Through the Backward Lens

“What are you going to do now?” Mrs. Clancy asked me at the cottage.  “I’m going to write a book,” I answered.  The last confession of the sun god, told by the little girl he’d loved beyond all reason.  Except, as it turned out, he was no god at all.  Just a weak, damaged man who had lost everything, and who had known even less.  But in the end truth is irrelevant.  History is written by the winners.  

The sun god is the biggest loser of them all.

The Day After Tomorrow

Spread your arms           wide

dive

the snow envelops my knees

it makes me want to believe         in you

your candle is dim          a flickering light

in sight on top of the hill

I am pushing

a thousand clouds to insulate the sky

only the beat of the ice crunching             underneath my feet

purple the color of your hidden majesty

in this river flood of oncoming night

                               

play your sad drums for me

underneath the tree

up there on our crayon hill

keep it steady           keep it still

but in a minute I am undone

I cannot cannot leave you now

in the world all gray I wanted to feel

zephyrs and sunrise against my face

it looked so warm

                it looked so warm

from the other side

so I strapped on my wings

took to your sky

                blinded by a million sparkling dreams

                snowflakes falling into infinity

the howling drums of wind and war echoing

around me…

 and then the

candle

                went out

                               

               

Walls

The pen bothered me.   So I asked him, “Where’d you get this again?”  It was fat and plastic and full of colorful ink cartridges.  Being something of a pen connoisseur I never would have bought it on my own.

The strange animal character on the screen jumped over a crumpled brick wall with an appropriate boing sound.  “I found it,” he told me.

“Oh.  Okay.”  I walked into the hallway.  But not entirely satisfied I called back, “Where?”

 “In the library,” he shouted from the other room.

“Okay.”  But I still didn’t remember.  And that was the worst part.

Still Here

I was one fear closer to here

lost in a night too dark for sleeping

was it me on the ledge        or was it you

whispering

                                                               

                         don’t give up too soon

don’t give up

too soon                                                                                                                                                                                              

when I am breaking           

I am a fool

where do I stand

I am a piece of stone mixed in

with all this sand

                                                               

yet full of proof

of what died         

with you

                               

                why did you bring me here to my cyclone second

when rage engulfs this bridge from earth to heaven                    

cinder through and through                                                                                                                                        

you ask too much                               you do

for one whisper like the hint of water splashed on embers  

for one storybook of dreams with its message tethered 

to the fading metal moon

the sun  it can  be cruel

now that I gave too much                 too soon                  

  

Is this your plan

is this your one    

your great             

your smoky last demand  

or

my intention

my blue-flame doom

because

burned across my heart your forgotten message

the language lost in time with the words rewritten

resuscitate the girl she is out of breathing

collapsed under the hope she could not believe in

the soot was in her eyes she could only cry

was this my one great truth

did I give up

                too soon?

The Last Rationalization

to remember is to 

fall

memory the betrayal of

what decorates the 

hall

a collection of explosions

kept

in an open jar

Bereft

Yes you were a picture in a book        nestled between a cranny and a nook       where I could close my eyes and see       but the library locked its doors      and I am prostrate on the floor       you do not belong to me       you do not belong to me

Beautiful Escape

I don’t really know what to say, I tell him.  Well, I do, but I don’t want to write it down.  

We could obliterate them into a million zillion pieces, he answers.  Or turn them into cartoon characters that we can erase, and then crumple up and throw away.  

I want to fly amidst the stars I want to fall splat on the ground, I return.  This could go on forever.  Fat and wore cheap suits.  There, how’s that for something?

He rolls his eyes.  How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?

An excellent question, I reply.  But unfortunately there is a party conference going on.  

Yes, he says.  And no one is winning.