Thursday, July 22, 2010

i accept the silence


"Abstraction White Rose" by Georgia O'Keeffe

silent
my dead grandmother
forever silent
and cold
and alone
but there are secrets to be shared
and confidences to be breeched
and promises to be broken
you come to me
you read me your letters
her letters
letters returned
unopened
unanswered
and you tell me
your mother has a black heart
and
glass
your eyes
glass filmed over
by gentle breaths in unforgiving cold
and glass
the wall that separates us
we can see
but not touch
we can look
eyes drifting
desiring
and our hands can reach out
for intimacies that can no longer be realized
your mother has always scorned affection
you say
and my heart wants to jump to my mother’s defense
maybe out of fear that she will hear
from her place so far away
this mute conversation
that gouges loyalty in the throat
i want to tell you about those times
my mother had looked at your black and white photo
hanging on her living room wall
and said she looked like the actress in that old movie
the white rose
but i recognize the past tense
and the word old
is a cloud over a full and beaming moon
i want to tell you my mother
has always been affectionate
but your daughter and my mother
though the same person in appearance
are two different women in essence
so i sit on my chair
in silence
and see you as if through a peeling mirror
mirror
the back of your china cabinet
where i looked at myself as a child
amidst the glimmer of french porcelain
and i counted my freckles as if they were coins
and i thought i could fly
and i remember running down the hill
outside your house
running breathless and effortless
the ground rising like slow motion
rising to meet me
my heart lifting
bloodless and fleshless
feeling like if i stepped into the air
i could fly
before doubt grabbed a hold of me
and wed me to the asphalt
you cleansed my face
of blood and shards of macadam
and your voice was gentle and steady
as you lulled me to sleep that night
and i sit with you now
and your hand is cold
and your face is ice
but even in death you are so beautiful
and tears stream from your eyes
and i try to tell your tears
i try to tell them you are not dead
but they quiet me and tell me about
tormented spirits and haunted souls
and glass
your body
and mirror
your soul
and you are here and you are not
light and weightless
like a shadow on a wall
and i want to say things
grandmama
as if this moment does not know
the meaning of itself
as if to cover the silence
but the words shun my lips
so we sit still
you
with me
with you
and time accordions between us
and we accept the silence
and we close our eyes
and i see
your extinguishing presence
sharp as a pinprick to a blind woman’s finger
and there are yet gulfs to bridge
and labyrinths to unravel
but you speak
as you go
only
of the thirst of a mother
for her daughter’s love
and all of what you say
you say not with your lips
but with your eyes
and all of your words
i hear with my heart
because death and absence
are not an end
but an eternity
and so
i accept the silence

Sunday, July 18, 2010

nocturne

"Sleeping Couple" by Ivan Koulakov

it is that time of night
when i withdraw quietly
inside myself
and i go in silence
and rest my head
upon my pillow
and he comes in silence
and rests his head
upon his pillow
that lies at my pillow’s side
and he breathes in shallow draws
and troubles my soul’s harmony
and he turns slightly to one side
and disturbs my body’s repose
and i turn slightly to one side
and look out of the window
into the nebulous night
and i begin
with my nocturnal hallucinations
once more
and the trees are deep
and the sky is low
 and the moon is lackadaisical and alone
and the floor is carpeted with blossoms
iridescent and shaped like stars
 and my candle flickers and shortens
and the rose petals flutter on the rose
and i hear your breaths deepen and slow
and the sky splits open
like the flanks of a tender wound
and the rain rains
and the stars fall out of the sky
and i twist my head
and lay my pulsing lips
upon your murmuring eyes
and your opaque lips unfold and pull me in
and i plummet into the length of your shadow
and your heart is pillow
and my head is cloud
and breaths no longer trouble harmony
nor thoughts disturb repose
and time dissolves like vertigo
and i dream that i am painting my lips
vermilion black
and that i am flying with paper wings
clasped to my shoulder blades
lest wax wings melt and i fall
and i dream that icarus did not die
but sleeps on the bed of the sea
and that morpheus sleeps at his side
and together they dream our fates
and in a lapse of dream
they will turn slightly to one side
and that is when storms will arise

Sunday, July 4, 2010

Episodic Flickers in Black and White

                                   Kiss by unknown photographer

This is how it begins…

We are a silent film
shot in black and white
scratchy and grainy
speeding to a soundtrack
of our shortened breaths

Our eyes are electric
with drifting gazes
that blink and unblink to
hair lips shoulders skin

And when they are closed
we feel we are drowsing
heads drifting down
to meet shoulders
on a trip that is longer
than the length of the shot

At moments when we do
look at one another my face
rises from inside you and
your head tilts downward
where lips brush gently
without kissing and eyes
close dreamily and cheeks
meet in a surreal embrace

We are a silent film
filled with haste and though
the scenes speed ahead of us
we are the actors doing all
in a dance of slow motion

Here…

My mouth turns up to your ear
your ear drops down to my mouth
I smile and my teeth gleam white
against the blackness of your
jacket and my eyes glow violet
in the beam of an invisible light

And with my violet eyes’ glow
I see inside you and see you
as if for the first time – but
the seeing will have to wait
because you know and I know
that in this timeless scene the
moments are fleeting and will
drift into the soft light of dawn

But if you should wish me
goodnight without pressing
your lips to mine we will not
have truly embraced my love

And so we stand entwined
on the sidewalk of a quiet
street corner in the milky halo
of a solitary street light
lips pressed to lips
breathless
for a very long time
and though the scenes of this
film are flickering to an end
we do not part but instead –
we reign – in the silence.

and this is how it ends.