Saturday, November 22, 2014

Phoenix World and the Sparrow's Song

The deep-set gloom of the night grips tightly to the backdrop of the world. The moon's visage slowly becomes more and more transparent against the lightening sky. Mercury blooms like a star flower just above the eastern horizon as the cyclops sun slowly opens its eye upon a sleeping hemisphere.

In late-autumn and early winter, small puddles of ice begin to crack and spit against the warming air. The lunar kiss spread across them like a silver thread begins to warp and curl beneath the blazing rage of the sun's unquenchable desire. Contrails spread across the burning dawn like strings of pale seaweed marking  aerial highways before fading into a cerulean abyss, the ocean's convected reflection where birds become fish swimming through coral clouds and jets trundle along like shrimp boats into the indiscriminate edge of the world where the clay meets the sky.

The bellies of clouds boil with a red fury as the mountaintops set fire to the eastern sky and the peach hue of a dying night makes way for the day. Sparrows sing their morning song from the bare branches of a Formosa tree near the path of abandoned inter-county railroad tracks. Chattering like early-risen school children, they flutter like dying autumn leaves clinging to the branches of their migratory home.

I pull the collar up on my wool coat and tug the lapel in tight around my neck, trying in vain to block out the bite of an early morning in late-autumn. The pink lady feels slick against my gloved hands as I watch the orange shine of a fully awakened sun simmer just above the ridges of the distant mountain range. I take the first bite of the apple and hold the tart yet sweet pieces in my mouth, allowing the juices to soak into my tongue and coat the insides of my mouth before chewing. At the edge of a field to my left two deer stand as if engraved against the backdrop of tall, beige saw grass that seems to stretch to the edge of the universe. The doe keeps watch as her baby crunches on an apple core that I left the morning before.

We crunch in unison, the baby deer and I. In unison with each other, with the sparrows as they fine tune their morning song, with the sun as it paints a portrait of the awakening world, with the puddles as they break free from the thin sheen of moon ice, with the contrails as they cut and heal like a pale scratch against the skin of the sky, and with the mountains as they breathe hot upward toward the heavens. We live in unison with the phoenix world, reborn from the ashes of a previous day forgot.

j

Sunday, November 16, 2014

Lost in the Finding; or, Memories like Late Autumn Frost

Memories linger like the reluctant frost of an early morning in late autumn. The crystalline tinge of leftover moonlight and star-shine sleeps soundly against the slow pull of the rising sun, dreams reluctantly slipping in thin misty tendrils toward a brightening blue sky. That's when I feel her most. When I feel the most alone. The warmth of this or that morning's coffee slowly kindling fires within the chilled ache of my body, pipe-smoke peeling away the dreary fog of a daunting and sleepless night.

"Did you put out the stars with Hikeshibaba (火消婆) last night?" you would say with butterfly whispers and a kiss like the wind. Your skin the warmth within the morning that wills the world to life. Your hair loose within the apartment's stillness, the slowly swinging conductor's baton bringing the symphony of morning birds to tune. I would feel arms fold and pull, skin pebble then smooth. I would close my eyes and breathe in the world that would only spark to life with a technicolored brilliance at your rising.

"Good morning, my Amaterasu (アマテラス)." That's all I could ever say. In those mornings, you were the birth and death of every breath. You were the sunrise that woke the world.

I look out this morning beyond the dampening banisters from a cold front porch and close my eyes against the slow rise of the sun, the slow reluctance of the early morning frost coating the ground like a thousand specks of shattered sea glass. And I feel you again.

Good morning, my Amaterasu.

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Lost in the Finding
By: Jonathan Garren

I am desperate for fingers raising skin,
For your long hair tangled in the wind.
And I am built to embrace my sins,
But I know they were hard for you to defend.

I miss the taste of your lips and the slow rise of your smile,
Your scent like winter woodsmoke and summer rain.
I miss the bend of your knees in sensual denial,
Your fever, your cries, your joy, and your pain.

I’m trying to find the weakness that pushed you away,
Suffocate the flames that tore our story from the binding.
I’m still trying to find the lies to make you stay,
I keep trying to find why I’m lost in the finding.

Does that mean we were broken by desire,
Or did we bleed together through the lust?
Does that mean we became liars,
Or were we simply betrayed by trust?

Did we gradually descend into colder water,
Frozen in memories beneath time and dust?
Or were we meant for different lovers,
Different bodies to blend and adjust?

Friday, November 14, 2014

Late Autumn Robin; or, Grounded with Hope in my Eyes

*taps my non-touch screen* Hello? Is this thing on? Yes? Good.

I was beginning to grow worried that a lack of words would cause my blog to short circuit and die a slow, technologically webby type death. I feel like I should cuddle my blog and coo regrets for having neglected it for so long.

I feel like it may be like the scared little robin with an injured wing that I saw hopping around my front yard a few days back. Eyes-wide with the wonder of a grounded life, the longing for wind beneath its wings tearing a black hole into the fabric of its avian soul. I wanted to hold it close to my heart that day and let it know that us grounded souls still beat along to the rhythm of the coming and going of the days. The ticking percussion of the hours as they seep through the space and time colliding and expanding around us with every movement, every decision, every gentle push that Nature presses upon our backs during moments of indecision. I wanted to give it love that the world would probably soon retract, because we all know that a soul meant for the skies will never stay grounded for long, for good or ill.

It reminded me of the baby robin that I took care of for a day before it died peacefully in the crystalline hue of a full moon night in late spring. Its cries tender and melodic even against the coming stillness of death. I knew then that there is nothing more unfair in life than a bird that never has the chance to fly.

I looked at the grown robin hopping along the ground a few days ago and hoped that it would learn to fly again. I hoped that the wind would mend the slowly growing tear in its fragile cobalt soul. I hoped for a cloudless day to send it upward over the mountains rolling gently like craggy waves along the western horizon. I hoped then and today I still do.

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I Cradled a Baby Robin on Its Dying Day
By: Jonathan Garren (aka: Mr. Wind-Up Bird)

I cradled a baby robin on its dying day,
A fallen autumn leaf in the bud of spring.

Fledgling cries wane to mewing pleas
For a mother’s warmth, a mother’s strength -
Nestled bowls of pine straw and twine,
Blooming plumage to rise and fall ‘neath
The distant love of unknown brothers.

Why should the tender soul of spring
Blow transient upon the warming winds
Like the listless detritus of winter?
If I could only ply a fraction of my life
And gift it to this simple soul, I would
Live a lesser life for such innocence deprived
To blossom unfettered by the snare of an early death.

I cradled a baby robin on its dying day
And watched its life fly upward over the mountain.

I curse these hands of Adam, these loins of God,
Creators and destroyers both of simple fragility.
Lamenting lives left to fate, lives to be buried
Beneath the reigns of cruel men,
To live within the scripture of ill-tempered
Democratic morality, the majority
A justice of pitched scales and averted eyes.

I cradled the baby robin on its dying day,
The veil of my soul wrapped fallow among feathers unemployed.