To Be Penelope

Long did I await a pelt that knew not I, but my face. Elongated was my heart of hearts in such that I would fill the topographical crevices of despair for just one moment. With a blazing and maleficent desert sun I walked into the elusive arms of my captor guised by your visage. Blinded by the gaseous and luminous mass in the daytime sky, I fell endlessly unto the earthy terrain as hosted by your skin, your eyes. I felt an aura that could go on for eons until the eons ran out of light years and we had to create our own. I felt and willingly allowed for the colossally noir night sky, adorned by just one moon, envelop me as it promised to take me to those same stars amidst your gaze. A summer rush filled my veins like a repugnant pleasantry. It was something I could not accept, yet knew so well. I drew lines on your face to try and connect them to my wrinkled countenance. My hope was that as you walked, my skin could be pulled taught once more so that the world might see my bones again. Tipping over the hourglass, my heart sank with each grain of sand as I paced steadily into the darkness, only my own certainty to guide my movements. I sustained an ankle bruise with radiant blues. So as I now pack up my belongings and wash what once belonged to you, I limp with a cascading rhythm and allow this final blow to be no more than a cadence so that I may get on with this happenstance and put on a better show.

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The closest thing I can compare it to is a car wreck . . . And trying to get on the road again. The fundamentals are the first thing forgotten and practice at a very basic life skill seems ultimately necessary. I have this thing where I wake up and I feel like the Jaws of Life are the only sure way to pry me from bed. Anxiety fuses with a third-world state of being famished and I don't even know how to wish the next man a 'Good Morning.' I'm watching my visage expand into something that, while large, is full of the ramifications of a heart that's always been invited back here. I know it all too well; the hunger, the heart rate, the all-inclusive ache. My entire frame loses density as I grow stubby little appendages that stretch the skin across my back to just break free and be wings again. I knew more about flight before I was even free. Every yesterday of my life seems to be the only days where I knew the skies. I was always there . . . I was always there, I just wanted to believe it got bigger, bluer. I suppose that in some frame of tomorrow I will feel this way about today. I want to believe that my life at current could fit into more than a paragraph. I’d like to think I have such control of my right hand to the point I’m able to compose my insides away. You put the marrow in my veins and the blood in my bones.

That is not where they go . . . that is not where they go.

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You called to me out of a desperate, summer swelter and to you I strode with an assured west-coast glimmer. I, too, was a soldier, however with a fight of my own and a heart that had too long been alone. Had I known that your ammo had run low many winters ago, I may have rethought my trek towards your arms. I may have been able to control my dreams in those weeks of solemn patience. I may have regarded to every single image of you as another frame of life to hang upon my wall and glimpse at each time I climbed the stairs to put the children to bed. I unleashed the saga of my heart of hearts to you nonetheless and allowed for a warzone to speak on behalf of your brevity, silently affirming to myself each morning that you would one day unlock yourself in front of me. I felt the earth sing a ballad one day and I thought I’d capture it for you. Fiercely and with might, I merged the moon into the sun and told you that you were the one. Once upon a time, you were free and I wasn’t just a conduit within which you could just be. Little did you know, my soldier from back home, the one who withstood the war was me while you were out – out at sea.

October For Oaken Hearts

Within a sphere of this maniacal world,

Days pass as sure as they fall.

Their movement shakes my window--

The house settles, it settles and cracks to tell its tale.

I am an entity, and I am unafraid,

For within the center, the eye, and the calm

Of this storm, I do wait--

And as I am still, but one thing is real. That is--

The sound of the gods who’ve claimed my soul,

Clamoring yet whispering, into the sound hole.

They speak of your return, and of an October sky--

Silhouetting the oak tree we’ve claimed, but not yet known.

I embark unto the shoreline, and my feet,

They follow my heart.

Soon, the water, it surrounds me--

I am floating and bathing within a hope that stirs

My chest. I break, but my gods appoint a seamstress.

It’s not until they’ve mended my best dress,

That they gently, one last time,

Reveal to me the sky that holds the tree--

“Oh, dear heart, this sight you shall soon be.”

The Frontlines And The Golden One

An absence filled by only my dreams,

A heart I ever-long to see so clearly--

Fade into an Iraqi sunset each night with your call to sleep.

Where do you go,

When they allow you to shift through dreams and

Cultivate a territory all your own?

The ammo and the mission,

Does it follow you there?

Wincing, I am wincing at the thought,

That a war would follow you to your bedside

And take the place of home.

But if I could be your Golden One,

And sit beside you as you wept for peace—

Arms would lower and the skies—

Would brighten. For at your beck and call,

I could send the fates. Tie a noose around your fears—

Draw it taught until this purgatory was no longer.

And all the while the demons were taking their bows,

Exiting—

I could stitch the wounds like Lady Barton. And cross

The veins of your heart and mine before I tied the knot.

Unto your bones, I would give my own lot—

My marrow and tissue to replenish yours lost.

Before I left to wash my hands,

I’d take the nails there from your own.

Die to your country, your cause, your profession

No longer. Exhale the strife of your militant plight,

My love.

Because if I could be your Golden One,

The moon would change the tides to finish this one for you --

Before you even woke.

The Vagabond And The Sea

As if the wind itself had begotten thee,

I feel your presence as the horse’s mane blows me out to sea.

Here, on this shore—

I do wait for thee.

Oh, dear vagabond—

Do you like the way the streets feel ‘neath thine soles?

Break the tide to an alarming halt,

Oh, my own Odysseus.

Fleeting thoughts of homecoming

And happenstances of merciful bliss

Invade my subconscious.

While between them lay your face.

Letters from ashore,

I will send them till the squid’s of the sea
Shall no longer relinquish their ink to me.

Breathe an adoring memorandum,

If but a wisp of air that’s phantom,

Towards thine blood-laden chambers.

And as I await the ship,

As the swell tightens its grip,

A Penelopean ardor will filleth thine spirit,

And giveth thee life.

Biographical Anecdotes Of An Elephant

I dream night by night of the snow that used to fall from your heart onto my scalding hot being. Intuition plagues me with lucid recollections of the bannisters that so supported your shaky limbs as you navigated the residential museum of my lineage as laid down for display at your hearth. As she watched on, we danced to the chimes of your everlasting hospitality. As life went on, her memory imbued each and every trajectory. An infinite microcosm of life was tucked into each particle of dust that made rest on your countertops. Within the historical cabinetry, you housed nourishment that could last days less than your riveting blood. International figurines bore watch to every breath you took, every ounce of oxygen you so heaved into your delicate and aged lungs. Damn is to the pitiful plaque within your arteries of steel that so robbed you of this earth and took with you – a longevity I will never understand in my own tongue. Woe is to the knees that must support my appendages each time they fall in remembrance of you. Did you feel the warmth you created? Were you immune to your own light to the point you could not see the inherent worth your outstretched arms harnessed with a characteristic dignity? Woe is to my destiny of musing about a life where scratched records spun around a needle and held you and I close as supreme kin. If the sounds did not haunt me so much as an innate burst of enthralling existence I might walk away from your daily memorial unscathed. Nay, I carry wounds lethal as artillery that I one day hope morph to peace doves that I may release in honor of your humble and pure being. If your insides were fashioned to become a carcass of skin I might delight in filling the mold until your pelt may grace this earth again. It is with the genetically predisposed deoxyribonucleic acid code that I guide my fingers over the pages of your saga. I hope never to end until I am back to where you begin. Never have I laid eyes upon as many blankets as so fostered by your heart . . . And the day I find the moon, I’ll give it back to you and hope that you may trek the heavenly pavement that I so envy with the celestial lamppost as absent amidst the farmland between you and I many nights ago.

Bovine

Like infantile calves – they let us out to graze before they even showed us the pasture. For years did they watch as we writhed to break free from the noose – clenching their bony digits around the whip. With each annihilating howl, we threw our necks back unto the blood red sky as the braided leather carved into our flesh the image they so desperately wanted us to portray. After all, it was never enough to have initially branded our rumps so that every time we took a step, we knew that we were but bitches to a bastard. Days passed and the sun beat into our skulls to extract what little nutrient we still contained. Only the dirt between our hooves could speak of the daily pilgrimage to slaughter, as we were not allowed to exist audibly but for the rustling of the grass we ate routinely, three times a day. During mealtimes, tensions would rise as a few of the older ones grew excessively frustrated watching the young, vivacious Golden Ones frolic about their restricted pasture. These ones were the fresh meat and bones to arrive. They were scrupulously yielded more meticulous care so as to distract them from their eventual fate of ending up just like the rest of us. Besides, new product had to be coddled for the novelty it was, we only saw about three births a month because of the adverse effects of BGH. Some days we wonder why they even use our milk because we’re so lethargic – anatomically atrophic, even. It’s a wonder some of the skin they ship out doesn’t sift through the palates as if they were gargantuan sieves of some inhumane sort. Last week we swore they didn’t know that five of us died. There wasn’t any mention of profits decreasing, or even anger. It’s like we’re depreciating, or they’re just getting apathetic. Either way, we still walk the same paths every day, same line, same order. On the off chance that one of us tries to go astray, they’re on you like clockwork, it’s kind of like they’ve got some kind of intuition after all this time and they just know when something’s about to happen. I don’t think we have any of that – intuition. We just walk, and walk, and eat, and graze the same schematic tracks, but we never really know where we’re going. Sometimes we swore we saw something move or change, but then with the shake of the head, we were back between these bars again – moving, moving, and moving some more. Now, I can’t speak for the rest of them, but I always do wonder what the ones hanging naked ever did so wrong.