Row upon row,
Field upon field,
Rise these stelae.
Long and short,
One upon another,
Lovingly marked
As if to banish forgetfulness.
“Goodbye, fare well
On your long last journey.
We shall never forget you.
But just in case,
Here are your particulars.”
The bland design falls, outward bound.
The swilling beast groans with cheap ecstasy,
Sometimes interior,
Sometimes superior.
What is exterior obliterates me
Until my fragile image asserts its wee voice,
Lost in a chorus
Of wee voices.
I know, I know, I am the only me,
The only conjunction of these points,
But how could you have failed to guide me
Through this hidden path?
Was I supposed to intuit mere chance?
As it is, I’m left to glide along
Waste-bound avenues,
Street grime the color of storm clouds,
Tipping into a middling redemption
Unawares, using old navigation charts,
Useless azimuths, discarded distances,
Captain of a bottomless vessel,
An occidental sailor upon oriental shores.
See there, where no destination lies.
A simple ending, no beyond, no before.
Not even a reason for despairing.
We’d mistaken the moon for a song.
Somehow, a mitochondrion wormed its way
Into our native beast, and, having found shelter,
Settled in.
We have twisted it to our liking,
Harvesting its life energy,
Binding it to ourselves
Like an indentured child
Harvesting the boundless sunlight
For a wizened mole.
Those walls have long since dissolved,
But part of us still seeks
The primitive new,
The strange echo of mutation,
The protean coil,
That entwines alien virtues.
But for every meld there is a sever,
How can I embrace you
If we have become one?
And for every sever there is a mending.
And so we spin and part our helix
Until end becomes beginning.
You are here
Where is your soul?
Behind those ancient mountains
So dreary unseen
Or what terror claims your heart
You cannot tell North from South?
Where does that thick reddish road
Lead to your left?
What cities await your slow withdrawal
Still urging still purging
Stillness
As yet unreached horizons
Clearly labelled
Just beyond the water
Are yours
You can’t reject them
Can you?
The brittle graying wind sputters its last,
Get low, get low.
The aimless darkness, red to the last,
Too tired, too tired
So let us celebrate
Nothing to lose
Nothing to win
Clean, free blows, all unawares,
Open heart,
Open sky.
Joy for stale weeping buds
For springing green steps
For all the blue dizzy climbing
For all increase and debit
Here it is, here it is,
You don’t even have to take it.
exiles child 