Friday, October 31, 2008

streaming semi-consciousness

The branches outside my window sit still for the first time in days, mocking with their contentment outside the tempest rising within. I ache with emotional exhaustion and a persistent crink in my neck. The darkness folds its curtains around me while I stare away my soul into a screen. I feel like fleeing through my window and across the masquerading mountains over cornfields and wide rivers to where winter has already come. I want to hide in a valley between overpowering rocks ascending towards heaven and the lake whose end can't be seen from the shore. I want to feel the sky unencumbered by the earthly trees that presently prevent my view. I want to feel the cold that apologizes for being so by jeweling my whole self and surroundings with crystals and creates a quiet security as it muffles the sounds of the world. 

I want to see stars. 

A moon who hasn't been replaced by stadium lights or crowded out by buildings. 

I want to see the splendor of the sun in it's descent, not just feel the gradual extinguishing of it's light. I want to see it pastel the clouds and set fire to the water, to see it retire to deep blue instead of abdicating, exiled by the dark. 

What I wouldn't give to see a cloud! What I wouldn't give to see it parade phantasmagorically across an azure stage so nonchalantly, so unassuming, passing it's silhouette over the unfortunate mortal. Oh if I could just lie on grass with the earth working for and supporting rather than working against me. If only the ground would calm itself long enough to let me lie on my back, for I cannot yet stand on my feet. I want to earth to hold me while I observe the heavens, not hurt me. 

Hide me while I wait for the apocalypse, won't you? If you can't bear me before heaven, at least bear me a little before hell. Sink me deep into your soil in one swift swallow. Plant me where the roots of trees may plant themselves, wrapping great fibers around my arms and legs, piercing through my side. If you keep me, I will keep you. Until together we will be burned in the great purging of our impurities by flagellanting blaze. 

If you will not keep me, I will wander until someone does. Here a stone or brook or borough, until somewhere will hide me forever. 

If, of course, that sky is beyond me. Those stars and moon and sun. Or else I am confusing darkness, outside the once-sought sky. In the end I see that somewhere I have breached the contract between the sky, the earth, and me.