IdiOdyssey

Silver wax forms the only tears the wires know
Technicians leave blobs of it, like cytoplasm,
Within the dark metal boxes in the room beyond.

There’s a wooden chair in this cold room, a scarf

For whatever fickle engineer comes to this glass,

Checking each light, each hum. A nuance of connection.

Worlds shift in that electronic sea; programmers manage

The constant unweaving of those threads, the reweaving

Of these ephemeral ones, while the engineer watches.

Any sign of silver wax at the sharp edges--new shadows

Show where the grief overflows, the traffic snarls, and

Repairs to the seas themselves must be made.

This was inspired by a word list from Wednesday's WordCrafters prompt...I don't remember all the words (some of the ones I do are highlighted above). Pretty sure most of them fell out during a brief editing purge when I transferred this from draft page to blog. The image that popped in from that set was a cold room with a window facing a bank of servers, a single chair for the only person who might enter the room and then, rarely. 

We're all there, right now. In those server seas and hoping that they don't leak unless it's to put out the fire that is silently burning out our spaces and connections. I'm going to go with feeling a little disconnected and, despite my great good fortune of having someone (and canine someones) here in the house with me, I'm feeling little fizzles as threads snap and connections go dark. 

And then, Merlin starts to snore and the darkness fades a little. Nighttime on the lake, rather than empty space. Sending as much as I can outward, hopeful. 

-- Chrissa

Think Sharp, Party Nimbus's

What a party! We're all still sliding out, thoughts slamming into each other--we've been in that spiral for as long as I can remember.  Hey! Hey! More spin!

We dream about it, our heads bumping ceiling, faces iced into cliffs, thoughts zooming through each other. Even you, down there, can seem 'em--but this post-party disorder, the sharp and bright edges, melts. Thoughts drop--damn--not always direct.

I was speeding up, ready to slam into my best friend and I was trying to get that thought right into his head first so we could bunch up on another group...when it slammed into some metal box and I just rained briefly on some tiny pond down there.

Mist! Pun for the win. Pun for the funny...

But all that potential laughter slammed into my ragged self and now I'm gonna bunch spin them all. There's enough heat to twirl us into that line of mush just below the city. We're gonna rain on that traffic. Woo!

This ridiculous bit is dedicated to my mom, who was startled by a nearby transformer that was exploded by a stray thunderbolt, setting part of a fence on fire. Everything turned out okay--the power is back on, the transformer is being thoroughly mitigated, and the fence survived. But that stray bolt...it just tripped a thought. Also, maybe I'm a little jealous of clouds swanning around the Texas coast. ;) 

-- Chrissa 

Afternoon Shower/Gorgon

I'll hang my head 

just beyond the gazebo's edge

Let the rain fill my hair

with the rumors of heat,

the slick twists of the globe

uncoiled.

I'll remember

the hard counter, the frayed towel,

the soft metal curve of the sink;

squirming at shampoo

and angles and 

relaxing.

I'll let rain pour-- 

freed from the deep spigots,

from limestone-rimmed oubliettes

where seas vanished

or stoned themselves

silent.

My throat grows soft with rainwater,

sore and silted with saltwater.

Hair keeps twisting,

whispering.

I will hold myself rigid

I will not let me fall.

Sharing today with The Sunday Muse and Poets and Storytellers United. This past week we found ourselves fortunately out of range of the latest Texas hurricane but sitting on the edge of the rain bands, flicking between newsfeed and radar image, just emphasized the emergency holding pattern that 2020 is turning out to be. At some point, that attentiveness has to relax. When it does, maybe I'll get a few projects finished. Maybe?

Hope your week is going safely & well!

--  Chrissa 

Water Comes a Stain

Water Comes a Stain

I hear it before I see it, lurking,

where I imagine a corner; the sky

deep and dark with all that promises

to come heavily upon us.

It walks lightly over the yard, toward the blue.

Leaves behind the bright--

a wash of daylight backlit by fire

heat and thought and lightning--

clean.

Then, here, spun thoughts gleam,

like reality

or like a paradise of Saturdays

where triumph is clear

and tightly worn as spandex

in a stainless sky.

Sight

I had forgotten we were playing--
A universe rolling us on infinite rules
Watching the swerve and tumble
Blue and black, air and nothing

I feel the velvet and the stab
Edge of the game, board below us
Shock of the piece falling toward
All the breaths in a forest's lung

Singing that gameboard.

I'm flying, that's on my breath
My gasp, my cry, my infinite carol
Knocked against the edgeless glass
Bulging like that first lens

I opened on the first day
Free of floating somewhere
Deeper. Mote in the warp,
Dust in the weft.

Excellent image...mesmerizing. :) Hope you're having a good week!

-- Chrissa

Paradise

I read Inferno (in translation) during college classes
Taken to avoid some entrance exam requirement.
I read Purgatory while studying for my BA.
I never read Paradiso. I only read English.
American English, generic and sit-com; although
Many flavors of slang have threaded into it
Since I was truly fluent.

This summer, I scrape ideas into notebooks,
Dream about dead malls and lost food courts,
Wandering in off-scale hallways, on tile and ice
And carpet. The signs are half-lit but the booths
Mostly empty. Let's tell ghost stories of survival.
Everyone in their sheets.

I think you have to experience it--paradise. Not
Find it lurking in the translated rag and ink and dust
Some poet used to wipe the days from his heart.
We're constantly removing stains, I remember,
From in between the batmen and the wonder
Women; wash the days away, every day is white
Or bright or crisp.

It's too hot to think. Too hot to move.
Everything is caught in the gel, glass dome
Securing us to earth, pressing our dry flesh,
To woven plastic conjured out of nozzles
Like the industrious spider who gave us
Story. We are damp and sticky and unable
To disentangle ourselves.

I never read Paradise.

Apparently, my brain is still ticking over with old ideas or it's trying to get started with revisions but isn't quite there yet. Also, summer is its own swamp of joy. 

-- Chrissa

Cancellation Notice

Some things go on the calendar for a year out
Dates strung like bait for time and the great waves
Marking the passage of eras or the small slaps
Of holidays schooling around harvest and spring.

While I flip other pages, kicking to swirl flies
Off the back of my legs while summer is passing
In an empty majesty of water above and below,
The thing I haven't been attending to dies.

My own stomach drops--clenches--in sympathy.
Summer ripples. It had grown so calm
That I had begun to ignore the shadow's edge,
Filling the sedate water, shifting the lines.

Sharing with Poets and Storytellers United for Wednesday's Seeing Things prompt. Do keep your eyes on the water.

-- Chrissa 

In the Sunset

~"Seeing Black & White" photography by the lovely and talented Susie Clevenger~

I used to spear ideas with my antenna. There--

Back of the white clouds stained gleaming

As the falling sun splashes saffron through the blue, 

They're swimming still.

My head used to be full of asphalt rules
Governing my going and coming, waiting
Like all fantasy roads, at the apartment parking lot
When I was fish and man.

And dry my tail has become, silent
Those wheels upon the strand, gone
To memory and habit and the disuse that spear,
Although, within the sunset,

The ideas are swimming still.

A wonderful image for this week's muse! I enjoyed writing to it, although I found myself revising away those lines that tended toward rage...that's not really what driving reminds me of (well, right now, EVERYTHING does). And there is the knowledge that, should I be fortunate enough to see a when-this-is-over timeline, there are places that I won't go again. And I'm tired of writing about it and thinking about it and dreaming about it. But I guess that's the whole point of the LOTR quote "There's some good in this world, and it's worth fighting for." Or remembering, if the fight is just remaining as contained as possible. 

Sharing today with The Sunday Muse and Poets and Storytellers United, hosts of wonderful poetry and conversation.

-- Chrissa

Iron Keys

You have to know it burns. Like trailing a torch

Across the grass, spreading like fire under the green.

You have to know it burns.

Every morning, one of them unlocks the cell.

They walk in, balancing the carafe of water,

Bread, fruit, and a small pot of cheese. These go to the left,

On the shelf under the window.

Every evening, one of them locks the cell.

They sing at night, responding to each other.

I didn't burn down the entire country. I watch the sunset,

Sometimes pretending to be the sun.

Every morning, one of them unlocks the cell.

They offer me a reading, knowing I don't speak

Their language. It was so beautiful, the shimmer I saw first.

I didn't remember my keys.

Every evening, one of them locks the cell.

They speak my language at twilight. They ask

If I understand eternity. If I wanted to hurt them, if this

Was what I wanted? Forever.

Every morning, one of them unlocks the cell.

I hold my iron keyring tight to my stomach.

Today, paradise and prison are still the same.

So, there's got to be something wrong with me that makes me think of prisons rather than escape when faced with this picture. But, really...does this look like escape? 

-- Chrissa

Ringlets and Waves

Champagne, 1920s. Atelier Manasse was a legendary Austrian photo studio that captured the golden age of cinema and cabaret in Vienna of the 1920’s and 1930’s. The studio, active in Vienna between 1922 and 1938.

It has driven the universe since it passed through her hair

Leaving an echo of emptiness on the plate,

Already gone.

And that's it. Weirdly. Not quite a poem; not an American sentence. Sort of the only verse of a song caught in passing. Maybe there will be more later or it will show up in this month's Camp NaNo project (a self-indulgent science fantasy just because, well, I'm still having trouble imagining the future) or it will just be the image that got away, as some of them do. There were fireworks last night and we were up late as one of our pups is nervous and managed to chew part of a notebook during the evening between perching on one or the other of us like a nervous crow. Actually, I'm not having a hard time imagining the future at all. I'm just starting to believe it's being written by a bored and suddenly supernaturally powerful Edgar Allen Poe. There's no Netflix like America, always eager for the cameras to roll...

Sharing today with The Sunday Muse and Poets and Storytellers United. Hope you're having a good week, staying safe and finding hope. 

-- Chrissa

The Grain

Word Crafters Wednesday Prompt:
The Big Things/The Little Things

Ocean vs. A Grain of Sand

The Forest vs. One Leaf

Write about the ocean or a grain of sand. Write about the forest or a single leaf. It can be anything great or anything small, and if you want to fancy write about both.

The Grain

I give myself permission to slide over others; 
To fall through narrowness; to be buried by others.
There is nothing but waiting.
There is nothing but a slump,
Then sliding, then sifting beneath.
A narrow neck; it sometimes hisses
All is silicate, time is clear as glass.
I give myself permission to be Time itself
Its body, its breath, its blood.
Over and over, 
I forget the stillness in motion,
Forget stasis in a slide.
It seems that I have become
As small as any eternal second.

I'm usually the one that uses EVERY SINGLE PIECE of the prompt; not today. There is something satisfying about sand, its sharp softness, its weight, the way it retains heat and shape. And time, if the hourglass has its use. Back in the day when telephones were firmly attached to land lines and often to the walls themselves, my parents bought a phone timer. It was an hourglass encased in a thick layer of acrylic (or glass) that was intended to keep you from staying on the phone and running up long distance charges or just taking up the single family phone line for hours. I can remember the weight of it, the sharp edges of the acrylic, the silent slither of the tiny sand grains through the narrow waist. I'm not sure if we ever used it for the phone, but I know that I was mesmerized by the falling sand in a completely different way from the anxiety of a timer counting down. 

-- Chrissa