The Whole and the Chaos

The Whole eventually emerged from the Chaos

And it came out naked and bright

And slippery.

It was built on poems and manifestos

a blend of colorful paint

and crumbled balls of newspaper.

 

I stood far away

And I watched it moving

somewhere in my mind.

I felt the breeze of its movement

And I heard the sound

of rustling leaves overhead

and I felt my heart beating

more and more slowly.

 

Chaos slipped back into the shadows

like a wave that slides back into the ocean.

I could sense its low hum,

I could feel the crackling of its low song.

 

And the Whole grew bigger

brighter as it moved,

pulling in more and more words

lines of poems danced around it

forming rings so large they sprouted hurricanes

and all the cities were drenched,

pounded by drops of thought

and walls of words

and they were all made new again

and slippery

almost naked again as they once were

in their gray color.

The Quince Tree

The quince tree stood in the distance,

at the edge of the dreaming desert.

It stood illuminated in the moonlight,

And its fruit glowed from within

like tiny candles in the night.

All around the tree

the ground was dry and cracked and cool.

I had become invisible to those that once knew me.

I had disappeared into the hot nothingness long ago,

into the dry wind of blue and yellow.

I was brittle now, but I was also an explorer.

I would hitchhike on the edge of sentences,

and merge distant worlds for a moment in the dark.

No one knew I was there.

On the edge of the dreaming desert,

I remembered a children's song from long ago:

little darling fruit

you make the perfect pie

I wrap you up in sugar

and let out a little cry.

Little darling fruit.

I was alone now,

a lone dreamer within a vast dream.

The silver light lit the desert floor,

alive with tiny creatures of the night.

The dark leaves shook,

the fruit on the quince tree dangled restlessly.

I felt fear hiding in my body,

in the void explored in sleep,

in the places where words hung suspended

like fruit in the moonlight.

I knew that all the secrets were everywhere,

In every direction

around every corner

all around me

all the time.

So I rubbed by naked body against the bark,

and I lay on the ground.

I closed my eyes and

I was still in the nothing.

Then I felt the invitation

and I let a response emerge
from my mouth.

Two ancient species spoke that night,

And they made a connection

at the edge of the silver light.

I would never be alone again.

Without Eyes or Force

my king, my god

barely recognizable in the wind

shining in the moonlight

my king, my god

its shape incomprehensible

in the swirling phenomena

of a myriad structures and forms

that surround it.

It devours all true memory

all sense of the past

is torn away

from underneath me

leaving me cold and alone

hesitant and uncertain.

Here, in this place,

I see

it is thinking that began time,

and language that gave it shape.

And now time stirs

revealing the hidden treasures

of entropy and death.

Certain questions will

forever remain

suspended in space

without answers

without conclusions

vibrant in their

refusal to fall.

Meanwhile

behind the black curtain

the night envelops me

and a body

without eyes or force

forever becomes

movement

a sound

vibrating air

somehow shining

in the moonlight.

Impulse

Mood is my body

manifesting itself

through subtle levels

too light to touch

too faint to hold.

The remains of my lost thoughts

fall without making a sound

without leaving a trace.

How do I speak

of harmony

of light

and the process of the rose?

I have come through

twisted from the labyrinth

emerging fully formed

from the tunnels of time.

It is all a colorful pattern

yet fearsome and dark,

a strange loop

where words are arranged

in spiraling currents

a sequence discarding logic

a structure without

a stable frame.

No need here

for a physical body

just a seed

containing the process

and the freedom

that brings it life.

I remain

an unknown mass

a life impulse

a lustful fountain

a fading thought.

Wall Of Words

Spiraling currents and walls of words met us at the other end of the tunnel.

We had walked, walked for so long that I had forgotten there were feet, arms, or thoughts attached to me. There had been darkness for so long that I forgot you were with me, that there was an action called “walking,” a thing such as breathing and experience. We had been in the tunnel for so long that there was no tunnel, no self, no other. 
And then we emerged, and I realized that you were with me, but we were different. Our skin was shiny, with new hands and muscles and thin lines of electricity that voyaged up and down our veins in eternal recurrence.
I could see the purple and yellow pulsing through your skin, through my own. And it went between us too, stopping not at the borders of biology, but traveled through the space between us, changing color. It was not distance between us, because we were connected, both through these colored currents and through the walls of words.
With each new discovery between us the words would slowly fade together, one replacing the other so slowly, so beautifully that I would sometimes get lost in the blurring lines and speckled palettes. We dabbled together, linking minds, smiling, fusing thoughts into cursive patterns.
We arranged our bodies in new ways, imitating the patterns on the chamber walls. I on top of you, you inside of me, connecting and mirroring, shadows becoming dances, a twisted oblique labyrinthine representation of conscious energy.
And the hidden channels, here we dove into them. Nakedness not just unabashed, but sacred. We gave ourselves as gifts. Golden and shiny, wet and smooth, buffered in hair and dancing dreams and shadowy thoughts. I could see the landscapes of purple places, where moons came out to light the way for traveling islands we glimpsed from moving trains.

I was looking away when a girl in a yellow shirt decided to look at me. Then I saw her reflected on your skin, could smell the jasmine and sun of the day in which she appeared. She jumped through a chain of daisies and came to us, bringing more voices and more strange boys and girls who sang in unison. They wore glasses and golden crowns and I could not quite make out their words and instead of singing, made up syllables to the melody and spun in circles.  Black and red birds descended upon the scene, some of them menace makers, adding to the chaos, to the flutter of leaves and eyelashes. They swirled and swooped, brushing some of us with their glitter tipped wings, and I laughed, despite myself.  It was a carnival of lights, a thousand elements blinking, lighting up the night, fireworks bursting, lovers in the bushes, covered in dirt and sticky leaves and kisses.

Spiraling currents, the walls of words held us close, hugged us deeply. I write and re-write, you who read and maybe re-read, we are bound through electric pulsing currents. Together in a sense, apart in yet another sense, I send bursts of this hot energy your way, and you let them come in through the eyes. They come out through your lips and I sense the words once again transformed. Shapes without definition, meaning as slippery as soap and water.

Held Between

Living water
bouncing sound from one finger to another.
Shape travels like the sun
east to west,
a storehouse of stars that go inward,
getting deeper the further we look.

A map of the territory
has been colored and laid on the table.
Red and blue.
We travel up and down, the heart
always a beating constant.

Who was flowing
back towards the moon?
Two oars that sent ripples through the black water.
It was the only sound I could hear.
The darkened trees were far in the distance,
surrounding us
alone on the water.

We were unable to contain it.
Not just the one precious thing we held between us,
but the stars that tried to jump
out and overboard,
making food for the fishes that swam below.

Was it not our life’s work to hold it all in?
Except for the few days we gathered at the pyre
to release the fireballs we had created,
we never talked of such things.
It slipped through us,
accidentally,
forever.

It dissipated into the labyrinth.
The thing we had tried to carry and transport,
the screams we held
the laughter
the lifetimes of energy
escaped into the bramble of tunnels
and thin passageways lined with thorns.

We simply didn't know enough to
retrieve what had escaped.
We could not find the keys beside our shoes,
so close.

We now contained the light of nature,
the moon gave us a new skin,
Shiny and somehow both dark and light at the same time.
We noticed our mistake
and looked for the keys.
Those were the last vestiges of the world we cast off.
The waters and oars needed no coaxing to
follow our commands, nor
the weather which somehow began to bend at our will.

This is where the last year would migrate after ending.
Right here, this one place which contained all places
All lives and hopes
All mistakes and lovers.

The last year was in fact constructed
From the last vestiges of blood and skin we had salvaged from
the piles left out in the forest.
somehow we had sewn it up, constructing
what appeared to be a perfect replica.

It may have existed since the beginning.
But I would not know, I did not come from that time.
They sent me down with the last of the colonists and I have been here since,
piecing together the journey I forgot to write about.

From the very fabric of the labyrinth
I have created a replica of the past,
which when slightly tilted to the right,
shows what will come next,
though I have artistic license to bend the pieces as I like.
Perhaps the farmer and small town will be subject to pink grass and blue trees,
or none at all
and all will be absorbed into the labyrinth itself. 
I have been known to wander.

Missing Words

How many times will I dig through the mud to find those missing words?  Hands cupped, probing the thick dark folds of silken sludge, I move with the instincts of an animal, all seeing in the darkness. Through the buried remains of world and beast I move, finding remnants which in them contain entire galaxies, though I see them as tiny bits of stone and meadow grasses.

Those words, I released them in an undulating pattern of body convulsions, clicking, and rocking spasms. I sent them up into the air with warm breath and panting and so much fire.
There is still more in me. Deep in the caves guarded by secret mistresses in black hooded robes and pierced pink nipples, hidden in such dark places it might take years or lifetimes to find. There the sound swirls, a deep well of red hot amber, swelling and irrepressible.
Palpitating and prepared for all the fingers of every god who can make the journey. Every beast. Every mountain man covered in fur and curls, white powder on his heels. 
If they walk the thousand steps, slay the thousand dragons, enchant the guardians, they will find it there, swimming through the thick pools of combined water and earth, stone and plant.

Those missing words released in a momentary fluttering, they are tucked into small ponds with tiny golden fish, red and yellow stripes along their bellies. Bubbles and little waves sometimes push them to the surface where I can scoop them up and swallow them whole. There are none left for the wild dogs on the days I wade into the waters, naked and just slightly stiff in the cold air.
Always a bitter wind will sweep down off the mountains, rushing towards me, an avalanche of sound and roaring desperation.  How can it tell?  Finding my body as it moves, coming towards me gracefully as a large-winged bird. It covers me in a frozen embrace and races towards the great ice caps of the north.

I dropped my clothes long ago in the meadow. I walk with red painted toes and black stripes marking my breasts and ribs, barely breaking a blade of grass with my weight. My breathing, smooth and shallow, just enough to keep me alive as I search the waters. There are bees darting and iridescent songbirds and cicadas drowning out the noise of other living creatures, creating an undulating drone which corresponds to the water ripples slapping against my white skin.
Do they react to my rushing heat or do we move together? Desire and bubbles and fish and lost words pushing against each other, naked and sweat covered and moving without language.

Thin purple petals are covered in dew, they sparkle in the brilliant light. The wind keeps racing over and past me and my heart runs after it, a high pitched scream following our decent into the caverns below the sea of time. The ache inside bursts out, swelling outwards towards the sea. 

Gripping the wind for comfort, deep and voluminous snakes emerge from the holes in the ground, from my ears, out my mouth. Overcome by scales and hissing, I finally sink to my knees. They suck on the tiny beads of sweat below my breasts and coil around me, bringing me back into time. Where things happen, where words are formed.