there are things that need to be said-- heard, listened to, believed, or not. there is, she thinks, she knows, freedom in the saying. there are, she thinks, she knows, risks worth taking and similar things.
Out here, we are wilder, they say. There is little left to lose for those like us.
But the unchained melody is still ringing in my ears, cuts me to my core like an owl through the night. Out here we are free, out here we are we. Out here we are forgiven, bound only by our own promises, our own desires, our intuition of the forces that we want to [ought to] be. We are our own, a people of the forest, of the trees and the wind and the oceans and the clouds, unchained clouds. Destiny has nothing to do with it.
Separate me, break me from the prisons of my time, my lines- of lineage, of blood and water, consequence and circumstance. Burn the bridges, bomb the walls, and rip to shreds all the tiny threads that bind me, let me see things as they are. As we are. They are to us as we are to something we don’t call god, and that god is to us as the sun is to the west. We only meet in parting, in a slow dance in fading light. And how are we so far, so close, orbiting around each other. Mercury and venus, our hands only ever brush for briefest moments. Come to me, fill me up, let me see things as they are, above, beyond, inside and out, around and around in dizzy circles of drunken understanding. This is clearest to us now. We are what we are, and we see what we see. My universe is mine alone, only I can see it. And we all have our own, vast universes, coexisting and colliding, as i crash into god into you into the mountains where no one lives but legends. We are legends of our kind, of our time and our persuasions. Why don’t you be my persuasion, see me here as I see you; let us have a sunset of the mind.
Rushing water on the page, tiny fish give tiny kisses, where does all this come from, what are we trying to hide? The sun streams from the doorway til all we see is light. Here, here there are trees to climb, rocks to break and unlived lives. Here, there are stars to wander, in this field of gold and blue. When blue was gold and the sun went down forever? There’s no forgiveness for things like that. No forgiveness for things like that. Things. Like that.
I am an American aquarium drinker, and I will use this as I can. And I am wrong, I know I’m wrong, but I feel that I deserve it. There are days, I think, when we deserve to be wrong; it is what we are. And I am not a fatalist, I don’t believe I’m here because of you. who are you? I’m not here for a reason, there is no such thing as destiny. But there is no such thing as luck either, coincidence is as much a myth as our creation. We are all myths. And there, somewhere between fate and myth, between circumstance and consequence, there are two tiny eyes that watch the world, indifferent. Like two tiny stars in a constellation neither of them have ever heard of.
What if they knew? What if stars knew that we called them ursa minor, that we name them to control them, as we have since we invented adam? Would they shrug, or cringe, or laugh at us in their own, giant, burning, sad version of denial?
And what am I, here? Without a god that I can name, with a truth that I can only taste, with only a whisper on the wind that stirs me to revelation? Where will I go, what will I do, with my ghost of a god who pulls no strings, with my ghost of a self falling and rising, with my stars in the sky that have their own names, where will I go? Layer seven of a dark, mythical ring that they call a lake of sulfur? That they call a place for sinners, for unbelievers and rejectors, a place for those who dare to walk alone into the dark? Our bravery betrays us in our quest for peace, for a truth that matters in a world that maybe doesn’t, for a life that is made of more than empty promises and fiery threats. We are the sinners, we are the doubters, the questioners, the unbelievers. The pinnacle of human, our blessing and our curse. See that’s the thing, we don’t believe in curses. Or punishment, or violence, or unbreakable rules. We don’t believe in judgment, or salvation, or submission. But we believe in lilies, and in poetry and open windows. We believe in life and death, in life by seeing and death by ignorance, in atoms and in planets, in love without a cause. We believe in broken fences, red wine and candlelight and midnight, we believe in eclipses, in sunsets on the porch. And we believe that we are what we are, and that should be, is, enough. We believe that life is life, that love is love, that we are pieces of those glued together like broken plates, that what we see matters more than what we hear, that faith is something unbound and unchained, candles in the wind and lives torn apart by living. We believe in swirling smoke, in choices and in loss. In Kerouac and Sartre, in darkness and in light, in complicated realities that dance too fast to keep a rhythm. We are strangers in a strange world, twirling around a strange universe, a kaleidoscope of unknowing until we can’t stand it anymore.
Long live Muhammad, long live Jeremiah, long live Abraham and all his many, starstruck sons. But I am tired of Abraham, of men and sons of men, men who were revolutionaries for their time. for their time is nothing, means nothing, means water under the bridge-- I am not their time, we are not their time. A little girl in a garden is closer to god than all the prophets in the world, with their books and their salvations. they are gilded chalices, seedless cherries, synthesizers set to piano 2. They are lipsticked girls and decaf coffee; leave your books and leave your letters; leave your damnation and your pride; leave your so-called revelations and remember what you are. We are where we are, we cannot be another. But my visions are not their visions; I am no prince, no son of god, no daughter- their god has no daughters. No prophet, no prostitute, no virgin and no king. I am a woman. And I see what I can see, from the cliff we are all perched on, waiting for the fall. We are all, really, waiting for the fall. The piano is a heavy one, the rope is straining every moment. And when will they accept, when will they see, that we are what we are. We are not gods, we are not worms, we are open eyes and open wings. And you can pour as many drops in the ocean as you like, it will never be fresh water. You can throw sugar to the wind until the ground is white, it will never be sweet. You can burn the earth til its charred and black, it will never be anything but home. And I, I will build castles of stone and earth until we all spiral into the sun. I will drink from the rivers until my lungs are turned to gills. I will flail my arms until I am an eagle, stand in the fire until I burn like gasoline. There is no sun, we say, unless there is an earth. And I say no, say that they are all stars in the distance, that we are not the end of time. The end of history is not ours to make, the beginning of the end is a slow lullaby. We are immortal, in our way- everything we are is recorded in the stars and in the spaces beyond them, where there is nothing but Picasso and light is mixed with dark.
Light us on fire, they say, and I say let us burn. Let us be what we choose, let us choose what we believe, let us believe what we feel and let us feel without bounds. let us, unchained like the wind, blow like the chaff their god has always rejected. Let us fill our cup before it is filled for us, let us love as we can, let us be what we are until we can be nothing anymore. Let us run out, run our course, and then let the nothing come. Because we are not afraid of silence, we are nothing but the music of the space between the notes. Let us know, let us speak, let us drink and then, then let us sleep, and wake up next to each other intertwined, can’t tell my sleeping, dreaming arms from his.
As if we were one, we say. If only we knew. If only I know. If only it was so, if only we were unknown.
Remember, she says; a remembering people. Wings, faded, in the photographs of our childhood memories. There are rubies to be found, but Cortes was only ever looking at the ground; and we will never see the earth until the sky has overcome us.
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