Magpie Tales 303: Our Ink Began to Dry

Image via Magpie Tales

Ghost in the corner of the eye as

Counselor's door smacked my ass

hollow boom of sanctioned freedom

imploded in a fevered skull

She followed me to the car

worn leather soles scratching a dance

on oily pavement, halogen mirror balls 

glaring up the garage park club

Keys of the beater I got to keep

papers on its roof, a sheaf

of lead ending our mutual bondage

heavier wings we have never flapped

At stall 19 we stopped, me to weep

she to spin, or was it my head?

in the light of release she blurred

into the hard grey of my new prison

Magpie Tales 298: Dark Star

Image via Magpie Tales

What did we really think, back in the days of gold and glory? That the world would stop spinning at our command, our armor would never tarnish and split, our suns would not go out? Of course we did. Gold plated and bullet proof, we were. Legends in our own minds.

All of us except Ronnie, perhaps. He always seemed a bit wiser than us. No, wiser is perhaps unfair. Who understands wisdom when you never have had the world break your heart? Ronnie was less naive than us. We were unaware that his heart maybe was broken before we had the capacity to understand. Maybe that is why he left to put it back together before we even realized it would happen.

Jimmy died in the war protecting his mates. No surprise, he was always testing his bravery, it's what he wanted to do. I miss him. Caroline wove her way in and out of several time-wasters until she hit it big with writing. Funny how a story about a boy who grew up believing he was Satan could be turned into a living, with six novels and a screenplay under her belt. She deserves the accolades.

Lynn used to be a nurse until one day she decided that acting was better suited to her mindset. A beautiful mindset, it should be said, and after witnessing her perform you could understand the meaning of "doing God's work." I'll bet her patients never forget her, though.  Nathan is a lawyer now. Apparently a life of big suits and small cigars, washing the blood off of the money. Skill in arguing has its own peculiar rewards, I suppose. Too bad I lacked the ambition to follow his lead.

My body is on a river, milky brown like sweet coffee. My mind is somewhere between there and what used to be home. It floats in the gauzy humid air, the gnats flitting about my wet face. A tiny bee sips sweat from the corner of my eye. I hesitate to disturb it, this creature fulfilling its nature. I, too, sip at the sweat of the universe, all these years of searching.

We ease the boat upriver. The liquid swish of the oars ending in muted clacks of wood on wood. The guide murmurs something about stopping soon as nightfall is not that distant. He sounds far away and as if wrapped in cotton. I know we need to stop. But I cannot. The years fall away as layers of the onion. At the center is Ronnie. I haven't heard from him in years, but the quantum waves of his broken heart have disturbed the star in the center of mine.

Gravity. Starlight. A broken heart looking to be repaired in the fixing of others. He left decades ago to do good work, and in the process, broke a little of us. I keep looking, searching, scenting the fading trail laced across this world. He is out there, somewhere in the green hellishness of this life. Yet I think, maybe he is sitting right here in the boat. Maybe his heart is mine, lacerated, shattered, and looking to come home.

Magpie Tales 296: Appetites Obscura

Joachim Beuckelaer, 1560 via Magpie Tales

Incipient feast before our eyes,

Ignorant of the scandalmongers afar

of whom, it is said, do spread the truth

Anesthetized by full bellies, flushed loins

Citizen ears deafened by lust, greed, anger,

Blindly we face murderers in the bedroom

Magpie Tales 265: Miracle

Image via Magpie Tales

Our mystery came clear

upon Earth's awakening

rousing from young slumber

changing, molting, shedding skin

My golden height

Her fecund depth

Bind us to our miracle

Magpie Tales 259: This Is Not Hell

Image courtesy of Magpie Tales

"Don't walk on by,

come on in" It says,

Step right up, step inside

Trust me, I don't exist

This refulgent Carnival

is sweet, seductive Life!

Not a garish fine trick

misleading the lambs

Come, come to light!

Rest your hearts here,

friends, this is not Hell

nor are you out of it

Magpie Tales 249: Lensing

Photo by Elene Usdin, via Magpie Tales

Wary glance from supernova eyes
shining a ring around the black hole

anchoring the center of a galactic heart

It feels at a distance this lenticular caress,

bent, arcing over the interstellar chasm

separating love from fulfillment

Gravity warps, accelerates, casts out

time and distance, bright recognition

of love laying, waiting for our fall

Magpie Tales 246: Onramp

Image courtesy of Tess at Magpie Tales

Her veins aflame, burning

with panic, regret and longing

Not the parasitic draining

of buried addictions vampiric

Road rises, grips a pounding heart

making love to the pedal

She weeps, speed is never enough

to find home in the outer dark

Magpie Tales 240: Dawes County Meditation

Photo by Tom Chambers via Tess at Magpie Tales

Wide open here in God's country

That means hearts as well as range

Loneliness not the sole province of cowboys

Rim of her world defined by stone

Scratching its defiance of the sky
She knew the legend of star-crossed love

Romeo and Juliet of a different hue

Whispers of their mad leap from the butte

But all she wanted was to escape

the barbed wire of her heart

Magpie Tales 239: Meditations Before the Slaughter

Autumn in Madeira by Jacek Yerka, via Tess at Magpie Tales

He belches softly, there in the wood
cider chewy-sweet on the tongue
heavy boots oppress a nation of leaves
with yet a smile to be home

Time overseas burnishes the edges
he thinks, of memories and soil
but the mind heart and belly
never forgot, truly forgot their nest

Winter stirs, bares its teeth in the wind
bringing the chuffing of the hogs
reminding the soldier of the butcher's calling:
In this work, Death begets living, not more dying

Magpie Tales 238: Made For Walkin'

Image via Tess Kincaid at Magpie Tales

boots brogans mukluks

not 'wellies' her look said

I said which do you wear

quick shy smile

under chestnut tresses 

she didn't answer

from over here

now that the rain stopped

looks to me a mismatched pair

at that she stopped

tucked a strand 

behind the shell of her ear

polar blue eyes

with a touch of crow

that mona lisa shone

I wear what I wear

because it suits me

why do yours match?

Magpie Tale 213: His Other Life

Image via Magpie Tales

Shaking hand opened the drawer

Wormy chestnut, waxy blackened 

angsty scrawls of sun-faded youth 

Burden of years constricts the heart

that sees the tarot of inks it never wore 

Never will, not in this life, nevermore,

Change has come, blood spilled

in a different river from passion's run

Magpie Tales 212: Unmade

My Bed by Tracey Emin, via Magpie Tales

She was told by earnest hearts

the simple solution was to get up

Shower, primp and perform

Monkeys at the circus, no doubt

She tried, decades of self-combat,

to make the sober faces happy

But what to them seemed prison

To her was sanctity of the womb

Magpie Tales 211: Simon Says

Feast in the House of Simon, 1610, El Greco via Magpie Tales

In my house at meat

Cure upon me, yet

I am the example

to be made of forgiveness,

by you, son of God?

Outcast I was, perfume I have not

Let the question reverse itself

Thankful to keep my limbs

But without perfume or hair as rags

You damn me with faint praise

Magpie Tales 210: Honeymoon at the Wartorn Arms Hotel

Lee Plaza Hotel, Detroit, photo by Bonnie Beechler via Magpie Tales

What innocence it was to have not known the smell of mildewcide, to not have marveled at the unearthly shades of blood wicking into a sponge, like liquid bruises. The acid-metal taste of fear and revulsion clinging to the back of the throat as the sirens wail grew louder, fingers clawing desperately at the door in a bid to escape before the uniforms and guns arrived to haul us all away. Life before the war seemed so quaint in retrospect. 

Under the blue-grey haze of cigarette smoke, you asked me once "What is the difference between the past here and the now there? You are different, you know, but one cannot pin down why." I remember laughing, a raspy howl roughened by Chinese tobacco and that awful cherry soda we drank in a bid to stay sober. I thought you were daft to ask such a silly question, then caught myself to realize that you spoke from innocence. You spoke from not having seen the ravaged past that I had.

I stood amongst the peeling paint and crumbling plaster, recalling the blank look on your upturned face, truly untroubled by the misery that would find you. Find us. The odor of mold and feces made my stomach turn. I took another drag on the cigarette cupped in my trembling left hand, seeking solace in smoke that did not reek of cordite and scorched pavement. Despite my nausea, could not force myself to leave. Your ghost demanded conversation.

"Well?" you said, the mottled wall behind you shining faintly through your eyes. A low rumble seeped through the floor and into my aching legs. The armored vehicle serving as my transport awaited outside. I slumped into the dust-clotted chair. I found it hard to meet those eyes of fog and gauze. You began to fade away even as I spoke into the clammy air of the room.

"The difference? It isn't just that was then, this is now!"

You sat up straight, gained some solidity. Your eyes widened.

"The difference, the one that matters…" I choked, gulped, nearly shouted, "That was Sarajevo where I had nothing. This is Detroit, where I had you. And you are gone."

My head slumped to the table. Her hand faded from my grasp. My cigarette burned itself out in the ashes of another dream. A groan permeated the chill dimness, whether the city or my soul giving vent, I could not tell.

Magpie Tales 209: Our Lady of the Spirit Road

The Sleeping Gypsy, 1897, by Henry Rousseau via Magpie Tales

I cherish the memory of her breath. The roughness of strong tea and fried ramps is no ordinary aphrodisiac but it haunts me still. Travelers when we met, travelers when we parted long ago under a hunter's moon, I do not believe I can gaze on a sky such as that without weeping at the loss.

To live in the verge is no simple thing, but possible. More of us do it than one might consider. Magadalena certainly did. I was one of them for however brief. Chasing my spirit animal over hill and sward had become my life's work. She had already accomplished hers when I crested the rise and saw her tending a small fire under a nearby tree. She looked at me with eyes of sunlit ice. 

I stood on the shoulder of the road. My hands fidgeted nervously with my hat. I hadn't know I had taken it off, I was so mesmerized by those eyes. A smile broke the road-weary map of her face. She raised a dusky hand and bade me join her at the kettle. I sat. We talked of warm sun and cold hearts. She gave me tea. We became lovers at that moment, though we knew it not.

The day we parted began in an unsettled dawn. Road weary from several days of hard walking, we had come to a fork in the road the night before. There was a clear stream, with fish, and soft grass in which to sleep. Dreams kept me in motion much of the night. Shadows. Beasts that bared fangs at me across strangely colored campfires. I ran through forest and field in argentine moonlight, wondering if I was pursued or pursuer. In my last dream I stumbled over a log and woke up confused and breathless.

The light was submarine. Faint rosiness on the horizon and a barely smoldering fire. I raised my head, bleary eyed to squint over at her. The breath seized in my throat. 

She lay asleep. There was a smile on her face and her right hand was trembling, fluttering. In the dim light and thready smoke I saw what I thought was a beast standing over her, shaggy maned and bright-eyed. Magdalena appeared to be reaching out to it.

In my confusion, I thought she was being attacked. I bolted upright and shouted, waving my arms at the apparition. The beast dissolved, or so I thought. She jerked awake with a loud gasp, blinking at me with those glacial eyes. The look of concern and fright sent a pang through my heart. Taking my hands, we talked of what I had seen. She grew solemn as we made tea.

The fork in the road lay before us. Magdalena had quietly told me that we had different paths now. Mine was not hers, and the creature I sought abided in a different realm. We talked long, and deeply. My heart broke, as did hers, I think, but knew she spoke the truth. After moonrise, we split apart. 

Forks in my roads ever give me pause, nowadays. On nights of the hunter's moon, I walk from moonrise to moonset, looking for Magdalena in the thickness of shadows. Sometimes, I do not weep.

Magpie Tales 208: Perchance to Sleep?

 

Poet's Sleep, 1989, by Chang Houg Ahn via Magpie Tales

Memories outside the window grow,
Pasts like poppies abloom in the garden
Little death of sleep, Hypnos whispers,
I love the sound of breaking glass

---

Italicized phrase belongs to Nick Lowe, from his song of the same name. Resistance was futile.

Magpie Tales 207: Hero in New York

Universal Studios Lot, Instagram by sessepien via Magpie Tales

Come down, come down,

please, you gotta come down

Street knows your here

Perfume stronger than exhaust

Goddamnit, woman, come down

I ain't no Stanley, no Casanova, 

Juliet isn't your name,

No one calls me Romeo

Come down, once more,

Sirens' wail doesn't call me home

Only a desperate reminder

I'm Odysseus on the rocks

Magpie Tales 205: New River

Image courtesy of Tess at Magpie Tales

Angelie claimed to be a city girl, but I knew better. She loved that patinaed cabin just as much I did. I loved it even more when she was there, gauzy and softly scented of lavender mixed with sun-baked salt. Salt that my hungry mouth had the privilege of tasting when she would waltz across the porch to honor me with a kiss. It was good, it was summer and the cabin breathed us in.

Maw-Maw's piano rested on the front porch, a mossy king keeping an eye on the emerald mountainside that constituted its domain. It held sway over the gravel drive up to the cabin, taking in the river below. The river, a steely blue rush that cut the landscape from west to east, whispered to us up there on the slope. Every year there was a conversation between the piano and the river gods. I heard it from when I was a stripling and into my erstwhile adulthood. The dark mutterings, the burbling trills that could have been prayers. I never understood them, not for years.

Angelie was a nova in the deep space of my life. Bursting forth with light and heat enough to melt glaciers and cause an early spring. I knew nothing of it until that afternoon when she climbed up on the piano. The shade of my Maw-Maw must have groaned in disbelief, watching from somewhere. I felt the exhalation sweep through my heart in a small cold rush.

Late summer day, with the scent of warm earth eliding into the metal tang of ozone emanating from the darkening sky rolling in from the south. The trees were bowing and scraping before the wind. Little drops of rain pitter-pattered into the soft dust in the yard. The Queen Anne's lace and coreopsis that snuggled the porch shivered at the promise of a soaking. Maybe I did too.

I sat on an old oak stool at the end of the piano, watching Angelie as she watched the coming storm. She sipped at her iced tea, swan-like, as the tinkle of ice cubes merged with the burble of the river. I sat mesmerized. The glass in my hand sweated gently, cool runnels flowing over my fingers in counterpoint to the muted heat of the day. She told me she felt like a song.

She walked over to the edge of the porch, just under the overhang. She set down her glass. Back to me, looking down over a sun-brown shoulder, she reached to take off her sandals. I tried to ask her what she was doing but somewhere between the mind and the mouth the words evaporated. 

Shoes on the bench. Rain like little glass beads adorning the metallic leather straps. Angelie hoisted herself up onto the piano before I could object. In the back of my mind, Maw-Maw raised a hand to her mouth, aghast at the sheer boldness on display. I was hoping the old thing would hold together, but it, like the cabin, had been built to last.

Tawny toes graced the yellowed ivory, slow liquid notes shimmering in the air. Angelie smiled at me. I smiled back. My heart rang like a bell, to be reborn on a summer day, a witness to the Creation.

Magpie Tales 204: Pressing of the Apple

The Mill, 1964, by Andrew Wyeth via Magpie Tales

Crow calls thump a hollow chest

toll the bell, echoes disturbs the river

Beyond the press building it flows

Shivery black water absorbing the sun

Mausoleum mask framed by panes

Porcelain eyes drift with weather

While worn wood exhales

a century's worth of apples breath

Raise the tankard, quaff the cider

Try to slake the searing thirst

besetting a fractured heart 

As her footprints blurred with snow 

Amplitude Squares the Force (Magpie Tales #159)

 Meal Beach, Burra Isles, Shetland by Robin Gosnall via Magpie Tales

Never in his life had Colin Haverhill woken to the sound of applause, or being shusshed as if he were making too much noise in the library. It took little time to realize that now was not one of those times. A saline tang in his nose and gritty coldness digging into his back and neck told him differently. It was cool on the morning beach. The waves welcomed him back to life.

He opened his eyes. It took some effort, crusted as they were with sand and the granular residue of tears. A disconcerting split second of tugging and his eyelids snapped open on the cerulean dome of the sky arching overhead. It was a blue he had not known he missed, it was the lightning blue of her eyes, the kind of blue that made him ache. His heart spasmed. The metallic sharpness of it caused him to sit bolt upright, and cough.

Shivering, he spat into the sand. The dregs of a few too many wee heavies coated the insides of his mouth. His head ached. The ghost of the drink was on him, he could tell, but not so bad he wanted to turn himself inside out. Small miracle, that,  he thought. Dragging his hand across parched and flaking lips, he looked up to get his bearings.

Small beach, empty save for himself, a lone seabird and some tide-wrack. Low hills across the way. Green sward behind him. Out by the headland, his aching eyes spotted something that could have been a boat. Or a figment. He didn't know. It was then that the color of the water caught his attention.

Her eyes again. Liquid blue, shifting like the wavelets between aqua and lapis and the sky.  In some lights it was flecked with gold. He never had been able to predict how they would present. Her mood, the sun, so much beauty in the moment it often left him speechless, breathless. Especially when she laughed.

The sea lapped the beach. He told himself it wasn't her voice he heard. She was gone, he was lost, now somewhere on the wrong side of the world. But the waves kept crashing in no matter where he ran. They were smaller, Colin granted, but amplitude squares the force now and forever. The waves curled in endless lace upon the strand, each one a hammer on the bell of his heart.