Cry of the Stars

Your death crashes here
like an angry storm; we raise our windows
and let the sun weep through the cracks.

Despair seizes my brothers by the throat
and shakes the air out of their lungs, while
you, faceless, touch my cheek—odd thunder.

Your headstone wakes
astride a hollow grave,
where I dig on hands and knees until

we are three years old again. The rubble
breaks my skin with gracious teeth.
I learn to love you.

Your body slips into its place,
your shadow burning,
unexpected laughter like a song.

The new gods still play old tricks,
but we have lost some of our wisdom.

I think maybe my ancestors knew:
gnarled carrots and lopsided smiles were just
the way of things, the warm and imperfect
voice of the earth. Nobody asked apple trees
to bear crystals, or women to bear marble—only

fools, open-mouthed, scrabbling at      

        Ellen really did it, can you believe?
        Traded her baby boy for one of the fae!
        Oh sure, he’s beautiful, but
        she hasn’t heard what happened to
        old Katherine’s second one, seventeen
        years past? Grew up a right horror, he did.

ghosts all dressed up
like the backs of their eyelids.

I think we used to know.

These days we have worn our pockets out
with asking, and our gods yield freely,

        There is a fragment of the sun
        caught in your hair, so that
        I want to weep . . .

delighted, while lethe slips under our tongues;

we reach for the same illusions now
and never stop to wonder. Our grandmothers
tried to warn us, and we laughed until

        All perfect
        All mine

we cried, jaws unhooked and gaping.
We fastened the chains with
our own hands.

The space between moments
is a dangerous place to find yourself.

For a fraction of a second
you might have traveled in time
or between dimensions:
you take half a breath in the dusty womb
of your childhood house or in
the quivering depths of a city you
don't yet recognize;

you glimpse misty rain falling golden,
slipping viridian off mushrooms
ringed with iridescent blue,
and feel the last booming tremor
of a cloud whale's song

before you're back again, dizzy,
worrying where the next click
on the clock's second-hand might bring you.

Someday, you're afraid,
you'll slip away
and never find your way home,
Rip Van Winkle asleep indefinitely,
Tam Lin minus your Janet,
Persephone with twelve seeds
rattling in your empty stomach.

It's with the weary knowledge
of an old shanachie that you tell me,
The space between moments— 
I think it's where fairies live.

And I—the minutes held linear
and evenly spaced across my hands,
a daylong time traveler going just one way—
wonder what on earth, or under
heaven's reach, you're trying to say.

This tree once spread its verdant wings
In sanctuary for our play,
The harbinger of youthful spring

With memories now frozen, splayed
In branches cracking to their core
Beneath a sky billowing grey

Like life, and winter, gone to war.
We wove those branches into art,
The tree that you and I adored,

But creeping ice has clutched its heart
And teaches us this eerie sound:
A child's house falling apart.

Where can the cold ruins be found?
Their shards will be my mournful throne,
And frosted leaves, my weeping crown.

The vision of you, at first, appears
almost mythical: the unearthly guise
of perfection, the cold glare of near-divinity.
Your dress floating, as if out of the sunset
a young cloud blushed, and bowed to kiss
your feet, and shroud your towering frame.

It's no less startling as you draw near,
when dusk is drawn in shadows rising
around us. Something of you seems infinite
and inhuman, an entity of secrets
sojourning here awhile. Thus
in my mouth, your soul remains unnamed,

but morning comes, finally, to tear
the dazzling veil away. (Blinking, I realize
your eyes are level with my chin.)
Now in dawn's greying, at last I meet
your tired and gentle face--and there it is.
The quiet revelation of sameness.

Black are these drowning days; fierce,
the water's hands that claw my face;
cold, the accusing daggers
twisting in my ears.
Choking, bitter ashes fill my mouth
when I am hurled ashore.
Is this the place where Job once
mourned before?

and I ran to the whirlwind, shouted at
a father I could barely see.
        do you hear me?
        are you there?

Oh, my fingers and my feet grow weak;
my weary limbs could drop
away from me. But no, not yet.
These jagged stones may drink my blood,
but I am told
your voice lies at the top
of Zion's noble peak.
   
so I came up the mountain, waited there--
but only silence answered me.
        is this all?
        must I despair?
   
Here I cry, my feeble eyes
at war against the night,
my palms spread throbbing on the ground.
I shake and tremble, and I cannot rise;
here I lie, blind in the dark; quiet
I shall stay

                 until the sunlight
breaks open the day
and I can feel your hands around
my own, then: where have you been?
why did you hide?

You're crouching by my side.
I'm here, is all you say.

and I stood by Golgotha, listened close,
and there, again, I heard mercy--
    the sound more beautiful
    than I could bear.

Baking soda and baking powder are not interchangeable.
Cactuses need to be watered, too.
Boys are not icky, nor are they your world.
They will make fine friends
when you are both content to be just that,
especially while you are still young:
to call someone a brother, and mean it,
is a wonderful thing.
There is no shame in wanting to learn
as much as you possibly can.
Before you become good at something,
you must first be terrible. There is
no shame in that, either.
Sing while you vacuum; it is harder
for other people to hear your mistakes.
African violets will die if you pour water on their leaves.
When a friend first cries on your shoulder,
do not listen like a doctor,
waiting to prescribe the cure. Their pain
will break your heart, and you will want
nothing more than to fix it right there, to throw it
far, far away from them - but you
are weaker than you'd like to think,
and you cannot do it. The medicine they need for now
is the knowledge that they are not alone.
When you are seventeen and find it hard to believe
that I could have ever been your age
and felt what you feel,
read this again. I am seventeen now,
I can barely comprehend the idea of you, and
the breadth of my wisdom fits in a single page.
A few more things -
if you remember nothing else of what I say,
remember these.
Reading your Bible is literally like eating:
a day missed will leave you feeling starved,
but the hungry are only called to fill themselves again.
No one will be a better friend to you than Jesus;
no one will understand the depths of your weakness
as he will, and yet love you as he does.
Nobody made in the image of God
should ever receive your disdain,
no matter how much they may destroy.
You'd think that desert plants can go thirsty,
but cactuses need to be watered, too.

Every year - silent and
with little ceremony - my heart molts.
On my birthday, I line them up,

the fragile exoskeletons left over
from the years since I drew breath with new lungs,
and the first tiny shell split
down the middle and fell off, sighing.

I can see the contours of that old granite,
the outline of that first paper-thin membrane
reflected in the shapes of all the bigger skins
that follow, and echoing in me
to the smallest curves of my hands and feet:

sometimes, when the edges have grown too sharp
and someone's dark blood pools on the tabletop,
for a moment I wish I could crawl back
into my mother's womb and
start over, try again with a different mold,

praying that this time the stone
will come out smooth and white
and harmless in its reverberations -
but you and I both know what futility
we entertain, however briefly.

Our mothers and fathers cannot give us marble;
they know too much of cold blood, spilt and stale.

No, this was never what he meant. But if you
count the shells from all my heart's growing,
you'll find one more than there should be,
and hope (for me, for you) is in the reality of that
last cracked, broken rock. Some years ago

it fell from me, sighing, split
in two because I drew breath with new lungs
and opened new eyes to a dazzling glory,
and the new heart was strong flesh and
bright, living blood in a perfect frame that

echoes stronger in my body every day.
My hands and feet still follow
the old patterns sometimes, but it's
life and love that wins in the end, and I know

the matter of my birth
is settled.

cut down before its time,
the tree behind my house shriveled dry
from lightning, not age.

(sun and rain breathe life to
all creatures in the forest, but then
fire won't discriminate, either.)

watch closely, all slender saplings
waiting to reach the sky:

unroughened hands must take and build,
and youthful feet must run
while blood still animates your bones.
your face may wash stone-cold
before the skin has time to sag.

we say ‘forever’:
ignored, eternity’s breadth
and our own weak hands.

In another age, you and I
tried, but could not make peace with unfamiliarity.
Yellow festered to a slur in your mouth;
never mind that to us it meant power and holiness,
the color of emperors, the birthmark on our bodies
as children of the mighty dragon.
Never mind that in honesty, we held our skin
to the pale of the moon or the soft brown dust and
thought it the same:
we too curled our lips at you,
laughed at these white foreign ghosts in our fields,
your hair and eyes blazing in strange pigments--
red like our fruit, green like our mountains,
blue like our great clean sky--that never belonged on a body,
that were surely a mistake in your making.

Today I carry this turmoil in my memory,
but not in my blood. My ancestors have etched their legacy
into my cheeks and nose and eyelids,
but these veins are mine alone, to color as I wish.
I have chosen to love hair golden as the morning
and eyes gentle as dusk, which have painted my childhood
and taught me that vibrance can easily frame your face,
bright and true and beautiful.
I know, too, that if I laid you out and peeled you open,
I would find a crumbling core of borrowed rot
for Death's long fingers to grasp and draw back to itself,
the same ugly weight that lingers black in me
and steeps my days in bitter weariness.
That has always been our problem, after all.

Perhaps someday, you and I,
we'll work the rich ground side by side,
colorful children of the same father
with new light blooming from our hearts.
We'll hold hands and never wonder
at the complement of our skin, at the reflection
of the dark earth, and the tender flowers we'll leave behind
will sing our ancient, blood-filled stories
in a thousand lovely hues.

Good beginnings are only
exciting because of the
beautiful endings
they promise,
which an author sets up
carefully, so the reader
will be satisfied in
some way. 
Funny that something so
simple as an ending
can be so very
complex,
satisfying the writer as
well as the reader,
setting down
her pen,
saying to herself, yes, this
will grasp their hearts
and hold them
captive;
yet only the best tales can
transfix us like that.
I think I know
one of them:

It is finished,
wrote one author,
just beginning my story.
I'm reading eagerly until the end.

If the world would end tonight,
would you be coming home with me?

If the sky was pulled apart
and stars and moon fled
to farthest corners and trembled there,
would you be frightened
to find what glory lay behind?

If you saw a King coming down to us,
would you want to hide, or
would you want to run into his arms?

I'm shaking with the promise of
eternity, and you'll be shaking too.
I hope you know if it'll be fear or joy.

When you stand at Heaven's gates,
will you be looking at your home--
will you be going there with me?

we stacked up smiles
on conversations,
laid nonsense on philosophy,
nailed dreams to
heavy pauses, worked
for hours beneath the sun
and stars and cloudy sky
to fill this hollow shell with love.

Born free of conformity,
yet into a world of rule -
a land of regulation
I open my eyes,
I see the shadows
My mind, once a vast emporium
of thought, of concept,
of idea,
now advertises only falsity and fear.

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.

I am made of two,
one old, one new,
one stone, one clay,
one walking with sure feet,
one running far away.

I am torn by two,
by what each wants to do:
they fight as if to own me.
They'll fight until one dies--
and though the elder frequently
controls my thoughts with fear,
the younger's battle cries
are clear.

Each struggle might go either way,
but since redeeming work is done,
my war's already won,

and I am longing for the day
when I am made of one.

spit or swallow you

are poison
burning on my tongue
threatening to scorch me
all the way down

are snakes of flame
licking every corner of my open mouth

are greedy for destruction.

the fire's easier to quell
inside,
where other tongues don't
sweep the conflagration higher,
where burning words might sting,
but only me
and only for an instant--
so i bite my mouth

shut, and swallow you.

Thomas can't
really hear the music, but
while the party dances on, it
keeps on buzzing in his chest,
like hornets searching for his heart
and shaking everything beneath
his ribs.
Thomas can't
really breathe, not the same
thick air they do, even as he
settles in this lonely couch,
forgotten stains like yellow flesh
on faded white beneath
his fingertips.
Thomas thinks that maybe
he should go back where they are,
but he's afraid
their noise would chase away his soul
and twist his body inside-out,
so Thomas never does.

Thomas wants to ask them all:
    why are you so loud, and
    how can you be sure that
    what you're calling love
    is so,
    and in the night's dead stillness,
    have you ever felt that
    sorrow smolders in your bones,
    waiting soundlessly till it can
    burn through paper skin?
(Thomas thinks that someone, somewhere
has to have the answers)
--but when
his heart and mouth are open,
eyes and ears are always
closed,
so Thomas never does.

--

[written for class]

I need to find this faint reality,
for I have fallen deep into my mind
and phantom dreams are more than they should be.

Your glowing eyes are everything I see,
consuming every glance, so I am blind
when grasping at this faint reality--

and strangled by my thirst till I can't breathe,
so peaceful rest's impossible to find,
and phantom dreams are more than they should be.

Yet would this dark night seek to rescue me,
my senses pulling at me from behind?
I'm laughing at this faint reality,

endeavoring to set my being free--
for 'round my heart your arms are closely twined,
and phantom dreams are more than they should be.

Your smile will drive me to insanity
unless, until your every thought is mine.
I must escape this faint reality;
my phantom dreams are more than they should be.