Wishflower
If what I said about you can be counted as
completely true,
then also I must realize that truth is made of parts.
Intricate by their design
inlaid with luring labyrinths
of two-way mirrors
and phantom fears
with every choice, another’s missed.
Truth is just a consequence
of suffering a need to know
planted by some unknown hand
left to grow in some strange land
invisible until its roots
fiercely twist themselves around
oblivion, and force their way
to being found.
Truthful ambiguity,
the lies we sell ourselves and
tell us to believe.
I know you’ve been there, too—
the daffodil that didn’t know
(because you never let it show)
that it was really nothing more
than a humble dandelion.
And only when you looked and saw
the buoyant fluff when fields were dying
that all along you were lying
and it was you who made you cry.
But still it would be improbable
to deny
that you know what you saw
and you made it with your mind.
And so the seed takes root!
Which part of truth makes sense
when there really is no difference
between the things we want to see
and all the things we need to see
and all the things that can’t yet be
and what is really there?
Consciousness fades.
stealing away in an amber haze
distant dissonance falling away
in layers drifting further down
slowly away and away and away.
Nobody knows this spring breeze in October—
a beautiful stranger come to meet me.
Skin pulling toward the setting sun
I am numb.
And electric.
This form, long suffered by gravity,
forgets me so soon.
Goodbye old friend.
(I don’t suppose we’ll meet again.)
A new place stands empty on the horizon, waiting,
and there I may be found
stripped of chains, unbound
with feathers at my back.
Eyes close. Fade to black.
Edge of Day
You might call it an unwillingness to indulge your simplicity,
or worse—
a perceived complexity that won’t exist, but still I see.
Some things mean simply nothing.
Or is nothing without relevance to every other nothing?
Sometimes I cry—
but it’s the laugh inside for which you love me best.
Limbs on trees outside reach high and dare to dream of heaven,
while the willow weeps and sweeps her arms across the floor,
and never cares to hope for more.
I handed you a stone you held awhile
before you called it gray
and tossed it merrily away,
whose gentle smooth and graceful hue
were memories alive in my fingertips
well before it left yours.
And the shadows of the setting sun
touched your face and rode the lines around your eyes
and slid slowly down the side
of your cheek and lost themselves below the cotton ridges of your collar.
In the burning orange you glowed
and I wondered if you’d ever know
the way the sunlight touched your skin
and spoke to me, and screamed your name
and burned in me everything you’ve never known about you,
until I grew so hot inside I had to make it rain
and it was everything that ever was
all at once, and was too much.
Your eyes saw the sun, the rain, the rising mist
yet somehow you managed to dismiss
the significance of all that was,
and to this very day your eyes have not forgotten
and when I look, they remind me.