Are you my friend?
Can you be trusted?
I don’t know.
Beat the drum.
Raise up crosses.
Friend?
You hale an earthly king.
You hale a godly kingdom.
Friend?
I spit upon your king.
I despise your kingdom.
Will you kill me?
Pretty words amount to shit.
You always obey your lords.
Will you kill me?
Drums are growing loud.
The crosses stand above cannons.
Friend?
Friend?
I wake her from her dream.
Still hazy, she scribbles her visions in pen on a yellow legal tablet.
Tablets, like Moses, brought down from heaven.
Tablets, holy words, for us to sing.
Wiping the sleep from her eyes,
she sings with heaven still roaring in her ears.
Distorted and warm guitars cocoon her voice,
make her visions free from sin.
A light is in her eyes.
A sly, and joyous smile on her lips.
She sees a place promised in holy visions,
in the cutting, bitter words of prophets.
She lays down to sleep.
Dream cycle 4-6. Last song at sunrise.
God is close in cold nights, whispering.
We’ll wake her at first light, to hear Him.
Prophetess, talons in prayers,
time, time, time, and embracing thunder.
Buried words go in through the pores, not ears.
Saving them from sin if only half heard.
One last revelation, and soft kiss,
watching her troubled peace on a vinyl couch.
Heaven comes in snatches as we float to the ceiling.
Prophetess, our soul, my platonic knight errant.
A soft kiss on her brow, she sighs.
Eyes closed, automatic writings, writes her visions.
Half heard, like angels laughing, under soothing cacophony,
she will sing heaven into this world.
Friends feel like strangers, or enemies,
people who smile but you cannot trust,
and who don’t come close, don’t the speak
the words of silence and regret.
I dream too often of women, of sex
or even just someone to share a night.
The pieces don’t fit, and my face is cold,
and I can only be brave to the naïve.
The days may come close to perdition,
but the mornings, when dreams linger,
and there’s only the heater rumbling,
I can almost feel content.
Lilish and I, always rode on her dull blue moped up the crooked road to the top of the mountain above our town, me on the back, and her seeing clearly ahead, in her bright red helmet.
Even in the cold of January, in our well worn and threadbare jackets and sweatshirts, asked to make it through one more winter and one more promise of better times, we came as night fell, to look down up the earthbound lights.
We sat upon the concrete picnic table in the scenic pull out, passing a cigarette, or maybe candies between us. We felt like lords up there, with our Marloboros and gummy bears, looking down upon our town, as if we were king and queen in a fearsome castle.
We talked about how New York was waiting for us after senior year. We talked of the nixes and pixies in her garden. We talked of the UFO we saw some nights, beside the moon, knowing it would come for us, to make us slaves.
And we talked of how we’d rain down fire and destruction on this nowhere town, this empty place and dead end loss, that hummed in our brains like naked wires, and tore at what little was left inside ourselves that belonged to us.
Escape, looking down upon our town, miscreant angels having at laugh at it all, just us, just our mad dreams, and still feeling safe with the unseen and wicked things hiding in the trees and between the air.
I held her hand some nights, warm and soft in the cold. And one night, she placed her head upon my shoulder, the night the UFO really dead come down to take us. The time together, when hope still lingered, and there was still escape.
And tomorrow, I don’t know, will you stay?
I have my heart, but I don’t know how to pray.
Can invocations be made in tender caresses?
In making you such beautiful and blue dresses?
The sea is eternal, outside this empty mansion.
Even hot and dead, it comes up the beach, eternal expansion.
What world could we make as the air is sucked out the sky?
I can make you blue dresses, but I cannot stop it when you cry.
The materials of things that no longer matter, is what I have here.
I make blue dresses for you, a bit of beauty, as we sigh with fear.
I don’t know how to pray, and I don’t know how to be an angel for you.
I can hold you tight, but I can’t move the moon, or be holy like you.
So, this morning, hot and dry and a dust kicked up, I look at the sea.
Hot and dead, grey water, I have empty hands and an absent destiny.
I made you a blue dress, the one for this day, for I know not what else to make.
Maybe you’ll ascend back to heaven today, only so much foolishness you can take.
She rides an old, dull blue moped, and wears a bright red helmet,
heading down the thin road by the cold, grey inlet, before dawn.
The silent morning, save for the high wine of the moped’s engine,
is frightening and welcome; who watches or takes care, this hour?
A small leather bag is slung over her shoulder, and across her chest.
She hopes the tide has not washed away the angel’s body and bones.
She hopes other desperate scavengers have not taken that green eye.
She hopes for a beautiful feeling, a piece of heaven above her, for dreams.
She stops the moped at a well worn dirt path, down to the water.
She leaves it on the shoulder and walks down, the sun rising again.
A distant glow, like hoping waking after the war, and endless evil.
Like a paladin approaching The Grail, she is silent and awestruck.
On the little finger of land, half still in the water, is the angel’s body.
Silver and dull bones, soft flesh corrupted by coming down to earth.
White hair spun pure and fine. Fluttering gold feathers still on wings.
And the bright and green eye, still seeing and glowing without light.
She knelt at the angel’s head, awestruck and fearful, touched it softly.
She reached out and took the eye, and all that heaven could be for her,
those visions filled her mind, crushed her heart, something more than animal.
Something more than will and power and corruption and endless loss.
She put it in her leather bag, and walked back up the dirt path to the road.
God’s eyes were upon her now, no hiding from who or what she had been.
Those eyes upon her, no hiding from all that she could yet be and become.
The night was no longer fear, but the sun would be once more, as at her birth.
She rode back to the trailer home she shared with her older brother, and tired
and angry mother, and the cat that seemed to see ghosts in the dust hanging in sunlight.
Her heart seemed empty but at peace, and the star light was a broken sing: VACANCY.
As the sun rose, the light filled her, and changed her, and God sighed, at a silent loss.
All was new. All was fearful. All was well.
Above New York, in a tall grey tower,
looking down on the lights below,
like golden and distant, earthbound stars.
I remember your hand in mine, warm, soft,
as we looked out over that galaxy, so free,
awed and humbled, given the eyes of angels.
You cuddle in close to me, our jackets too thin,
from the whipping and still bitter April wind,
your hair trailing out, catching the spotlights wane.
I kissed your cheek, and then your brow,
and all that is moment echoes forever,
eyes from the chain of storms that is madness.
A good night, the demons of thought asleep,
the angels showing us the stars of man’s world,
and letting us now peace, being in love, not broken.
I am nervous on the ice, unsure, unsteady, laughing a bit.
You take my hand, glove to glove, and pull me further out.
End of the evening, 10 or so, just us before the rink closes.
Christmas passed, but still soft blues and cheerful music.
You pull me on, and we glide, my heart giddy as you laugh,
and smile at me, a silly boy, an unsure man, following you.
You let go of my hands, smile brighter, than start to spin
and race circles around me, looking into my eye as you pass.
Long ago, you were up and coming champion, proud and high.
But things change and life ruins everything, but you still glide
like you’re on the air and not bound by gravity, only haughty grace.
I slide on as you circle me, fairy ring around your captured lover.
And then you come to my side, and take my hand again, and I
hold it tightly, and you clench tightly back, and we slide, side by side
through the ice and the cheery music and the soft blue lights,
queen and knight errand, a court of two, just me and you.
She touches my face.
I do not flinch.
I do not pull away.
It’s been so long.
She kisses my cheek.
I flush and feel warm.
Face, chest, burning blood.
It’s been so long.
“I love you.” She whispers.
I wrap her tight in my arms.
I feel safe. She is home. Sanctuary.
It’s been so long.
Groggy, waking up, it’s a new day.
I dread the lonely car ride to work.
I already feel drained trying to be
normal and happy, tell them jokes.
Dreams were no better, no more real.
Same bar afterwards, or the comics shop,
or maybe a movie to try and find in waking
the place I knew in my youth, of limitless
places without boundaries, of open escape.
It all seems like violent nihilism now.
Outside the bar, or wherever I ended up,
not wanting to go straight home, to siren call
of internet and other things so rotten there,
a song comes on, that is pure and melancholy.
The last release, open escape, shattered boundary.
