I Have Come

I have not come to lay the dust.
Oh, there is a sorrow for that,
Cracked like the horizon's fire
Running through park and tundra,
Memories of bones I'll squeeze
Bright against my marrow.

I have not come to press thorns
Through my palms or forehead,
Angels in the smoke blown out
Of life running through the blood
Marking me with those stories
Smelling of dead bonfires.

I have not come to remember.

I have come to breathe
Your past deep and release
The sweet, ashy exhale
Of our future.

So there are probably less melodramatic times to sit down to write a poem...but there is literally a Southern Gothic sky out there right now, the damp grass is practically warm as bathwater, and a haze of dust has draped itself over us like the concrete to which we're addicted in the puddled suburbs along the highway out of the City Itself. And the heat. And the creeping panic. And the stay-at-home orders competing with the mad laughter of those who are aggressively free. And the heat. And the concrete sky...

So, yeah. Melodrama it is, folks. Which means that I'm looking forward to all the ways this will be interpreted and set to words across The Sunday Muse this week and all the ways in which Poets and Storytellers will see the world differently so that I can change keys as another week becomes this present and I crawl closer to finishing? Drafting another section of? In Thornish, wringing out the melodrama before it becomes part of the story. *gasp!* *sigh* *evil chuckle*

Hope you're having a good week! 
-- Chrissa

Untitled

That old umbrella frame

I thought would be

Moonflowers, mini pumpkins;

That I imagined a cave of moths,

October poetry readings,

Finger food, fire pit smoke

That skeleton--

Lizard road and reflection

In the rain-filled anchor pot

Holds an empty season

Like a scarecrow year

In the water that waits

To be inhaled, wept out.

Stories We've Already Forgotten

Belinda hasn't received the message

Yet

She still feeds the pigeons and whispers

That her sojourn in the apartment 

On the corner, midway up, with the closets

Where the suitcases lurk

Is the best adventure she's had. 

No bird's gentle burped coo 

Is louder than her story

Of watching neighbors 

Float in their windows

Profound in their unnoticed slippage

From one decade to the next.

She checks the cases when it thunders;

Still locked, still smelling of cedar, lavender.

She spilled the rose elixir on the train

On a landmass these pigeons have never seen.

Maybe they never leave the park,

Maybe they've chased away the last message,

A harsh scrabble of feathers,

From this neighborhood

Because they like her familiar whisper. 

Maybe they keep close

To keep away

The pigeon's lonely ghost

And the long faded code.

Image and bold words are this week's WordCrafters prompt. I'm sorry that I didn't use "cahoots"...although I feel it lurks in the background of the poem. :) Also lurking is the idea that some of the stories that sustain us fade over time, however often we retell them. Not sure where I'm going with this, just thinking about the way change leaves many of those stories pruned and blooming in odd corners. 

-- Chrissa