Every Year…
We never intend our voice to be a mirror
after a year. Writing is a release -
that means don’t come back.
To cry the tear of a reader
to pose a question – to describe a lack.
The cocoon sealed green opens
and the history of those people
is a stream reflecting light.
Water isn’t without connotation
words are not without denotation -
and thus an elderly man can come across
the stream he crossed in youth
sockless and happy -
and feel nothing but sorrow at
the sameness of it all.
In time he will build a bridge
to never look upon the waters again.
The bridge will bear his name
the name on the lips of those who pass
with their children in hand.
Small girls laugh at the wind carrying seeds
as mothers sneeze loudly.
The young boys pull with all their might
against the weight of their fathers
toward the edge of the path.
For one second they want to see the river
as it passes through the trees,
under the bridge,
and on into the horizon.
A Metaphor?
Black and white cons. Tattered jeans. The t-shirt with a band’s name. A hoodie. A cloudless yet thundering sky above. A soulless yet sacred pavement below. Amidst an elegantly constructed rubble there is an art. Sharp angular buildings carve a new sky – one determined by arithmetical precision of point A to point B – a skyline where once there was an arc and a horizon. Eyes catch a self walking beside them in the mirrored side of a headless building.
The shifting doppelganger pulls his hoodie ever over his face. It hides a pumping pocket music box the artificial heart tucked neatly into secret space. Its droning muse redefines things around by altering moods and emotions. It at least distracts one’s self from grunting street folk, yelling children, angry men, and domestic assault. Hurried people bump the ghost in street clothes as they splash by in lingering puddles – the aftermath of a deluge worthy of Noah’s arc.
Pascal outlined how distraction only served to make us forget about death. The music pumped on. Death is not nearly as scary as purposeless living some would say. To fear death would be to fear what you do not know otherwise called a phobia. So distractions might as it turns offer salvation from the natural elements that otherwise bind us in a prison of flesh. Life, after all its pretensions are stripped, would be an error without music.
A hand reached out to grab a hold of its corresponding doppelganger only to find smooth glass. Its firm skin coldly resisted touch. How sound could easily cut the infinitely regress into fragments. Destruction, it turns out, is linked to creativity. Destruction’s angel of justice, Entropy, only exists as an accident of presupposed organization. An organization that means nothing without an organizer. The difference between life and death, science teaches, is a few misplaced neurons, a couple of atoms, and timing. What brought life to that unrelated mess of parts is still unknown – but it wasn’t music.
