Saturday, April 25, 2020

Day 25 #napowrimo - day 19 #the100dayproject - Descent


This was a really weird prompt, but I followed it as closely as I could and ended up with a stream of conscious hodge podge. But I feel like there are gems in here that I could use somewhere else...

Descent

I hold a drink in my hand while I listen to you,
The cup the color of clear ochre and inside,
Amaro and pistachio liqueur pools and swirls
With the ice cubes and the small segments
Of lime pulp and slivers of zest like bits of
Green potato peel. Your voice resounds
With a lisp, spittle and saliva gesticulating
Into a poetry about life and all the details
Of the day and you always bring it back
To the years and the months and the days.
We span time without a timeline, nothing
Is linear. It feels like a road map that we
Follow, but time it is more like shining
A light through a prism, where the beams
Spread out like our fingers, all the colors.

We bike into the present as we race down
The hills we climb, up and down, up and down,
Down, Down, Down, Down, Down, Down.
And after all the grit from the road,
The taste of cedar and asphalt,
Particulates of tires and our cars
Pounding the roads into sand, we wonder
If the river could take us into the sky,
We wonder if we keep pedaling off the
Face of this earth. We will only end up
Falling off the dock into a lake, or bay,
Or into the surf.

And that is the surf
Our bodies made of beach, the thick
Grains of sand made of granite,
Each one holding the colors of rose
And Brute Champagne. All of the molecules
Like bubbles that we could drink, salt
And sweet. When I surf, I can feel the rise
Of the water taking me up like an airplane,
The sound of the earth’s engine rushing
Me up and into me as if I too were a tidal
Being, that I could grow fins and gills
And churn the ocean enough to make waves.

This body disappoints me, this pale meat
Insists, determines, thinks, is. Demands
The sustenance of breath and food and sleep.
I am tired of the daily bread of my body,
The ache of bone and joint, the insecure
Pain of opening the window blinds
To bring in the world, to bring in the morning.

“Did they teach you the intrinsic value of stocks,”
The bullion, the golden finch, the wool winnowed
Into golden thread. In a world where everyone wants
Gold and money; I want adventure. I want the value
Of experience, the tip of the toe desperation, knife
In hand survival instinct. I want the bear in the woods
To greet me at my door and welcome herself in.
I want to find myself in the silence of the grass,
The hush of tree bark. I want to find my copper
And brass to weigh more than mansions and cars.

I want a lot of things, but there is nothing more
But to release this hollow want from my throat,
As if it to has a body of its own, hands, fingers,
Throat, a throat within a throat, I have so much
To speak that these hands are a second throat
That I can speak and write, write and speak
And empty this fullness growing inside of me.
That is not even enough, but it quiets when I
See the earth light into fire, the sky illuminating
Into the blood red of sunset.

I grow silent too
When I ride my bike down a slope, the anticipation
Of falling of being suspended into the air, the risk.
I grow frequent and plentiful into this life
As if it could hold me like a cup filled with
Lime juice. I pucker my lips, the sour
A reminder that a body feels; I am lived.


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