Trace The Lines

I try to trace the lines back

The night was dark

Purple

Without stars

Do you know what I mean?

My body was twisted

and formed of clay and pale powder.

Thrown into the air

and endless rolling hillsides.

I try to trace the lines back

Red and white lights

streaked below the bridge.

Veins that carry flesh, soul, meaning.

I peek out from a blanket of forgetfulness,

stretching from California to Arizona.

Catch the road, straight and black.

Look for a star.

I try to trace the lines back

Somebody was there

a mirror

just past the shabby brick building.

I dismissed the thought

Curious, slashing in the wind,

those elements tangled me in color,

leading me to desolate places

surrounded by water

and black carrion birds.

I try to trace the lines back

There was a fluttering hand

the ropes of my bondage cut into me

the sound of an animal.

I am carried home unto awakening

can see forever in every direction

I try to trace the lines back

I cannot remember

I cannot remember what I was

I cannot remember

Detectives

We search, picking through the clues left behind- piles of letters in the mailbox and a fuzzy videotape that leaves more questions than answers. 
They have combed their mind for answers- praying, hoping for a final answer to the questions that keep them awake night after night.  It has been years now- years, and the nights when they should be sleeping drag out forever as they adjust themselves over and over on their pillows and twist their sheets and get up for another glass of water or a trip to the bathroom.  The nights last forever and the mind races, jumping, searching the corners for clues- something, maybe that one thing they forgot to tell the police.  One tiny little detail that will solve it all. 
Just what happened to them?  They disappeared like shadows. 
We saw them leave in the middle of the night and then their car turned up a few days later in a Wal-Mart parking lot.  Where did they go? 
The night is long and tedious as the questions rise up, over and over. There is no resolution.  The wonderful resolution that might be- the death to the constant struggle against wonder.  If only the night would end and the day would come and with it, god willing, an answer. 
We sit now, around a circular table, we draw out what we know, what we don’t.  We search and the more we talk, the less the lines connect.  A disjointed mandala appears before us on the tiled table and we tend to grasp at the edges, trying to bring it all around. 
Just where did they go in the middle of the night? 
My heart starts to beat, not pounding really, but with a slightly sick feeling as it interacts with my chest.  This body wants answers, how I want to be that lady who sees the rise of the sun at dawn, light bringing with it the death I seek- those eternal questions that the religions of the world attempt to answer. 
All the self help gurus and the multi-billion dollar industry cluttered with sticky-sweet titles like “Being Happy in the Digital Age.’  They want it, we want it- an end to the struggle. 
And then I look at my detective. A sly smile on his face.  How he skips, delights in the unknown. I follow him down the twisting path searching for clues. He walks slow, taking his time, enjoying the night.  The day might never come and he would still walk, soaking in the damp air, tasting it on his tongue, listening to the sounds of a sleeping world. 
My beautiful detective.  He looks into a hole and sees the endless possibilities, seeing not darkness, but a galaxy of stars.  Each one shines from another world, another story ringing behind it. 
We walk in the night, picking up clues and storing them in our pockets for safekeeping. And we walk, taking the turns in the path with as much delight as the little things we find under the misplaced stones in a driveway covered with tiny pebbles. 

Consequences

It was late at night and it was very dark. The clouds were hidden behind a thick layer of fog and the world moved around her in only three colors: black, gray and white. The roads were nearly deserted, just a bus with its hazard lights on blinked quietly as she passed. And she drove on, driving up the twisted road that skirted like an asphalt snake along the edge of San Bruno mountain, her car’s headlights outlining the bulbous forms of gray clouds that enveloped her like a hungry ghost made of mist and sheets of moisture. There was a musical piece on the radio, an electronic composition without words that seemed so tender, coming right from the unknown heart of its creator and entering hers with an unrelenting curiosity to see what lay open in the late hour. Small tears pricked her eyes as she reached the crest of the hill. The music was too beautiful, how could something like this arrive to fit the moment so well? This was music for the tender dark hours, when night and day blend into one. When the sleeping and the awakened dance between clouds of fog and pull dreams from the void. The music held her, as though the notes themselves were made to caress her curvaceous tears, as though the notes knew why she would cry and they pulled the tears out with a little more force, taking her with them on their voyage through time. As the road flattened out, she suddenly realized she might never know the composer, another song would come on and the beauty of what she had just heard would remain forever in her memory, encapsulating the moment like a dream. Someone, somewhere had made this music, and that person would never know that now, there was a girl driving in a small black truck in the middle of the night, going home. She could never tell them that the notes cast themselves around her like a magic circle, holding her as no other piece of music could. It was made for this. It was this. She was that, and it was her. It took her hand and led her down a psychedelic road where owls feed and coyotes sometimes wander. It held her in its palm, a loving teacher that pulled on her metal gates just a little more. “Open up,” it said. And whoever made this piece…they would never know. What were they doing right now? Sleeping? Eating? Working? Making love? The infinite consequences of their creation were unknowable. Once born, the creation had its own life, moving through time, radio, stereos, ears…moving into and out of perception…being heard by some, being shut off by others. Were there others crying? Others dancing? A thousand ways this piece could go…its creator would never know.
The consequences of what we create are unknowable. We create for the sake of creating, we do for the sake of doing, and then, it is sent, it goes out into the world, drifting like a carefully constructed leaf in the wind. Will someone catch it? Will it go straight to the sea, straight to the blue waves that will swallow up the orange and yellow and green? Or maybe it will drift to land with the high tide, and perhaps a little girl will pluck it from the ocean foam. And maybe it will end up in her collage of thoughts and dreams and her memory of changing seasons. There is just no way to tell what will happen, so we just let them go. Just as we were once let go, like tears already dispersing into the fog before the song that provoked them has come to an end, like ribbons of stardust dancing in the bottomless void of the infinite night.

Forgotten Circus

The notebook stretches its imposed lines across my field of my vision. The blue lines of formality, rigidity…they are the lines of frigid women in black dresses that reach up to their necks, the impotent men that squirm at the thought of my oozing love, enough love to cover the world if given enough time and enough fingers. But my cupboards are not filled with plain white paper, the lines of chastity are useful, despite their sexless impulse… I use them for their discipline, for their linear spankings. Order from chaos, I cast out the net into the cosmos and pull back orange starfish and leopards. Instead of hoops, I jump through a singular diamond eye and find a magician waiting for me in a metal cage. I take his top hat and shrink it, placing it on my head with a firm nod to the fashion critics who sit in the bleachers, they applaud in short bursts of excited fury, looking to each other with disbelief in one eye and tears in the other. Their moving hands hide the daggers well, their polite smiles mask the ventriloquist who has already spoken to Vogue. I cannot tell if they have drunk from the same glass as the women of the lines. “Lick it up!” I shout, “there’s more in the back!” The crowd stands to applaud. The bleachers are full and there’s a performance for the new king. The trapeze is set and taught, the elephants are glittering in their jeweled crowns and painted saddles, their riders are bejeweled in head-dresses and their faces are masked in lace and their small chests are bound in tight black bodices that describe their curves as only a true poet could. They balance on tiptoes above the great gray beasts, like fairies that ride the magic waves of night. The king is ready and seated, the jesters have finished with their truths and the jury waits to judge. The magician is full of old secrets and as the people turn towards us, we escape together through the diamond eye of the leopard, back to a room with carpets and strange light bulbs with no strings and a dry heat that smells of vitamins and soft black hair and warm welcoming arms. He holds my hand as we step through prismatic light seeped in yellow and gold, the color of tigers and opened treasure chests. He takes my hand and we step through, my blindfold forgotten on the sandy floor of the cage. My eyes remember this magic chamber of music. We have left a king waiting upon his throne, we have left sad clowns who look in desperation to their barking dogs and critics who look to their companions for ideas. We mean them no harm, but the curtain called and the lens of the crystal ball gathers us like prophecy. We are together and we disrobe, revealing our true forms, the shapeless crystals that shine more brightly than the night.