Element: Void

Void

This is where there is nothing;

Nothing between us, nothing around us,

Nothing but us.

No space as I enter you,

No distance as you clench me,

No time but that told by the beating of our hearts.

We singular are, one from many,

And nothing exists but your nails in my back,

My breath on your neck,

My hands under you, lifting you,

Your eyes holding me, lifting me.

We are the friction of dark galaxies,

Filling what was never meant to be empty.

Frantic in our desire to be,

To create,

We have inhaled each other’s souls and bodies,

Quenched the thirst of our needs,

Reflected on our desires

Nourished our animality

Set fire to Infinity

And radiated the equations of Eternity

All with this Lust,

With this Love that we were made from and made for.

We move against, into, with one another

As if for the first/last time,

Like all that has been hasn’t,

Like we are something new in this Universe

Until your body shudders against me,

Carrying me away in its blessing

And I speak my word into your void,

Our particles colliding up, down, top and bottom,

Screaming each other’s names

As we fall spent,

Strange and charmed,

Knowing we have held nothing back,

Left nothing out,

And have nothing left. 

Status Migrainosus 1: A Poet’s Thoughts Near Death

‘I have read, I have cried, and I have

Supped full with passion and horror,’

Thought the poet, his eyes preternaturally bright,

‘I have ticked away the seconds in a dry age

And have put pain to paper and turned rage to words,

As is a poet’s job.

But, most importantly, I stood in the night

And felt the breeze blow mortality;

I stood in a field of flowers under the sun

And knew the Power of God;

I played carelessly within the silverness of the moon

And relearned the untroubled days of childhood;

I held her hand, and watched that same moon

Rise in her eyes

And knew Love.’

The poet stops, sighs and wipes tears from his eyes.

He sits quietly for a moment and then continues:

‘These are the things that truly define me or men

Or Mankind; it’s not the things written or said,

It’s the things that are lived.’

The light in the poet’s eyes fades.

The poet dies.

Indian Summer

We ran like the clouds run,

Chasing our shadows across the skin of the world.

And we were gods again,

Lords of all this naturalness,

Racing to outrun the moon.

Time’s face smiled on us and these were ours-

Our days, our nights.

The whole world was these golden days

That stretched between the boundless blue sky

And the sweet liquor of our sweat

.

So we ran,

Ran until we were drunk inhaling Autumn’s promise,

Ran ‘til we passed Summer’s dreams.

And did we sing?

We sang until our throats were raw

And coated with ancestor’s dust.

We’d been granted a reprieve you see,

Surcease from dreams and duties,

A few short hours, here near midnight,

To dive again into piles of red and brown leaves                                     

And to bleed and cry again without consequence.

This was our second chance

And we grabbed it with both hands and ran,

Ran under the sun, ran under the moon

‘Til our hearts must break from the joy of running.

Because we already knew how short summer was,         

These days would be so much sweeter

For their brevity and undeservedness.

We were free again,

Like the leaves falling all around us,

Prisoners of days given unexpected furlough.

And did we drink, did we dance,

Did we love, did we live?

Yes, like they were new to the world.

But all things pass away

And we exist now in twilight

Where the years we spent,

Not for naught, but not for enough, now

Stand between us and Indian Summer

As both bridge and chasm.

Street Song 1 (On the Corner)

On the corner, at night,

We stand and sing under neon stars,

Playing the same game our father’s played,

Passing the same bottles our brothers passed,

Traffic as our melody.

We sing the music of hard times,

Be it do-wop or hip-hop,

Ballads or blues

To the steady boom-bap of basketballs,

While our people move around us,

Dancing in their natural unknowing way.

Under neon stars,

Sippin’ and singin’,

Hangin’ and jivin’,

Good times

(Ain’t we lucky we got em’)

On the corner,

At night. 

New Language

I taste your touch in the texture of every Word.

this is what we are,

distant longing in souls held close

hearts shouting through the Infinite

only to be heard by each other.

Words in thought yet unspoken,

raising ecstacy in wanting hips.

these are our hearts

bent in succulent extremes

during our stolen moments,

dancing in electric space

while fingers speak,

while souls reach

moonlight in a diamond eye,

shining in the Love we build.

all easy we flow even still,

even now,

vibrations still manifesting,

resonance ever moving,

tasting imagined sweat,

drawing forth milk and honey

to pour onto the alter of our desire;

flowing through night and space

believing in the Truth of union,                                 

the seed of Cosmic storms.

share my pain in the dream of the now-

this singular moment

hanging between the sky and the ocean

as we sleep hand-in-hand under the idea

of our virtual orgasms-

in the deep purple time.

freed from planetary shackles,

from our worlds of work and responsibility,

to swallow the evening summer breezes;

the water leaping in the late sunlight,

and in that moment, divine,                                            

speaking new language.

I cannot bring me back from there, that place,

That distant aerie where your soul my heart did touch.

Three Crows at Sunrise

I often awaken in time to see

Dawn’s initial understanding,

But at first light today what appeared to me

Were three crows, off in the field standing.

I wondered, ‘Is this some kind of warning,

Or the unseen world’s shorthanded way

To let me know that my death comes with the dawning

And this is to be my last earthly day?’

‘Should I run and wake my sleeping wife,

Tell her one last time of the depth of my Love,

Give her all of the hidden secrets of my life

Before I am called back to that I was made of?’

‘Shall I hold my son one last time

Praying and imploring him to grow to be a Man?

Or should we play and sing some silly rhyme

So I can hear his laughter as I hold his hand?’

I awoke this morning, as always, seeking the sun

And found instead three solemn crows.

Now, wondering if my life is now done,

Should I shoulder my lifetime of woes?

‘Will she remember me to the children

While I lay rotting in the ground?

Or will some other man grow with them,

And take all of my pictures down?’

‘Will she cry for me in the night? ,’

Is what I ask these hateful crows,

‘Or forget me once I am out of sight?’

I guess I’ll never really know.

But then I stop my breast beating and ask,

‘Is this how I am, is this really me?

To see three birds, casually hopping past

And let myself start to feel all melancholy?

If these that I love grow to forget me,

Then that is, of course, their right.

But even if they won’t have tomorrows with me,

They’ll all know that I loved them last night.

I tell these crows, ‘Yes they may find another

If with you I am called to go today,

But if you look into their hearts you’ll discover

That my memory there will ever stay.’

‘So I won’t be split by this internal strife,

Stupid birds, if you’ve come to carry me on.

The saddest thing that I know about life

Is that life must always go on.’

‘I will not let my soul be lost

Even,’ I say, ‘if it is time for me to die.’

And with that the crows as one take off,

And silently up, over my head, fly.

‘Be gone,’ I say. ‘A good riddance to you,’

I scream at their ebon tails,

‘Love is Love and that stays true

Even when all else fails!’

I stand a little longer in the doorway

Just enjoying the fair weather.

And on returning to bed, I have nothing to say

Finding my wife, newly stilled, lying next to three black feathers.