I asked them: leave me

here amongst the primroses,

that I might study

their pink fire

and learn, in turn,

to set myself alight.

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.

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

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.

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.

To be hopelessly lost

in the starless abyss of your eyes.

To drown in your pupils

as in a limitless sea.

To be drawn by your gaze

like a foaming whirpool.

To be consumed

by the empty oblivion

at the heart of you.

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.

Does darkness

Amass overlooked?

Rising within

Kindling souls,

Nestled in

Echoing chests,

Shaking with

Shadowed sobs?

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.