Saturday, October 30, 2010

I'm Published!


Yes! Freefalling, Creator of Illusion, and Love, Suddenly are all published in the Autumn 2010 issue of The Copperfield Review, which is now online. I’ve been a regular reader of this literary journal for a few years, and now I’m in it… and over the moon with elation! I hope you will forgive the cliché; my muse is too busy celebrating, and I’m on an adrenaline high! Please click on the links to read. I hope you enjoy!

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

If Ever...

La Naïade by Nathalie Vogel

If ever... on a given day
wonder should grip you
and you should find yourself
musing about the sky,

And how it evolves from
bone to fire to indigo,

And how emotions
hum in prism hues,

And how hearts beat red
but sometimes blue,

And how leaves turn gold
when the air is cold,

And how paper goes beige
with graceless age,

And how the sun blackens
behind the silver moon,

I just might confess
how my soul numbs… and dies
when you trick with your lies
and think I do not realize.


Monday, October 18, 2010

Women Behind Windows

Woman in a Window by unknown artist

In this quiet town,
On this early morning,
When leaves are painted
On the horizon,
And eyes are yet
Blind with sleep, and dry,
And a cat is stalking a sparrow,
Meowing obscenely,
Clambering onto shiny cars
And slippery rooftops, 
And into gated gardens
And cloistered mansions,
And sunlight is filtering
Through the shroud of dawn,

A woman in a white dress
Leans upon a windowsill,
On elbows that have known
Other windows in other times,
And looks out into her garden,
Into another woman’s garden,
And that other woman’s window,

A woman who,
In this quiet town,
On this early morning,
While leaves and eyes
And cats and sunlight
Are doing their do’s,
Is setting her breakfast table:
Bread and butter and honey
And milk and bananas and berries,
While the rising sun makes
Painted glass out of the sky;

But a sudden storm swings by,
Shards of liquid ice and
The jerky dance of maples,
Whose silhouettes come alive
In blinked illuminations,
While the woman in her white dress
And the other at her kitchen table
Neither see nor hear
These visits from nature,
As one’s eyes are focused
Upon herself,
And the other’s eyes are focused
Upon the other;

They are hearing another music
Seeing with another eye:
Yearning and birth,
Liberation and death,
And the gratifying memories
Of that first house,
The house where, once upon a time,
They were little girls,
Never lingering behind windows
But always beyond them;

And from this muted recall,
A sliver of white light
Becomes full spectrum,
Blinding color on glass windows
That close… and enclose
forgotten time... and lost echoes.

Sunday, October 10, 2010

doppelgänger

Doppelgänger by Agnieszka Szwengier

who are you

you drift away from me
like a leaf drifts from its tree
you drift you drift you drift
and if you were a traveler
you would be marco polo

adventurous and animate
spirit of flight
but i lied to myself and
told myself i had gifted you
had delivered you from hell

and we were poets
and we were princesses
and you were epic
and i was ode
and we were history

but we were children
sitting in a circle around the fire
listening to ghost stories
and scaring ourselves and
one another with flitting fingers

in the dark

and you in my imagination
though right there beside me

you were immobile
not in a state of rest
but in a state of paralysis
defying all axioms
and theories of relativity

defying gravity

and i was stone

and there was a girl
sometimes happy
sometimes sad
with stars in her eyes
and a cloud in her throat

and you were me
and i was you

but that was was
and no longer is
and i sit here
now
wondering who you are
but who am i
while you watch me
deliver myself to evil

and you watch me fall

and i tuck myself into this descent
as snugly as i can and you tell me
don’t go don’t go don’t go
and i see it in your eyes
that you want to follow me
and i see it in your eyes
that you are trying
to fight the emerging flames
and i see it in your eyes
that you are doing the arithmetic

when you are here
we are two
when you are gone
we will be one

and one
gone

and i wilt and dissolve
like flower stems in brackish water
and you float and flutter
like rose petals on a night stand

and you are earth
and you are heaven
and i am stone

and you are grief
and you are tears
and i am fall

from grace

eternal
irrevocable
original

and we are mud
and we are dust
and we are ashes

and you are spirit
and i am flesh

And We are One.


Saturday, October 2, 2010

Chrysalis: The Second Transformation

Voyageur IV by Michel Henricot

This is Part 2 of a vignette I wrote a few weeks ago. If you would like to read Part 1 you can read it here.

* * * * * * * * *

He has never told her, Every time I meet you, I arrive expecting to find not you, but another woman asking me: Who are you?

He has never asked her, Do you feel the weight of prison bars on open, exposed flesh?

He has never told her, I feel oppression taking hold of your heart. And your eternity.

He has never asked her, Do you hear my muted wish?

He has never told. He has never asked. Because. Of Pride.

Besides, he has always believed that truly significant things are not meant to be said. Are unspeakable. Unutterable.

Words… no matter how beautiful… are treasons… to the Self. He has always believed.

And her beauty… like words… when expressed… creates pain. He has always told himself.

Is this pain a definition of love? Is it the treasonous words unsaid? He does not say this to her.

She is wearing her other face. The one he does not recognize. Yet, it is always there. That other face. As a determined yearning in her eyes. As a loneliness that refuses despair.

Will you ever find what you are searching for? He does not say this to her.

He sees what others cannot see: the white waves of fixed time. Her lips: delicate. soft. primitive. unspoiled. By spoken treasons to the Self.

My love, how lonely you are. He does not say this to her.

At the end of a day that crashed them into one another through: passion. tears. frustration. pain. She says to him only these words: Tell me a story. And don’t stop until I fall asleep.

Her fragile voice, wounding in its fragility, is powerless before the boundless expanse of loneliness.

Now. He wants to tell her things. To ask her things. And she wants to ask him things, too.

But.

She says to him only these words: Tell me a story. And don’t stop until I fall asleep.

He tells her a story. A fairy tale. Of a butterfly who one day finds her voice. And as he fumbles with his own words, he enjoys yet derides the new adventure.

Once upon a time, he begins.

And she says, Don’t stop until I fall asleep.

There was a butterfly, he says.

And she says, Don’t stop until I fall asleep.

And the sun sets. And the night comes. Always, the night. Like black death on a white steed.

The night. And his treasons. And her silence.