Living the Dream

An eagle arches against sky
to scribe another truth
where man and god can decipher it

dipping in white ink of clouds
and sundown’s slinking dark shadows
to brush a Universe with truths

a yellow horizon makes sad panting
noises of hollow promises
seeping into a sad earth
laying against the birth of new babies
like a plague, a pathetic pledge
that we have not read
what was written anywhere

not in skies, stone, clay
not on paper, not in poetry,
not in parables or psalms

not with blind hands
running over raised dots,
not even the touch of skin
made poems pointless

such wide calligraphy
has written it all
such closed eyes and closed hearts
forgot to be wary

only now, as he etches
over a dropping sun
do we wish for indelible quills

Tags: Poems by Shewolf
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From just outside their view, I watch four twilights.

She; in her slip-stitched sweater, hands knotted
into the frayed edges of sleeves.  Rocking, rocking
on a two-seater patio swing,
holding his outstretched hand on her boney breast
like a dead baby
that took her dreams with it.

He; leaning oddly and at opposite angles to her,
making a pyramid of the space between them
as if to pull them together for warmth
of another evening, another quiet cuddle,
another few moments before the light
swallows the heavy knit jacket that droops
open to the night’s cool promise to come.

Light; blue on their lips as it pulls its covers
over the earth and goes for a twelve-hour sleep
from which we know it will rise.  The swing
looses it pendulum pace as the bright eyes
of pinned spirits watch their quiet quest
to hold on to this fading faith.

Season; sending some animals
to dark caves to sleep until they wake…if they wake…
but not before they take in  a final slow sight,
over the rim of their burrow’s bend,
of a simmering blackness that hovers
like a dreaded drift of a closing door.

Four twilights, swinging only one way,
waiting for an invisible force
to draw them up again.
 

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I believe in you;
There in the street with rags for shoes,
here in the corner of the park,
Listerine bottle and bread bag begging
notice that you still survive;

Oh, Louis, you keep me on my knees
knowing you need more than I can give.

I believe in you;
Sister, with hood pulled down
over dark eyes, a fake diamond
in the flare of your nose,
the ‘stink’ attitude you ward me off with.

Oh, daughter, I am dropped dead with longing
that your story was different than mine…than mine.

I believe in you;
Grandfather, wispy whiskered chin
gathering its own snowdrift
on your walk to the soup kitchen.

Oh Grandfather, I pray you a different hunt
and a fuller table for you to go out on.

I believe in the real ones; those who do not hide
the shards of pain, their need to feel,
their emptiness that the rest of us fill
with wafers on wine-wetted tongues,
with rings and Botox, with hundred dollar dinners.

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Sputtering across a night sky, a wish
was sent flinging into another orbit that is not mine.
I saw and heard nothing,
but felt the crash in my heart.

A bee fiddled with a piece of pollen
and I was struck dumb
that yellowed sweetness could make him hum
an octave higher than I could hear.

A butterfly, crash-landed on the windshield
and I heard a silent bone-cracking say
that love had died in a chaos of creamed colors.

You never actually said, “Goodbye,”
You simply walked across the snow-sifted landing
strip and mouthed something
from the small window of a two-seater plane.

Tags: Beloved Be, Poems by Shewolf
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How easily I slipped into wishes traces,
bend my back to it, started when whips unfurled
made a pyramid but on poor foundations’ places
so that it sifted and shifted in the real winds of the real world.

The bass music of men’s voices, “Push, Pull,”
commanded me row in even rhythm to their own.
Round and round in circles, arms dull
with aching need to finally reach a home.

I recited to myself, the fairytales of old.
waiting to be kissed awake, captured by hair,
for dragons to be dealt a blow, by a knight so bold
as to know my reality from my vacant stare.

No brothers to un-indenture me, no sisters to strip
my Cinderella fantasies that slaves could be set free
no mother to draw a needle to that fatal rip
nor godmother to make the most of me.

Once all the chains were dropped, from soul and heart;
once I knew I held freedom’s key,
only then could I, from lone landscape depart,
to work at allowing love to simply find me Free.

Tags: Beloved Be, Poems by Shewolf
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