A man on a ledge in mid-August
April 11, 2001
From off the street
beneath the feet of passersby
the heat will
lunge,
delude
and permeate.
Like life
the sticky sun-sick smell rises
on a given wave, and,
looking for a brother settles near.
It is a boorish, life-spent kin,
these two intermingling.
Some sick something to find comfort in;
that even before union these two meet:
two elements of heat in awkward dance,
a tempered road to cloak the crossroads of a life.
Or, to proffer a path.
--
"Road work in summer," one man grumbles
to a lifeless mound of tar.
"Indeed."
And nothing more.
Above the hotplate-highway there
is little left to do. The man and mingling
coexist quite happily. The yawning drop
curls into a wicked smile and holds its breath.
--
Truly, heat by two is something
to find comfort in,
but only in winter.
Two silent specters,
bodies of their own god,
emptiness with purpose
we presume to know, but can't.
1,000 unseen eyes
on scuttle feet stand waiting,
each with prying fingerprints
to mar the beauty there.
Death and life and death
unknown to them,
time of nothing in their vacuum unreality.
One million all from anything,
boundless and alone in utter blackness.
Sometimes we are like
two
BlackHoles,
gravities opposing
in a darkness of our own.
I set my love to sail
on uncharted waters,
simply floated as its rhythm
rubbed its muzzle on the shore.
Beyond the silver thread
the land unfolds like butcher's fare
until I look around
and all the world is blue.
I set my love to sail
on new horizons,
untried avenues
my pen could never find.
I am likened to the sailor
who has never seen the sea,
my port a distant memory
replaced by dreams I've had.
In one long stretch
the sun reaches out, over the earth,
past the fields to warm
the pool from where the dog laps--
content to drink his fill
before calling for his breakfast.
In the heat of noon the work is done,
bare backs slick beneath the sun
as toilers work their hoes
into the earth and dream of shade,
and lemonade,
and evening banter
on the porch as night descends.
The afternoon brings clouds
as if to rain, but nothing comes;
save for the cows across the
knotted plane from grazing in the pasture.
Since I was a child I have been told
"there will be time within the day,"
and now I know.
As quietly as it came
the sun sinks softly out of sight,
blessing other days in lands
I dream about at night.
Who's to be the savior of a wicked land?
And who's to say the land regards the need?
In the cadence I can think, be lost, absorbed.
The tempering of my footfalls drumming validation.
I am here. Imagine that.
I run because I can. Long strides, lungs burning,
fighting against the passage of time.
Running
for the absolute necessity of the deed.
I am running from all that threatens in the corners of the night.
Those who say time is nothing have no references,
cannot know and are content to die as such.
Time is a never-changing catalyst. Time grows cancer,
heals wounds, grinds mountains into dust.
Time is a misunderstood affliction.
Past fields, towns, dewy morning meadows; little girls
with pinwheels waggling in the breeze. Overfed dogs
on a plank porch. They are colors in a smear
of careless memories. Was she smiling? Was it yellow?
I do not know.
I chase phantoms on a whim, but cannot rest
to greet the morning even once.
No one knows that I will fail, am doomed to fail.
And knowing this I run...
for if I am to waste my life, I should do it fast.
The mind assumes as the body tires,
running through the forests, glens and fire
that I have read. Flowers bobbing in the breeze
will drown the need for actual thought.
I don't have to be here. I can be anywhere.
The wind skitters along the crowns of the
nodding Lazy Susans, turns a cheek toward
the sky and passes by, fluttering the leaves like gossip.
Time is sorely abused. A parcel given, wound up
and waiting, begging for the next poor soul to take it
by the hand; to toss the carcass on the ground
when they are done. Shadows lick the bones
of wasted moments, sullied time.
A million things that could have been but won't.
Exhausting work, running. It strips your soul,
your strength and dignity. You cry, because you can't stop
because then you would have to FEEL what it is like to stop.
I cannot feel, so I keep running.
I could ask the God of Cain, Cain
who could and in fact did as I have thought...but I will not,
content on questioning the mirror when I'm lost.
Would it help then to ask, What is there? Mere flesh?
Something dying, dead already, waiting to be slain?
I know no objectivity. In the mirror there lies more
than merely seeing what is there...
I want to know what shimmers in the wake
of my existence. Everything.
But you never listen. You cannot see beyond
the upturned mouth, the alabaster sheath...
your interest is in emptiness.
You once procured a glass,
(as truthful as they come is what you said),
so surely I might be sated after this.
I might know exactly what is there, and think no longer.
You were sure that once I looked I could see everything,
but you were wrong. The opinion formed,
I saw only what my sickness would allow.
~*~*~*~
"So, what do you see?"
"I am beautiful."
"Like a bird? That sort?"
"Like some thing from the sea.
No eyes. Long hair. Falling away."
"Like a mermaid."
"No. Something darker.
The beast that lives in solitude,
Never before seen by the eyes of man.
It could eat you, but scientists say it is beautiful."
"Perhaps it is the danger..."
"Maybe."
What is it then?"
"It swirls...and blurs the edges."
"What does?"
"Whatever makes me beautiful."
~*~*~*~
You turned your face away,
refusing to accept the self I sought.
In the end you loved a theme, an idea...
and the truth that graced the mirror broke your heart.
My disease might dine across from John the Baptist,
and, looking only briefly find a brother.
"Seemingly, he is dead," I hear them murmur,
yet I am yet to die in spite of them. In certain circles
I am Deity, the Mother, a god around whom light will never shine.
Crimson palms hold fast against themselves, the knuckles white.
I am the ambidextrian.
No myth could ever fabricate the essence I present,
a cold unwelcome feeling short of love yet less than hate;
the yellow fog that propagates a kiss to urge your dreams.
A first-date miracle of falsified intent.
I was there when the mid-night madness
unrolled itself at length, and crept along the alleyways
and fowl-mouthed sewer caps. I drawled a Latin litany
and followed it with song, and held my dress
above me knees to keep the hem pristine.
I used to think myself the void,
the space that filled the cadence of a swarmy afternoon--
but, I am just the bookend to a life too tightly lived.
I am space within a space with room to grow.
And willingness to change means all or nothing.
So I grew into a lad and then a man,
and shook my shell upon the beach and floated out to sea,
leaving all the emptiness that constituted me.
Some lives start mid-sentence, and some begin "The End."
Without prologue start this life, watch it dwindle
word for word into a symphony of rhyme,
a mother of sentences,
a collection of moments kept in a jar...
taken down but never freed for fear of small ones getting lost.
No life is catalogued, they say, no declaration of existence
stamped so boldly on the page and yet we're known--
we are known to those so painfully aware that we are not.
Life isn't bound in leather, lettered gold or sealed with wax;
yet the manuscript is valued more than wealth.
Inside the words aren't born of eloquence but
the sentiment is there, each word a moment to be savored.
Of course, the plot receives no accolades, but the characters
ring true, and touch our hearts as if we were the author.
This book is never stored behind a glass, or on a stand.
It is dog-eared, unpreserved.
Crooked as a bookend on a shelf beside a jar...
dirty in the light but somehow charming,
somehow ours, wanting wear from overuse.
Yes, some lives begin mid-sentence, but most begin "the end,"
and are lived out in the epilogue of "could have," "should have been."
I once fancied myself a prophet,
a sign of the change that whittles at the bow;
now I know that I am smaller than the truth I stand behind.
The only peace I find is covered in blood.
Beneath the shroud of the eyes the accusation
stands preserved, rendered on a virgin
slate my name stares back at me, blinking
to the rhythm of a thousand sins I've known.
Their memory soft and brittle but their worth is fully whole.
After the smoke has cleared,
the spectators packed and gone, the
souls strung from their bodies in a ghastly chain
of tenements, I weep. Into the dirt below,
beneath a rock I find a spirit I can sing to.
And he might know my soul more so than I...
and forgive me all those ones who spoke my name
when I failed to listen.
In a dream I became whole,
chosen at the last to carry on,
to cry forever at the feet of many gods
until the cruelty of the fever parted skies,
and I awoke,
and slipped into the smallness that dignifies my soul.
She walked in proud until we strapped her,
charred her through and through.
Blackness skimmed the hem of her dress,
spreading like a secret. The sour truth of it
curled her fingers, brought them back into a fist
save but one...
--an accusation--
A shock of white bone
from out the puckered flesh.
Through it all she never screamed
nor shed a tear though fire consumed her slowly;
our fire, fire from the tongues of men extinguished her spirit
as I stood back and watched the life be torn from her,
watched her will be eaten. With smoke on my breath
I watched her fall...and stayed until they shut the lights...
stood stone-still until the nightman swept away the ash.
I stayed to catch a glimpse of what I saw before her death
...in her eyes...
my own sought solace in the way she kept her face--
the substance shown until the very end.
I cried to know my hands were thick with blood.
Her life is gone; and I,
The Executioner,
am sentenced to live on.
©Brandi Clark
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