The Renaissance Cycle
A curated performance of hope, and aestheticized surrender. Made later, after my earlier poems found in my archive.
The Emissary
A man, worn thin by the journey,
his history written in the dust on his clothes,
met another,
at the hill’s summit.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” the man offered.
The stranger looked out, his eyes holding the distance.
“It is.
I could lie down here now and become a statistic of the landscape.
Or I could walk away and become a statistic of the road.
The outcome is identical.”
The man was silent for a long moment.
Then he spoke, his voice low and firm.
“‘To be or not to be’ is a child’s riddle.
It presumes the universe would have a memory,
and even this Earth, this land, this hill, this hill
this hill a slate. It remembers nothing,
your death as swift a breath on cold glass.
There is only one inquiry worthy of our final breath:
Will you carve your name into this stone, by your blood, by bashing your head until it bleeds, with your blood onto the stone, the mossy, stone,
knowing the wind and rain will lick it clean,
or precisely because they will?
For in the trying, in the furious act of scarring the world,
you command the wind, you command the rain.
You make them your devoted servants in the art of erosion.
You do not ask to be remembered.
You sentence the world to the labour of forgetting you.
And that,
is a legacy.”
L’été
once, a season of warmth.
it clung, a humid skin.
an insistence that left me ashamed.
then, the long subtraction.
the sun a memory of blush.
and now, this winter of the nerve.
i hunt old coals with frozen hands.
i would burn the house down
just to feel the glow on my face.
tell me,
if some new fire should find me,
some generous, foolish flame…
tell me,
will these same hands
will these hands of mine
will they build a wall around the fire?
will they become a cup of poison
and spill themselves?
will they open the window to the outside, of the cold, blue night?
tell me,
if it comes,
will i
will i cast it all away
again?
This Transient Body
Far from here, I wish not
to hear from those with fanged teeth,
or with lupine hearts,
I wish to die beautifully, far
from the hungry dogs,
far from the rabid games they play.
This Earth hungers-
my momentary and transient body.
Moribund, I will flourish
my body, into soil
the dirt, the mud,
the microbiomes,
my life; everything, and
nothing at all.
Something I Forbade
I built a house with no windows,
the silence is perfect.
Yet, I press my ear to the wall,
listening for music
I have forbidden myself to hear.
My Body, A Nest
My eyes, my heart, my body, my soul-
all the little, vital,
unimportant things to me;
yearns to rot, with an Orchid
enveloping in my decaying sternum,
from which I’ve breathed in the world’s eloquence.
Now, lives inside of me.
A nest, of which the Orchid blooms.
A body is not a body, but a nest,
a nest that is laid upon the Orchid,
upon the body.
And we learned to fear our homes, our nest, our Orchid.
We have not learned the addiction of being nothing.
We have grown to yearn for something, to be something;
a painful, prickly something,
a shrieking, loving, agitated something.
To be addicted to nothing, is to be just-
the sleep of a stone in a river,
the weight of water,
and the dripping sound, from the dews of water,
falling;
inevitably, inevitably
without resisting.
A Forced Declaration
The wind blows,
the petals fall, the temple bell rings,
as the birds fly to distant lands.
The sun grazes my cold, pale skin.
Inevitably.
I hum a warm lullaby lost long ago,
a forced declaration of peace, I reluctantly
declare.
Maybe,
the waterfall is supposed to collapse back
back into the pond,
for a few scaly things to live.
Oh, cruel Gut.
i tell my gut
everything is a lie
everything is rot
i whisper to my bones
it is all meaningless
then i tell my gut
meaningless is a nest
you can build in
i whisper to my bones
even death is a body
for the ants
for the things beneath the ants
is this truth
or is it a blanket i am chewing
a soft thing to choke on
i don’t want the storm
i don’t want the storm
but the storm is a beast
that gets tired
then a face
a familiar face
and for a moment
i am a crayon
i am a colour
i am a drawing
and the sound that comes out
from the red wet cave
is not a performance
it is blind
it is raw
it is a birth.
The Emissary (II)
A small favour.
What is a legacy?
And, how important can it be?
It is the only honest thing
in a world, built on sand.
And in a year, that honest thing,
is pollen.
Is the dust that gathers
on a raven’s wing.
You cup this violence into your palms,
you cling onto it with both hands.
You speak of carving your name
with the ink of your body.
You speak of sentencing the wind
to the labour of your erosion.
The wind does not labour.
The rain does not serve.
They are older than service.
Older than sentences.
Yet, you labour pointlessly,
to be a chore.
The blood on the dumb stone.
The moss doesn’t read.
What are words that cannot
be read?
What is blood, that cannot
be a decree?
It is stain.
You speak of commanding the Earth,
and her elements,
while your own breath still clouds the air.
A legacy cannot be carved.
It is whispered into a mouth of a river.
Of any river.
And released.
It is the permission you give the Earth,
for her to take you back
without ceremony,
without any effort.
There is no war with the wind.
Only surrender.
And in that surrender,
the freedom she has granted you
is the terrible weight of
your own name.
Of Earth and Sky
I wish someone would hold me
until my ribs creak
and say:
“You talk of Earth and Sky
as if they are ideas
you talk of the meaningless
as if it is a paintbrush
Let me tell you about Earth,
it is not a metaphor,
it is the mud where I buried
the afterbirth,
it is the grave where I planted
a tomato seed,
that grew fat and red
from the body’s decay.
You talk about ‘flowers’, and think
too much of its death.
Think ‘flower’, and think of its sex
the sticky pistil
the buzzing bee
and the rot, that feeds the
next
the next
next
You fetishize the rain,
it is a lonely thing, that somehow
connects the Earth and Sky,
but child,
rain is not a connection
it is a fucking
it is the Sky penetrating
the Earth
it is violent
it makes mud
it makes a mess
it makes a life
A ‘beautiful death’ is a
clean thing
a thought
but death is not clean
it is the body’s final, wet surrender
it is the smell
it is the bloom of
bacteria
it is the gift of your meat
to the worms
to the roots
to the mycelial networks
you never knew were holding you
You were a nobody
and thought yourself rootless
but you were always part of the soil,
part of the Earth,
you just refused to get
dirty,
you just refused
to be food.
Put the nihilism all down,
not for anyone,
but because this Earth, is hungry
for your particular and momentary body.”
Then I remember:
the one who pathologized me is me.
the one who found the solution is me.
This is the proof that no one else can save me.
This is the proof that no one else could love
this particular rot.
And I-
even I-
cannot swallow my own cure,
a doctor cannot operate on himself.
Prayer, Prayer
in a thousand years of rain
a thousand years of rain
a flood comes down
and i see
not to see
but i see
a single branch
refusing
to drown
and on it
one green leaf
clinging
like a final
unspoken
prayer.
