Four walls. Invisible and made of glass.
A frozen prison, filled with pieces of sky,
an echo of universe; shimmers of
swirling white, rotating quietly within.
The soundless hum of blue, the ageless
glitter of stars, a sun in the center;
solid, bright, and cold. A dream; trapped
inside. Drifting, dimming, fading.
Drowning light.
Sometimes we forget we are human,
fall past sights induced in swooping dizziness,
jagged lines of darkness, and blinding magenta swirls,
and enter the worlds beyond three dimension.
Sometimes we forget we are human,
ride on jeweled dolphins in oceans full of stardust,
sing in languages forgotten or yet unknown,
walk on blood orange sunsets and drift through scarlet seas.
Sometimes we forget we are human,
our frozen prisons no longer solid blue,
we grow wings chiseled of weightless diamond,
and abandon our sadness to die in echoes.
Sometimes we forget we are human,
we leave pathways to dance on silver meadows,
shatter mirrors to splinter sight,
and we capture sunlight with our bare hands.
Underneath
the swell of skin
the bloated belly
a scarlet pulsing flame
a burning heartbeat
raging, seething,
in infinite dark fire
a blistered, lividly red,
weeping child born with
shadow hunted eyes
and broken thoughts
from the dying body
In the gaps between stories;
a life of pale blue whispers,
lilac syllables, almost voices,
dancers of nowhere that spiral
in careful white lace
The moon emerges from the mountains a monstrous, swollen apparition; gleaming and pulsing like an ember.
The souls surface from darkness behind the mountains, their bodies the deepest midnight blue, yet translucent, and full of stars. They transcend downhill toward the ominous outline of forest beyond my house. They seem weightless like they are walking on air.
One caught me watching once; lifted its strange face dappled with muted moonlight, and stared at me with its wide vacuous indigo eyes. A shiver had run down my spine and for a moment my heart was frozen. Solid. Ice. Piercing in my chest. I was drowning in their indigo emptiness. The entirety of it. But the moment dissolved quickly, along with the figure, becoming only another shimmering shadow swallowed by the mangled trees.
Others enter the forest; soft-featured girls with long blond hair and men with large rifles and dogs with gleaming teeth. They enter the forest when sun is high in the sky, casting golden rays to glitter like sprinkled fairy dust on the leaves, dispersing the darkness, pushing it aside to wait its turn. They are under the illusion that is safer then. They aren’t aware of how fast darkness can surround you.
I never see their faces again. The forest swallows them.
Sometimes I see other faces, peering out from the silver birches, from between the brambles, and blackberry thickets; wisps of women, green with flowing leafy hair and fingers stained in crimson blood. Faces thick with pelts of dark fur and wide, aquamarine eyes. So quick to disappear again that most of the time I am not sure of whether I imagined them or not. I wonder when I will enter the forest. If I will ever come back.
The last body waits in the center of the room
and listens to the echoes;
the receding colors that dance on walls
painting landscapes dipped in falling time
the hum of fading stars
the ach of forgotten promises
abandoned shadows left to whisper in the corners
The body waits.
Days,
Years,
Eternities.
Until its wings slowly dissolve,
drawn up and up like thinning mist,
into a vast emptying space.
Another shadow.
Another Angel left to sing in an ancient sky.
Dense atmospheres vibrate in scarlet discord
Arid melodies simmer above colorless oceans
Parched soils wait for frozen songs
Angels to walk through blistering pathways
Orange sunsets move slowly across burning horizons
Golden tears fall like memories of ancient water
A feverish heartbeat shudders as heat advances
Every winter a dream in worlds of endless flame
Your first word,
your first smile,
your first tea,
your first laugh,
your first wound,
treasures in her memories.
In sleepless nights she sung in sunsets;
golden lullabies to paint away
the darkness
She rocked you back and forth;
motions like a silent sea
She let you fill her with your sadness
your frozen cries of pain
She helped carry it when it got to heavy
She kissed away the crimson blood
without worry of staining her lips
She jumped in swirling black oceans
fearless of the crashing waves
as she saved your shaking body
She danced with you in golden rain,
In waterfalls of stardust,
In worlds of pretend.
She helped you learn
in patient syllables
until you understood.
She braided daisies in your hair
whispered smiles on your face
wiped away your tears
Her’s is the heartbeat you will remember forever.
The Gates are calling.
We hear their voices vibrate,
quiet silver lights in days full of mist,
a faint draft from the Underworld,
as we wonder on grey sidewalks,
lined with fading skyscrapers.
Now we dream in visions leaking from raven blackness,
in dwindling hope of another dance.
We wait with lavish masks of chiseled diamond,
in lingering dust that breathes in soft silver chimes.
The music of the Underworld a thick hum in our ears.
We listen and forget to listen all at once,
our bony shoulders touching, pallid skin sparkling,
dark eyes glistening, hearts beating too fast,
Stars fall from the sky and tangle in our hair.
We move slowly, with heavy, broken breath,
until we pick up from the ground, and rise.
We fall in the belief of flying.
We fall endlessly from the cliff we climbed,
plunging through the Gates,
diving into the blackness of the Underworld.
In the glistening white light
shinning in open doorways
In the thick coils of rainforest
gleaming and dripping in sinuous dance
In the deeper realities that shimmer
Like a heat haze above the surface world
Magic lives.
In the huge oaks and sprawling hawthorn hedges
leaves turned luminous against iron-grey sky
In the blazing heart-shaped pendants
hanging around little girl’s necks
In the twisted pathways
strung with silver birches
In rain clouds and glimpses of sunlight
Magic lives.
