Arctic Summer

Every morning at drop-off
those rose window eyes turn
to his, he falls to the floor
in front of the altar

Every morning the angel says
"I love you" in a silver-spun whisper
he barely hears sometimes
because the sun has just risen in his face

Every morning he says "I love you, too"
through throat tight with tears on a leash
knowing awareness for precious moments
mayfly in a hyperborean landscape

Every morning, walking out the door
chill descending on his heart
he prays the sun will rise again
bathing him in the gold of an arctic summer

Controlled Experiment

Man in the mirror
is not Michael Jackson,
goddamnit, he sighs, no
thank God I'm not

or maybe...no, best avoid
that place, because being known,
while secretly desired,
scares him quite pale

Desolate dinner of chicken nuggets
he swore he would cut back,
but their gravity is too strong
and they take the blame

tonight, swallowing the last bit
of deep fried melancholy
the scientist acknowledged
a long-buried suspicion:

His life, a controlled experiment
in the hermetic womb of a mindlab
become killing jar of the soul,
would not survive contact with reality.

One In A Million

rain falls outside on greening grass
birds chatter and the sound,
a dreich counterpoint to human song

that claims "I'm a million
different people,
from one day to the next"

heard it all before
still split of mind
as to that million:

afraid I'm infinity plus one

Hard Road, High Sea

The collar only turns so high
Wind finds its way inside
Coiling around aching chest
Chilly breath of Manannan

Pulling the hat down low
Putting one foot 'fore the other
Again and again, on the hard road
Gray cliff along the high sea

"You aren't going to admit that for the first time in your life, you committed a purely human, emotional act?"*

YouTube made today's status report so easy. Just in case anyone was wondering...

*A Gumbo high-five for whoever guesses where this quote came from, and by whom.

Parted

The architect Louis Kahn said:

“Consider the momentous event in architecture when the wall parted and the column became.”

 

He was talking about building parts, of course, but the metaphor is inescapable...goddamnit, I know what he means, now, after all these years...

...I am become column.