Necessary Horizon

 

There were never transmissions from the floating deepness.

Waves elongated, lost themselves in their own curves, mimicked

songs that were being sung, secrets that were being passed;

they dissipated through their own curiosity.

Receivers were hung off coasts and above the atmosphere;

elegant branching equations detached themselves from one hand

to settle in the cranial valleys of another seeker, grew new branches.

Still, the sounds never made it into our empty boxes.

It's easy to breathe all the way to the edges of your lungs,

to feel them fill and think about drifting upward or pushing,

gently, with a single toe and launching yourself, starfished,

into what your muscles assure you is a form of flight.

Only, your ears assure you, you've been deceived; the 

axis is there for a reason, the horizon for a necessary balance.

Mermaids are a myth, their song ultimately meets our deafness.

Sirens have always warned us of the lure of unspun space.

So, the flick of light in the night sky, like moonlight,

is all that remains of what angels were before feathers,

halos, and upright-on-two-legs, dry. That tilt, that fall into

knowledge, the lurch of the ground underfoot.

Sharing this week with The Sunday Muse, hosted by the awesome Carrie, and Poets and Storytellers United. Lately, I've been realizing two things--first, I shouldn't have tried to do a combination of Inktober and an American sentence a day. I can't draw and attempting to illustrate what I'm writing does weird things to my writer brain. It seemed like a good idea at the time... 

Second, poetry is becoming my laundry. I'm really happy to use it to avoid thinking about things that make me angry or the way living as if certain things exist in the real world makes me seem like the panicked alien among the locals. Do you see that giant fanged beast charging down the street? No, fine. Yes, we all step aside, but it's just a kind of cultural response to the Myth of the Fanged Beast. It totally wouldn't have eaten that guy if he'd just remembered today was the Day of the Fanged Beast, and, I don't know, stayed home if he couldn't swerve fast enough. You're fine. We're fine. Keep moving. 

All this to say--not sure if I trust my writing right now. 

-- Chrissa