Solara 96-110

 sorry for the wait, world.

XCVI
my words are more like nonsense and still, someone is agreeing with me. they’ll come forward, in disinterested clumps/amoebas who can’t be bothered to congeal. hell no, we won’t grow! little tests of disbursement. lessening the impact. still they will arrive at the appropriate moment to chant something like a sad battlecry, another little ditty made by a combination of scatting and yawning. to think, this all came from nothing.

XCVII

you know that i/critter of the swamp/deep forest kin/sad enough for two of us/mourn collections of broken trees and the rotting stumps of yesterday//i done told you, pa/there ain’t nothing for us here anymore/not like yester-years//a voice emits from swamp country-beware-it snaps-for my violin is broken and i have used the word “for” when speaking to you. this must mean i am serious//i am a conscientious swamp thing objector/give us honest truths/those condos aren’t building themselves//pa, get off’n them condos/they ain’t hiring none of us under the best’ve them circumstances//free labor is the voice of the people//i’ve had about enough of this swamp shilling/sad to be leaving, but look what we’ve become//

XCVIII

when will the babbling stop? i would like to know. i would like a timeline expressing the ability to change and the inability to let the real words come to the surface. bad enough, we let real sentences stand on their own merit. word bubbles, next to the river, like it has something to say. we cannot understand the language of water. it was never meant for us. not you, and certainly not me. i will lay my head on the pillow each night and know i’ve done what’s required of me; water thoughts be damned. what will the current bring to you? 

XCIX

like a bridge/over the Atlantic Ocean/like the industry cropping up on said bridge/think of the gas monopolies//the hotel chains, springing up like snakes out of a cylindrical can/economy revitalized//shirts commemorating the trip/like a dream, only commercial/only filled with roadside attractions/only a pain when you break down/all that smog and the fish below/we’ve done it/

C

We were leaving, long before the rest of us had planned to go. No bags, just our feet, the wind. This fellowship. We knew what was behind us. We didn’t want it anymore; not like this. Not this time. You followed suit, eventually. Followed the path we marked with scuffs, our easy conversation and camaraderie with one another, still drifting on the wind. Along the metal, over the water of a river long forgotten. We all went elsewhere, to a point unknown, unimportant. Just, not here.

CI

Fidelity/Thy name/Is a flower/In a barren field/Next to a rotted out tire/Shine yourself/Back into the forefront/You’ve earned your fifteen minutes/Baby

CII

is nature/good/and done yet?

mingling with our affairs/our

ill-gotten/treasures/hidden on

maps of a golden/imagined country.

interceding with what we’ve/made/

linking within an abandoned fence/this

Semi-forgotten bicycle? Can we/just

agree to go our separate ways?

CIII

I can’t/won’t change what you did/left to devices less formal/less honest/rewritten along the rust marks/along the old wounded lineage/I can’t bring it back to life/not the way you want it to be/not like before/not even halfway back, or halfway/there/the silver standard, untouchable/you’ve been handed an opportunity/not an invitation to revision/lessen exposure/lessen the blow to the ego/let the rust become native and take control of the operation/we’ll have to make do with what is left/salvage it/somehow/

CIV

Some unseen hand, in an unseen tongue, on a spent piece of paper, has taken to recording the enterprise of the past. Left us, guessing at the detailed notes. Headshakes and mutterings. Another lost opportunity. Not recorded in the annals of history. Another one, gone. Again.

CV

exposure/the sun/like wrinkles,

this/like parchment/finer aging,

this/loadstar, shackle on the neck,

this/a destination/an obstacle,

both/this/in heat mirage/shimmering

air, this/lend me what is yours/not mine,

this/ 

CVI

truth is vision/and what the eye/is beholden

to/the truth is/that i am no longer/seeing clearly/

what is in front of my eye/instead/i invent a truth

fitting my purpose/my need/another color, another

shape/another landscape//

wind, rake this still form/gather the dust 

and swirl/remake

this truth into something we will

all believe.

CVII

gurgle and whimper/the future has devoured me/beneath the waves/cosmic/sound/ocean/all in a swirl of cacophony/let my heart know it is stopping soon and/the sputtering is natural and/soon i am food for a fish/set of fishes/or an enterprising beast designed in sound/the light is faster than we imagined/even with everything we know/we still/know nothing/

CVIII

shifting the terms of service/fire below water/lightning on both levels/what we see and hear/not relevant to a discussion of this magnitude/as earth splits/as water leaks from the apartment above/less you know/less it your friend/as the smoke shifts downward/up and away/we are going somewhere unexpected yet/yes/another surprise/right about now, you’ll be coming up for air/surprised to see what remains/what has left us/

CIX

Not sure/relief/or pained response/misfiring of a synapse/the leg kept twitching/long after the brain was good and done/who knew what was really/at peace/what does rest look like\when left to our devices/moments of weakness/a triumph in stillness/this, a monument/this, inflection point/willed into knowing yourself/like an arbitrary spin of a wheel/spokes flying in all directions/and then, peace/

CX

this is
not what i
had in mind
when the day
started. dearly
absent lightning
and broken crack
of thunder. my stare
has traveled the eons
and cosmos. i expect
some raving spectacle
and was met with
unsure cymbal claspings,
shrugs from the players,
less prepared than me
for what comes out of
the sky. today.