Join the wind

Sound of heater
casting gently,
stealing
momentary, low gravity
head hanging
before dirty keyboard
wishing, feeling
i was young

glance
right
sudden tugging
desire to transcend
mass that i am
to pull apart
yes, to come apart,
to be blown away
to
again
join the wind.

Feral

Toying,
i was an atom bomb,
i was an explosion one thousand meters
above the earth
a wild one
there beside a small fissure
in time
a fissure, man,
can’t you see
can’t you nibble
can’t you take me there
toying

feral i am
flipping through empty pages
killing rhyme
to burn back
a backlash of
borrowed crime
feral aren’t we
the wild ones
killing so freely

i’d give two cents
to be that boy again
doing wheelies
down the street.

19C

The 737 ripped in half. Or into thirds or fourths, I can't be sure. Regardless, it came apart at aisle 17, just two rows in front of mine. And now I'm falling.

The cold air whips at my body. I'm freezing, though I feel a certain warmth, a wet something, coming from my left ear. Must have been the explosion. I can no longer hear - I can only feel the living wind whooshing past me. I try desperately to pull my arms into my chest, to keep them from flailing about. I continue to fall.

Other passengers, faces terribly distorted, soar past me, plummet to the earth some 18,000 feet below. I try unsuccessfully to close my eyes. I start to spin, pitching downward, still attached to a bit of undestroyed plane, buckled in tight. Passengers, once beside me - gone forever. I see nothingness before me, a beautiful blue emptiness enveloping me, and a dimming sun against clouds that beckon to embrace me.

I'm going to black out. I'm going to be sick. It's so cold. I need out of this seat. Can I fight the centrifugal force to release the safety belt? I try. I fail. I try again. I fail again. Then, success. I'm free.

Everything begins to move in slow motion. I carefully push off, away from 19C, and watch it slip away into the void below. I'm falling, completely alone now, unrestrained. For a moment, I'm at a loss for action. Then, gradually turning into the rising wind, into the earth that holds the horizon at bay, I spread my arms like some majestic bird and dive.

My life does not flash before my eyes as if in some kind of made-for-television movie. I have no final memories of loved ones. No reminiscences of times past. No recollections of anything I have been or have ever done. Everything I am, everything that defined me, the good, the bad, everything, all of it leaves me, falls away from me like some baggage that only now I realize has held me captive for so long.

I am no longer Joh... I am not my name. Names, words, words that rarely ever succeeded, they fail me again. But this time it’s somehow different - language disintegrates, and along with it the necessity to be understood. My thoughts are finally free to simply exist unencumbered by any need for meaningful exposition. They have survived the linguistic storm, and thus reveal themselves for what they have always been - pure truth, pure reaction to sensation – unnamed, undefined, unjudged.

Time comes and goes. My body hovers ever closer to what must surely be the end. My clothing tears at my flesh. I rip off my shirt, then my pants, desperately trying to disengage from them. Finally, I am as I was upon my arrival. I am flesh and I am blood. No more, no less. I smile.

For a brief, beautiful moment, I am once again human.

Stay

These things,
they float into my periphery
the faces, the places,
the everyday mundane
and added together
can weigh less than
a cement feather,
and mean so much less
than the bleating wail of a white cat
before the storm of apocalypse

yet we are prisoners here
sheltered not by land
but by a vast open expanse that
seeks it’s own end
through the drive-in stare
of a dead-end nightmare

so i have to…
i have to never know
that the faces and the places
are not cold
if i am to ever stay here
if i am to ever
grow old.

Stint

Twisting into an empty wind
my mind
a helicopter
hovers
floats
as dusk
settles in

then

a scattering of particles,
slowly grows
marks my steady approach
as vacant thoughts release
fear
and a voice through
a drifting fog
announces
"all clear"

now

grounded
i am drowning
in time spent alone
waxing poetic,
forever recounting
a less energetic stint,
or a period of cool evenings
some years ago,
when i learned how to kiss you,
when i learned i could miss you
and in the end i found...
i can miss you
even as i kiss you

"it's time to go."

Among my static

A few notes gently falling
describe another place
where you dwell
in dreams
a million miles away

sliding, slipping,
never content,
never staying,
not in one place,
not for too long,
and never satisfied,
nor ever worried
that this reality can't give you
what you want

and it’s me you remind me of,
a reluctant breeze that caressed your ear
on a fractured, swollen day
as you fumbled, frowning,
for your keys
in a harried sort of way

but i see now
my wind is no match
for the wall of sound that
breaks forth from your lips,
full and round,
and the way that i’ve found
to make the ground
seem a bit more stable,
a kind of cement table,
among my static
where our waves are not
water bound

but distance is a demon
a burden you support
convenient enough
at times
to keep us apart
but i don’t want to play
anymore

i want you to experience
being alone.