A Sparrow Who Ate the Universe

From Chapter 1: The Waiting Rings of Time Waiting in my memory Its gentle waves are calling me For I was cut from eroding shore To oceans edge for evermore Never a sight had crossed my eyes So vast a nexus, land and sky and sea. Transfixed so there I stood In briny sand and drifting wood While still, each visage yet untamed, Each weathered bough, not one the same. To touch them all, I sought to soothe With salted kisses, lay them smooth There among the writhing forms I walked barefoot and weather worn While each piece begged my presence stay, Another hurried me on my way What could quench this thirsting gaze, Lo, is all for destination’s sake? I beg for but a moment longer, with all these twisting paths to ponder I too am driftwood on the beach A wilting flower within your reach One day You’ll have me by Your side and unbury my waiting rings of time. Chapter 2: Written The Beloved enters like a mist When in stillness Lays a kiss Disarms my words eludes my eyes All empty pages the ink run dry Hours gaze from a clock sans face, free from the hands of time and space Pulsing chamber of light that of a lantern of a wayfaring messenger, who says, "I am not writer, I am written." Chapter 3: I Polish Mirrors My story is the collision of what I say with what you hear or something careless That I’m here for Just a sentence Poorly wrapped A bow untied Unzipped Unstacked All fallen rose petals Under-watered wilted pages Roots of wounded Periphrasis Antlers shed Their velvet read With some words flown from lips and bone so much is left … unsaid Forensics show my story s-stumbled Witnesses heard three shots fired My story bleeds channels Along sidewalk seams It seems my time’s expired That I was right handed makes my writing average marginalized a ricochet of plans gone awry Life stays two paces ahead of mine Still this story missed its stop Back to the pages of your story again when do I drop my polishing cloth where does this sentence end? Chapter 4 Glowering Junkies A glowering beat junkie shuffles frayed hems over avenue I, propped up and preened, through the door he trips, to find a pew All this, I watch with a dour view Down in a beanery where souls are served coffee with a shot consciousness, who nibble on curated cakes of turd Awaiting liberation from these surroundings It's a cacophony of diatribe, cackles, Disenfranchised, dim-witted opining. Counting, quarter time of a song I’d sing to myself if this woman before me would just stop talking over the music in my headphones; she's talking to me from a bag of bones “You resemble my brother at Microsoft.” I asked, “well, is that good?” And then she asks if I too work at Microsoft - I detach one earplug, and imagine spitting at her feet, replying, "I can't imagine why I would." Crazy. We, those, who dare to thrive like dew clung to a thin thread of spider silk; and how we slide down, in a moment, a little more when the breeze of our prey, quivers the chord My deeper thoughts ride out on the tip of a swordfish dipped in fine finned fears; from the undercurrents of this vicious tide, to throttle the banshee that screams with eyes filled with crystal tears, that fall into my coffee mug and sweeten the slake of our bitter drug. Chapter 5 Even in the Shadows The world is in a soft descent As henchmen bend away from dawn toward their cowardly silhouettes. With the pull of a trigger or slice by the blade The stage of tragedy is set Upon their chests the black stone laid. Three new stars appear in the darkening sky Above the scattered flames of the sun Nefarious actors take no rest But even in shadows, lights work is never done. I see 3 everywhere, and 21, 40 missing, and 141, and thousands upon thousands As many stars as sweet souls there are From each death, another candle lit By a cold black murderers match struck, then dropped, to Jahannam sent, their cloaks of death, expended, rent. Innocent victims as gems amassed From bright varied palettes and colors, cast by dying breath, lifts a shroud, shifts the night by radiant cloud Until that black flag, itself, is blotted out. Chapter 6: Excerpt from "The Altar Of Happiness Built On The Ruins Of Sorrow "... I mused an eon of my life one evening, on the purpose of existence and on what leaves me with the most certainty, those being both birth and death; as well as that which gives me the least certainty - the life that spans between them. For, in my quest to understand the world, I am continually preempted by my own thought of what, in the meantime, I am to do in it. We unfurl parchments of love, and mark red inked routes conjured through charts and maps by wayfaring spirits in their navigation of uncertainty; with its pendulous swells and troughs, and writhing storms toward the curved horizon of placidity. Upon our ecstasy or agony, whichever compels us to reach to the heavens for answers, from the black firmament, rains down the white light of stars. Besotted with beauty, we invent our own answers – swinging angrily at the words, despairing, disillusioned or disinterested. It is not what we hear, but that we listen – “purpose” is the captain of our ship. The journey is long, and the captain seeks only the safe passage of moments in the timeless sea of uncertainty. The meaning of our lives is unveiled through the examination of purpose in others'...the mirror of meaning. Each soul ticks away a different moment within the same illusion of time; yet each and every moment harmonizes to the melody of time's passage. I became deluded by my own idea that happiness is an infrequent preoccupation of life, a proverbial “comma” to a long-winded torporous sentence; a quick paradise of dust kicked up by God stepping gingerly through a parched desert. I thought how a moment of happiness seems to pass so quickly and yet, how our disappointments seem to echo on and on through deep valleys of consciousness..."