a quiet hand with a gentle sigh
a deep blanket under darkened skies
slowly moving through clever lies
a foreign lover who never dies
a quiet hand with a gentle sigh
a deep blanket under darkened skies
slowly moving through clever lies
a foreign lover who never dies
each sunrise is not a new beginning
each rain is not a cleansing
you must stack your days on top of each other
only building, no tearing down
I take pleasure in gently blowing the candle
And listening to the fire struggle against the wind.
It crackles and snaps with its last blue heat
to try to stay alive before I finally extinguish it.
You say it makes you nervous when I stand up
I’m always moving, shifting, changing,
Trying for a better fit in a bitter cup.
I say I understand that my smoke makes you cough,
Then you sigh, moan, roll your eyes,
Tell me you’re more comfortable with the lights off.
The volume of the music grows in the night,
You like the fiddles, guitars, banjos,
But you hate that my sheets are white.
It wasn’t very long ago or far away it seems,
Those moments in the sun, moon, stars,
Now they begin to fade like near-forgotten dreams.
the dreariness is the clouds in my drink.
the grey smell of smoke from the bonfire
persists long after the people have gone,
the lights turned off and the doors locked.
and a silence returns to the vicinity that
begins to pervade, invade my skull
until nothing else matters but the loud ringing
of nothing and of no one. colour, too, fades
away as monochrome becomes the theme.
We two, how long we were fool’d,
Now transmuted, we swiftly escape as Nature escapes,
We are Nature, long have we been absent, but now we return,
We are bedded in the ground, we are rocks,
We are oaks, we are two among the wild herds spontaneous as any,
We are two fishes swimming in the sea together,
We are what locust blossoms are, we drop scent around lanes mornings and evenings,
We are also the coarse smut of beasts, vegetables, minerals,
We are two predatory hawks, we soar above and look down,
We are two resplendent suns, we it is who balance ourselves orbic and stellar, we are as two comets,
We prowl fang’d and four-footed in the woods, we spring on prey,
We are two clouds forenoons and afternoons driving overhead,
We are seas mingling, we are two of those cheerful waves rolling over each other and interwetting each other,
We are what the atmosphere is, transparent, receptive, pervious, impervious,
We are snow, rain, cold, darkness, we are each product and influence of the globe,
We have circled and circled till we have arrived home again, we two,
We have voided all but freedom and all but our own joy.
—Walt Whitman
silence…but here is no need for sound.
calm…we feel no urge to frenzy.
darkness…if you cannot see, then you must touch.
my toes gripped the cold, hard ledge while your fingers gently slid down my back.
below, leagues below, the water smashed against the shore and the white foam
it created lingered on the craggy rocks like your macchiato mustache.
the stupid gulls’ cries were drowned out by the gale-force wind that seemed to
call to us to jump just in case we had recently gained the gift of flight.
