Three Strange Angels

Timberland

2009-12-09T01:41:56+02:00

(For my father - Charles Wheatley Mathews)

I looked to where he lay sleeping

His mouth became a beak,
His body a bird.

Small. Soft and fragile.
How could he be
A man?

Slumped. Gawping.
Cheeks sucked into a hollow.
There was a time
They were filled with words,
And worlds of wonder
Would fall from his lips.

But tonight.
A rasp. A slim sigh.
A soft whistle.
Shrunken and brittle,
Mouth framed with spittle,
No less a man,
No more a giant.

When his last breath left,
I opened the door
Walked into night
Picked up an axe
Chopped the greatest
Tree I could find,
Till it fell.
No more a tree.

Again and
Again the axe struck,
The saw cut through wood.
Hours passed as tears
Turned to resolve.

He died as the sun set
When the new moon
Stalked the sky.

As the night fled
Just before dawn,
I dragged that square box
Onto the lawn.

I stepped right in
Sat down.
Here my father
Would rest his crown.

Then as the stars
Died to sun,
I told him again
That I was his son.

I carried his form
Into the new day
To that casket
I built where
He now would lay.

The Controlled Experiment

2009-12-04T23:33:06+02:00

SUBJECT A: “Do you remember who you were?”

SUBJECT B: “No. That’s why I kept the journals.”

SUBJECT A: “But now you’ve gone and lost them. Haven’t you?”

SUBJECT B: “I never was any good at keeping things.”

SUBJECT A: “Who will you be now?”

SUBJECT B: “Anyone I want to be. I guess.”

SUBJECT A: “Do you remember what you used to write in your journal?”

SUBJECT B: “Not really. Words though beautiful are a poor replica for the fluidity of thought. Thought has its own mercurial quality. Rising like a wave from the depths. Traveling through a sea of consciousness to break away from a world of wateriness and become one distinct wave that departs. Leaves everything it knows to become unique with the sole purpose of crashing into a shore of meaning.”

SUBJECT A: “If words are so confining, how could your journals be your template for becoming?”

SUBJECT B: “What else is there? You’ve got to make do with what you’ve got. And all that I had were the words in those old moleskin books.”

Qualia (two)

2009-09-14T12:04:34+02:00

It is not death

That he fears

But an end without meaning.

He needs to be seen

Heard, remembered.

For a fraction of legacy

To remain

When he’s gone.

It is not forgetting

That I fear

But the loss of memory.

The dimming and

Disintegration

Of experience.

Until I no longer see

What made me.

metempsychosis

2009-08-31T08:26:16+02:00

a tendril leans into tomorrow

budded with tender promise

nested in the seam of two worlds -

where failure and fortune make love

before silhouettes take form,

the possible waits to be born.

PHOTO: fern bud IV by ~photonzoo

Rolling stones…

2009-08-06T01:05:43+02:00

Sisyphus must have known he was buggered the minute he looked at that boulder. The son of kings and a king himself, we can thank Sisyphus for bringing commerce into the world. Surveying the global financial fallout, it’s no small surprise to learn that this mythical Greek was a greedy, lying, niece-fucking son of a bitch. That’s when he wasn’t busy murdering merchants and travelers, stabbing his brother in the back or sticking one in Zeus’ eye.

The swine had it coming to him. So when that massive rock rolled down the hill and landed in front of him, he must have known he was one step closer to hell. Let’s face it, there’s got to be no crueller purgatory than the desperate sweat of shouldering a boulder up a hill, only to watch it roll down again. Never getting to the top of the peak, yet repeating the same trick day in and day out for eternity.

The Sisyphean dilemma sounds like insanity. Despite this most of us willingly shoulder the boulder. Enslaved to a bond; car instalments; medical aid; debt repayments or Edgar’s six month, interest-free payment plan; we reach for the rock and walk the mountain. Day after day. Month after month. Year after year. This while the sky yawns above us, and a fantasy of freedom beckons on the other side.

Only the psychotic, illumined or gifted few give up. For the rest it’s the daily grind of pushing our way closer to the top of our failure, while convincing ourselves we are striving for success.

Perhaps the trick is one of perspective?

Which is what makes Albert Camus is the legendary genius he is. In his philosophical essay The Myth of Sisyphus Camus posits: "The struggle itself...is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy."

It is only, Camus says, by acknowledging the absurdity or our situation that we can march towards death – shoulder to the boulder - with a smile on our face.

Art by summitstudios at deviantART.

Fragile (during the fall):

2009-07-28T10:39:46+02:00

That moment between everything and emptiness.

The dream before the sleep when we were one. Bound in a unity forged by the sun. Before the moon slipped away at dawn and too soon we were two. Separate in all but the forgotten memory of that singular experience.

Another country (for Sean)

2009-06-28T12:45:51+02:00

I love you much
Miss you more.

This longing grows wings
Flies to the edge of my
World, where by water
Fins unfold
(flip flop)

Falls away from the edge
Swims free
Across too far
And finds a new home
In your heart.

the sum of we

2009-04-22T10:50:49+02:00

you and me
we fall into slipstream
fields of possibility
where we are neither
ourselves
(bound by blood)

for too long
I hung on
tightly
pulling umbilicals
as if I could hold
you
who could hold
you?

then I flew kites
learned
reeling in
letting go

surrendering forever
to the beyond
between
life and death
you and me
we are one
and then some
we are two
one of the few
who make three
that trinity where
we are everything
and nothing
together
or apart
we are.

we are.

(For Kyle).

One small single truth

2009-04-05T20:57:00+02:00

We are born alone. We die alone. Why then do we spend much of our lives seeking union with the other? Is it to emulate the spark of creation? A fusion of binary polarties that for the briefest moment recreates a heaven for travelers far away from home. Born of the product of lovemaking, do we intuitively migrate toward the point of origin? Is it that we fall from oneness into twoness. Fragmented from unity into solitude, and so seek return to that state of familial solidarity? People believe in twin souls or soul mates or an original separation. For them is the need is seeded by longing? There are those who say we begin to create our true definition by breaking our parental mirror to redefine ourselves through the image projected by our lovers' eyes. For them does relation help craft identity? In indigenous lore seeking our antithesis simply means following the path of the original story. Emulating the birth of the cosmos again and again as yin meets yang. Or perhaps when we are truly alone we face the startling truth. We are borne of nothing, and die only to return to nothing. An emptiness so overwhelming that once alienated from it, we grasp onto anyone to avoid going back. For me the truth is this. We are borne of one into two, the sum of which makes three. A trinity of doing, saying and being that makes us more and less than we already are.

A letter on stalking word forms.

2009-03-23T23:21:03+02:00

“Your faith was strong but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you
She tied you
To a kitchen chair
She broke your throne, and she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah”
- Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen

There are some lines that are so perfect, so remarkable… that as a writer you forever wish you had written them. And there’s a haunting that you never did.

That you weren’t clever enough, or that you didn’t get there first.

Do you know that some people think that when you’ve thought a thought. Given birth to it. Created it. It begins to take breath in the tangible universe?

Then it leaves you. And if you don’t stalk it... and own it, well then it grows legs and walks and runs until someone else hunts it down.

That’s why many writers never move without a paper and pencil. Because thoughts, like animals, have their own migration. An energy, a being and a will to enter the world as soon as they have been manifest. Perhaps they want to live screaming and kicking in this world, rather exist in some nebulous midway point as mere phantoms.

I wonder if Leonard Cohen knows that. I think he must. Because like Dylan he is a poet first. And poets are remarkable in that they have this rare ability to enable you to see the world anew.

Like Columbus on the Santa María or Livingstone hearing the thunder of the Victoria Falls... there are people who enable us to see the world fresh, for the first time. Who can catch rare beauty before it forever departs from their shore.

I wish I could do that.

Change the way people look at the world.