As the crow flies

On still days

with drooping flags

and contented leaves

Sounds somehow soaked in

between the crevices

of broad daylight

I sit as still as my body

Allows

shuffling feathers

a crow passes by 

my hair

Lifts

and the clouds tip-toe 

Along the rounded horizon 

I don't see any

Evidence of spin

and even while held down 

in place and time

I feel the thousand 

mile-per-hour trajectory

Of every thing 

and cannot help

but try to follow

Which way

it all goes.

Painting by Akseli Gallen-Kallela, ' Boy and a crow' c. 1884 in Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Goldenlocks

I stumbled upon a short 

story, written

as if it were a poem-

Lines broken like cracks in the side-

walk that one steps

Over

Its title did not evoke its

gait and I hazard to observe-

if it walks like a big duck

it could be a small goose

and then

what do profiles 

Reveal or musings in marginalia...

What makes a poem,

a place, a sense of something familiar

almost like thoughts

Severed

So many stories

follow a straight line

and then

I 

turned a corner

saw a different path

without backstory and confident

Nobody

was following me

(anymore)

and then

it was done. 

Artwork by Virginia Frances Sterret, 'Old French Fairy Tales 0077 in Public domain in US, via Wikimedia Commons.

They carry no identification

The lost souls could not
have been
                -strayed-
unwillingly taken
from their way,
meaning-intention.

Did I mention
they found Us
in sad shapes too,
(round bodies in square
boxes),
what to do

about maps that don't make a clear path through
tough terrain
& letters that refuse to column, justify, paragraph
or add up to cents?

I swear atop the nameless grave,
I saw the spirits, the others
looking away, must have been
confused by their own disparate
directions toward the destination
all call
'Home'.

There was always more than one way
there and back,
although there never stayed the same.

The tree markers,
bleed and breathe,
resembling each other,
unlike the stone
every body was required
to find
a building for the soul.





Painting by George Elgar Hicks, 'Gypsy girl' c. 1899 in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Terminal Velocity

My toes point to that familiar path
over which I tread the same very way
without thought, after days, after days
ground-soft
                               only it doesn't end.
The terminus dissipates before me
the exit escapes
itself

fracturing new matter,
atoms posing in new positions,
the frames along the long hall
                                        rattle and
all fall, shattering into
collage.

I have moved on and on
and recognize how the light changes
just enough to see
this
step
through and parallel time
at equal velocities and thus
all must be still-

transported. This is how
I can be carried along
in this metropolitan body,
incentivized, yet
                    infested with crime,
corrupt with ego, more so
hiding in skin
I was entrusted to always protect-
                                        but don't.

Animal eyes see me
burrow in my bi-pedestal body
and hear my heart beat itself and
echo through my unshod feet-
yet I do not run,
                                   I carry on,
erect, by these same narrow walls
plastered shells, caves or caverns
alternating distances passed
by vision and memory
                                        alone,
                                   barefoot,
weary but walking on and on
this way
toward the vanishing point.

Photograph By PCR Services Corporation, creator [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

What lies ahead

Sun lifting the veil of purple sky-

might bronze forge strength

pungent as the turned dirt?

Thirsting through 

exposition, hide and seek,

those are lost and winding back 

around-

those that reap

shall be held against the light

shall cast atonement into the shadows-

thou shalt be measured against the day.

All ways an arm's length

a way-in every direction

aimed 

this focus spares no details 

no enunciation of echoes

when molding bodies

come to day with arsenals

of color intended to define us

by just what they had

known and felt 

against all alchemy

made from the excesses,

there was the sky 

with directions. 

Painting by Maksymilian Gierymski c. 1869 in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

We women watching under eye shadows

Seeing is believing.
Done through heavy sooted eye-
shadows.

New, meant come around 
all over 
again.
We noticed,
nothing new.

Women still paint their faces,

but abstain from powdering noses,

            and will travel as far and wide enough

to know a full revolution

            of the hips when she feels the need
to dance,

when hoops slip into too tight of spirals
we feel confined.

Given time

the stains come out

and by reduction to the lowest possible whole drop,

                        some flesh tones become singularities

condensed into specks, spread across any open faces

                        sunk into  black holes that may only escape 
as screams.
There was a trace. 

What progress we felt on our burning skin,

blurs as age rounds off soft female edges,

                        yet the spine protrudes, more

and gums get back up in order

to suck out the ivory scene
leaving a chalk outline.

All life in circles, women come around.

Known for orbit and making

headway

            by the expansion of ego and 

squeezing in equilateral points, the men did
squares and wrecked tangles.

Forward was no direction-

to give 
away.

And finding this Now, Here,

           was terrifying.

There were unseen toxins in the air.

The smog-always Over There.

The disease thrived in another suffocating body.

Would we feel less,

we would ever know

if we were in it

or it was in us.

Knowing not 

why we came or why we remain,

heavy, 
we carry on a stench 
wrapped around our glacial shoulders.

A few were inoculated against such

vertiginous long views, like standing up-
right

where Up was no place

for land lubbers.

Women won't follow 

directions. 

Most felt the calamities rising,

considered the unreasonable temperatures,

and the harshness of storms as personal 
lashings, mis-behaving as
the judged and jurried.

From overhead,

sensed the shifting clime,

and sought sources

                        backward, by untangling those wires,

going on invisible signals.

We find the Current that carries us. 


Painting By Marion Boyd Allen (1862–1941) (http://the-athenaeum.org/art/detail.php?ID=49019) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.