There’s an owl,
just outside my window,
in the trees.
Her claws firmly fastened onto a branch;
moonlight reflects thro’ her feathers.
Should I be so bold,
to ask her to rest upon my arm?
Would I dare?
There’s a street corner
I can stand on
Shout
And over-react,
As the headlights reach thro’ the darkness.
I can think of a few things to say.
La Nina steps in from the south,
infiltrating a cold undercurrent.
The streets spring up with water,
black tar rivers wantonly advance
through the concrete glass and steel man-made mountains.
I could smell it. The Rain.
I knew it would come.
I had closed all the windows,
smothered my bed with plastic
to keep the water, while I slept,
from making ponds in my eyes
and a deep lake in my mouth.
“You’re butterflyesque.” My sister commented,
As I talked to her from a payphone outside a QT
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“No matter how tornadic the storm
when it lets go of you,
you always land upon another flower.”
The storm raves outside, wakes me.
Flustered about the water I was taking in
through the roof of my home-made camper top,
I pull the plastic closer about me.
Why have I come here?
To this city?
This Babylon?
It terrifies me.
But I am here.
Here in the city of my birth.
Yet I have been mutated.
Who was I, then?
Was it really me?
Or was it only a dream?
So many names,
so many lives,
so many styles of clothes
so many books, so many people
separate me from that naive trusting boy.
Who would recognize my prodigal face?
For thirty years I’ve gnawed innocently on bitterness.
This city fortifies itself for an Olympic siege;
and for reasons that are incomprehensible
I have come here.
My Friends,
I hear your words:
those notes, which fill the night air,
keeping me company,
as they penetrate through the cracks of this particle board box
I have constructed and call home,
The rain has forced me to remain inside for now;
but I sing with it tonight.
I sing the song of laughter.
I reach out for new friends.
It is hard but so is seeing the moon behind the clouds.
I just have to be patient.
and soon this storm will blow over.
The stars fall back into the clouds,
As I pull myself into the cab of the U-haul.
I look around for the Moon
but it is not out.
The stars flicker and roll past the window.
The passage of time on the road is interchangeable.
Today, tomorrow, yesterday,
the actions are all at once;
nevertheless, the decisions which were made
brought me away from yesterday,
through today, and into tomorrow.
Some of my friends inform me
I am running away from my problems
and they are right, of course I am.
I am running as fast as I can go,
running from everything that meant anything,
the hopes, the dreams, her love
and the memories connected to it:
each tree, street corner,
each restaurant, pool table,
each movie theater,
and each piece of ground
that covers the square miles
upon which the city rests.
The moon was not out.
I could not see it
nor its glow from behind the clouds.
All I could see
were the headlights beaming in front of me,
showing me
just a fleeting bit of what lies ahead.
How I have felt it,
that strange bird called parting.
Its wings stirring up the dust
as I pack the things I choose to keep.
The past clouds up the air,
as wings rip through the cobwebs of perplexity,
covering me in dust and cobwebs.
In this rotting house
our love sprouted from the earth,
pressed between the cracks of the hard wood floor;
not some craving nor want, but attended to.
I think about these things as I wash the dust off
in a friend’s house, because of a friend’s love;
but it is love all the same.
For so long,
I have not understood this love called friendship.
It rose up as the sun
radiant and intense.
Its brilliance tried to burn away the cold of the night,
but it couldn’t.
A space heater in snow filled woods.
I thank the friend, stay and talk awhile.
I must leave
to sleep on floor and couch
in search of another lover best-friend.
Heart in Battle Dress,
face scared from previous hunts
and tangles with Love’s imminent fangs.
I lurk on a stool in an alcohol Jungle,
armed for skirmish.
Bow taunt,
arrow in hand straight and sharp.
I glanced about,
all around
circles stain the bar from my drink.
If at that point, you’d asked me
w/ face smeared black for battle,
-Had my spirit defected?
I would’ve answered, -Yea;
albeit, I saw it that night.
It was an electrical moment.
which shook me,
jolting me back
up against the polyurethane wood of the bar.
I saw Picasso’s Incandescent Angel;
she came over and spoke to me.
The light was blinding.
Her blazing blue eyes caused seeds to sprout.
Leaves unfold, catching the radiating light.
With her hand on mine,
the Incandescent Angel’s words,
delicate in their arrival,
wrap around me slowly tightening.
The arrow, sliding from my fingers,
splintered upon the floor.
I place my bow in the trash can
with the plastic cups and beer bottles,
as we walked up the sidewalk
to get something to eat.
I chose to be myself
following the way of the spirit,
the way of the hunter was too painful.
Angel, I come with no presents,
only the wind at my back.
I can only give you words
threaded together in a necklace called poem
and leave with the hope,
that you, too,
desire to continue our conversation on another day.
Smyon-Pa 