remain in motion, child.
everytime you wake, you will find yourself running again,
so remain in motion.
swim through this
replete with tiny paper birds,
your body an origamic flicker on the sky,
crinkling in search of land,
but don’t look down.
Here, you must believe in flight in order to remain
aloft.
Better this way, kept away from the people you do not create,
the people who can hate and crack you
like a shelled being,
and you know you are not a strong crustacean,
more pea than wall
nutshell.
If you hear him moving beside you, beckoning you with promises of flesh
and the conscious comfort of his arms,
try the howl of denial.
If you fear his breath upon your skin, do not pay it heed, give it credit,
take it as no more than oxygen,
expulsed from his internal skies.
Pray as the light crawl limbed over you that he will love you,
that the melody of dreams will linger long enough to lure him onward,
inward,
asleep,
where an orange and pink laced overhead stays the same,
and swans can burn
or be left in your pocket
GLS
8.3.93
Showing posts with label 1993. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1993. Show all posts
reasons -
1. you found me
2. at times, lost beneath your mouth, ministering
3. wounds I had from others, myself
4. whom above is heavy, solid, a jawbone in the hand, and light like pine
5. clean lined, Scandinavian, clean limbed
6. obvious appreciation of the maleness of my form
7. in the way you moan abstractedly to the pillows in our life
8. sing musicals at bus-stops, annoying
9. canis-blue hued
10. keeping eyes open when we first still kiss
11. “just to watch”
12. the July to now stretch
13. marking the twelve in every month as if some totemic ritual
14. with your allergy of orange and dislike of brown
15. dreaming of sand
16. repeating above
17. your disbelief that lovers would be unkind
18. to me, you digging anchor
19. home
20. because hands held and street kisses are our creation, our claim
21. for once, for all, for selfish reasons
22. your stubble
23. face to face loin-sliding intercourses: again
24. space between
25. the word “us”
26. the nöosphere
27. and “me”
1.27.93
GLS
2. at times, lost beneath your mouth, ministering
3. wounds I had from others, myself
4. whom above is heavy, solid, a jawbone in the hand, and light like pine
5. clean lined, Scandinavian, clean limbed
6. obvious appreciation of the maleness of my form
7. in the way you moan abstractedly to the pillows in our life
8. sing musicals at bus-stops, annoying
9. canis-blue hued
10. keeping eyes open when we first still kiss
11. “just to watch”
12. the July to now stretch
13. marking the twelve in every month as if some totemic ritual
14. with your allergy of orange and dislike of brown
15. dreaming of sand
16. repeating above
17. your disbelief that lovers would be unkind
18. to me, you digging anchor
19. home
20. because hands held and street kisses are our creation, our claim
21. for once, for all, for selfish reasons
22. your stubble
23. face to face loin-sliding intercourses: again
24. space between
25. the word “us”
26. the nöosphere
27. and “me”
1.27.93
GLS
Sister tongue -
They call it la niña,
“the girl”,
even though they have never seen it.
Rising from those cold waters, hovering in the spheres drifting heedless of continental passageways or
national meanderings, it causes the longest winters this city
has known in years.
From Peru it whispers to the winds,
speaks in a foreign tongue to the temperate drafts,
convincing our Spring to be patient,
to allow this chilling we must survive.
La niña phenomenon.
Like Lauren waking in Virginia,
and deciding that once again she does not have time to call
or write or think
about him today,
and more time passes.
Like Lauren finally calling late one Sunday evening and speaking into the air,
her voice caught in digital pauses
and replayed at his leisure,
later.
Her words spoken in Virginia reach to Illinois and cause
an unexpected coldness,
an anger extended beyond her bounds. Love will do this
with answering machine messages.
Waiting for warmer weather shortens
tempers and lifespans,
waiting for a loved one
only shortens memory.
The next morning is humid as he rises,
so he takes the phone and places
his voice in the air, across the boundaries,
and the anger is filtered over other lands,
until the word
“Hermana ”
settles after the beep.
GLS
4.21.93
“the girl”,
even though they have never seen it.
Rising from those cold waters, hovering in the spheres drifting heedless of continental passageways or
national meanderings, it causes the longest winters this city
has known in years.
From Peru it whispers to the winds,
speaks in a foreign tongue to the temperate drafts,
convincing our Spring to be patient,
to allow this chilling we must survive.
La niña phenomenon.
Like Lauren waking in Virginia,
and deciding that once again she does not have time to call
or write or think
about him today,
and more time passes.
Like Lauren finally calling late one Sunday evening and speaking into the air,
her voice caught in digital pauses
and replayed at his leisure,
later.
Her words spoken in Virginia reach to Illinois and cause
an unexpected coldness,
an anger extended beyond her bounds. Love will do this
with answering machine messages.
Waiting for warmer weather shortens
tempers and lifespans,
waiting for a loved one
only shortens memory.
The next morning is humid as he rises,
so he takes the phone and places
his voice in the air, across the boundaries,
and the anger is filtered over other lands,
until the word
“Hermana ”
settles after the beep.
GLS
4.21.93
These words are your gift-
You are embarking.
You are leaving.
Yet, this time there is no movement.
Life spins us these ways,
around the dial, along the axis of our mind,
and back again.
But I have always measured my life by cycles,
by water returning
from air to land to stone to sand
to sea,
by the clockwork of people
who always find a way back.
I am learning to live life differently.
To take moments as shadows of clouds
on a sidewalk.
I must enjoy the passing of shadows
as much as the return of favors.
Do not live life by patterns,
the world knows its cycles, they will continue
without you.
But the flow of half-truths told by the tide,
“I am here. I am gone. I will touch you.”,
or the pain
of watching a Texas sky go gold go dark
go away,
these things can be held.
to them, we can apply the word:
cherish.
I know this is a form of release,
that you do not like these lessons,
for they play upon design and control.
Learn this one.
Stand upon the six and force your turning
to stop.
Hold the hands back, force your turning
to stop.
Hold the hands back, link the fingers,
twine them and begin your realization.
Time is not cyclical, it is a line.
Why must we cycle, return to memory, anticipate?
Now the option is ours, to move
outward, away, ever-wider
until, like clouds across the ground
we are cast upon the earth
as we are filled with light
filled with air.
GLS
3.2.93
You are leaving.
Yet, this time there is no movement.
Life spins us these ways,
around the dial, along the axis of our mind,
and back again.
But I have always measured my life by cycles,
by water returning
from air to land to stone to sand
to sea,
by the clockwork of people
who always find a way back.
I am learning to live life differently.
To take moments as shadows of clouds
on a sidewalk.
I must enjoy the passing of shadows
as much as the return of favors.
Do not live life by patterns,
the world knows its cycles, they will continue
without you.
But the flow of half-truths told by the tide,
“I am here. I am gone. I will touch you.”,
or the pain
of watching a Texas sky go gold go dark
go away,
these things can be held.
to them, we can apply the word:
cherish.
I know this is a form of release,
that you do not like these lessons,
for they play upon design and control.
Learn this one.
Stand upon the six and force your turning
to stop.
Hold the hands back, force your turning
to stop.
Hold the hands back, link the fingers,
twine them and begin your realization.
Time is not cyclical, it is a line.
Why must we cycle, return to memory, anticipate?
Now the option is ours, to move
outward, away, ever-wider
until, like clouds across the ground
we are cast upon the earth
as we are filled with light
filled with air.
GLS
3.2.93
This heart I have -
Darling
long from here I will still need you
in the patterns of dreaming and waking in
your gaze, in the pleasure of kissing, even in
these midwinter winds. So take me
in your cradle this night, tell me
something immutable in your so
strong voice. Timbre. Because life
will catch us unawares, toss us like
debris against walls of others, and
Perhaps only this fragile moment will survive,
candle in our collective mind, but that,
that certainly will be enough. Because
I love you. As no other, ever. And I will
teach others of the way I see since you
first touched my neck, and the way I have
learned to breathe because of you. Do
you understand? Listen to my words.
Feel me in the page, glinting like light
on scales underwater, watching, watching.
We were not born for each other, which is
no tragedy, for we found each other, and
that is our gentle, singular, whispered glory.
Why western is a b stop –
The husking time again.
Half-holden moons linger over this city in the heat
of August. I think it is this heat, or this movement.
Life moving side to side,
rocking to a heated, golden rhyme,
and I am cutting through,
leaving pieces in the cross-section of space
where I was, and the world is.
The churches are landmarks for me,
breaking the tree-line like mammoths in a veldt of prayers;
I can sight them from the train and know
that I am near.
This is the loneliest time, time,
the time of immense and disturbing silence,
when the sway of an elevated car and the spark of steel and rail
are suddenly symbolic,
but of what,
I do not know.
The husking time again.
Quarter-glow moons are like the stopwatch;
I am moving to a place so rapidly,
that Indian cycles are the only measure,
Indians know that people change like seasons,
if they move like brooks.
I do not look, either, at faces, or into eyes,
unspoken codes allow people the privacy of hermits or saints
when they board;
suddenly, there is no singing, and there is only swaying
of metal on a hurried path.
It makes one wonder if people are worthy of love.
The husking time again.
In darkness from the sky, I am reached.
No bonfires, no flashlights, no beaconing.
I can hear the pieces rushing like leaves on concrete,
clawing to find the one who discarded them.
I cannot smell others,
the lingering of sweat from platform is mine,
this reminds me of each time I change:
when I lose my sense of after-you,
when I lost my sense of touch,
and people blur into uniformity,
and churches rising and floating in trees
are perfect goals,
stone serenity to guide me
past these moons of August,
and this primal need to lose myself.
Half-holden moons linger over this city in the heat
of August. I think it is this heat, or this movement.
Life moving side to side,
rocking to a heated, golden rhyme,
and I am cutting through,
leaving pieces in the cross-section of space
where I was, and the world is.
The churches are landmarks for me,
breaking the tree-line like mammoths in a veldt of prayers;
I can sight them from the train and know
that I am near.
This is the loneliest time, time,
the time of immense and disturbing silence,
when the sway of an elevated car and the spark of steel and rail
are suddenly symbolic,
but of what,
I do not know.
The husking time again.
Quarter-glow moons are like the stopwatch;
I am moving to a place so rapidly,
that Indian cycles are the only measure,
Indians know that people change like seasons,
if they move like brooks.
I do not look, either, at faces, or into eyes,
unspoken codes allow people the privacy of hermits or saints
when they board;
suddenly, there is no singing, and there is only swaying
of metal on a hurried path.
It makes one wonder if people are worthy of love.
The husking time again.
In darkness from the sky, I am reached.
No bonfires, no flashlights, no beaconing.
I can hear the pieces rushing like leaves on concrete,
clawing to find the one who discarded them.
I cannot smell others,
the lingering of sweat from platform is mine,
this reminds me of each time I change:
when I lose my sense of after-you,
when I lost my sense of touch,
and people blur into uniformity,
and churches rising and floating in trees
are perfect goals,
stone serenity to guide me
past these moons of August,
and this primal need to lose myself.
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