Kidjo 2

dance and sing
the clouds move in
a tree stands
still the wind seeks
redemption song trills
a bird a sky
in the seeking eye
to be yourself
and that is enough

How I Filled The Emptiness

There was never a brother
or a sister, any sound that
reached me.  The minutes
were a parade of events
marching to someone else’s
drum.  Oh, I learned the
drumbeat, it slithered out
of someone else’s past,
their memories, their
dreams.  This is my vision
against  yours.  Do you
remember what it was
like to escape?  Do you
remember the thrill
which has turned into
a recrimination when
I experience your feelings?

Tomorrow

Life is a time line.
Don’t ever think it’s
anything else.  Don’t
imagine in rainbows,
or arrivals.  Don’t
construct lasting
structures.  Don’t
expect.  The world
is a bag of experiences.
Don’t imagine.  One
minute turns into
the next.  Each breath
is a step, each event
a footnote.  Don’t
ever think.  Time is
quicksand and your
footsteps span
lily pads crossing
imagination.

The Library

was never that one place,
with its plate of events, the door,
the street, those sounds leaking
from each house in a row
and autumn dancing leaves,
street lights at seven, rain,
Frau Von Halsting sitting by
her window, listening to
footsteps which have been there
for five hundred years.

My library was the ocean,
that space between one place
and the next, touching down
on the fifth planet of a class F
star where everything is strange;
building, learning, adjusting,
forever remaining slightly displaced.

Travel

and history.  So much
to experience from a ship,
from a bus, or on foot.
We reach into the essence
of emotion, of time, extract
fragments of the story.
How footsteps between
are steeped in thought,
caramelized and consumed
by tomorrow.  I imagine
ancient thoroughfares bustling
with the brine of business,
people appearing, then gone,
marble weeping.  There is always
a fear of twilight.  I imagine
wind, rain, lightening and rivulets
returning to...I imagine the darkest
crevice in Emphasis occupied
by your eyes.

Google Earth

It looks like spring
when the Google vehicle
spied through our
neighbourhood.  The trees
and bushes are sullen
stick figures.  The
mountain ash still thrive
in the side  yard, not
victims of the ash parasite.
The car in the driveway
has yet to be destroyed
by a runaway Freightliner
truck.  My mother
has survived her
cancer surgery and is
ranting and raving against
the world’s expectations.

We were photographed
at a moment when....

Everything is different
today, the reality which
is presented no more than
a fleeting memory.  In
the scheme of things,
no more than a game
of always late
catch-up by history.

The Argument

There is no truth,
there are two shores.
The first meanders along
the lines of
imagination.  The other
follows the script
laid down by experience.

They are both a map to
this amalgam of
the reality which exists.

You go first, tell me
what the world is,
what the world does,
how it interacts with
who you are.

I’ll refute each statement.
I’ll rebuild each situation,
until the vector to arrival
equals where I am.

And you still won’t be wrong.