Cry of the Stars

The world and I dance a fine line
between glacier and wildfire, but
it's my body that sometimes flubs the tightrope.

Here I go, flipping
like a pendulum gone insane,
desperate for steady orbit,
a hot star scrabbling at one side and the
universe’s freezing hands grasping at the other.

I've grown armor made of ice: the greaves,
the cuisses, the pauldrons. I'm thinking maybe
if I tremble hard enough, I can shake
my legs and shoulders free.
My down comforter is a useless furnace and
laughs at me. The afternoon
is depressingly grey.

My down comforter is a furnace and someone
has stretched holiday plastic wrap across the sunset.
The light leaks eerily red through my window
like maraschino cherry juice, like twilight
on Mars. I am a human space heater with
a second skin made of sweat.
The covers are tangled on the floor.

Millennia ago, it seems I sped along as fast
as any spinning planet, as innately
balanced as the earth for life and
living—for summer wind and winter scarves and
children laughing on the lawn—but perhaps
I am imagining
it all.

My dreams fractalize:
Shiver. Run. The city grid.
Burn. Sit down. The sidewalk cracks.
Shiver. Swallow sand. The network of my capillaries.
The head on my neck is swelling;
it is filling with cement; it will
explode by dawn.

I. Sunrise

Honey gold licked through the back van
windows, stuck warm to our clothes
and ran down our sleep-muddled hair,
took the jitters running indigo and itchy
through our veins and turned them
into light. Soft glowing amber
crowned every head with a horizon
of its own.

Maybe it was a blessing,
maybe the emblem of beginnings, rising
neatly at the inception of our journey
as if a marvelous coincidence designed
to soothe our fears and awaken our souls
with promised joy.
Maybe it was just beautiful.

The road flowed along like a golden river
and the tires rumbled like an old song,
and the sky brightened like an unbidden smile
as we drove on and on.


II. Sunset

There's a map on the screens
where you could watch the night move
across the ocean, you could
watch the night
move.

Somewhere above the sea
we crossed the line that separates the
sun from darkness, we crossed
that elusive
line:

You did not know it yet, but
you were a casual time traveler with
sleep truncated, a casual sleeper
traveling through
time.


III. Sunrise

it was different, five thousand feet
in the air. like the dawn broke on that
flat edge and bled all over it,
deep crimsons and phosphorescent
orange almost too close up
and brightly neon to bear.

"my first african sunrise,"
said the man on my right.
mine too,
though the craters and hills beneath
were not african land nor african sea,
but dense gray cloud -
soaking in the day's birthing blood
till it was all innocent white,
and the sky faint blue again.
belonging to no country but the heavens.

lucky me, on the left side of the plane
as we flew south along the night's borders.
across the aisles they leaned over,
craned and cracked their necks
to taste a little of the new morning.
i drank it all up, mouth wide open
and throat aching.


IV. Sunset

Breathe, finally.
The wind can touch your face
at last, its fingers smelling of smoke
and diesel and somehow pride,
or freedom.

Do not close your eyes.
The evening comes with a welcome
of rain, cool and light as the day
prepares to sleep,
but you - you are not dreaming.
The bus is crowded and your
cramped legs are numb,
but the windows are wide open, so
look out at the dimming sky and
breathe.

You have come so far, so long.
New terrain rattles loud in your sternum,
this old land's way of settling into
your heart, and though
the road seems endless, you know
that rest is near.

You have come so long, so far,
a traveler now with newborn night
sinking into your blood,
as we - the friends, the blessed,
the brothers -
drive on and on.

Well, all the other kids have got
their pencils out. They've marked the spots
where iron crowbars, hammer swings,
spikes, and other pointy things
might best bring down this monolith.
Not me. No, I am numbered with
those who have lost their precious tools--
the clueless ones, the fools.

This bleak expanse wears little, just
the remnants of our feeble thrusts:
a crimson drip, a rusty scar
from shoulders torn and raw. We are
the prisoners of endless youth,
who rest our heads on kneecaps, soothe
our bloody hands with bitter tears,
and count the fading years.

Oh, I would sit and sleep away
my days. I'd catch the dreams that stray
from me like threaded mist between
my fingers, bind them till they're clean
as mountain springs and buttercups,
spin them gold and drink them up
till they are cold and real as rain,
and never rise again . . .

Yet something murmurs discontent,
a fervent voice that takes offense
at idle limbs and slumbering mind.
It cries: awake, oh sleeper! Find
your sight once more and look beyond
your dreams, see how the ancient bonds
have fallen from your wrists. You're free,
it calls, reminding me

that there is work still incomplete--
so pull me back onto my feet
and put your chisel in my hand.
A fool I am, but I will stand
and hammer at this wall with you,
if you will show me what to do.
If you, who brought down Jericho,
would teach me where to place each blow,

I know that I could tear it down.
Then at the broadness of new ground
perhaps I'll hesitate in fear,
but let me not forget you're near
and that I'll never walk alone
until I reach our glorious home--
so let my sleeping spirit wake,
and guide my hands till this wall breaks.

Come tomorrow, they'll be

sky stretching bright
the sun blazing hot;
new people nicer
than first i had thought.

blue into green
green into blue,
my hand is so tired
from mixing you two.

i guess these all are
memories to keep.
i wrote this lame poem
and crept off to sleep.

teeter-totter on the edge of sleep
until i slip and fall
back into bed as morning's greying light
pulls my heavy eyelids
open,
like my gasping mouth that's
hauling air inside to soothe
reality's cold ache;

reach back for floating fragments
from the fringes of a dream,
still warm
and full of hope that crushes
all the more as morning's greying light
pulls the glowing strands
away,
leaving me so that
i cannot help but tremble with
the ache of cold reality--

( i saw you well
  i saw you smile
  i saw your body whole,
  that you had food and clothes
  and life and health and joy,
  i saw you love
  i saw you smile
  i saw you well )

--clench my sheets around my fists
and twist them to my eyes
i will not cry.

rise because i must,
to toil with these hands
until they ache,
to war against the cold and darkness
clinging heavy to this world,

remembering that
morning's greying light will
one day turn
to gold.