The Distance Between Us And The Stars

Loneliness sometimes takes strange shapes I suppose, there is a kind that the fervently wants recorded in word or image every thought and deed, an underlying fear of being forgotten, afraid of never being truly known. Perhaps the feverish words scrawled in the middle of the night are just intended to be a reaffirmation of your existence, even though no one might read it.

i had an idea for a poem a little while ago but it got lost in life, in time, under a chair, under the blankets, outside a frosty window, beneath a quiet floorboard, under my tongue, inside your eyes

Untitled

White, as if a shroud for one's dead,

Came the rain to cover the twisted

Smile with which the city laid.

The salt-wet cloud pressed down

Apologetically down on the wails

To muffle down the alleys where

Fear smelt sharper than the guilty

Lust for life.

The smoke rose up and died

In the arms of the rain

And the bruised earth cooled itself

Down to sleep on the sidewalk

Tattered from toes to head

And a loaf of wet, burned bread

Fed the hunger in their

Grim, kerosene-masked eyes.

There was a road from living,

So they said, and it was hope

That shone on the edge of

The blade. Prayers curled up

In its handle like a dirty scroll

Pushed up in a crypt, to hold onto

And to give up to the fire when

Rain shattered all.

- pollosky-in-blue

Frosted glass between rain and life

I run my hand through the same old withered branches,

Drenched in the same old tired rain,

Far away the sunset harbours the lost gold of

Odysseys gone by, and if the wind were to hide

Within it some unremembered glow from the land

Of unknown secrets, the evening will gently

Whisk away the covers of the coquette,

And reveal to us a maiden under the bent willow,

Sweet as the apples from the orchards where our dreams

Were buried. She will beckon for the children

To gather around the fire and tell them the story

Of Zerah and Zulamith, whilst we twist the

Slender branches of the cherry tree into a throne

Fit for the brides of heaven to recline on,

Place at the altar a wreath of dead roses,

And hope that the silent fragrance borne to the shore

Is enough for the sea to give up the child

She drew to her heart in death’s storm.

…

And dare I tag anyone? @pollosky-in-blue perhaps you’ll like the story?

I wonder what the impulse to beauty is, - thinking of Darwin - without all the jargon around it. Why should a pale pink cloud strike the eye as profound and beautiful? There is a pigeon drinking water a few feet from where I sit and the squirrels are chasing each other over half raised walls. Today, the evening tells me of something that has been in ruins for a period long enough for it to have ceased to matter. Somewhere a bird whispers, the ruins are to rise again, not in image of what was, but as a shrine what is now. The future seems less real than the past. why?

Anne Carson, from “The Glass Essay” (Glass, Irony, and God)

The limitations of language - sounds and symbols that encapsulate that which is fundamentally incommunicable - perception, first hand experience

The feeling of regained humanity pervades the maple grove,

As branches rustle in the evening light - glinting golden,

their music pleasing dissonance, a swift breeze blows

over the horizon, blotting out lurking shadows.

Knives of love cut wounds that bleed ambrosia,

for what is the taste of ambrosia but the derisive emptiness

of a secret forgotten?

Faded flowers lay waste, that once were wreaths of worship

on altars sacred. At sea one instant, fragmented and lost,

on an isle the waves break unforgiving, and by the shore,

Robed in the receding Mist of dawn, towering and dense stood

The Maple grove, an unremembered grave of forgotten secrets.