Antheia please

The flowers, the blooms, I can smell them heady-strong, and I'm drunk with their love. The starlings nesting in roof slats warble obnoxiously; the trees shrug the world of ice from their shoulders with deep, ancient groans; the stars glitter and parade into new locations while the sky subtly lightens her hue; but it's the flowers, the blossoms I await in my room.

The prickly roses are sleeping beauties, tulips, voluptuous lips of spring, the wildflowers showering the mountainsides paint a picture so brilliant, I discard my easel and become a boy again, rolling down slopes and beneath the willows and evergreens. Spring, spring is coming, the season of life-giving green, days where the light is greater than night.

Where baby bunnies cluster around in the tall grasses, glancing at the true blue sky between the shivering pines, and the sing-song breeze brushes past and whistles to the tune of life; as deer pause by the shimmering silver of streams and lap at ease; when the squirrels chatter with the chirping chickadees, and cottonwood seeds float along the streets and hillsides. Antheia, please, clothe the mountains extravagantly; Rhea, lady of the wilds, wrap the stones, forests, earth, and living with verdancy, and let us see something worthy of a resurrecting.

Sometimes, the loneliest of places are within the wildest of crowds full of unfamiliar faces. You catch fleeting glimpses of passing emotions like sparks from a fire, but never linger long enough with another soul for warmth. It's like a dream, in a city street full of ghosts (are you walking through or with the stream? it's impossible to tell. Is anyone moving?), and the voices and noises around could be the hiss of the wind as easily as the words from the lips of these empty, translucent beings. (am I the same ghostly figure as these? what do I look like in their eyes?) Sometimes, the most fulfilling talks are held from hundreds of miles away, and you only wish they would drag you through these crowds, or that you might fight through them together. But it's only a dream, and the sun will rise and shed new light on life if you wait long enough. 

Sometimes, the greatest joys are those where it's just the holy spirit and I, and she doesn't mind that I know not how to pray, she intercedes anyway.

Sometimes

Who am I? Sometimes

While magnolia tides shimmer with the smiles of the sea

A scimitar moon sings with the power of wheat;

tiny boats like snowdrops through the ocean drift

cupped in the mighty waves

the sky's eyes breathe fire and my heart's kindling -

jaguar of my spirit stirs 

and leaps

into the running water seams of these twilight weaves

whose wolf howls and owls hoot thrice

wherefore art thou now, oh brother, oh love?

quick, before too long

locking dried petals into a walnut box

redolent of east autumn sunrise

and dizzying honeyed saffron

treasure of memories, gift to the lady of waters

this burden is heavier floating free

Today was Walt Whitman and Pablo Neruda day. I admit a fascination and love for Pablo Neruda, and an indifference towards Walt Whitman. Oh, Whitman definitely possesses a turn of phrase and a knack for vital, almost blood-thirsty writing that lacks in my own. But somehow he manages to make poetry long-winded, almost tedious. There is something impatient in the reading, or too patient in the writing. Maybe I read too nearly to Pablo Neruda, whose writing inspired me greatly.

Some lines I wrote down as I read them:

cold flower heads are raining over my heart

ay, love is a journey through waters and stars, through suffocating air, sharp tempests of grain

carnal apple, woman filled, burning moon, dark smell of seaweed, crush of mud and light

full of the voltage of the sea's movements

...to that form that love carved in the guitar

so that the waves can complete themselves in the sky

It seems like every poem is charged with their own "voltage" like the sea's motions.  Again I wish that I could read the original works and understand the nuance of his language. I understand enough Spanish to know that I know too little. 

It's been a day of distance, of separation. I can't remember if I've ever suffered a headache, but what I sometimes experience is strange nauseating "distance vision". Everything, from the pen in my hand to the doorknob only paces away or the book I hold in my hand, everything appears as though it were far, far away, well beyond reach.  That's what today has felt like, as though seeing things, I could not interact with them. Difficult days (S: looking at you), unusual environment, unsolvable problems, confusing imagery, brokenness of people, losing - I can't seem to win, or even compete in the game, sometimes. None of these are my problems, and I can't seem to help with them. It is a devastating separation. This is such a day (when the chinks in my legerdemain make clear the smoke and mirror).

What do I do on such days? I've no solutions. Sometimes, I write until the pages bleed through and, closing my eyes, I wait until my blindness dissipates. Sometimes, I stare at my hands and wonder if they are mine, or if that changes things. Sometimes, I wish. Sometimes I win anyway.