Echo

Whose truth will be accepted         as war rages against my memories            I cannot say for certain what I expected          or even what I thought I believed      but I am jumping off the cliff into this pillow of air              while you are a voice warning me from the canyon floor                   because this is where you disappear               and where I wish for something more

Tomorrow

Despair rose up in me like a flash flood, so quickly that it had almost reached my heart, when I heard a snuffling.  The dog who smelled like cake shuffled out from behind an overgrown bush.  “Are you real?” I asked her.  “Or are you going to disappear, too?”

She cocked her head and bared crooked teeth at me, as if to say, does it matter?

I dropped down to the ground next to her.  When I wrapped my arms around my knees and began to cry, she butted her head against me until I laid a hand on her back.  The setting sun was hot on my neck.  “You won’t be safe here,” I told her.  “You should go back into the woods, where’s it cooler.”

But she wouldn’t move. 

Tiredly I leaned back against the damp, cold ground.  When I closed my eyes I heard some more snuffling, and then felt her fuzzy head against the palm of my hand.  We will be safe tonight, I thought to myself.  Tomorrow was anybody’s guess.   Absolute safety would never be mine to have.  It simply did not exist. 

To Bleed

In the desert I crawl alone

sweat and fatigue

all that I own

I cry for nothing

I cry for nothing

Grief

When he dropped me I fell

And it was close, the ground              

so close that I could smell the grass

as the sky reformed

above me

Yet somehow I forgot to wave 

goodbye
forgot that without him

I could not 

fly

Growth

One swallow does not a summer make.

Knowing matters.  Why does it matter?  Because it does.  It matters.  But that’s the game—the torture—the double bind.  You will not be allowed to have the one thing that could either give you peace or send you off the cliff of despair, or both.  This one thing will be taken from you.  Instead you will wonder whether you have banana Weetabix poisoning, or if you are right but lost in the red straw network, or if you are sort of right but kind of wrong but full of good intentions, or if you are just a nutter.  

You will be told you hold the answers, but there are no answers inside.  Just a howling wind, an incessantly buzzing bee, a mass grave filled with the fallen, the ones who foolishly entered into No Man’s Land armed only with a musket and grim determination.  A musket is no defense against an ICBM.  Grim determination and a dollar will get you a ride on the bus.  Or it would have about twenty years ago.  Now you’d probably need a couple of bucks.

You will be denied all knowledge.  Knowledge will die within you, to be replaced with rotting suspicions and wilting hope.  No seeds can be planted here.  You will be left a slave to ambiguity, a prisoner of doubt.  Enjoy the banana Weetabix, because there is no going back.  And I do like it.  It’s quite nice with yogurt.  Not with milk.  Must never eat cereal with milk.  Never ever ever.

Fractured

The peace which comes my love
there is no lock on the door
And now you can shut out nothing
let alone the memory of
the war
Some kind of peace now
one hell of a peace now
All bruised and tattered and sore
as long as it hurts less than the no-peace
you were forever crashing through
before

Fireball

I do not walk through this disaster with

my hands covering my eyes

I do not step across the ruins of

this fragmented, shattered shell 

or run through the forest with

the wind in my hair

the trees so high they block the sun

fear not, my love

this fear it is alive

I can see

my hands are not covering my eyes