textimagepoem: 8/5/07

tom taylor - what at first made sense

What at first made sense gradually became clear, for it was no mistake at all but a silence from the heavens which got my attention alerted toward the elephant in the punchbowl of life itself no match for what had preceded me into the arena by leaps and bounding lines described as if it mattered. It was love’s anchor caught in my throat like an onomatopoeic bit of phlegm, maybe the wrong word stuck there mid-speech. Love’s due. ‘I’m not heanded’ he cried into the dark surrounding him in the village of life. A cool spin from Jack’s knife upon the floor at more central concerns than thought first from its description almost let go.
He called her back. Tattooed along the ridgeline from truck to hourglass in the window like a flame retardant spoke and wheel were thrown a piece of clay in the hands of the potter’s wheel and chain smoking one after the next in line to speak softly in the moving days ahead were let into light by the chimes beside them, barely moving at all. Would you were here this morning to stroke my bow and chasm not filled but allayed by the champions at dusk no mysteries are revealed here and now but claimed by those who most simply let them be taken from the field next to the house. Nostalgia in the field of husks. A monster entity let loose in the depths of one’s being there in the first place but not entitled for release, not quite yet.
He’d been there and done that. All along the highway signs left out in the rain would not master the situation but allowed it to recur silently across the lobby floor to meet again in the airport under the sign of the times, ten, eleven, once again chiming forward glues in this aspect of life to becalm morning’s hard-on once again the hour in the glass. But held and firm. A distant memory in the scheme and pleasure’s wrap on something flimsy and diaphanous corrected instantly by the machine into its proper rasp and counter. Another clipper in the moon, doused instantly from self acceptance driven along the hilltops and river valleys among the pheasants at their tiny plows.
Still you drove the ancient highways at the curving rabbits spun away at night into the music from the radio which only made their suicidal march onto the highway more bizarre than not. Love’s anchor in this pool of strife would mark you out from the herd no more than any other mystery you’d never understood in the first place becoming more obscure as the days rushed by into each other’s arms clasped for comfort and identity. I wooed you down the days and marked another chink in the walls of the house the logs filled with an oily rope which grew darker with each smoky night they’d reminded themselves of the tiny lines around her eyes were now filled with tears as she read this.
Thence and plenty, a hopeful resin called the surfboard leaning up against the shed was not his, nor hers either. A silent teen marched the floor with his arms upraised against the storm brewing at the outer reaches of the empire wore no clothes yet maintained an appearance of civility even with unfinished sentences falling on the ground, a war criminal in no disguise but the face he wore for everyone to recognize at the slightest whisper of scrutiny as metaphors mixed into puns and reasons to call the diphthong an example of itself.
We paused against the wooden shelf in the hallway which contained my ashes for another life not unintended but made into what it was by love’s anchor in the sand marking the days and nights as if you’d made the time our own again and again, heeling into the sand like a moss or schooner at the dock making its way into safe harbor from voyages long and clear, prepositions aligned in the moonlight according to size and width in the games of life and death we all attribute to some other cause than our own wits.

tom taylor - dead man demonflag

tom taylor - dead man demonflag
Originally uploaded by jim leftwich

tom taylor - chthonic

‘…the chthonic /comes up through the soles of the feet / blows up out the top of the head…like we had some kind of choice in some of this….’ Rant of dour poise, the joyous precluded in its history by a nameless head of steaming noise at the beginning of the day’s remonstrations you might recall them all along the quay at the climate of morning in the small fishing village by the shores of the Mediterranean. We’d not been there before nor did we speak their language. It was all nod and blink and arm and hand signaling to get anything anywhere at all. But that was its comfort and its challenge, more to survive the need for food and water than to correct the tempo of the ages, far beyond our intent or desire. Soon the ship would come to carry us south into less safe regions, to teach the stragglers dependents and the ambitious on the huge air base known to have carried too much too long to too many for not enough of anything….
Now the largesse was declared in excess of time’s flowing matrix in the image and patronage of the ocean itself, another mirror for the mind’s recreation of big bang sentimentality, expanding universes aparted from the maze of the heart’s discoveries. We’d taken the time off from life to explore something outside the realm of chance terms laid as they were on top of more immediate memories. The wide, paved oceanfront sidewalks drew upon the shops the chai houses the winding streets of the village at the foot of a cliff of volcanic rock where the road above had been carved by hand a long time before us, an imaginary landscape set in the midst of small, brightly painted boats skiffs and scows which drew out from their own distances into the deep blue waters which let into the sea beyond. An away-station from the heart’s disturbances long ago in an empty landscape surrounded by our own fields of dream and scheme.
Now, here, the hours recall nothing. The sand dragon ekes up through your shoes and eats your soul in its’ way out of your head into the cool air which surrounds you. Maybe not today. The glue which holds it all together, the joy connectives themselves have all but disappeared from common life, although occasionally in the shopping malls and parking lots of the day around us, some accuracy descends to open the door and let you see through and into the totality of what has only before been imagined or sought. Here is the tempo of modernity, allayed into some kind of willingness by the seeker and the quest, both allowed their pressure by the sheer force of flight and repose, by the hours and days of motion on the face of the planet’s increasing weight, moving slower now, finally coming to rest in an otherwise empty field, itself a memory of what had preceded.
The roaming eye declares a point of focus and destination. Color marks the distinctions from each other as objects melt into a landscape which is unfamiliar yet bears some accuracy from its singularity, a shock, a reminder, an allowance for the time served and for the observations of all the links and passageways along the cobbled stones in the village itself. The busses come and go from the center square by the ancient fountain where the girls come each evening carrying now brightly colored plastic jugs to ferry the water home, walking past the boys in their best clothes who linger at the edges of the fountain’s space, dressed as they are in their best clothing, showing their best manners. The reminiscence of this benign dignity follows me along the signs of decay and wilderness which surround me now – everything unfinished and constantly beginning again from wherever it was before now. Now is what there is. Now is the lesson itself. As if we’d made an answer out of this particular moment, as if we’d had some kind of choice… this is the hollow tree at the edge of the plain where the bees keep their own largesse and penitent calm in the hours of sunrise and sunset…this is the open day.