Climber of trees

she climbs in the trees again
hooting with glee and then
wondering
how high this pine will go -
ah, but not high enough for she
who would climb into the moon,
beyond, if the beanstalk allow -
she's climbing in the trees again,
and though the wind and weight
of the world drag her down,
down,
why, she's upward bound
and no stopping -
branches snap as she ascends to seize
the end from whence she'll start anon:
the tallest mount or moon beneath
her feet before she never bends



// I just can't get this one right

Sleepless Dreams

Last night, after hours of what I might be hesitant to call sleep, I finally lapsed into a light snooze near dawn's light. And with apple-juice chemicals seeping down my veins, I dreamed, and the semi-lucid nature of this dream elucidated the unsteady proximity of this sleep to wakefulness. Yet, I dreamed.

I was in a manor, full of family, relatives, friends. It was one of those manses you imagine when reading nobler exemplars of british literature, with chestnut trees lining the approach, a marble fountain in back, a high hedge around the lot, and all fashion of incredible landscaping that comes from a permanent staff of gardeners and absurd amounts of money. 

Of course, none of this catches the eye nearly as surely as the mansion itself, with Doric columns showing off a regal, daunting archway and gaudy threshold. The house itself is Victorian, with sash windows and the daunting facade that is nearly as much fortress as house.  

Inside, though, that is where I was.

There was a great hall, somewhere in the upstairs of the mansion, with a rounded ceiling arched along a great length. Everywhere on the walls were hangings that split between an eido-japanese and shinto artistic genre and a historical, european lineage of wall-hangings that described a pedigree back to creation in intricately painted portraits. 

The great hall was filled with people, prepared for a banquet. Food was lavishly arrayed about the long, central table, and there was eating and drinking to rival the romans or the vikings in their heyday.  But I was not particularly hungry, and craved only to explore the household.
It was a strange house. Every room centered on the main dining hall, which was the only room in the house not to touch the outer wall. The house was old, and every room contained a door to a small balcony, specific to that room, where you could overlook the grounds. Unfortunately, the constructions for these was crumbling, and I went room to room, trying to find one on which I could stand without it crumbling beneath my feet. As I stood upon each, I found myself scrambling for purchase and frantically leaping backwards into the house for safety, as the stone crumbled down into the garden.

In one room, a number of children were jumping up and down on a mattress, and laughing with glee. But there were dangerous objects clustered around the base of the mattress: knives, pins, nails, and so I shouted for the children to stop, though they would not listen. I rushed into the room and swept away all of the dangerous items, and joined the children in hopping on the mattress for a time. The mattress grew, and was large as the entire room, and the low gravity the room acquired allowed for some fancy leaping shenanigans.

Shortly thereafter, I realized someone was looking for me, someone I knew. But I knew if they found me, I'd have to explain why I left, why I was wandering - so I leapt out of the mansion and into the garden, and hid beneath a bench, behind a raised bed of flowers. 

Ash trees surrounded my hiding spot, and the scent of flowers rushed to my head like ambrosia. I heard the person who was looking for me pass, and I scrambled out of my hiding place to explore the garden. There were flowers everywhere, of every color and type. I began searching for one, a very particular flower that grew in no other place than this mansion, and found it.

It was the most sought after flower in the entirety of the world: purple and short, with petals soft as a rose, and as brilliant a violet as royalty ever wore. The stem is tiny, as short as a daisy, so the flower rides close to the ground, and the center of the flower blossom was liquid gold, like honey, and tasted sweeter.

If you plucked a flower, it would shrivel and die within a minute, the purple petals turning ashen and burning away like chaff.

But they possessed a magical allure, a siren-call that incited anyone who found them to immediately pluck them, and give them to the one you most cherished. I plucked one, hoping the same, and found how quickly those dreams turned to ash in my hands.

At this time, everyone was helping clean up from the feast, and I knew I should help. So I wandered back inside and was told to help empty giant bowls of water. So I kept taking bowls from the kitchen into the garden, and watering the flowers with the unused water.

Then I woke up.

Sunday of Dandelions

Today was sunshine and dandelions, and drawing things that looked like neither. Spring pries winter's fingers from its strangle-hold; flowers and souls blossom to life; starlings nest in the roof slats; grass grows; dogwoods, cherry-blossoms, and plums delight in fragrance and alight with startling colors; and shorts, sun-skirts, light jackets, and the outdoors replace time spent huddling inside under mountains of blankets. It's remembering-the-world season.
I've missed it, the world.

 The world rocks, Ahuva, shudders and burns, quaking beneath the thumping knees of the heavens. Aviva sprawls, she shakes her slippered feet, pops neatly from her cocoon, but your wings are not ready, dear, and the sun cries anxiously.
Ahuva, dance the puddles down the city streets hurry, beloved, time is not, nor will ever be...
lasting, everlasting,  as we seem, so smell the flowers and the trees while racing along every city street, fly while holding hands
and breath, remember everything. for nigh the time arrives to say goodbye, Ahuva, don't wait for me, you're everything when you believe - and I'll surrender everything to see
how far you'll fly




jumbled-diction-stuff-day

Some days, like each of these, I've a magnificent golden mane, and others I'm all seeds, tattered and translucent, fragile as the breeze. I'll travel, but there will be pieces of me dispatched most violently to God-knows-where. Golden-mane-me makes a fine tea, but with these white plumes, people pluck me violently with questions thrown into the wind. Life is not all sunshine and daisies, I exclaim to the tiny white flowers surrounding me, and they natter on irreverently. The tulips understand, praying with delicacy - they understand timing and set the stage most elegantly.

Morning at night

the soft sleeves of morning
form dewdrops of sorrow,
or the golden smiles of dandelions,
around the hazelnut orchards -
stay awhile, it's too beautiful
to leave, lie beneath the boughs -
wind slippers my toes
fog my fuzzy pantaloons
tell no truths I cannot bear -
flower faerie rings,
the magic of dreams girds me,
and below the cherry blossoms,

below the plums, beside rose bushes,

from the dust I rise to dawn

good morning

Writ in fire - amnesia

Where is the fire behind the pen, the blazing sunlight flaring from this nib? Will my writing resurrect in sacred embers, penning these dying words from phoenix feathers? Oh Keats, I understand, what does everyone want from me? I'm inscribing these in flames, leaving fiery lanes of diction known only to me, and soon on and on forever. There's a furnace beneath my feet, and it's hell on my heels. I fear the diving deep, knowing it could be the last thing, my carving letters into the sea soon washed away. Thou was not born for death, immortal Bird! I wish you not half in love with easeful death, nor consign to fate your final breath, for it is not on the end we dwell, no, nor on misery does happiness hold her sway.
It's a gambit; this all was. I notice footsteps in the dust around this head of mine, and they race around in obvious disdain of geometrical similitude, and though they neither exit nor enter, arrive nor leave, I never see whose feet these footsteps belong to. But I love whoever it is, for the delicate rhythm and the stubborn willingness to disturb the dust and dance the dream, I love despite the hurt. If you fall in love with the volcano, you are bound to be burned, and if the sea, why, what ripples can you make in such a thing?


Blind woke up, and he was. Around him, capsules similar to the one in which he lay also swiveled open with a dry, ratcheting noise, and Blind attempted to orient himself in the room based on the sounds, but his head pounded and his mind eked along like an ice floe.
He remembered nothing.

Story Notes

The first thing he knew was light, and the second was life. Thousands of pinpricks of it, scuttling along invisible pathways and organic circuitry. Third was sound, an echoing growl of sound, modulated and pitched with intent, though such was lost on his ears. There was a whistle, a slamming, an irritating buzz, and the voice emanating from a dark figure by the wall, whose face the orange tip of a cigar dimly lit.
The fourth sensation, as the shadow-person leaning against the wall approached and inserted a thin needle into his arm, was pain, though a dull, sharp pain. A soft touch was the fifth, a hand brushing back his hair, and another hovering hand shone a bright light into his eyes. Behind the hand was a pair of light-blue eyes, kind and concerned, and this was the sixth.
The seventh knowing, as the two figures retreated, shutting him in the darkness behind, was nothing he could name, but hurt worse than the first pain, and there were no eyes to console him.

** deceit cannot recall identity? or blind? both


cryo-1

Boromir-Ben

It's such a mess, life, poignant and beautiful. Everyone with divergent expectations, dreams, hopes, with so many jagged edges to so intricate a puzzle - are there any neat connections? I know you feel it, the longing, and mine's another, and hers and his and theirs, like a mess of tangled tentacles in a mosh pit of jellyfish. Infinite monkeys with typewriters never produce hamlet, countless kittens with yarn never knit blankets. A billion humans, why, we're the worse by half.
It's that moment on the road, watching the tire burst and the oncoming vehicle swerve, that eternal second that never-always ends. You've poised your entire self upon a spinning dime, and the whirling wind has already decided on a deterministic destiny, heads or tails. It is no fifty-fifty, but a hundred-zero, always, but you are blind, and rushing into the other lane. Dreams do not make you invincible, only vulnerable, but you must strive for them anyway.
And I sit, contemplating whether I should even try to untie the knots of poisoned tentacles, or simply snip the tips and truncate so many hopes like unlucky strings at the end of the roll. It would be easy if all these were mine, but no decision is an island, either, but a continent of seaweed struggling to stay afloat, and intertwined.
Will you hate me with a knee-jerk response, once this cruelty strikes your spine?
Sometimes, you must drive off a cliff to protect another's life. I heard today a person say that you must always look out first for the needs of numero uno. No, I think. In the end I believe my needs are the final ones in line, in a stack ever increasing in size.
It's a sisyphean task, and one I'd never ask you for. I love, and it's not enough, I fight, and fall further behind, I care, and who knows - because the eyes are always turned aside.  I'm Boromir - how desperately I want to provide restoration and healing for all I know and love, and how foolish I have become in my plight. Sometimes, you must let the onus pass.