence. There's a child-like
wanderer in your heart that's seeking ecstasy
and the opportunity to bring us absolute bliss.
This is the part of you that makes you part of everything.
You are daises and sunshine. You are in
my favorite yarn and the amber streak
on an otherwise empty canvas.

Overall
You are a prism of idealistic intensities,
saturation and pigments
that are lost on the unexceptional.
Your arc of varied hues gleam beyond what a
human should be capable of mastering.

You are incredible illumination at its finest.

I want to be delicate
Like sewing needles
On stilts
Held together
By baby pink yarn
I want my clothes
To graze my bones
Like a new couple holding hands
At the end of freshman year
I want my shoes to look big
On my bamboo ankles
Hollow like a flute
Pretty and silver
Clinking and plinking along
My footsteps will leave glitter in their wake

when the yarn of rain weaves a carpet on grass blades
the loudy birds move for shelter
in pages of a book skipped to the ****** of night
in hope to start afresh with another journey

silently as spirits hum through my lips
and unspoken words wait to be heard
the stars spring a mesh of destiny
*fighting with demon clouds

The Path up and down is one and the same.
~Heraclitus~*

Through dusty books,
pages as brittle as peanut candy,
I search for wisdom
among the Greeks;
question the meaning of life.

On distant shelves,
among cobwebs and boewevils,
fiery sagas shadow
the lives of lustful Gods,
tribulations of mortals
and destructions of nations
once as powerful as the Gods
they worshiped.

I diligently catalogue:
fill page after page
with lore and legend,
trace paths of ancient ones ~
their bones telling tales~
until I realize nothing has changed.

I too spin tales,
yarn of sagas rich as the Greeks,
worship Gods and muses,
like my own broken-spirited muse,
a Simberg angel.

Someday, I will join weavers of old,
and searchers of knowledge
will dust away webs of my tales
and realize that I am but one,
and yet, the same.

I am a single point
I am a hole between
the threads of a quilt
these strings amongst me
are my thoughts intertwined
with the words of others wound
around countless other spaces,
little voids filled with warmth of
fuzzy yarn spun from the
tongues of old
days past
Oh, how this fabric
so filled with holes
keeps me from trembling

Life is a big ball of yarn.
Each passing second being
braided into the past,
the present being set in
stone and the future
keeps changing.

I feel my body turning into
dust. Instead of just
floating in the life I've
been given, the yarn
pulls strands of my hair,
pulls dead skin off my
pillow. It pulls my tears
and drops of blood away.
It moves bits and pieces
of me into history.
I feel myself decaying.

They no longer know
who I am. I feel
like saying, "People change
when they know they're
dying."

The world becomes black
and white and clouds
are shadows. Lights become
the sun and the sun
is just another
rotting planet.
    The world is decaying.
    Trees all dead, leaning with
    leaves made of dead skin.
    All the yellow dandelions
    higher than the stoner downstairs.
    The white weeds don't have
    seeds. Just acid leaking
    out of them and the
    smoke we breath out reeks
    of lost hope and dead
    promises.

Do not ask me why
I reply so slowly.
It's because honestly
nobody speaks loudly
enough for me to hear
over the screaming
of people drowning in my
stomach acid.

    I can see his shadow
even in the dark.
The demon not with
horns or fangs.
No tail, his reflection
shows and pictures can
be taken.
    Just another twisted
    thought inside my mind.

I feel his arsenic breath
get closer with each passing
day.
    He will not leave me
alone until he can tie my
phalanges together. Have
a crown of my broken
bones to show that he is
the king of my skeleton.

    I feel him inside my
skin crawling, faster than
my slowing heart beat. He
survives in my battery
acid blood. He thrives
off my scorched insides.
You see hell is his home.
He's at peace with death.
    His mind is twisted more
than my body when
    he ****** me.

He demanded a queen but
when he got a servant
he took advantage of my
calloused hands and bruised
mind.
    You see this man
    was no king.
    Just a black market
    dealer
      who didn't know how
      to keep his hands off
      of the merchandise.

   He never had any customers
   but broken girls.
   So when I was whole
   he was intrigued.
     I was a box
     he took everything out.
     Broke me down,
     laughed as the trashman
     took me to next town.

She was there when
I first rode a two wheeler
All by myself
She was the one who
Grabbed the back of the seat and gently pushed me along
Helping me to stay balanced
Letting me go at the perfect moment
Hugging me
Telling me how proud she was
When I finally got it

She was there when
I mastered the chain stitch
She taught me how
She encouraged me when
I got frusterated
And threw the needle and yarn down in disgust and defeat
She's the one who said
You can do it
Keep trying

She was there when
I landed my first backside boardslide
She had him build the ramp and rail
For me
So I could practice
And get better
She clapped when
I did it
She smiled and said
I knew you could

She was there when
I was first really introduced to Christianity
She told me about God
His awesome power
His amazing grace
She answered my questions
Pushed me to
Look closer
Delve deeper

But
She was also there when
I was hurt
Beyond any comprehensibly reason
She was the grand master of my pain
Directing the show with
Biting words and
Slicing actions
She was the one who
Made the demands
She was the one who sat and watched
Hand on my thigh
Stroking
As he whipped his ***** against the side of my face
As he licked places that should not be licked
She was the one who
Smacked
And yelled
And kissed
And touched

Yes
She did all these things
And this,
This is why
My heart overflows with conflict
And nothing,
Not a single thing
Makes any sense
I feel a strange sense of attachment and care
But in the same moment I am gripped with boiling hatred
My brain is twisted into
A spiraled mess of indecision
And I just want
Out
To not feel sick
But
Normal
To know that what I feel is true
And right

But I can't
And I don't

~~
*When I saw grandma was spinning yarn at moon
Mother's lullaby was just a fairytale
The measure would not have to weigh the legs
Flew colorful kites in the sky
Had a chat with friends at idle hours
The dreams came but never went with wind
We, all friends were wandering in a fairyland
The words of the poem as the rain came
She loved to hear the poems
When romance flowed with blood
Air, flowers said Spring
When in a lazy Summer afternoon  
She stood at my door
Sitting beside me
Sang a song of future
Lost ourselves
When time moved in the forth dimension  
You and me
Sometimes Sunshine,
Sometimes Rain
Horizon spoke with Rainbows
Then dreams played with my blue Sky
And I was bright as the Evening Star
 ~~
@ Musfiq us shaleheen

I don't remember what he looks like.

I am told that I carry much of him in myself, with my blonde hair that curls around my shoulders, foreign green eyes, and a smile that could never belong to my mother. These are all his traits. Everywhere I go I carry a piece of him inside of myself, in everything from my complexion to my complexities.

My DNA is 50% monsters in the closet.

I wonder if that's why I always have an urge to punch the mirror.


I barely remember his name.

I am told that when his mother asked my name, she cried. She cried as she was told that there would be no evidence of him there.

I wonder if my mother knew even then.


I don't remember the day he left.

I was too young to understand why this goodbye would be any different than the others.

I am told that my mild mannered brother, all toothy grins and silly jokes, curled his hands into two identical fists and growled, "I am more to her than he will ever be"

I wonder if he ever resented me for forcing him to become a man at 14 years old.


I remember a doll.

A soft rag doll with yellow yarn curls and dimples, nearly identical to my own.

I am told that he gave it to me.

I wonder if he noticed the resemblance.

I wonder if he ever noticed me at all.


I remember a phone call.

The way my mother's hands shook. and her words followed suit.

I was told that he wanted to see me, nearly ten years after he left.

I wanted to tell him that once you've ripped someone's still beating heart out of their chest and devoured it whole, it was bad table manners to ask for seconds.

I wonder if my rejection even bothered him.


I don't remember a father.

I don't think I ever had one.

We were lambs
When first we met,
Rubbing noses,
Getting wet.
We gambolled
In the meadow,
Lost our balance
On new legs,
Found our footing,
Earned our *****.
Our future loomed
Before us.
We grazed on
The greenest farms,
Wove our way
Like knitting yarn.
But you,
Dear ewe,
You grew your horns.

My anger is showing.

The capitol is full
Of treason and misogyny.

Pressure is building.
Boiling hot lava
Could erupt.

And I'm just over here
Making lard and yarn.
Not necessarily in that order.

I guess it is a good thing
That i wasn't made
winged and fire-breathing.

Just trying really hard
Not to destroy
Anything
In my path.

My life, she said, is so akin
To a twisted, knotted piece of yarn
Tied around an unknown object
Hanging from a broken limb
Blown by whirling, dusty wind
That never ever makes a sound.
                           ljm

When the first sweet scent of summertime,
sifted through the sea-salt scented air,
so many things and everything
were bright, light and happy-go-fair,
the Summer Life with you was finally here.

As soon as our bare feet hit the wood bridge,
running from the road up over the dunes,
great grey seagulls squawked, dove and swoon,
we held hands together, one and one
made two,
dash-dancing across the shiny sand with you,
dressed and undressed in our Summer Life moods.

Colours like pinwheels spun like yarn,
flashed and clashed bright orange to blue,
you danced and giggled like a loon,
pulled me up and so close, so close
to you,
that I had to dance, I had to dance like a loon,
I just had to laugh and dance and laugh along with you.

How we played, we frolicked beneath the beachy sun,
belly-surfed upon the waves just for funny fun,
flicked flecks of sand from our sticky picnic lunch,
shared swigs from a big blue thermos jug
of fruity-fruit yummy punch,
sharing and caring beneath the Summer Life's sun.

By evening-tide the air grew cool,
you called me 'lover,' I called you 'fool'
-with a big ol' blanket draped over our shoulders,
we kissed and cuddled, growing much bolder,
falling flat back
upon the mighty mattress of sand,
feeling the mists of the waves licking our hands,
as the Man-In-The-Moon arose and shone,
to dance and laugh with us on the Summer Life's throne.

There are clouds hanging around my head
And there is skin capturing my skull. I am boxed in. I can’t hear what you say when you speak.
This is not a problem when you have your hat with the earmuffs on and are momentarily deaf. When you have your hat on neither of us can hear.
Your hat has a pattern on it that looks like your skull
And so when you have it on you are like a deaf half-skeleton. This is when I feel the most need for lip-language, Morse code, when I want to drum my messages out on your skin. I say more when I lock my brain out of my skull and leave my body to its own devices.
You feel the bumps of earth trying to poke through the street
I know this because you had your earmuff hat on again this morning when you went walking outside
But even with your hearing gone, the street spoke to you, in bumps and ridges and edges and curbs and paint. You spoke its language back to it, feedback through
The soles of your feet.
You may be a little scraped up but you know the asphalt
Like a closed loop, like Saturn’s rings
Like the grooves of your favorite record.
I’ve seen you when you sleep, floating two inches above your covers. Your skin becomes yarn and it unravels, it waves, it ties itself around your ceiling fan.
Multi-colored yarn that twists and writhes and slides and knots itself until
The wavelength steadies and you are a solid telephone-line-stretch of yarn
Reaching straight across town.
I touch my end of the yarn and I whisper to the other end. Then I sit in the dark humid air.
I sit and I wait for the response.
This is when the clouds lift.
When the skin around my skull evaporates and I am left bare bones, unboxed.
When this happens
I hear the sound of Earth’s rotation
I hear your telephone-wire skin
I hear the closed loop
I hear Saturn’s rings
I hear the grooves of your favorite record
I hear the bumps in the asphalt.
I hear it all.
I am begging you to break your silence.

The mind creates a world in which it controls what is right and what is wrong.
It executes the punishments and doles them out freely.
It refuses to acknowledge the unraveling of itself.
Like yarn, threading throughout itself in a tangled mess.
Knotted up until no longer light can be seen.
It sits behind a nest of cotton.

Bear in mind there is nothing that can usurp it from its throne.
The mind heeds no rules or regulations and without hesitation it will turn the most heinous of realities into a commonplace find.
There is nothing like that which can make light out of fog and spread plagued whispers throughout its own successes.
Tirelessly it works to reach a state at which it must work no longer.
A state at which it can finally and utterly be recompensed with what it has decided it needs.

There is no such state.

What soothes the tattered remains and gives it peace?

You came riding
the last wave of summer breeze
You stay enduring
the blast of winter freeze

I see in your eyes
bright spray scouring
afternoon sands dancing
straw hat roaming
cobblestones glowing
golden dusts filling air
tropical breath teasing hair

I feel on your lips
fruit punch spilling
pool pub splashing
yarn arbor wrapping
blushed evening
coconut trees clipping shades
aged seawalls humming dreams

So long, scrolls, taps and dots
for the rest of my days
my feet beside hers
treading sapphire waves

A woman at the market today
had obsidian eyes that tilted like
orbits grappled and shook
by a toothleth toddler.

I dropped an orange,
imagining the spritz coming
from the eye and into my mouth,
and for a moment of a moment the
rubber floor nudged at my heels with a sneer.

*** herself not once touched me,
nor lured her invisible tongue
across my intestines, yarn for
barbed wire.

She stood at the register
with a green (I'd like to call ribboned)
apron and ironed, white shirt,
smiled at me when I was
fumbling for 2 quarters--

worth a cent more for my time
when I stumbled away.

In texts so normal we find
Unraveled yarns they left behind
To swallow a dry pill that bruises a dream
It tends to be the easiest of things

I’ve left my yarn in tranquil holes
Dug so deep and filled with snow
Underneath lie the bodies of old
I tell myself
Who could have known?

Mended with gauze and fixed with scraps
The vessel caves in and the flies come back
The whither and tremble of a soft human hand
Which quivers so lightly through weakened grasps

I ask this old woman now barely stable
Did your yarn precede the marvel
Of a young child, bold and able?
Did it graze him and make him wiser?
Powdered bone you hid under covers

How the leaves and meadows of your memories
Reach for both ankles, pushing you gently
Towards a beckoning boney finger that urges you closer
Will such saccharine visions bury six feet under?
So it goes

The yarns unravel now, as they always have  
From birth to the backwards prance of descent
She holds me, whispering me her loves, her life
And my tears unfurl with hers as I ache, hearing such words
Who could have known?

Yarn Demons, mushy few
Do not weep for a distant sun;
your time will find a new magazine.
The coronation revealed, regarded as victory,
We found only cabbage

Heirlooms

Jun 2017

One day, parkouring through my uncles two story apartment,

I was drawn naturally to his desktop computer

upon which I found his OkCupid Dating profile.

I don't remember his username, Or anything about the site really,

But I remember the head-shot of a beautiful woman

framed above the desk

the sterile grey Rubbermaid totes behind me like caskets, 

How they made even the hardwood floors

look like they were holding in the dead.

For my Grandmothers birthday

my family gathered at Captain Newicks

her favorite seafood restaurant.

My uncle flirted with the waitress.

I don't think I've ever gone to a restaurant with my uncle where he

didn't flirt with the waitress.

Captain Newicks went out of business shortly after that dinner

followed shortly by my grandmothers life.

the relationship between my uncle and that waitress expired well

before both my Grandmother or Captain Newicks.

I remember asking my grandmother about my Uncle.

Tarots Fool would have predicted

my grandmothers eyelids

a silent prayer before her words.

He had two children by his first wife,

keeps a portrait of her above his desk.

She was a blessing on the family

Selfless amd loved by every one.

She took her own life

Spread her wings to break free from the cage He kept her locked in.

He buried his heart in her casket,

motorcycles, empty bottles

had a third child by a second wife

who buried her heart in drugs and strangers.

Amanda was 6 years old when her mother died.

my uncles wife. Her brother josh was 3

when she died my uncle wanted to put them both up for adoption

he didn't.

Their mother died on the 20th of September

a week after her 25th birthday.

their mother once bought a bunch of carnations

with a dead rose in the middle

and said "it looks like I'm dead".

she took a bottle of pills before going to a chinese restaurant

went out as a family

and collapsed at the table.

she was rushed to the hospital

she didn't make it.

their mother wasn't happy

her and my uncle were getting divorced at the time

lived in the same house that I grew up in.

when my uncle told the kids mommy wasn't coming home

my mother was 17 

and there to see all of it.

When my mother was 17 

she had to watch her baby cousins be told their mother had died.

When my grandmother passed.

grief bounced off of my uncles callouses

ricocheted to my cousins, robbed 

twice now of a selfless mother.

The tragedies in my family

have always enthralled me.

like shakespeare sonnets

I breath them into my faithless nights

tap an extra dream-catcher on my bedpost

in space of a prayer.

When The hearth-fire of our family dimmed 

a tealight in my grandmothers eyes.

grayed, Glossed.

she could no longer crochet 

one big dysfunctional quilt, 

together from our families yarn.

without her needle, 

I was determined to watch how our life spun forward.

The next time I saw my uncle,

He offered me a job.

Thick mosquito blinded us as we carried our sweat 

with Rubbermaid totes into a blue two story home 

deep in the evergreen thickets of Maine.

a tall white fan rotated slowly back and fourth 

Cooling the wet patches on our T-shirts while my Uncle 

flirted with the landlord

I still remember when my uncle tossed me the truck keys

the look of terror I gave him

How easy it was for him to trust

I guess when your heart is buried in a casket 

you stop worrying who has your keys.

It makes me remember

when my daughter asked for my keys 

I would sit her in the drivers seat

watch her pretend to drive.

I loved imagining her free

living how she wanted.

I still wouldn't give her my keys.

she would turn my car into a casket.

It makes me remember

when that little girls mother asked me to drive

My words spun portcullises

prison bars forged in anxiety

scaffolding out of latex secrets

Glued with siren smiles, pacifier kisses

denying cigarette smoke on her breath

fueling infernos in my head.

when my uncle handed me his keys without hesitation.

my religion was insulted by his tough skin.

I felt his simple kindness 

like a splash of holy water. 

saw in me, the devil 

caging a woman like property

holding her hostage 

out of fear.

And yes 

when She could drive she left me

And yes 

when she left me she took her daughter.

every morning 

cereal bowl of pills, I **** myself

keep a poster of my mothers face 

covered in bruises 

behind the tiny orange bottles 

to remind me why I do it.

wake up twice, 

first as Phoenix, dying

second as a watcher, writer and admirer.

callouses are not to protect us from the outside at all.

Callouses harden our bodies into caskets.

Hold in all our dead.

I am stitched together,
Delicately,
The yarns of long forgotten dreams
Woven with unrequited love,
I am loosely made,
Perilously close to
Unraveling,
My rainbow stitches
Change colors,
As my mind wavers daily
Between unabashed hope
And doomed darkness,
A gentle pull
At a poor yarn
Can undo them all,
Until they are a rich, radiant
Pile of memories upon the floor.

I turn around with all the trepidation a single turning motion can manifest in a human body. I'm looking at the blackest daemon I've ever seen, a billion of his white eyes staring right back at me. I'm distraught for a moment. This is the edge of the universe.

Me?

Well, I've traveled a tangled path since my conception, a born wanderer of these dark, frost-tipped mountains my whole life. I've always had something to hold on to during my deep treks into the abyss. My mother's protection stayed with me wherever I went, remembering to go the speed limit past planets filled with life and death, stars of eruptive strength, moon's of ghostly luminance. I've fought against a myriad of space-pirate ****, befriended alien species you could only dream of having and torn through the stringiest of worm holes, leaving only bad time behind me, all in her name. My father taught me how to run my ship well; I've been sailing these black tides in his trademark downward ***** fashion ever since I got a handle of the control systems. He personalized the grid himself, starting with that big red button for "ignition." That's easier to remember than reprogramming it myself, right? You could say I've sailed my ship into a few wrong turns here and there, a couple of undone screws from the engine pressure. I've never meant to go outside the boundaries of what my ship can handle, a stable ideology my parents had taught me in my youthful years in the spaceflight academy; Those were the very days my destiny had been written through the sky.

This beat up piece of machinery I call a transportation device had puttered out at the very edge of all existence, my woven destiny utterly behind me. I only threw one thing at a wall and I really can't remember what it was; you could say I had a mild emotional breakdown. Here were all these tiny, beady stars I'd been connecting like dots since the very beginning of my life's journey and none of my past plotting made sense anymore; the yarn I left behind must have been strung with invisible fabric.

The mirror of a windshield I once peered through (mostly caused by the terminal blackness of space) was just a ******* portrait placed their to tease me. All that time and energy, all my wandering and fallen bolts I could never ***** back into my ship again...

Now staring through my very own wide-screen ink blot, parts of which I had traveled, others of which I still had time to visit and still others of which a therapist would later find disturbing: right then, something happened to my ******* eyes.

“Woh.
Is that seriously
a cloud-shaped star system
I'm seeing out there?
That is!
I don't believe
what my visors
are seeing right now.”

And a fist shaped system too. No, no that's a heart shaped one. And a person dancing to music and a table of friends and a girl's beautiful smile. They were right in front of me, all this time, and yet I had been running circles around them until I finally hit a ledge. For a moment I wondered what my invisible yarn would've shown me in the stars had it not been invisible yarn; it must have always been a malicious sentient creature that knew he'd get his *** kicked if I ever found him after this episode.

Looking down at the control pads of my ship, I begin reprogramming (a process that takes time) not just my plotted course into new territory, but also the grid's controlling functions themselves. I like the color green so I'll make that the "ignition".

Is there a word for the way the heart aches,
the way it longs to be filled,
but nothing on earth will suffice?

Is there a word for that hole
inside
gnawing slowly
then spitting back that
disgusting, chewed up mess
you call a self?

Is there a word for the way you try
to hide the beast inside
and you try so hard
then just watch yourself fall apart?

Is there a word for the feeling
of your soul being one, big
mass of tangled yarn
and you just can't seem to undo the knots?

Is there a word for pain
real pain
the kind that has used up every tear you've got,
is there a word for that pain?

Who knows?
But then again,

Is there a word for the way
realization hits you hard
in the gut
and shakes you by the shoulders
leaving you breathless and gasping?

Is there a word for the way
you hear a whisper in your spirit
that assures you of love
an unending
unfailing
unshakable
love?

Is there a word for that feeling
when you've been found
and are running back
into waiting, open arms?

Is there a word for when your
heart is being mended
and you feel whole
like you've never felt before,
is there a word for that joy?
and that peace?

Who knows?
Maybe someday,
but for now

be still, child.

be still.

i.
i found a little
pull in the threads of
my favorite sweater
the day my father told me
my mother was
(is) clinically
depressed.

ii.
the first time i saw
a tear in
my favorite sweater
was in fifth grade
and i learned
that the price to be
perfect was cheating
on a spelling test
and a finger
down the throat

iii.
i started realizing that
other people’s sweaters
had tears and pulls when i
was walking
to the park
and saw the teenage girl
who had carved ribbons
and ladders
up her forearms.

iv.
my sweater didn’t show it’s
wear
until
i provoked my father and his
response was
mirrored to that of his
alcoholic, abusive father.
(in turn i smashed every cup
in the cupboard).

v.
my shoulders began to curl
inward
due to the weight
of that sweater.
and i explained to my therapist
that the meds weren’t working
and that i was tired but
i could only sleep after
drawing
an equal amount of lines
on each hip.

vi.
the scraps of ***** yarn,
hardly keeps me warm
anymore.

vii.
for the longest time
i worried i was the only one
who wore a filthy sweater
until i had a best friend
who lifted up her sleeve to show me her
identical  
wrist

viii.
i don’t like to wear my sweater
anymore
but like most old belongings
i don’t have the
heart to throw
it away.

she's a jumping bean,
bouncing off walls,
breaking in her velvet muscles.

a princess crown encompasses her cranium,
eyelashes like butterfly wings,
fluttering in a breeze.

wearing tic-tacs for teeth,
a smile designed by blind men's hands,
construction of a masterpiece.

eyes aglow with eagerness,
bleeding aquamarine,
flooding my pupils with luminosity.

giggles like dandelion seedtips,
a supplementary appendage,
attached to my forearm.

she blankets me in gentle bear hugs,
curling around like pink yarn,
frayed at the edges.

A ball of ice and fire
Floating around in space
Sunlight or darkness
You don't choose for that

We are the earthlings
The current residents
I've got to thinking
What we are at that

We are the Earth (Think about it)
It's what we are
We are the earth
It says so in the stars

We are the Earth
Listen near and far
For I'll tell you a story
That isn't full of yarn

THE CYCLE OF LIFE

The seed goes into the earth
The earth goes into the seed
The seed becomes a plant
On that is what we feed
And when we're dead and done
And our souls are finally freed
We go back to what we ate from
We are what we eat
Six feet underneath
The worms then eat
The body becomes the earth
A new child is born
The cycle happens again

The Pigs
symbolize for me now
the hell
that was the year that just fell away
a year now spent and in ruins
dropped off like a golden husk
dead cobra flesh
summer sugared flakes of skin,
torn with teeth from a wintered mouth

The Pigs were an omen on that day
last January
day of first blizzard and weather churn,
sleet and howling,
first day of white knuckles and prickling thighs,
first day of numb chins and jowls,
thick and gummy feeling against hands

dead and uncovered in the back
of a grisly pickup truck
The Pigs came into existence,
piled ten feet high and fifteen long,
bodies jutting stiff and macabre
reaching for the sky, blank and indifferent.

I remember being disturbed by their enormous heads
and the way the ice formed a crust over their bodies
binding them one to another-snout to useless ***, milky underbelly
to back
creating not a pile
but a mass.
Somewhat
globular.

I watched
mesmerized by them in their sorrowful death bed,
gliding over black ice down that empty leg of highway,
black beautiful forests woven into color hungry sky
and chalky fields on all sides
devouring sound
I felt numb and small on the back of that prairie stretch
In my blacks and my wools,
gut colored scarf around my throat
Stuffed into my panting mouth
Breath freezing to the yarn and to my lips
Cold wet song escaping me
-my protest against the freeze that held me
Music about wolves against my ears-the haunting lyrics
Stumbled upon by a man with ancient desires, the need for
Animal blood, stone dwellings and strong women

This collage woven by the senses
Became me in that moment
For me a holy moment-every piece of me engaged and
Acute
Body clenched, mind awhirl, ears ringing, eyes filled with white

And then The Pigs whipped past me-in their resting place of crusted steel and chipping
Paint, their eyes clenched like hundreds of tiny fists,
Their mouths open and crookedly petrified
around the last breath of their lifesong
Their flesh as pink as the day they were born
Their minds and organs preserved by the patient
hands of Manitoba winter
The smell of death was imagined then-I was
Stricken by the harsh, wet scent of flesh
Against the back of my throat it lingered for only a moment

In that moment I was complete

I blinked and The Pigs were beyond me-one hundred miles an hour
to nowhere beautiful
And I was left with a sense of awe and a thousand questions
Death riding my thoughts
Hand against my padded heart

I moved forward in time-caught my ride
Which followed the tracks gouged by
The ***** pick-up for a little while
Something small and true stirring within me
Protected beneath all of my meticulous layers
A new awareness of something
dark and curious in the world.

In hallways
In the empty lecture hall

Among plants
Through the garden

Behind my back
Behind my elbows!

In the cemetery
Between the trees

In space

I see you Silence
I know you're there

I know you love to connect with me
And see the disappearance of my despair

You wait for me like an excited lover
Unwinding my ideals and hopes like a kitten pouncing on an orange ball of yarn

It is true, one of the sweetest feelings on earth, is to connect with you