Author: Michael Angelo

I thought I was cured—
that the squirming feeling in my stomach had stopped—

that it went to sleep along with the anxious
breath my lungs hide when I hear about a new house
bought, this marriage sealed, this baby
born—I wish
my years

would feel less like dreamed decades and more real—
that somehow my shredded apartment would be

a home,
but I’m still ill,

and get cold chills
when I see those tall sharp buildings and endless roads—
when I hear the clattering teeth of the talking human being

on stage, their words wet and thick with
the smothering future and
the market value of things
and the career trajectories of
people and the hard work involved…the vacation
plans and
retirement plans and
insurance plans and
health plans and
plans of plans and
plans and—I’m sick,

and my stomach is churning again,
but the schematics of my life refuse
to burn in the incinerator

no matter how high I turn up the flames.

Atop the fields that served as home
for the fragile flower of my love,

I stand as a ruined tower, dark
brooding, remembering
beauty’s smile—

now faded,

washed away by tides of time
along the edges of stony days.

High in my night’s sorrow,
I bear witness to cruel sight:
the unraveling of those sacred seams
that hold together the horizon.

Each loosened strand,
a kingdom felled;
each thread undone,
a country rent;
a good child born,
one man dead.

Leaves of every near and distant tree
lie like effigies of loss—

I, unable to bear
the sight of a fraying world,
turn my gaze away from its grey peaks—

and to the blue stars
I pray; they so full
of light, and joyful with eternity

—or so it seems,
to the short lived.

Consider
the countless stars that have dawned
and died
before the glow of our very Sun;

our Sun, alone and frightened in black deep space,
silenced and numbed
by explosions lived—explosions gone.

Light itself gutted—sprinkling

as ashes of death,
coalescing into my stone body;

a body that every day,
burdened by the overwhelming weight
of loss,

  sinks
deeper into ground,
to be forgotten,
like my love.

Within the chrysalis,
what once was known as
I
dissolves.

Particles of refracted light,
memories—

            A bus ride lined with blurry faces;
            a smiling silhouette—

all rays,
dying in a dimming den.

“Who am I now,” asks
who?

Legs a decayed milky dew.

An eye afloat
on flowing time, observing Eternity feast,
hours consumed.

Nothing then
everything.

Pain ruptures darkness,
a light seeping like sap, filling
space.

An abdomen churning,
a thorax curling,
first memories wake.

Silky remembrances harden
into delineations and limitations.

Welcome nascent
I.

Mind
thinks the first brightness
while its temples burn and split.

More pain, then breath,
and through muscles rip
petals—

Petals? What are petals?

No. These are wings.
They open—air at once seeps in.

A current
called yearning
carries me

towards flower or flame.

In a way, it feels like I’m reaching
to grasp the Sun
as though it were a bead of my own blood.

Amber skies in tranquil hours
pass me by—or rather
I pass them in my haste.

There’s work to do, obligations to keep,
my feet smoke with exhaust
and air is just something I breathe,
not taste.

There’s no time—and yet
there’s so much of it.

The people of this world
are like fishes in a plastic bag
submerged in the sea,
capable of feeling the currents
flowing just behind
the thin obscuring membrane
we call priorities.

But whose owns these priorities?
Where did they come from?

A man is bound to his family,
a mother to her children’s needs,

but outside of nature’s dictations,
to what, truly, am I devoting myself to?

Ideas, large like economies and governments.

Ideas are the iron frames
that support our anthills,
and we all march, dutifully,
believing in the power of their ore.

But again, who mined the minerals?
Who assigned them value?

Is fool’s gold fool’s gold
without the entire artifice of a society?

We rush for gold because we believe in it,
and our walls don’t collapse
because we believe our frames to be true.

This is the ache in me, however:
I see the walls.

I am unable to deny
that they do keep me warm,
warding off the claws and beaks and teeth
of gales and storms—

but for some reason
my eyes do not just stop
and rest on their hard surfaces,

they also see right through them,
and bathe in bold bleeding rays.

And though I rush to the offices
of my life, imprisoning instincts
in duties, I am
slowed, just enough, to notice
the breadth of this natural wonder
called Life.

My priorities are transparent,
simply unable to hide this incredible sea,
and try as I might to love the ideas
given to me,

the great pulsing Heart in the sky
bleeds its vibrant vitality
through my pleading fingers.