obasan.

"Unless the stone bursts with telling, unless the seed flowers with speech, there is in my life no living word. The sound I hear is only sound. White sound. Words, when they fall, are pock marks on the earth. They are hailstones seeking an underground stream. If I could follow the stream down and down to the hidden voice, would I come at last to the freeing word? I ask the night sky but the silence is steadfast. There is no reply."

- Joy Kogawa

100th post

A is for the apple in a bowl of oranges

L is for lucky charms marshmallow thief

I is for the most important person in the world ever

S is for short...

O is for an octopus whose sixth and seventh legs are obsolete

N is for... nobody beats alison

new skies.

well if these new skies come down like the last
i will shield my eyes like the past
and look at the ground again

instead of my mouth, i'm gonna use my pen
drop a couple thoughts that won't come again
not soon and not forever

sputnik.

"An intense love, a veritable tornado sweeping across the plains-- flattening everything in its path, tossing things up in the air, ripping them to shreds, crushing them to bits. The tornado's intensity doesn't abate for a second as it blasts across the ocean, laying waste to Angkor Wat, incinerating an Indian jungle, tigers and all, transforming itself into a Persian desert sandstorm, burying an exotic fortress city under a sea of sand. In short, a love of truly monumental proportions."

from Murakami's Sputnik Sweetheart

leaving.

when time runs thin, we will come back here again.
the questions that we leave behind, they remain unanswered.
we'll pick them up again.

my cave holds warmth, my cave holds hope,
my bed stays firm, it is strong, so it can hold me,
through all of this.

if we don't feel the same, i won't be surprised.
remember me in various spots, with various words in my mouth.
when we return, we will do it all again.

book.

the ocean creased between your brows,
you looked through me to the window pane. drops,
of the selfishness we embody
rise and fall in your chest.
and i see how you are like me.

borrowing from me my lifts, my gentle daily riffs,
you made me travel to retrieve my book.
having read it with your preconceived hate,
your hair danced while your head shook.
and i felt the wind we ate.

the road.

Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its beginning. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery.

From Cormac McCarthy's 'The Road'