Making astronomy and poetry collide…
Rushing past the whites
of the universe’s eyes
pale, not-blue, and heavy–
despairing in the dust
of old life–while, perhaps,
sparking
the embers of carbon
and hydrogen
the combination generating
the warm blue glow
of a new species, Perseid’s
sister waiting for the dust
to settle.
I am known by my curly shadow curse. And I regularly reintroduce myself during the once-a-year “normal” day. Folks regularly introduced to the frizz uncontrolled and overwhelmed. And that is fine with me. A defining feature I can embrace since “Oh yes, there’s just no hope for it” and “All-natural, all the time” but don’t worry about the maintenance because it’s an excuse to “get up and go.” No one can tell a difference anyway, just go.
Go unabashed in the wind because it’s tangled however you throw it and luckily the humidity is low today. But the occasional rainstorm transforms me from the beach-babe to the medieval torture chamber victim as soon as the steam starts to rise from the pavement. But it also embraces me and keeps me warm in the winter. No scarf needed. I can wrap the mass around my neck, a self-inflicted, Porphyria during the occasional exuberant breeze. Even she is a vision of beauty and lust, even if in the grave. I can mimic some semblance of that beginning, on a Tuesday, perhaps.
I am the young girl standing in front of the mirror for three hours fumbling the tie that won’t stay on my piano-fingers. My only wish at the time, to tie back this blight and pin it until the wind can never twist open the fly-aways. Perhaps then I might sneak in with the flat-heads. I did learn. But now–now I can go. Go wherever I want and that thing that everyone knows me by reaches out to brush the chest of the man I lay next to. It spreads out like water-alive across his arms and my shoulders-bare (except for the occasional escapee) and I am whole in this genetic gift cursed upon my scalp.
nights when the stars burn and light chills
chilling suspended in the blank air exposed
exposing little reality of expansion
expanding of the unimaginable-unending fire
and somehow arms wrapping around me
and somehow the smell of chocolate steam
and somehow the pine and snow mixed on my tongue
and somehow the freezing tingle of your warmth
somehow infinitely far from my skin
And dust covered Caroline’s rose.
Sand left to blow between the cacti
and scatter by scorpions’ legs
finally settling for the night on
the black pettles in place of dew.
She saw the dust in the sky and drew
it down where it could only fade, not
disband. A singular interpretation,
an anomaly, hidden between the sheets
of a girl’s journal. All the while,
the world continued to turn the pages
of masculine calculations waiting
for the wind to flip the page
of the rose-colored book.
I am breath moving
through the gaps, missing the time.
My future unknown.
Holding your breath in what seems empty space.
Reality; bits of lives scattered throughout
molecules, atoms, minuscules of matter invisible
to the eye. I see you. And I left you.
Standing at the bus stop, waiting for me to arrive
so I could say goodbye.
I know you wish that carbon and helium would mix,
expand, explode, create in a moment of destruction.
Memories between us left shattered, broken bonds
into a mushroom cloud of hydrogen, simplest
of them all packing a bang like none-other.
