Postcard 105

 

This world will end. Let's not be blithe.

 

This world will end and that would be magnificent to see.

And the universe will cool though that will be so far from now,

but now this world does end, again again again.

The how or what is so far removed from purpose, reason, why.

 

Imagine! You have been selected.

As a ball falls into a random slot, you have been selected.

A panel rises above you, gray and broad and blinking.

It clunks a judgement, an accounting. Yes or no. Clunk.

High logic is at play.

 

And off we go, both chutes the same.

Is there truth? Is there consequence?

You've been selected, furnace tossed, old and rusted, twisted, bent.

Each ounce of carbon heat, of rust -- a billion atoms rent.

 

I assure you that now the seconds are strongly and solemnly accentuated, and each one, as it leaps from the clock, says 'I am life, insupportable, implacable life!'
 

You jump, electron shocked, and you gather and you gather.

And you surge in complexity and your bonds grow strong and stronger.

And a boundary lies before you. You have been selected.

You push through in respiration, random as a ball -- to live or to die, the same chute.

 

Yes, the world will end, and that would be magnificent to see.

Postcard 104



Let me carry us home, carry you for just this stretch.

We've been here before. We've been lost before.

We're surely lost but we've been here before.

When you are dragging your body behind you,

I will tell you stories to keep your eyes bright.

I will tell you stories that may tread our hapless way into a path:

 

Once, I lie shot through and bleeding in the snow.

The pain it scurried throughout.

My little breaths were each a short season of freeze and thaw.

And I pulled it in and breathed through the pain and cold.

And I breathed in the pain and exhaled my warmth.

And I gathered it up.

The wound behind me sucked in those bunches of crisp brown leaves.

And sucked them all in. 

And the hole in me spun like a penny.

And the falling spin was the ringing of a spinning plate.

It spun and spun slower and smaller and I grew cold.

The snow was crust-red and I was a leaf-stuffed rag doll crinkling on the plane.

And I breathed out and let go into a dream:

 

I lie alive on the grass.

So alive my thoughts danced around my body on its warm back.

And that girl I had seen but once, dancing and lithe, came.

And she sat upon me, between the high sun and I.

And I gathered her up in my arms

and her long hair waved about over my face.

And we laughed and laughed.

And then that was it.

 

And though we have who knows how much longer,

we are home, a bramble above and dust below.

Lets rest a stretch and if I may ask,

rumble up a story and carry us home,

Another life.

Postcard 103

It's damn hard this. 

And you think you might know, though of course you don't.
As it turns out you don't know. You didnt, couldn't. 
And have you ever drawn your long fingers lightly over a row of well read books in a bookstore in a strange town, smelling through your finger nerves, and thought 'this!'? 
And have you ever lifted magically homebound, a bundle of memories all yours from your stale aired fellow passengers, and the thick air shudders threat and you thought and felt 'This! this is it'?  
And have you ever been mother held, a grown man awkward in strong arms weak you know so well, and felt 'this is it. It's this!'? 
And have you ever captured stranger's secret smile, an origamied future folded up in a float away moment and know damn well wrongly 'this!'? 
A moment later you thought you knew but of course you didnt, couldn't. 
A feather's edge this this as lost as breath. 
And have you ever felt your mind slide out from under you and curse and wonder just what it is you've gathered up, what you thought you could know but of course could not. 
And have you ever held on for dear life terrified and sobbed and wondered 'This? It's too damned hard.'