I.
A wave:
A mountain writ small.
A breath:
Substrate of the clouds.
A flame:
Remnant of a star.
A lie:
Progenitor of truth.
A life:
Congress of the devils.
A death:
Corpus of the same.
II.
What did Heraclitus say?
We are baptized with every step.
What did Schopenhauer dream?
Ask the burning Shiva, or Vishnu in repose.
What did Giacometti see?
A thousand portraits of a nose.
III.
Whatever you inferred, I intended.
I.
Your sins, random in youth,
form a lattice in time—
you sense the warp and weft
of its frame, a congruence
of branches and bones,
misplaced vines and nerves:
a template of your life emerges,
a blighted map leading
to a hollow under the roots.
II.
A scold of jays bursts outward
from your crown, their voices
scattered in the evening sky—
leaves cascading
from a harried canopy
like hairs falling
from an old man’s head.
The faceless child whose weight pressed into
the mattress beside you last night was never
meant to comfort; she comes first as terror,
a small rupture reminding you of something lost.
You lay there pinned, watching the dark
gather around her smooth, unreadable face—
a surface offering nothing, and somehow
offering you back to yourself.
You told me you prayed, hoping she’d release
the tight braid of your bodies, and how
a vast hand—God’s, you said—filled the doorway,
spilling gold dust over everything you feared.
And then you rose together, unbound,
unfolding into a single standing figure—
a shape I recognized the moment it resembled me.
One week beyond the ill-fated future
augured by unknown Mayan priests, my child
will awaken unscathed, her earthly host
redeemed by Providence, her beloved
father beside her, immured from the light
in a makeshift tent. She is my daughter,
born half of light and darkness, a daughter
I’m unable to shield from the future,
where there is neither benevolent light
nor abject darkness– I fear for my child
nevertheless, for she is my beloved,
my stark mirror. Soon her mother will host
our seventh Christmas morning; she will host
her own scattered shadows, too, our daughter
among the whispers (though no less beloved)
We are the remnants of the same future
shimmering in time around our only child,
like silver wrapping paper catching light.
like reflections in opposing mirrors,
create infinite vistas of similarity.
it is impossible to parse
a singular form from the array
of cascading beings
that are merely endlesss
repetitions of you.
“There is no music in The Firebird” – Sergei Prokofiev
“Prokofiev is wasting time with ballets” – Igor Stravinsky
I. Danse
Tonight’s prompt was placed
by my leather journal, randomly
selected by my wife.
I am indifferent to cherries,
equally so to prompts.
II. Exentrique
Stravinsky said constraints
will set you free, and serve only
to obtain precision of execution.
But then, he was never
constrained by three cherries
(though otherwise entranced
by Petrushka chords).
III. Cantique
Synchronicity, magic, or riposte?
The next morning
three orange vitamins
appeared in their place.
As a child, I carried odd, prescient dreams—
small details: where a buried locket slept,
or some lost trinket hid itself in seams
of neighborhoods I’d wandered only in sleep.
No one cared much, not really, until I said
our dog would die beneath a freighted truck;
and then my father, startled, bowed his head.
From that night on, my family left luck
outside the door. We’d gather late, confer
in the living room—my “visions” guiding moves
or money, or anything that might occur
to grown-ups fearing consequence. They approved
my awkward teenage ramblings, granting weight
reserved for augurs dreaming out the state.
My guide came early—four years old, I think—
small, and dreadful. She had no eyes at all
and lived beneath the stairs, her lavender skin
turned always inward, studying the wall.
At night, The Blonde unraveled space for me,
dilated time, whispered sideways truths
my parents swore they heard when I’d half-flee
my bedroom—her words still clinging to my mouth.
But gifts grow thin. I see faint shapes now—slips
of futures drifting just beyond the frame;
and though she speaks, her voice arrives eclipse-
blurred, changing bodies, changing even her name
to meet me where I am. I try to hear,
but all her meanings scatter when they near.
jaznoblog 