She thinks in binary Light years beyond me Her thoughts fly Mind going like an oiled machine She leaves behind her The detritus of genius Bits of worn out material Books and pencils and paper Supplies and snack wrappers Used and discarded Her thoughts are beyond them It’s messy, they might say, But so is her mind Thoughts crisscrossing like traffic Careening like a rollercoaster Who knows where they will go next? What’s a little mess In the shadow of infinite possibility?
Life does not begin with birth nor end in death But stretches, if remembered, beyond all death
Love shines, a gemstone in the settings of our heart The one thing that lasts indefinitely, even after death
Every time we close our eyes, do we leave this plane? And when we sleep, is it a departure, a tiny death?
Do not remember me for my attributes, not my beauty, But for my actions, the legacy I leave that lasts after death
For you I will dive to the bottom of the ocean For you I will brave the cold, dark depths of death
The sky is electric And I am not sure If I want to find somewhere to huddle Or to stare wide eyed at the clouds The way the lightning tears Blue streaks in the cosmos I count the seconds Until thunder rattles the air Vibrating through my bones And suddenly it is raining Softly at first and then sheets Of water plaster my hair to my face Drag my garment against my body I am not cold I feel more alive than I have in years And I laugh into the space Between droplets That silent, still moment And I am running, my feet sloshing My arms flung wide As if I could hold this world This strange, beautiful world And all the majesty it contains
It’s just you and I and moonlight Filtering through the lens of clouds Not where I thought I would be tonight Under the starless sky, the silence loud With promises, electricity crackling Between your skin and mine as it flares Between the ground and sky, lightning Brilliant in the dark, illuminating our stares The intensity of our gaze, our need Palpable as the first fat drops of rain fall And we are laughing, drunk on passion like mead Honey-sweet and intoxicating, holding us in thrall To our baser instincts, we move together Closer, closer, our skin beaded with droplets Our clothing soaked to our skin, this weather Cannot quench our passion, and I say “Let’s Dance together in this rain and for a moment we’ll forget Everything but each other; brighter days will happen yet.”
Moonlight and memories Tales of quieter times When the street lamps didn’t burn Their imprints onto the sky Obscuring the stars We huddle beneath the endless expanse Indigo blackness lit by the halo of cities Above us, pinpricks of brilliant white Flashing red moving slowly Marking the trail of passengers Navigating the great dome of sky We recall our ancestors Who set their sails by the stars Told tales of greatness Diamond-set forever in the velvet darkness Who sat in the cavernous moonless nights Where midnight pooled about their feet Untouched by neon and halogen Overwhelmed by uncountable worlds Hanging above them I can make out Orion’s Belt, the tail of the Great Bear Who have doubtless held countless names And stories in the fullness of time I can sit in the shadow of Venus And wonder how much further will my children travel And their children Through the ravenous cold of space To planets so far that the most powerful telescope Has only caught a glimmer of their suns Somewhere in that aching vastness Perhaps someone like me, but so, so different Stands beneath their own vaulted sky Under constellations that I would not recognize For whom Earth is just a gem studding the belt Of some alien hero What do they dream of when they see the sky Lit up under their alien moons And peer into an infinite galaxy Infinite possibilities Ours For the taking
There was a place left after he was gone An empty space in my lap No whiskery nose at the table nudging for my ice cream No warm body wrapping itself around my legs As I trailed through the house No white fur clinging to my clothes Like glitter, indelible Until it wasn’t There was a quiet without mewls and purrs And the strange clicking sound reserved for prey There was a time where the cat-shaped hole In my heart could not be filled But time passes And while the absence is still keenly felt One day the gaps can be refilled.
“Shit.” I said. I rubbed my head before I realized it didn’t actually hurt, which I might have expected it to do after that fall. I looked down to check my legs and it didn’t take me very long to realize that I was NOT on a ski slope in Aspen, not by a long shot. I still wore my bright red ski pants, though there didn’t seem to be much need for them. Not that it was hot, really, but it wasn’t cold either. It was…I wracked my brain but the best I could come up with was that it was the absence of temperature. Not in the zero Kelvin sense where molecular movement stopped, but more like temperature had ceased to matter. “Am I dead?” I asked nobody in particular, patting myself down as if I might find the presence or absence of corporeality. Could ghosts, or spirits, touch themselves, I wondered? I looked around for the first time and all I saw was gray. Not a fog, the entire landscape was just a monotone gray, nondescript surface. The ground was an undefinable substance and stretched endlessly unto the horizon, where it merged with something just barely lighter, more insubstantial, that might be sky. Stacked in neat rows were box-like structures, like a square forest. It too stretched eternally into the distance, the boxes getting smaller and smaller until they were indistinguishable from the ground. I don’t know what I expected from the afterlife but it was undeniably not this. I would have accepted fire and brimstone or multi-eyed, multi-winged angels, or even the sensation of floating timelessly in a golden cloud, but this…the overwhelming dreariness of it…Malvina Reynolds must have had a near death experience one time. <i>Little boxes on the hillside…little boxes made of ticky-tacky…little boxes on the hillside…little boxes just the same</i> I started walking, the sensation of time and distance dulled either by some fundamental quality of eternity or by the overwhelming sameness of the landscape. It was quiet, the other occupants perhaps in their homes—mausoleums? Nothing moved or changed. I walked for a moment or a millennium before I sighted another human—ghost? Soul? Spirit? Who knew, really. He was a gray man in a gray work suit, skin that might once have been peach, hair that might once have been salt-and-pepper, a long, philisophical beard. He could’ve died yesterday or during the Roman Empire, there was no way of knowing. “Am I…?” I asked him, hesitant to finish the sentence. “Almost certainly.” He said. I narrowed my eyes, looking around. “You looking for the big guy?” “God?” I asked. “Sure…or anything…I dunno…familiar.” “He quit.” The man said. “I’m sorry, he what?” “Quit. Buggered off. Gave it up for a bad job.” “Can he do that?” I asked. The man shrugged. “He’s God.” He said, as if that answered anything. “So now what?” I looked at the row after row of ticky-tacky boxes in front of me. “He took all the magic with him, but you’ll know which one is yours.” “Oh good.” I sighed. I didn’t even say goodbye, just put one foot in front of the other, through the rows of gray. It was going to be a long eternity.
The world is ice Gray and blue and white It surrounds me with its purity Its quiet danger Somewhere below me water flows Carving caves into the glacier Inexorable, steady I dig my crampon into the ice I pause, prying out one axe Only to bury it deeply again My arms have tired of the motion Swing and pull and swing I try not to look below me Into the treacherous depths But above is not better The feet stretch into miles I am not sure I have risen at all Somewhere above me people call encouragement A guide belays me, indefatigable But all of that has faded It is me and the ice I am certain that if I do not climb I will fall The only thing between me and the abyss Is my own tenacity Axes and crampons crunch into the ice It’s an endless rhythm Primal, raw Like the panic that fills my veins But somehow I prevail Pull myself over the ledge Lie panting on the ice There is so much of it An ocean of pale blue But I have conquered it Or it has conquered me Either way I squint at the sun in triumph
She is nothing. You would only look twice because of the Sheer incongruity The brokenness When you expect your world to be Rose colored She is smudged, old Where you expect shiny newness Crisp packaged novelty But what if I told you Once she was something Roughly loved, held, dragged Through the dirt By lovingly crafted porcelain arms Not molded but crafted Hand-painted Clothing stitched with care Would she be worth more than Pressed plastic, machine turned Assembly line impersonality But this is not the way now We crave more At the calloused hands of faceless workers Children in warehouses Making pennies a day What love can they craft with? She is forgotten But it is not too late Maybe She has not yet crumbled into dust
Magic is what happens when the sun rises Transmuting the land into gold Like generations of alchemists have not With all their philosophy And rare minerals And the teeth of something that promised To be a unicorn but was in fact Something wilder still Magic is what happens not When we chase the impossible Finned women and maned snakes And potions that will make him love you Or make you fly Or change you immutably into something you are not Magic is what happens when we still our minds And look out upon the land Not at what could be but what is Things so unbelievable That you can hold in your hand The shimmering of twilight off the water And the iridescence of a hummingbird’s throat The mathematical perfection of a snowflake, A nautilus shell, the feathery curl of a fern The way that every night the sun sets And every morning it rises As we hurtle through an endless universe Of stars and planets that call to each other In ways we don’t understand On a scale our minds were not designed to grasp Magic is what we make it In a world where the sun rises On endless possibility That we need only reach out and take
