mind your head (and your heart) as you walk out the midnight door

Before the moon breaks like an egg
on your hollow
of waxing man’s cheek,
mind your head
on the cuneiform door—

the frame
that will beg you
for more

as you walk
towards candles
on alters towards

The journey, they say!

It’s the journey, those they ‘s
from the dungeon inside
the dungeon inside
the dungeon of they
say.

What do they know anyway?

HA! Is what I say
to those pragmatic foghorns
of they:

I will have what I will when I bring it!

What will be, will be, will be—

never-mind all those secretive cuneiform doorframes
growing progressively smaller
with each pirouette
and turn;

smaller with each pictograph word;
smaller
until you are the essence behind
every word
like a feather

off bird.

Until I am as low
as poor Alice,
awake outside
of the dream,
dressed in a skin
made of bells
out of sight of the queen
of all men’s
bittersweet
bleeding heart chocolates—

I will mind my head on the cuneiform door,
lest the yolk of this life
eat me whole.

© Kristin Reynolds 12 12 2010

Gutted Fish

Now that my heart has been splayed open
like a gutted fish
Now that I have not run for safety
but stand, open-hearted and bleeding
before the hand who holds the knife

Now that I know (as surely as anything)
that THIS is love – stripped
of all its expectancy, all its dreams
in its raw, most heart-rending state

Now - I stand transfixed
staring into a night sky
which has (at this very moment)
zoomed light-years closer
surrounding me with her bright stars

Now I suddenly know
that I am one of these
and that, somewhere, someone else stands
transfixed …gazing up at ME

Keeping Company

the ceaseless ticking of clocks
the hollow humming of heaters
fill the void where ought to be laughter
and chatter and the clanking of dishes
and the shuffling of feet

tick tick
tick tick
hummmmmmmm…

I rejoice at the smallest sounds of life
my dog licking his paws
or lapping water from his bowl
the clicking of his toenails
on the floor

tick tick
tick tick
hummmmmmmm…

at night there are no birds
to visit my deck-rail
nor roosters crowing
nor children playing
nor even passing cars

tick tick
tick tick
hummmmmmmm…

where is the lovely rain
whose steadfast comp’ny kept me
whose clear gentle rolling voice
sang the sadness of my heart to sleep
and caressed the crinkles from my brow

tick tick
tick tick
hummmmmmmm…

tonight even the wind has ceased
no loons are calling no frogs are singing
no ships are rumbling by
and darkness and silence and I
are keeping company with the dog

Adrift

A lone star adrift in the darkened sea of night,
lost in the vastness of space - and time.
Seeking, searching, reaching for comfort,
the solid ground of familiarity,
confirmation of existence,
of reason, of purpose…

Remembering the solid curves of your body,
the taste of your skin,
the rhythm of your breath.
Oh, how these were my anchor,
my stay, in the stormy seas of existence’s doubt.

Oh, how I long to be anchored there again,
alongside you; to know my place
in this passing world
as surely as I know my own heartbeat.

Disillusionment

to accept the unacceptable
to will against your own will
to die to be born
to let go your grip from your most precious jewel
for which your life – your entire being –
has been the setting

to upturn your heart-goblet
emptying its contents into the dirt
to carry the burden of intolerable sin
to have defiled the sacred – the highest will of God
to breath, to eat, to sleep, to wake
without hope, without desire, without reason

to endure the flame that consumes your heart
the talon’s-grip deep into your core
to stand beneath the burning sun
in the vastness of your desert-soul
to cry without relief
to gasp like a dying fish
to step forward into the fire
to lift your eyes to heaven – and pray

On the Loom

strands of connection,
the golden warp of existence,
without which
the weave of daily life,
its myriad colors of events
and people and circumstances,
becomes as impossibly unsolid
and instable
as a tree without a trunk,
stars without a night sky,
sunlight severed from its fiery source;
without which
the weight of a single life,
its accumulated sorrows
and disappointments and grief,
becomes as impossibly unsupportable
and unbearable
as an elephant upon an ant’s back,
space without time,
the heart of man severed
from its fiery source

Densities 306

it is a static Saturday at last the low down clouds gray the light
and the wind hits the walls on top of the hill gleefully
it is a ponderous task to attach casters to this roller coaster
I will myself to lift the drill and ponder its secrets
the bit box opens offering its variety ready for surgery
my disabilities are all here for the holidays too
my hands won't stop shaking
my eyes guess the best they can
I am bound to fail
I accelerate deliberately
one step at a time
without the necessary tools

CHRONICLES OF CHANGE AND TIME

FRAMES

At six years old
I pursued the fantasy of technicolour
Melville and Orson Welles
Harpooned their madness
Blinding into my excitement
That made the sea gulls spin silver
Against sky
And in all ways with an avalanche
Of a new found timeless fear
That convinced me
Of the value in the human riddle
The very rumour of spilled wine
And the full measure of life
A snarl of sea wind echoed
Months and years afterwards
And the captain in death
Still hunts and beckons my dreams

End

THE HUNTER

We have known fear by another name
A secret name from a vantage of great distance
Past the rhymester bough

To know the strength of wild horses ablaze with riders of fortune
Of a darkened darkness in an immortal vision of Godspeed
A liberty in four tongues spoken as the familiar cries of the owl

A night bread of the strange infestations as a perchance to dream
Of conjoining sounds of a pleasure taken as nothing so sweet
As the taste from the wounds of deflowered maidens in black

Enacting a beauteous embrace in a naked diminished vanity
Destroying the movement and sacrificing wisdom in exchange
For the Goddess's grace in a sacred sun light's creatures hide

In neighbouring moving shadows and fully reverberated sound
Of salvation of a reversed beginning and finally with secret hurt
In an overgrown time recorded by on one against the beating

As the heart stops in shock as memory has killed again and alone
Once the fox is skinned and the rabbit devoured and the God Dog
Fades by the master's side in length and distance of a morning's
Mist and an adolescent fog promising to overrun the shoreline
By the limitation of forgotten lessons only the pain remembers

End

CHRONICLES

This season's rain an autumn spinet
As the wind etches light in darkened calendar pages asleep
Till the morrow that disobediently arrives anew

Sing with me as nature's tunes of bread and wine
Coloured glass believed familiar memoirs
Spreading birds of game aloud as waves and pines

A Grecian summer bride with the love of Arcades
Islands of unravished smiles motion silent overtones
The messenger as ourselves as deities of joy abound

Stratagems all but forgotton in the falling of music
And as Orpheus his affections turned arrow skyward
Youthful soprano voices and sunlit amber tongues

All sorrow now in the deepest hands of time's tide
Circles of roses and milk made oceans of dulcimer dew
Fear not there is not but a flashing of damask flowers

All fountains sing of ambrosia's lifeblood and honey
Miracles a paradise of delight built with the pleasure
Of a thousand symphonies of light in the eye of Rah

With a tumult replaced by fate's law
And then vanished the lustres of past days and nights
Beloved dwelling shapeless with eternity's destiny

This loom dark intricate time folded under the eyes
Ablaze with crystal as an arc of play and rest embraced
As all is recreated in the likeness and vision of a child

End

CHANGE AND TRANSFUSION

Anger in a weathered universe sharing media
Eaten by machines to jump-slip the maze alive
A million stab wounds are provided by down
Enjoy the ride of tactics that exit pure logic
Of most souls in green pools of evil short listing

Words ... such as these above

Alongside brass as a sixties aphoristic stance
Of unawakened predictions
Against a fitted sailor's screen of a fear of drowning
Quite uncomfortable an underwater lover lying still

And ... in the middle of this line

I do not remember dying

End

Densities 294

at a certain age living
becomes a vice
you know it is bad for your health
to go on and on into extreme
decrepitude
without a sense of humor
possibly without your memory
just for the hell of it

Densities 282

no men who love other men are allowed in our military
even on suicide missions
or killing women and children
they get everything ass-backwards
men who love women
full or part time as long as it shows
are far better killers than lovers
this everybody knows