atlas shrugged

Only Footprints Left Standing Where The Whole Of Me Once Stood:
A Part Of Everything / Apart From Everything (part 2)

Tear me apart.
Remove my vital signs.
The beating, bleeding, breathing
Buried along with my bones beneath
The woods I walk,
The winds I wander,
The water I wade.

Release the seed of tender loins
To fertilize the humus and loam below terra firma.
Unleash the soul from rib cages
To ascend escarpments hung above cloud banks.

Ring the ringing from my ears
And fill the silence surrounding
The hush of snow's soft falling.

Peel the whisper from my lips
To slip as hiss between
The diaphanous drops of rain.

Pull teeth,
Conjoin their chatter
To the chitter of crickets.

Pluck eyes,
Throw them to the dark,
Blind depths of the sea.

Spill guts,
Shout secrets aloud
Echoing off canyon walls.

Tear me limb from limb,
Wrap my arms around the waist of this world,
Lay my hands across the hips of her equator,
Lift my legs upon the shoulders of her mountains,
Stretch to reach to rise to break beyond her stratosphere,
So what is left of me might scatter amidst the stars,
Where I am a part of everything, though apart from everything I was,
Now only footprints left standing where the whole of me once stood.

photo by ac nagl

... Monet of this moment...

The Rain Painting / Painting The Rain

Late November rain falling over geese

static upon a lake canvas

painted by the impressionism of

sackcloth and milkweed sky,

trees with few leaves left crowding shoreline,

green ridge rise to brown earth turned behind plow.

The flap of wings upon water

swirling the wet oil images into one another,

the curve of trees meets the ripple of sky

circling again and again concentric into the waved ridge

beneath the lift of feathers through a suggestion of mist,

the Monet of this moment framed by a window on the world.

painting: 'Break-up of the ice on the Seine' c1890 by Claude Monet

word of mouth

Smile, Breath, Sigh, Moan, Whisper, Kiss

your smile,
new rain upon my tongue

your breath,
ozone ion inside my lungs

your sigh,
crocus bloom beneath my skin

your moan,
carnal knowledge within my brain

your whisper,
soft haiku between my ears

your kiss,
electric charge around my heart

In Memory of Auguste Escoffier & Kikunae Ikeda

Umami

my tongue holds the thought, the taste of your lips,
their tremble meeting the labor of my breath,
still nervous in the dark of this room
all these memories later.

from sea to shining sea

The Reluctant Mariner

God washed away the sun
below a vast sea, beyond an endless horizon,
leaving me cold in a winter without you,
searching southern hemispheres,
harnessing horse latitudes,
drifting doldrums promised in a Coleridge poem,
your painted face hidden upon a painted ocean,
the hot and copper sky above the only hint I have
you will return riding waves beneath this resurrected sun.

hibernation

Heard Them Stirring

The smell of balsam fir upon arrival home,
the scent and sense of security
of winter's months we spend hidden in,
never wanting to leave, locking doors, shuttering windows
we peek through to watch the black and gray of small birds
in contrast to the fallen snow, suddenly away
with a knock, a ring, a passing rumble,
we scatter the same to hide in a room of pine,
well knowing the crackle and smolder of the fire before us,
her smoke and ash escaping through a flue, have given up our ghosts
as sure as the smell of balsam fir upon arrival home.

post-op

My Pale Nurse

the light hurts my eyes

listen...
the drip, drip, drip
of morphine drip

waves of black
waves of white
waves of red

waves of mutilation
throbbing, stinging flesh

i lie open

blood crusts
nose, mouth, throat

waiting, in vein,
the slow of narcotic wash

my pale nurse appears instead,
an apparition floating in and out
of this room, my consciousness

her soft hand holds
my limp wrist,
wresting a pulse
from the hallucination
I am clinging to

in the aftermath of anesthesia
where dreams do not exist

photo by ac nagl

into blackwaters

If

If this is the last leg,
wish me luck,
offer bon voyage
in a wave goodbye,
my sails set
for a sunset
I cannot see,
I could not know,
I do not know
if we chance to meet again
beyond this wall of sleep,
if au revoir waits, patient,
in the depths of Heaven.

lovesick

Candy Hearts

a heart attack
waits in vain
sticky with
sugar kisses
non-plussed
by a pulse
already weak
in the knees
left shaking
all night
long winded
heavy breathing
along lips
soft slopes
slippery with

desire
climbing walls
high and wide
around valentines
unopened
candy hearts
beating love
to sweet death

the wake-up bomb

Suddenly Awake From A Dead Sleep

A mosaic of clouds met the pre-dawn morning hour,
along with me, shuttering La Luna's dim bulb cast,
grey across the lifeless, leafless cold of trees.
The full moon, half-insane panic attacks of fourteen years before
replaced by an indifferent sleep awaking to the notion that,
despite the stroke-subdued weak pulse of light outside this window,
I am not dying, though the days the phases have stolen
might just as well be killing me.

poet tree

Hewn

carve her name
in the oak of my heart,
a man of letters
sitting still at last
beneath this poet tree

swallowing mud pride,
my rootless days
left behind in
kissed dirt's spit
upon this sacred ground

kick the wood,
stir stump promises
that termite teeth
smile to keep
safe inside a mouth

timbers embraced
by vine, held fast
in the crawl and grip
covering, coveting
our initials

climb toward doves,
above cold stones,
take apples
for the words
i cannot find

maple fire song,
gospel shout
from treetops
i aspire
beyond, above

dance with me,
swing from branches
to shake leaves
like bells
summoning revival

bark grown back
over whittled away
can never hide
her name's
intention

vows,
hewn into wood,
not upon the wind
that once carried
this acorn unwritten

Cowboy Up

Stalking-horse

There is a gun in a calm hand waiting hours, watching doors,
spying windows for shadows of childhood scars subtle beneath thick skin,
rejection tattooed upon denial, reprisal smiles through the grind of teeth
nervous in the day of light, hidden in the dark of night,

ravens creep shoulders, bobbing back and forth to a rhythm of apples

falling from a hanging tree I hide behind, huddle beneath,

ducking the swing of feet, the clay of emotions molded into the dagger

of Et tu, Brute? raised against a Cain, a cross I bear,

nailing me to a killing floor to sweep clean, scattering asunder
bleeding hearts to the four winds of the apocalypse I ride,
my stalking-horse trampling underfoot the forget-me-nots wild mane
across a gravesite where you will come to rest with nothing more than
a whisper, a glance, an aside going off in my hand.

burnin' love

Campfire Song

I burn this fire within a ring, I sing this song within a round,

Strumming strings of heat strung between

The metered measures of our hollow bodies
To flicker flame-like notes of romantic melody

Drawing moth while soothing savage.

I sing this fire within a round, I burn this song within a ring,

Sending embers of EveryGoodBoyDoesFine
Into the shiver of winter's Jack Frost sky
To dance before the ice blue bowl of stars
Hung high, draped low beyond our shoulders.

photo by ac nagl

kafka was a neuroscientist

The Butterfly Effect

his brain constantly inventing itself,
smiling with the splitting of cells,
division, multiplication all adding up
to a slightly different him
each morning he awoke

the before and after as subtle as
not knowing, then knowing

the taste of a pomegranate
the song of a distlefink
the nuance of a memory

Butterfly Collection II (Encaustic & Dye on Paper) by Deanne Belinoff

drive, she said

Always Crashing In The Same Car

when we are not ourselves,

time passes like

the slow

of rush

hour traffic,

one minute,

punched up

acceleration,
the next,

drop dead

stopped,

trying to see

around, above, beyond
what is right

in front of us,

seemingly

immoveable,
suddenly

unstoppable,

me,

the man she remembers,
you,

the woman he can't forget

photo by ac nagl

aroma therapy

Balm

The bitter almond fetor of thanatophobia no longer
intubates my sinus, blackens my lungs, stains my teeth,
gags my throat, stings my eyes, fogs my brain.

In lieu, the fragrant and efflorescent cologne of gladiolas,
an olfactory deja vu of my consanguinity spiriting Elysian Fields,
lustrates this mind, body and soul for the verity of death.

Aldous Huxley meets John Muir.

Sea Change

A sea change in observation,
honed perception notes the tin-type-photo quality of light
shrouding, encircling a familiar swath of forest.

My own body transfiguring,
torso to trunk, bones to roots, limbs to branches,
skin to bark, flesh to pulp.

Face tilted skyward, arms spanning beyond their ambit,
illumed by the same stannic lantern's lambent glow
filtering through treetops I espy.

such great heights

Walk Unafraid

Up on this tightrope with only the stretch

of my love's hand to keep my equilibrium,

trying to not look down while hearing

the echo of her, don't look down,

following each tentative step

over a crevasse of vacuum suction
pulling at arms extended like clipped wings

for balance, hanging in the balance, suspended
between where we are going and where we have been,

the other side almost in reach of my rusted hands,

my aluminum legs bending but not breaking,
tin man knees wobbling with each compression

of the wire I walk along, its line

the shortest distance between two points,

but not necessarily the safest,
so close my eyes as the rain begins

a slow parade from head to toe,
as the shake and shiver of uncertainty

unhinges my spine and with it
the fear of falling slips from my pockets

rendering me weightless and able
to amble above it all and into her outstretched arms,

ready to walk unafraid a future of such great heights.

waiting for the sun

Loss and Found

A little boy in Sunday-best staring out from
a photograph, already searching for a portal,
between the petals of Easter flowers on an April day,
to move between the Earth and Sun, for a better look
across the universe, through Milky Ways and comet tails,
for a glimpse of a little girl, half orphaned, in her new dress,
crying by a door, wanting only to be by her father's side
to say goodbye, as the sun goes down, framed by a picture window,
unsure it will ever come again, unaware of a little boy
looking under stars for a sunrise and her tomorrow.

abuse your illusion

In This House That I Call Home

huddled here in a home, not a house,
safe from those who say they love me,
safe with the one who really does

illusion burns blue-to-white hot in a hearth
sending smoke and mirrors of imagined loyalties
to an indifferent sky

where sun still rises, moon still shines, wind still blows
carrying away the sound of voices I no longer hear

huddled in this house that I call home,
warming my hands over the embers of illusion