Acceleration
Speed and collision
to change atomic numbers
one matter and another
rendered a third.
The spiral of life holds
no quarter for half measures.
Those waiting for guarantees
stand empty-handed, open-mouthed
barely noticing the treasure
beckoning
brutal in its honesty,
Instead they look backward
but there’s no one to watch your back.
Give up the security issue,
a failsafe for loss.
I prefer such brutality
over beneficial lies and pencil kisses.
I prefer to read eyes
rather than dismember omissions.
I can’t claim I don’t know the language.
But my comprehension is garbled,
my childhood tuition offered through
heavy water. No matter, Seabrook or Savannah
nuclear plants. I’d pull the Uranium out,
slide the bars so neatly
only the birds would sense the danger.
A grey heron, perhaps.
(not blue,
blue was for happier days) would
escape, his neck an S,
his wide reach
smudging visions of explosions.
Summons to the Creative
Feel the pull,
as if the gravity of meaning, the gravity
of galaxies light years traveled
lured you from your safely shaped life;
refused “no” for an answer
offered no quarter to distractions, evasions,
escape. At first an invitation to
participation mystique
but the yawn is needy for spokesmen
and heralds of transcendence. The universal tug
wins, the house fixed by the planets you
chose at birth.
Collective man must have a voice,
dispersing your personal desires
as if scattering marbles. The hand on
your shoulder, snaking into your mind
is the spirit fed on the lives of your
influences. As society crumbles
the summons becomes louder, crueler,
keener. You may attempt to elude, but
night wakenings, day nightmares pursue
in packs, teeth eager for tendons…all for the benefit
of those unequipped.
You…sacrificed upon humanity’s steps…
divine device…cued
to hear, interpret the whispers.
Collapse
They saw in layers, perhaps collapsed
then expanded,
Orwell, Nostradamus, Cayce, DaVinci, Verne
trusting vision
better than our
20/20 laser-corrected eyes,
Technicolor contacts and
blue-tooth body attachments…
precursors of trans-humanism.
What frantic frenzy would Beethoven write
to score the downward sliding promises
and elevated graphs?
Quantum physicians put on their poker faces,
play bingo with metaphysicians while
Heraclitus referees,
his hands itching to jot down
fragments, despite knowing
they may never be read.
A Summons to the Authentic
You can’t look over your shoulder
without seeing the cracked eyes,
“Go.”
Calm invites
the dimming of lies. False constructs fold,
crisp as contracts ripped apart.
No easy slow disintegrating of moth-eaten parchment,
this big shift is not without tears and thrashing, mind you
and a desire to turn away, over and over
as those afraid of change, of awakening
insult and tease with steak.
“But hold on, the ride gets better,” said Eddie,
the Izzard, the awakened lizard.
Each individual may raise a hand above the fray of hazard,
Embrace their allies, law and chaos, if they so choose….life.
Centers may unfold, one at a time…or in quantum conclaves
(the latter is preferred) to slay the enemies, time and doubt.
Lack of faith ensures isolation, an alien in your own land,
an outcast by your own hand.
Prayer is a joke, but you may still pray
Hungry… like a wolf… seeking others like you.
“When the student is ready, the teacher shall arrive,” he whispered.
It was your Yoda waiting in the wings, yet you can’t see him…
until you look away.
Your true essence becomes you
as the colors of nature dance…
backlit in Hermetic Mercurial brilliance
by the works of those who struggled, wriggled from beneath the thumb
to share secrets. You know them. You recognize the enigmatic smile.
You can join them in their weirding ways.
The invitation is written on your soul in sanscrit…or something like it.
Perhaps, like Fowles and Jung, you’ll collect stones in your pocket,
amazed how they don’t weigh you down,
but provide foundation, a grounding in your world -
the one world.
And like the few, and not the many,
you may write obscure books of arcane messages,
filled with insights and curses, obstacles and answers,
escaping, defying one prison or another.
Big Brother’s fingers grip your shoulder to offer a satellite kiss.
You may avoid/embrace technology, hack into the closed rooms
or play with string theory, your music echoing through the universe
as you weave your future with the blessings of the Fates, who are liars.
“remember…
black thread for the common man;
red thread for the hero;
gold thread for the king,” Dimitri and Greg both said.
You’ll know your teachers by their lack of rhetoric;
by the glint of mad delight in their eyes,
an Epicurean gesture, to be sure,
the only way to live with death as constant companion.
Gail Gray, grew up in Lowell, Mass but now lives in Greenville, SC, USA . She is the author of three books of poetry, The Hazard of Waking Up, Spirals in Copper, and Planetary Tension and two collections of shorts stories, Dark Voices and Memories and Monsters. She is the owner of Shadow Archer Press and the editor of Fissure a magazine of experimental art and writing. Her short stories have been published or will be published in Morpheus Tales, Pear Noir!, moonShine Review, The Howling, Exquisite Corpse, Cover of Darkness 2009 anthology, and The Foliate Oak. Her poetry has been published in The Asheville Poetry Review, Cokefish, Exquisite Corpse, Eviscerator Heaven, Being, Big Swollen Toe, Sisyphus, Zygote Abstract Libertine, Gloom Cupboard, Main Street Rag, and seinundwerden, and is upcoming in the anthology, America!.
