60 years later. Multiplied by countless lives lived with a possibility that didn’t exist before a 6 year old child walked bravely to school, escorted by bodyguards and unseen Angels. To bear light. To shift time forward. Ahead of the appointment. To shake earth beneath stubborn feet. Moving the mountain aside to make a pathway for light to travel through. Bearer of….a burden. Light is a burden to harness.
Covering the half that doesn’t speak. I know people who fear Spiders more than death. The half mask adorned with eyes to lie in bed unwillingly with questions like lingerie.
You are my lower E string. You pulled me down to the depths. I have been with you all my years. And all my wars were fought with you. It is calm now. You gentle away the chaos. Long before I was chained to your wind, the ground held me tight. I looked down and never fell too hard to hurt you. Just in love.
Neck turns the head but don’t get the hair twisted. A crooked eye turns the sky upside down. Come forward with your certainty and let me tame you for you are wild in your clarity and I am life. Not given. Not taken. Make your presence an acquaintance of mine and I might lengthen your days of youth and ignorance. Or swerve contact with my eyes and watch me wither you to frailty like men who have learned too much death and bowed reluctantly to their successors.
Missed it. Trash. The slight of hand was deliberate but not intentional. The intent was the reach of my questions. I searched the hand because I thought it once held the heart. I might have been wrong. Beauty and trash have much in common when you see through them.
Day one.
They would say it was just another day. Or you might look at eachother and ask of eachother things you never asked eachother…before…you never knew eachother….still you question their commitment and yours. Its not that you’ve ceased to care. The fruit still has flavour. Maybe not as ripe as it once was. You never liked to eat the core. But thats where you must go. Hard. The fruit is softening. The heart is hardening. You do not notice what is happening around the centre of your world.
Bite me.
Fated to believe that it really does count. That numbers add up. The crosses and knives cut deeper than words and silence. Knowing that the count starts before you, runs ahead of aspiration, and the novelistic length of your thoughts. That desire carries you as far as you let it linger. A kiss inverted. You swallow your own lies. But they taste good.
Once upon a time I presented this painting, ‘The Deep Thinker’, as a gift. It was turned down because the person who it was gifted to, said the face had no eyes. And that it was tantamount to bad luck. I’ve never dealt in charms but I graciously took back my painting. It seems the only eyes we recognise more often than not are the peep holes for our iris to take a snap shot of what we percieve in surreality. In real life as we term it, we are blinded by sight or rather blunted. The optical illusion of the vision is only equaled by the delusion of what we choose not to see in plain sight. We are all complicit in the great deception and visionaries will burn at the high stakes of our unseeing eyes.
The Deep Thinker
Acrylic on canvas
Six thirty. You were on time. This time. You were here. I was on my way. Missed the train. Missed the boat too. Burnt the bridge behind the rush hour. Always Knew I could fly. Just needed you to believe. I could fly across the world between your heart and I. On my bicycle. Travelling you has been my greatest journey. So far. So far away. Too high to climb your thoughts. I tried you like you were written by Hemmingway. You were sentences that served me time in the cave of loneliness. I fell down in battle. We grow up in love and loss. Played the hand too hard. Not soon enough. Only time wins it all. Its seven.
Was it fundamental to die before we ever got to learn about who we were? Our second birth gave us skin. We await our humanity on the third go round. The unreturned, who never knew sleep didn’t discern the need to play on the hallow ground or ween on the blood of sacrifice.
Basil chases the child who runs into walls. Transparent heart is planted in a climate of hate. Lucent as the dark covering, lashes closed the eyes they never used. See through your sounds, the blind mouth utters crimes of thought, a berry too sweet to swallow all at once.
Drown deep slowly. You are continents of water. Drown long and timeless. You are bodies of murder. Drown soft, you are but a baby in all your lifetimes spent searching for your soul.
Napoleon Dozier's Dabbler's Hand 