Through the fear of fading, unseen, what do you carry your guilt for?
The Quest: unlock eternal glow that burns for the echo of a face.
Softly, bittersweet air flows to my lungs – I hold my breath – quietly, silky breeze caresses my skin. I exhale, and I inhale again, maintaining the rhythm of a soothing sleep. Empyrean sounds compose a symphony – moment by moment, it enshrouds my heart. I welcome blossoming morning light on my resting eyelids, and slowly opening my eyes against an effulgent image of ethereal nature I wake up from a lengthy trance.
Eternal spring, forever pleasant. How ephemeral forever is.
Adonis,
inamorato inspiration,
why risk waking up so early,
what nightmares don't allow you rest
in the world of the dead?
Please wait for the juice of my eminence to simmer and ripen.
My moon –
my aphrodisiac –
the spark in my soul –
something otherworldly, outlandish –
messy thoughts, dancing abstractions –
I want to be big, I want to grow, I want to fly wonders around the world. Pollination.
Phenology mismatches
Craft me a scallop shell, one in fifty thousand, let me be a perfect doll inside, they say plastic is the sturdiest material – no asymmetrical movements, no uncertainty in my petals will disturb your vision, the chemicals wash the stains off of my leaves – only the unbreakable dolls get the love they deserve. I'm not crying through plastic.
4 AM
SUNDAY
GOOD MORNING MIRROR
The script's in my hands before waking the sun.
From dreams I'm coming back to my shell,
and wide awake begin the ritual of a glorious strength:
EXHIBITIONISM
You ask me what am I – darling, I ask my mirror the same.
The Gilded Lily
THE RULES OF THE GAME:
1. Grace – Every move a warning of poise, every gaze a silent command. Check
2. Style – An illusion polished to a heavenly sheen, satin layers of artifice. Check
3. Symmetry – Not a slip in the stitch, sparks bewitching the eyes of the watchers. Check
4. Attraction – Think gravitational pull wrapped in velvet, inside – sharp as a glass. Check
5. Personality – Just enough fire to keep them seduced, nothing too real. Pending
I've seen others – postures sculpted according to guidelines;
I've heard others – voices tuned to the pulse of the room, always on point – ah, charming! –
I master myself just like them.
Soon. The curtains will rise – my warrior will stand before the verdict of how softly it moves and skillfully laughs, all abnormalities hid under a golden gloss sparkling in sunshine (pieces of skin grown too large, pieces of hair caught incorrect shade, pieces of leaves gone askew – now smoothed under precision).
Dressed in my greatest delusions, I'll step out on the market – all of you by my side, dazzling in brilliance, all defined against each other in our exceptional beauties. And oh – the pleasure in feeling the worship! The satisfaction, you know it. Darling, it's all for the feels.
i'm sturdy, i'm vibrant
use me, don't use me
maybe i can stay untouched on display
if i produce more hues for marveling at
Just wait a moment longer, I'll be the one you need –
will build the phantom lighthouse for the admiration of your eyes –
would you wait for when I'm ready, would you –
Draped in honey-sweet yellow, I'm ready, a daffodil field, keep me on display –
(stray grasses? shhhh – snipped! weeds trimmed away)
the bright green cloak eternity's claim.
Eight hours we perform our ritual, maybe more, might be weeks, might be years,
the freak show we've refined to an art –
bright faces aglow, bodies move the reptilian way – whispers in the dark –
a delight, really, to enchant one another with our illusions, fictitious self-confidence,
never a trip of the tongue, no awkward gesture, always admired – isn't this what we're after? –
LOVE, the kind that meets the standards,
praise is what lingers.
I sign at the bottom right of my mirror: perfection*
Shifting shapes, shifting souls, shifting sounds unspeakable, I beg you: talk to me kaleidoscope of gleaming reveries and pollinators in my soul – behind steel gazes and faded streetlights my mind stays caged from the touch of every other mind so that the already exploited soil in it drinks no acid, no nitrogen, no ammonium nor phosphorus no more – I'd rather hurt on my skin –
– what I don't say immortalized by their eyes, by their blades, by their fingerprints – loathing all the weak ones, I repress the need for validation and fall the silent victim of relinquishment – afraid to hug, estrange you. If they don't know me I can define myself, and still stand proud in not a single tear being shed.
BETWEEN MISSOURI AND THE CAROLINAS:
Toxic Grass is fueling eternal vibrance in plants and livestock
Months blend into years,
we're still pleasing each other,
a rhythm so recognizable, endless –
like a transcendental number of pi –
from soil to veins through skin and bones
flow decades of bane that we perform on ourselves,
curses for bright-lit shades of colors and all-year flourish,
but I know I didn't feel it first –
it's her, and I'm her mirror –
wide awake I stand on unglorified everyday soil
that crumbles between my toes –
cold puddle seeps through the pores of my skin –
ached to be special
craved her all to ourselves
to digest her all tidy and pretty
reshaped to fit into a mold
of our hand and our vision of beauty,
and I'm only her mirror.
They come with scythes early in the morning, birds flee leaving their children behind on the barren skin I now wear – uninhabitable becomes the farmland. A stoic wasteland, a perfect face born to be adorned with a ruderal diadem manufactured by traffic will soon fade into dust, and the crop dries off prematurely due to dry summers. Still there's no tragedy, I'm not crying, I'm strong in the absence of frost, the evergreen vibrant tall fescue.
It's only angst imposed on each other, premonition of darkness, still invisible crackings –
consciousness drops to the stomachs aroused to distant desires – as if kissed by fallen knives –
the absence of pollen drives insects and children of men equally mad – we must be the most fertile suppliers in sight.
Under civilized circumstances rejected I wonder: why wasn't my nature enough, or was it too much?
so everything revolves around the I,
around my eye,
I see all that happens to me,
you too look at me – but do you, really?
In frozen times of asphalt heat there's only so much that's allowed hide-and-seek.
Your skin so cold, my inamorato – did I leave you in the hands of fate, no nourishment for growth? I thought I needed growth myself, I forgot you needed it as well. While seeking your protection against pollutants of my heart, I didn't realize that my reliance on your aphrodisiac might be exposing me to toxins so that I evolve into a scarlet warrior of magic's trade – how shameful was my freeze in suspicion of owing you myself, guilt-ridden aspiration to fulfill my duty of filling up myself with witchcraft that you could toy with – and as you say it's not enough, my mind trembles in its fraud – how could it be I didn't draw my portrait right?
I set my heart on your pursuit for my attention, yet to twist realities in my seeking yours instead.
From multiple goblets I gulped poison with lust, deceived into tasting the rain
– seductive –
surrendered to power the limbs of the titans emerge from tears in the ground – all lovers, the idols collected through centuries – and slither up my throat their fingers – as if they see beyond my skull with their arms – the iron claws inspect the lines of my face in anticipating silence – the apple was promised to the fairest of us –
bitter in my jaws, fangs raging through starvation rip the knots on our fingers apart, bite off through agony my dependence on a thousand eyes of beholders afire –
heavens break loose, silver-hued storm throws me deep into my personal gravity –
face down on my mud, will I be offered salvation?
We sold ourselves, commodified soldiers, consuming each other when aisles in the shops don't excite anymore –
tonight, I seek one more crowd to absorb euphoria through validation – for the last time, I tell myself, tomorrow I'll be on my own – the greed for applause embalming us with a glow that veils the ache of not being special enough, the potion to make us forgetful that something happens to us all –
we continue perfecting the masks, quiet habitat thieves.
But tonight, the stars in the glass melt away, deprived of the nectar I'm a ghost in the crowd – self-confession: chasing love's hollow proof, I traded my uncultivated roots with their rowdy songs of dirty soil and feral blooms – and buried my guilt in seeing neither you nor myself –
the habitats widened the sounds to please foreign bodies – loud/and lusty/and reckless/and brassy – all through the fine razors ecstatically mowing all meadows to tidiness, fragments of our breaking, only small grasses remain for feeding the herd.
How long have I lied on this grassland, surrounded by duplicate stems stretching miles and miles from my body, wondering why we never truly loved ourselves? – we thought others had to do it for us, and mistook our fears for the entitlement to a crown in front of the crowd. No wonder the fear of breaking the manicured surface runs so deeply contagious – that's the standard we set ourselves – expected others to crown our fears, no wonder, waiting for others to fill our voids, look at the standards – hiding behind polished surfaces, have you ever been seen?
to offer love
to see beyond the glass
to breathe into the other
to be felt
to accept the love
we must be naked with ourselves
uncover the stuttering cripple
unmatched by the market
no mirror's lie
no shield of charm
I lower the swords held against the crowd for defending my glory and undress the armor of standardized measures.
Don't mind me – boneless and one with dust on the ground, I weep.
Fleeting, ephemeral, emerging from foam and desire fragmented, never my excellent self,
I'm real.
A hundred voices roll through the solid terrain, each whisper pulling a new species of life from below – at last, we hold tricks for not seeing appearance and taking away our worth from the eyes of the others – and finally, the everyday stage lights up as a dance floor of freaks – all boring, all silly, every single one slightly confused – the show that runs wild through the hearts exposed in the air ! – ! blooming through spaces violently forgotten for ages ! – thinking, I accept this vision of me –
ever so slightly tripping and slipping – swirling, deluding – our personal gravities never fully complete, something itches beneath – after all learning, the skin still folds in uncomfortable ways time and again –
one morning, the mirror greets you with silence, and you think that you've shifted into the shape you were meant to – still the next day you're all angles and edges, unsure where to soften.
The whispering voices take shape and stretch beyond sight – one rises as a chorus of thorns, sharp-tongued guardians of the soil – another unwinds as a serpent of dodder, chanting an oath of growth through silent decay –still one more swirls as a shadow of pollen and wind, scattering omens of resurrection – forever changing into something other, eternal life persists through death. The voices of Meadow murmur an entwined incantation:
Don't you bury the eyes, don't sew the tongue,
Your torture shall come from crystallizing into sugar reflections,
Your harmony - from living in the wildest desire to be seen for the beauty unfettered –
So they spread sorcery against dry spells prolonged through the seasons, a song to the magic of all our hearts –
raw, blazing right here, wide in the open of the mundane – in how dizzy we look in the morning, still half of the soul lost in a dream, in forgetting the lines in the midst of chitting and chatting, every pause giving rise to a different tale, and in fearless smiles, in swallowed tears –
magic in moments that we can't tame, can't control – they seize control over us, dragging us into powers beyond clear-cut manicured faces.
Here, where the soil breaks in thirst and cracks on my lips, breath grows into the wind,
where the lands ache for songs of nesting birds and the buzz of insects limb-tipped in nectar,
where my skin is too stretchy or tight, scars burn too bright, voice lingers too shaky,
we'll meet –
barriers down, I'll see you the same –
drumming the Earth's ancient rhythms fighting for glory – in what's fractured, in what's weaving the maze uncontrolled, one-of-a-kind,
becoming seed and wing, together incomplete,
a single body of human and the soil beneath –
together pieces of dust, all misplaced children forever too small for the heights of the sky.
Here, on the ground,
where we caress each other's souls against the rains and droughts and heat and frost – here wither my daffodil fingers, crumble on the green carpet of nettles, and a wildflower sap sweetens my wounds into an anemone season within –
Carbon my oxygen, she says, chaos my sanity – so break me. Break me again, and again, fertilize my yearning soul, balance my sleepless atmosphere.
Blood on my lips my sugar thirst satisfaction,
my scars – capacity for never-ending growth.
I don't want to be a display, I want to dance in my wilderness, dance with me, don't worship.