how to fly
some are born with wings.
if you feel them, lifting your spirits
and lightening your heart
you are one of the lucky few.
if you are too weighed down
by fear or anger or worry
to soar over the rest,
to rise above the world,
heedless of headache or heartache,
you must learn to surrender
pride and self-doubt,
give up the key to your being,
to let the whole earth see
what is trapped inside you
and set it free.
you must be brave enough,
strong enough, to dive
from the echoing cliff
you must be light enough
to release all you cling to,
before falling into oblivion.
and if your wings do spread
if your heart and your head
feel more airy than the very air
and the fear, the anger, the worry is gone,
you might just fly.
Nightmare
I'm sitting in a tube station lined with red cream tile. The scene flickers back and forth, from vivid technicolor to grainy black and white, as if shot through the gritty lens of an arthouse film. It's oppressively silent, the stale underground air tensing for the arrival of a train. I'm completely alone, folded into a glazed plastic chair. Suddenly, across the tracks is seated a man in a tangerine suit, stiff-backed and expectant. He seems to have been waiting there for hours, yet a moment ago, I was solitary. The tangerine man begins screaming and gesticulating wildly, his face contorting grotesquely as spittle flies like bullets from his mouth. “You are worthless,” he shrieks, his sunken eyes smoldering like burnt marches in their sockets. I turn to answer, but see that he is speaking, not to me, but to the empty red seat beside him. “You are nothing,” he screams to the plastic chair. “You are nothing, nothing!”
The screech of the incoming train drowns out his hysteria. The train pulls into the station and I step on. The inside is an empty tube, painted blindingly white, and as I stand in the center of the carriage, sluggish, plaintive strains of music begin to play from tinny speakers. For a moment, amidst the rattle of the train, the eerie tune and the glaring white walls of the car, time seems to draw to a halt, and my breath crumples like paper in my throat.
The train grinds to a stop, and a deadpan female voice announces: "Move away from the doors." As I step out, the train and its tracks evaporate, and I am left standing in solitude, ankle-deep in a shallow lake, which extends unbroken to the darkening skyline. The lake is calm, like a silken robe embroidered with the silver light of the overhead moon. In the far distance, beyond the haze of the horizon, stands a murky silhouette, contours fuzzy, reality bleeding into mirrored reflection.
I know, at a glance, it is you.
L’arbre de mes souvenirs
L'arbre de mes souvenirs
est tordu et entortillé.
Ses racines, epaisses
et moussues, serpentent
parmi les feuilles mortes.
L'arbre de mes souvenirs
s'allonge comme une main
tendue au ciel, poursuivant
en vain la nuit etoilé...
L'arbre de mes souvenirs
est fatigué. Ses branches
se courbent sous le poids
de mon passé. Malgre tout,
L'arbre de mes souvenirs
se tourne vers le confort etrange
de la lune, baigné dans sa lueur
celeste.
----------------------------------------------
The tree of my memory
is gnarled and twisted.
Its roots, mossy and thick,
snake amongst dead leaves.
The tree of my memory
extends like a hand outstretched
to the sky, pursuing in vain
the starry night...
The tree of my memory
is exhausted. Its branches
are bent beneath the weight
of my past. Nevertheless,
The tree of my memory
turns toward the strange comfort
of the moon, bathed in its celestial
light.
Yesterday
If I hadn't gotten stuck at one too many red lights,
Or waited a minute longer for a parking space;
If the elevator hadn't stopped on floor 16 before reaching me;
Or I hadn't dropped my keys as I stepped onto the roof
and paused a split second to pick them up;
If I hadn't stumbled, walking to the green railing lining the edge
of the rooftop, marking the brink of existence;
Or shuddered, looking down at the murky street below;
If I hadn't taken a moment to savor the fading taste of life;
I wouldn't have heard your voice like a dying echo behind me,
and your footsteps approaching like gunshots.
I wouldn't have felt your hand on my shoulder, anchoring me
amidst the furious whirlwind of my mind.
I wouldn't have seen your frantic face streaked with tears like
pale scars, pleading me to 'step down from there.'
If it weren't for those solitary seconds wasted,
I wouldn't have stepped down from there.
I
I am a jealous poet, i confess.
I hunger after dulcet syllables and sapphire phrases.
I am a covetous hoarder of mellifluous tones,
searching for the lush velvet beads
that roll like pearls off the tongue,
with plump vowels as mellow and round as blueberries,
and consonants like rough-hewn diamonds,
their harsh, blueish light glowing through my lips,
a radioactive, hypothermic poem.
Good poetry is a silver necklace,
forged with blood and moonlit tears,
a mossy emerald mined from the depths of consciousness,
an ethereal moth, with eggshell wings
and cerulean eyes;
unreachable.
Ophelia.
You had fingers slender as willow leaves
and diaphanous, lily-white skin. Your hair
drifted like drenched reeds on a balmy,
languid current. Your lips were soaked,
bloated and pale, but for a streak of cranberry
red. You lay suspended; wreathed in rippling
violet, your lavender gown like a tranquil
field of hyacinth. Your eyes were numb
prisons, azure irises staring glassily into
the opaque waters of the brook, beneath
the winding willow tree. You had a song
on your lips as you fell from its branches,
a wistful ode to the herb-of-grace,
the amber flower of rue.
Oftentimes i feel
as if i were covered
by a light dusting of frost
like baking sugar.
My skin blue as irises,
smothered by pinpricks
of slender ice like a mountain
blanketed by snow.
My blood itself congeals
like sleet in my shallow veins
and my breath is suspended,
searingly bitter, in my throat.
My fingertips grow ashen
with frostbite as if charred
and the lashes of my eyes
are powdered by rime.
My heart, my soul, are numb.