i've been working on this for a month or so. read if you feel like it.
Welcome to the atmosphere,
Little star in the sky.
You are wondering why you are here.
Well, the earth rolled over the sun in the daytime.
There was a calico stream in the sky when the ice melted.
There was a capitol cloud in the eyes of a lifetime.
There was a bursting of flames shooting up through the clouds into outer space.
You had lived there so long without seeing the green in the leaves.
You had lived there so long before we could explain yourself to you.
When this age is over you’ll see what we want you to see.
When we have time to think it over you’ll see what we want you to see.
Look there, it’s the wild child,
Sitting on the bench,
Counting his fingers
Till they bleed coffee and rent.
Oh, he’s caught up in the market sales.
Did you catch him in the postcard, in the background?
It was a trip for him too, to another life.
Fourteen seven times was the number of times he timed his pulse.
His pulse beat with each pounding wave of the man next door
Who put his wife in the hospital on 14th street with a doctor that
Left his bathroom light on seven days before he shot himself
To scare away the man with money wrapped around his leather mind
That bought a speaker once when he was fourteen from a
Man who lost a leg in Vietnam next to a bus driver that
Lost his license drinking on the job in front of Jimmy J.
Who broke his skateboard on the head of Jimmy G.
Who counted his pulse fourteen seven times a week thereafter.
So keep your helmet on!
The sand in the grass is setting traps,
And he’s watching each one,
With the slick of his fingers tucked tight.
Sure, he’s got nothing to fall into.
But did you see him split the chorus line?
The gospel singers fell in bloody bruises at his voice.
No hollowed halls can tame his hallowed hum!
I look to you, wild child, for now.
But all you can think to say is
“This silence is so beautiful, why did it take so long to find?
I hum with tiny dabs dripping in this gray aquarium of space and time and rioting,
All to the sound of nothing.”
No minding him, little star.
Lets listen there!
The birds are humming.
Humming bird,
Don’t make me cry! -
I won’t leave you to say goodbye,
But in the winter flight is mine.
Humming bird,
Don’t make me lie! -
These lovely willows weep and die,
And so do marshes carry knives.
Humming bird,
In tire’s time! -
You will protract each gentle sigh,
As we lay naked in the light.
Humming bird,
You don’t ask why! -
But you can see each sparkling eye,
In dazzled splinters in the night.
Humming bird,
The birds are humming! -
As you lay sleeping in your nest,
Orchestras playing soft incline.
Humming bird,
Living in line! -
There is no seaweed on your mind,
But there are sailors swimming fine.
Humming bird,
The birds are humming! -
And winter strings another chord,
As sticks and twigs make pillars shy.
Humming bird,
And humming high! -
You won’t see trees from in the sky with all the clouds;
you seek inside!
Humming bird,
So what if you can fly?
I can see the world ten times ten times
As large as you can see!
So what if you can sing?
My lungs can tame fire!
So what if you’re a dream?
I live and breathe with the instruments that make you great.
You move to your own discipline?
No better than the sun!
What greater cause could you ever know?
Humming bird,
From mountains floating in the sky,
We could drift softly, holding hands with stars and eyes wide bright,
If we could stand to stand together.
So not for much longer, here up on this perch.
Look there, little star.
Why did no one see the roses in the grass?
The white petals hit the earth like dew.
Where the roses hit the grass, there was a small arena of trust.
No one stepped on the roses in the grass.
Why did no one pick them up?
Where did the child go who knew them?
Where is a house on a field in the summer?
He took light and deliberate steps up each wooden stair.
In his bedroom a light candle flickered.
From his window he could see the reflection of a soft and mellow blush.
He climbed down to get them in one deliberate step.
Where did the wind go when it fell?
Freckles of sand are pushed down lanes into the seat of the earth, but not when there are roses.
Roses take a gardener, not just the wind.
The wind was sleeping when he fell, and when he slept the wind was weeping.
Why did no one see the roses in the grass?
What lampshade fell before the curtain-tail could uncurl to sleep?
What tired self-effacement shone on planets in the winter's heat?
That icy crystal glazing in the summer sun!
In India
The summer sun
Means nothing to
The white azalea,
Cherry trees and
Sugar cane are
Tasteless to the
Great Blue Whale,
No fireflies
Nor catacombs
Could care about
The falling sky;
All dew drops would
Sleep through the night
In caves or in
Straw mountain houses.
Look at all those
Tables covered
In soft diamonds
Wrapped in gold!
What a special
Value placed on
Things that we can
Call our own!
Some desperate
Sleeping mechanical
Bull is on
Fire! On Fire,
On! Fire go failing on
Into the night to
Wake up all the horses
Running out of sight.
No palindrome
Could march away
One fear like I
Could march one-million.
Down in the valley
There’re people to eat,
So come on, you horses,
And challenge your feet,
And gallop with me
To this upcoming hour
When the tide tells the moon
To lay low for a while.
The ice age will moan
To the sounds of our feet,
What an array of magical
Notes it will meet!
It will crumble and melt
When we rise from despair
And can gather ourselves
From this violet affair!
There’ll be shots like an island
Or bleeding like iron is melted to
Violence and pistols and bondage
And green holds like fire,
Dependent and fierce,
Yet alone in its conquest,
Alone with its tears.
When we’ve set all those fires in fields in the day,
The sun will see and know his place is in the sky,
And then he too will flaunt his power,
Setting the sky on fire as he sinks into the shade.
Setting sun, come on over to my house.
I think we have a lot to talk about.
You think I spend too much time staring at the sky,
I think you’re just running away from all the problems.
Setting sun, where do you go when there’s fire in the sky?
There you are, dangling on the distant shore,
We take out candles to remind us of your leaving,
We set our watches to keep track of your patterns,
But when the fires hit the sky, where do you go, setting sun?
Look there, little star.
Those fires mean the darkness comes,
And mellows out across the sky,
So we can see each figure dance before they fade to silhouettes.
Look there, little star.
These trees!
I’ve memorized their scent.
They’ll wake in the morning and do as they’re told.
In evenings they’ll shiver and flock to their sides,
In cloud light they’ll stretch out an arm
And I’ll lie beneath them until rain passes by.
These mountains!
I’ve climbed them before.
They’ll challenge my paces until I run dry,
They’ll relentlessly watch as their children fall down them
Into piles in the road that we all drive around.
Yes, we know, yes, we know,
Yes, we know how it sounds.
These leaves are still breaking on slightest of touch,
These grasses still bend at the breathe of our feet,
These pillows of greenery still send us termites,
These lightning rods still tower downwards to kill.
I’ll sit here, and wonder, and it will sit there,
And neither of us can help but cry in despair.
Little star,
If I could stop,
And you could stop,
And start again so fast that
No one, watching, would notice it,
Maybe there’s a chance that trees are
Keeping track of all our steps.
But you, little star, you surely do not know the things I know.
Look there.
The rice in the water is not on a string,
Watch as they rush down out of reach,
I’m sorry your caravel was not fast enough
To see them wandering into the sea.
Whoops, there goes the economy.
What’s that?
You said your darkening eyes are like the tip of the iceberg,
Over mountains under the sea?
More like a rock sitting in water,
Over me!
Listen, little star. I will try to tell you facts I know.
My mother collects storyless teapots.
There are mice beneath the cupboard,
And she calls it the wind.
A knife is on the counter and she puts it in the freezer
Next to stockings stuffed with vegetables and meat.
I know my mother bore me.
I was born in-debt to nature,
Given life and given living.
I know of a place called often,
And I only go there when I dream.
I know the stories I was raised on.
Stories told of temples keep us pounded in the ground.
Story-teller, tell a story! While we are not lost or found!
Holes you heaved with hammers are now filling up with grime,
But our mouths are sticking out so you can feed us one more time,
If we sing about your glory, story-teller, tell us more.
But don’t tell me of the story that my mother through me bore.
Listen, little star.
Sand is in the news today.
Grains and grains are coming loose,
Bottles dried out on the floor
To catch them when it rains.
“Shout out loud!”
You should aloud,
But stranger strangers
Come and go
Like leaves fall in the clouds.
I hand you this baton, tonight,
To cherish little things that I
Can no more dare to try set right,
A horror and a glaring fright.
So shout some more, you renegade,
And dance until the moon turns blue
From holding in its breathe, tonight,
Like stars held me when I fell through.
I will listen, little star.
You can’t see the world unlike a pendulum,
Turning on the sun,
Striking day and night with my dramatic tempo,
Vibrating from the heat of a nation stuck in metal fields
With hands made of small light bulbs and eyes forged out of stone.
Beat.
And we know it’s three.
The skies light up our insides till we boil in belief.
Beat.
And we know it’s four.
In the morning shade we wait to hear the thrust of sunshine clapping down the dusk.
Beat.
And we know it’s six,
And we hit the wall of the clock and send a shrill to some mother’s grandfather
Hiding in a nursery where time has lots its merry way.
I will listen, little star.
Is this now what you have to say?:
Little men do little things,
Like little air puts little life in little lungs,
And we all point and laugh at little men with little love,
And little fate and little splendor,
Who wrap the little world around their little fingers
Until a tear the size of little everything
Drops into the atmosphere and suffers with the little ponds,
Swirling round the little earth’s equator like a little clock,
Following the little sun,
Never sleeping, never dreaming.
Suck it up, whirlpool.
Fading words say fading things,
Like fading air puts fading life in fading lungs,
And we all clap our hands for fading songs with fading melodies,
And fading fate and fading splendor,
That creeps its way into our fading minds
Until we spit into the atmosphere
And make it swallow up the fading ponds,
Boiling in the fading sun as if it's time weren't fading too,
Resting in the fading clouds,
Forever sleeping, forever dreaming.
Keep it down, thunderstorm.
Yes perhaps, little star, I cannot explain to you as much as I had thought.