Call me Lelev
Living lectures
as leaves dry and eyes freeze,
I walk between horns,
through amplified waves,
listening to memory’s whispers
& its crow’s cries
The clouds who comfort and suffocate
those for whom imagination governs
the voices of children stirred
through the piano’s song
As we sit and smell souvenirs,
still remembering through sound
& sand’s gold with ocean’s azul
Thank Spinoza’s God for the sea
knowing what she saw belonged to her –
like watching poppies pass through
our subtly interacting lives
We live under the same statues
& the same rocket-left lines
thanks to a song that loves
the life with its saline tears
consider this protest
an ultimatum to silent birds
Now, for the moment
spinning on the stratosphere
& a bow to this blind audience
Forward-rolling free fall
over the light-lined borders,
a pencil’s wake made true
What does it mean to tiptoe the waking life?
to find each other with legs crossed
breathing souls, in & out
in a struggle through waist-deep snow
Toward rainbows cast
upon the forgettably mundane
divine iris spikes of light,
those identical peaks
Perched atop, a bird who forgets to remember
or remembers to forget
to read life back to you
when you see violet
you will understand
the color that founds a flame
the vibrance of sequential tone
under fields of acrylic orchids
& a palace of pastel clouds
suffering – yes, but
when you see violet
through phenomenological fireworks
& swimming in magnetic beads
leaves glowing from radiation behind
your skin will grow warm but
crimson enchants
your vascular tempo
fingers trace the duvet’s ridge
& hands submerge in grain
a parasite remarkable & preposterous
remembers that patience makes the clouds dance
& above the sea canopy glows
amethyst stars and gin moon
finale chromesthesia
when you see violet
petal’s edge to petal’s edge
Hanging from one’s hair-woven noose
rhythm spelled out cyrillic
Her, dancing through the sound’s waves
bordering the breathing shadow
A crystal vase of human figure
eight billion of them, lined and waiting
to be filled by flowers or ash
The song’s nostalgia taste
under a charcoal-smeared sky
atop a prismed Earth and restless Moon
What if it ended here?
Jupiter left unspun
things smaller than they seem
& thoroughly dreamless
Estranged
We fight through this cosmic blizzard
each flake, a star
Structures within structures
trekking against entropy’s wind,
knee-deep steps through dead suns
We swim in nebulae
these corporeal ingredients set in motion,
our hearts made of stellar pollen
that universal DNA, traced back to I
Is it not enough?
to be one with four dimensions
a species born of star’s seed
It demanded
Do you live behind your eyes?
A blue mirror right, yellow mirror left
we stand on sharp pillars spaced octagonal
brushing those skulls’ teeth
What is it to be here?
rolling this head about
pushed along magnetic strings
In a palace of strokes
finding exponents in rhythm
Of music, to live inside
beneath a frozen spring sky
rainbow rings round cubic worlds
crossing a duned cosmos
In this desert
scripts carved by valleys,
men of rocks and cloud,
standing proud, hoisting wire
We live within lines:
pushing against nature’s edge
The furnace, a stage
We, aliens on our own world
Life reflected in infinite monoliths
as a radiative plane stares me down
When the world becomes a model
& the city turns to prison
Throat scorched
As ash flows and
Glaciers sing light’s vibrato
Europa’s promise of
breathing seas and
orbits within orbits
What brought waves
brought warmth
& a jagged crust of frost
The clarity of moons,
due to God’s blindness and
stratified dimensions
This counterfeit model:
flawless & burned
Behind flowers of perfumed smoke
we yearn to grow among others,
along beaches gilded by memory and
carved by those descriptors, so novel
A shadow painted over her
light-pierced eyelashes while
silence is hidden by scent
This was when the voice went quiet
What was this secret?
For; now it howls within
focusing on that which terrorizes,
we are brought back to this room
Invisible movements
illuminated through a flower’s combustion
We remember the air that dances
through the leaves of aloe vera and
across the dirty paints left to dry scarred
Being so many places at once,
alive in the wake of a boat and
dying in the shallowest waters
What we leave to be mourned
that figure so alluring,
left nullified in print
A meaningless body, so alien
The watchmaker’s trip
Allow me to show you the world as I see it:
with its clockwork of creatures
& its defined mechanics, chiseled without
We walk through waves, mindless and strange
with our corroded legs and
leaking minds, our souls spill sand
Constructed of gold mixed with gold,
our veins drip paint,
calligraphic paths left by stride
God is that choreographed fairy
emerging from pitted spacetime,
made of stars, with butterfly wings
She sends suns on their way
creating that night sky, drifting
Warped and distorted celestial lights
melt at our backs
Someone else,
he prophesizes slowly
presenting God’s work in figures:
a mathematical painting, so pure
I speak to Her and
She speaks to me better than I
With a mirror at each side
I acquaint myself with one
A line drawn:
On this spectrum we live
I walk
The one I know tears at me
and shows me my claws,
the other one forgotten
His gentle eyes
closed over months –
yet he still holds my hand
Faced with three mirrors
and a trailing wake of pasts,
the shadow at left makes me bleed,
makes me weep as
the light at right can only grimace
Light’s touch becomes nullified
as I watch myself at front,
torn by images and words
Boxed in by versions of myself,
fighting a civil war amongst themselves
How quietly they swing –
and how gently I fall
This is our world
behind eyes drowning in ocean’s blue
Do the leaves welcome me, or
are they wishing me farewell?
Such a gentle shadow’s wave
beside embers hidden from breeze
She once told me:
I detest days of cloudless sky,
for I feel as if I could just float away –
nothing to grasp, no clouds nor stars
Can you catch fate with your hands?
Will she return from other lands?
I hope to find those small glass houses,
buried in high tide
where people stop to look at flowers and stars
S’arrêtent-ils pour regarder les fleurs et les étoiles ?
I busy myself stacking adverbs
to distract a body made of components, fractal and evil
Maybe I meet her presenting
a purple life slowed down and redshifted
I forget the second and remember:
the walls are alive,
a heart sunken to times inevitable,
a breath changed the world,
entropy’s forced cause and consequence
Here I rest –
between two mountains, ancient
on the edge of an infinite globe
Across the flipped circumflex:
a skeleton of wood lies open
– sharpened rib cage mid breath –
atop expansive wildflowers,
mustard and rose
Behind our deciduous corpse
the living mushroom’s shape breathes
and waves with its twinkling leaves,
as I sweat out my tears and think:
What would I be if not here?
Ce soir magique me chante :
les nuages d’or et pebbles sur la rue,
une balançoire solitaire rencontre
une boîte aux lettre rouge,
sous un ciel peint
Les étés, je marche toujours
près des fenêtres glacées et déformées
alors que les tournesols oublient
leur raisons d’être
Les reflets de moi-même
dansent, pieds sur terre
2023.12.02
Breathing leaves,
wrapped in bubbles of light
Within me, pulled toward windows:
pale and blue
She smiles though counterparts;
I leap, to find –
Worlds all the way down,
to points and space
We build to what we know,
dividing from an unknown whole
I hear the foliage song
through an accelerated breeze
How strange it feels:
a foreign kiss
Teeth carved for other words
If only clouds could catch and
grass could leave a wave’s wake
The bladed lips’ many alternatives
Shaded eyes and a cat’s tongue,
singing under blankets
While a body surrenders
prior to mind
2023.12.05
Can we meet under the canopy
of a language we did not know we shared?
Of course; bien sûr
Where have you been, I asked
Je savais: je l’ai regardé en rêve
Le grand Nord, a-t-il répondu
We have lived perpendicularly,
sous une langue déplacée
Where roads turn to dirt,
entre des lacs épars
Face-to-face; tête-à-tête
On a crater’s iced island,
qui s'érode jusqu’à rien
Yet here we are –
speaking under eyelids
En vérité
Can we forbid ever being strangers again?
Twice is too many
for a collaboration across lives
This madness of joy:
folie à deux, folie de dieu
What I call improbable, you see as necessary
This is your sapience,
distinguished amongst sapiens –
Masked behind lurid eyes of sky,
a universe within a soul
I attend to you,
as if a binary in orbital song
Let those Suns rise,
again & again
2024.09.20
There is a mismatched turn signal
at the cadence of a cricket’s song
Philosophers & ants explore tables, alike
Likewise: at this time and space
we turn from the Sun
to find shade, stars, sleep
& symmetry –
What gets a wave, waves back
I wave; she stops…
to look at flowers, film critters, and touch globes
Does it spin as we do?
No, but eventually…
with a two-handed symmetry, she waves
That walk, I love, continues
atop our turning world
We meet, as squirrels in the canopy
within rising winds
and talk until foliage comes
Over & over
There she is: a sign to sing together
The promise of permanence
It tears at things:
should have been, could have been
weren’t & aren’t
But with the mourning of lost tomorrows
freedom’s clarity follows;
flows meandering – to ultimate futures
How things will be, were always
and what a beautiful moment this is,
swimming to the crackles of stones
Pressed under billions of years –
to come here, with you
Temporary laughs and hugs, held forever
in this moment, fleeting and eternal
That broken promise brings us here and now
to accept; to let go; to move forward…
We create these moments together:
priceless and immeasurable
I wouldn’t trade them
Who knew one second
could be worth so much more than all others?
our chesapeake evocations
how I miss those
summers spent elsewhere
breathing that
Old Bay atmosphere
perhaps he recalls more
little brother and I
us woken up by the smell of
an active kitchen
lard smoke and dish soap
mornings of orange juice
fresh-squeezed and
delivered by our
beloved stuffed bear
we savor
blueberry pancakes and
miles of bacon
chores upstairs
our eyes blocked by
arms full of sheets
running (in) the inn and
days spent playing on docks
careful not to fall into
the drink
to be met with the jellies and
horseshoe crabs
we twirl on our
landlocked ship of softened wood
us pirates lost at sea
I see his
curly blond hair
long and uncombed
bleached by sun and
twisted by salt
I see his arctic iris and
chocolate painted lips
he sees mine
our adventures to
the drawbridge and
the lighthouse the museum that island the supermarket
bright lights and
cheap cereal
I hear
rhythm of skateboard
over red-brick sidewalk
and cruiser bikes
too big for us
barefoot days
on end
skipping over pebbles
hot and sharp
relief on that splintered dock
sometimes there were Crocs
at their melting point
squeaking with sweat as
we retreat to conditioned air
to
red cups and
industrial ice
break for pound cake wrapped
in
paper towel and BLTs
after hours of swimming in chlorine and
sailing in salt
exhausted naps on the
kitchen rug so itchy
our big blue eyes
freckled pale skin
saw it all
felt it all
the nightly burst of corn sweet and
Earl Grey evenings
our twilight explorations to
ice cream shops yonder
sticky fingers and
sleepless nights of lightning
exhilarated shutter and
giggles of fear at our
first taste of nature’s
omnipotence
that taste of pantheism
without definition
lingering the summers preserved of the day we left and
never came back those memories so fragile