Saturday, February 23, 2008

Three Part Tale Spin

(i)

I’m thinking of a night full of birds
A confusion of wingbeats and soft
collisions that feel like heartbreak

Crowds are gathering on the hill
in their pink masks
to watch the sky which dwarfs us all
It’s the colour of the desert
Stealing our shadows in funnels of dust


(ii)

They’re there to see a poem unfolding
Where words haven’t arrived
A small underscoring of half-slept moments
Of forgetting weakness

Here we are again
Away from them
and your hands are in my hair
My face is in your chest
You smell of cigarettes and solitude
Your voice is close to my ear
in a form I know but don’t understand
This is no story you’re telling
in bare-knuckled braille
It has a narrative I cant follow
back to your mouth

This is the easy eye of beauty
Silence of the planets and falling starlings
in a cosmic tailspin of absurdity

The black stones under my feet are still warm
from when the sun burnt them
in the middle of the day
I wonder where I left my shoes

(iii)

Naked of meanings your face eludes me
Still the words aren’t coming
The patterns are there
lightening then darkening
The sounds amplify
bird cries swell thick
higher now
with throats full of clouds
Caught as they rise
No truth we’ve been
offered corresponds to this
These are feats of the imagination
To feathered applause and closed eyes

My skin is my mind
These are my dreams
they bring it all closer
Sink it in

Crawl up under my sheets
under a blanket of memory
warp and weft of surfaces of things
Woven threads of messages received
from every cell touched, held, imagined
Hold it, touch it again to remember
whisper into it
into the scars
into the dull ache
like a bridge from some place not located in my body

Or write it and I’ll read it to my hands
with my fingertips in a soft slow scrawl

8 comments:

mikel k poet said...

Gosh, you're good.

bruce dorlova said...

loved these.

a fantastic triptych. wonderful imagery, with the elusive quality of dreaming...

Rosemary Nissen-Wade said...

Yes, mikel, gosh she is. 15 kudos!

Nathan Hondros said...

this is brilliant...i'm going to think about this poem for quite a while, I think...

Unknown said...

Hey girl! Haven't talked to you in a while. Wow - this is the most amazing piece I've read from you. It's one that will stick with me more deeper pondering for quite some time. Have a wonderful time in Europe ;)

Sam

Unknown said...

"stick with me for deeper pondering' - *sigh* I hate it when my fingers get ahead of me. ;)

Art Goodtimes said...

yes, reading it to your hands is
a lovely image in a tail spin of a triptych piece.

Joy Leftow said...

a poem unfolding with some bitterness & ease, the beauty beneath.
cigarettes and solitude we all want to resist the narrative we can't follow.

Much love - keep trucking!