I did not hire the day laborer inside whose bones I ride.
Here is motion, here is time, here is the spinning world.
Here is the trowel, mortar, and metronome hand industrious.
Here is the moon, the hidden language, the valuable burl.
Here is my compulsion to sing, and my throat empty as a new vase.
Here is the afflicted tree holding one jewel and a thousand birds.
Merged, the swordsman and the healer, missionary from God.
Ice and ivy grown on my tongue break the bricks with words.
I am a scorched bird born of lightning, hatched from geode silence.
I am more beautiful than any river. I am cloaked in thorns and tar.
One day, laborer and wall will dissolve intestate
and I will rise, concubine of the quarter moon, magna voce avatar.
_______
So many great lines. "Here is the afflicted tree holding one jewel and a thousand birds" is my favourite, but I could have quoted them all.
ReplyDeleteI don't know where to begin. Because "here" has exploded. Because it is a nova.
ReplyDeleteWhenever I think you've maybe written your best poem since the last time you wrote your best poem, you take it up yet another notch like this.
ReplyDeleteYou are sporting word mastery!
ReplyDeleteAs you know I read this yesterday and was pretty much speechless. As qbit says, each new poem seems to raise the bar lately, reach somewhere higher when it hardly seems possible anything higher could exist. I don't think I've ever read a more flawless first stanza. In many ways this strikes me as a culmination, a transcendence that is luminous, of many other poems you've written on this sense of duality, a self that is captive, always bound by something, a day-laborer living in the bones of that other being which seems both magical and mystical, a bird who's never been allowed to fly, made valuable as much by its flaws as its gifts. The brevity here is rich and defining, as if words must be carefully chosen and then released in small batches of verbal arrows, permeated with a meaning that is elusive yet insistent. Anyway, I could go on forever about how good this is, and quote back line after line, but I think my favorite phrase is : "...Here is motion, here is time, here is the spinning world..." not because it is the most dramatic or beautiful, but because it is such a perfect foundation for the entire piece. Superlative writing, Shay.
ReplyDeleteNothing I say can truly give the justice and compliments this poem deserves! I feel the same way Qbit and Joy mentioned, every next poem of yours I read makes me think this is it (it doesn't get any better than this!!!) Then you do it again!!!!! Find new heights and amaze me again! I love every line and as usual your tags are Shaytastic! You made me create a word!!!! Shaytastic!
ReplyDeleteOhhhhh...I feel as if I'm reading the true meaning of a tarot card here. The Queen of Cups maybe or The Moon. Lovely, Shay.
ReplyDelete