Tag: life

The Pathos of An Attic

~ SW Altair ~ 3 Comments

I rarely go up there anymore.
Too many shards and tatters
jutted out, like an obtusely ill-grown tooth
scraping the membrane
of my tender memories.

Those days were young
like an unbroken promise, we sat up there
together in a great chair that could fit two,
with a book of fables that never rung true.
Our kisses went on under July’s sunlight,
against all possible endings
and the moon.
Quiet ripples of endless summer nights,
and her dress was drenched in sweet wine.
She was made of ringlets of laughters,
made of the scent of an apple orchard.
She was made of all good things
that slipped through my fingers.

I rarely go up there anymore.
Why would I?
To sit in that empty chair,
and gather pots of dirty daffodils?
To read those moth-eaten letters,
and utter sentences with no arrival?
To be scolded by that cranky old piano
desperately missing her touch?
Or to be drowned yet again in the immense silence,
still more immense without her?

All day I rummage through the other parts of the house –
the den’s nose, the kitchen’s fingertips,
the bedroom’s tear ducks.
All day I rummage through my body
for a sad corner, for a cigarette,
for a blue dream without her presence,
until the attic is as far as she is to me,
a distant nebulous star.

At nightfall, I sit upon the broken staircase,
palms dusty, sorrows over.
The wind quickens to a new horizon.
I see myself forgotten.

I love her still among those shredded things.
But I rarely go up there anymore.

 

Originally published in Visual Verse, Vol 02 – Chapter 12

How To Cross A Bridge

~ SW Altair ~ 2 Comments

At four thirty I stand at the end of the bridge
watching my daughter descend
from the yellow school bus.

We begin our journey home
as the sun leans wearily to the west.
Her schoolbag is painted with funny daisies.
Inside there are many unanswered questions.

It takes three hundred and four steps to cross this bridge
to our white stucco house with a wooden swing.
She likes to go higher and higher, my fatherless daughter.
My own father left me on a cloudy day in the winter.

I often ask my daughter to count her own steps home,
but she rather skips and hops and says hello to the ducks.
I think about whether her eyes will grow
into a deeper blue like her father, as I often think about
these small and inconsequential matters.
Was it calla lilies that I carried
on my wedding day
or did I lay them down
on my husband’s grave?

As my daughter begins to run, her shadow
tearing away from mine, my terrified limbs
give birth to a butterfly. One hundred and twenty-one steps,
or is it one hundred and twenty-five?
God please help me go back to zero before all my sadness began.

I want to know what makes my little girl come back
to hold my hands as if they are her own gloves.
I want to remember the way she looks at me,
like how she would look at a dying deer,
with eyes like two blue stars
from the vast universe shouting to me,
mommy, mommy, don’t be afraid.

 

Originally published in Mouse Tales Press in September 2016.

Seasons

~ SW Altair ~ 3 Comments

By the end of summer,
my breath hangs in mid-air,
pale, slow, and full of watermelon seeds.
Days grow impatient, hurrying into deep valleys
of dead fireflies, damp and iridescent.
I grow cold and silent.

Autumn gains momentum. Everyday
somber bells toll for the march of wheat stalks
in the golden field of over-ripened hunger.
The pregnant pumpkin, greatly confused,
gives birth to a shivering life
vague in meaning.
Things return to order –
plums dead, birds nameless, fingers callous and lovers over.
Yet the scent of wet lavenders
from faraway corners
stirs up curious whispers. But oh,
don’t be silly, summer is over. Listen-
here come the violent gallops of
winter, invincible as god’s plan.
Its weighty hooves punch through the ashes of man,
through the leaves of a dead autumn, through
the cries of a grey lone wolf, through grooves of sorrows,
until nothing falls to the hands we raise up.

I, of withered spirit and hardened veins, retreat into
my vanished self, gathering silence
upon more silence, to my unanswered questions:
why do sprouts turn to flowers,
then back to weeds;
why do children grow tall and brave,
then bald and afraid.
Why do we cling to what life can not give back?
This infinite circle, and this disillusion
of death and nothingness,
like two star-crossed songbirds,
shall forever lament upon our sordid graves.

When the seeds of the past take root, spring
from earth a quick sensation – vicissitudes of seasons
kick open the fat belly of discontent, palpitating
with springtime urges.
It pleases me so much to see
the colors of hydrangeas descend from the sky,
as I sit here by my open window,
unwinding the yarns of a melancholy mind.
There is a young child in my garden
petting an old dog of a nameless collar,
rosebud cheeks against a wind-beaten tail.
How my heart begins to flutter,
breaking loose in that original spasm,
as I see fireflies
spring up from the child’s fingers.

 

Originally published on October 4th, 2015 on my old blog.

Fifth Piece

~ SW Altair ~ 2 Comments

Let us love for a while, for a year or two,
you and me, among these cold things,
and winter dreams, under the bright stars
and rhodoras, until life’s full froth
swallows us in gurgling disillusions.
And from time to time I shall
fall to sudden melancholia.
To think that I no longer have you.

Fall’s Kingdom

~ SW Altair ~ 3 Comments

On the first day of your claim,
a newborn raises his fist to the faraway trumpets
sounded for the triumphant return of October.

A league of white doves, oracles from the east,
adorn your royal robe with rain-soaked wreaths.
Before the trembling days and the darkened horses,
there are rivers, bright stars, and you

of pulpy lips and fecund breasts,
from which milk of nacre flows,
and fattened squash tumble down
into the palms of our arid endurance.

Your hair is golden as the maple leaves;
your breath is the scent of an apple orchard;
your earlobes, sweet
as the ripened grapes hanging from heaven’s vines,
have been kissed and kissed
by the doting peasants.

On your brow rests the throne of a butterfly,
dignified and full of sunlight.
Those beating wings reign over your vision.
We shall never despair.
We shall never die for want of another lilac
for as long as your courage perseveres.
The hapless take refuge under your sleeves;
the unworthy flee like indignant black moths.
Only one remains. Only one remains.
He is the great oak beneath the harvest moon.
As he bows to your grace, acorns fall to their deaths,
a season’s offering, a tribute to your life.

Your Kingdom.

 

Originally published on September 20th, 2015 on my old blog. 

The Tavern

~ SW Altair ~ 1 Comment

At the edge of an atlas,
by the border of desert cactus,
stands the lonely tavern.
An unhinged door, moth-eaten lanterns,
and chock-full of dirty feathers.

The sky is a piece of dry cloth.

You move through a generation
of peanut shells.
Abandoned cocoons
fossilized in amber lamplights,
childless, unmoving.

The tavern’s usual patrons
travel from one end to another
in the hourglass’ desert, sifting
through god’s thinning fingers
between each dissipating hour.

The barkeep settles your tab,
five full tankards for five full lies.
There is no salvation for the dried-up souls,
only rum and gin and
an apple

for the the drunken crow.
With a pair of blotched wings,
it flies to the fevered moon, pale-faced,
bearing a glass coffin,

clear as vodka.

 

originally published on September 14th, 2015 on my old blog. 

Departure

~ SW Altair ~ 6 Comments

Remember when we were young,
we used to run wild in the fields,
easy footsteps caressing
the wrinkled brows of ancient hills.
We were dancing fairies
that made the whole forest sing.
The days were unhurried
and evenly pink.

Then one day you began
talking about a life elsewhere, a place
without metaphorical flowers or bread,
where you could sweat and tread
in your new sails and moccasins. You left me
half-hearted kisses
and bouquets of teary tulips.
Yellow petals fell, as soon as you were gone,
headlong into the ground. Those hopeless little faces
buried themselves in earth,
like obstinate ostriches, hiding
from unstoppable truths, capable
of neither running away
nor being saved.

At sunrise, trees bent down to lend shadows
to creatures who were fearful of their own.
In this world I marched alone
with a book of vacated love
and an undulating heart
that overturned ships
with each turning page.

Only with bruised lips and confessions could I remain constant.
I rid my body of metaphors you detested – romantic notions that
turned rivers into music,
and withering roses into unrequited love –
so that one day you could return
and kiss my hardened, concrete flesh.

Only with hollow bones and desolate passions could I remain constant
among this foliage of absences and
you and I and solitary stars.
At sundown, the world is devoured by her own shadow, whole
and complete.

Years later, I lay under the twilight of fading memories.
Children run across the wrinkled brows of my ancient breasts. My soul
is a bottle of dried laments.
Through half-opened eyes, I see you standing at the very beginning,
a hand in mine, brown eyes, a surge of delight.
Have you come back to say goodbye, my beloved?
This voyage, already so long, expanding into this incessant night,
is about to come to an end as I
gracefully close my eyes.

 

originally published on September 5, 2015 on my old blog

Second Piece

~ SW Altair ~ 2 Comments

I have nothing to give you, my love,
but a jar of my melted laments.
Be still, it’s too hot to touch.
Shapeless sorrows as such
will burn harder than you remember.
Put it up on the shelf, my love,
it will be there forever.
Let’s smile and drink wine today and
let’s not destroy
that remaining sensibility
of the pointed finger.