cara the bruce

Coast No. Eight

 

The icy wave rushed, kicked his shins, hard enough he wondered about bruising. Wondered if it was possible to leave a mark on him, however impermanent, and watched as she shimmied sideways to avoid the chilly, punitive embrace around her ankles.

Her retreat matched the ocean’s; hasty, apologetic, saying sorry, sorry I didn’t mean to, I couldn’t help it.

He didn’t mind the cold. He liked the submersion. And he madly loved her.

This was their first night at the The Ruby, a beachside Victorian they found on a holiday letting site. After an enervating series of flights from Chicago and a bumpy, puttering car ride to Saltburn-by-the-Sea, the last thing she had wanted to do was take a walk along the promenade. But after sitting for so long his body’s restless muscles overtook her body’s close collapse and she reluctantly agreed to come along on the nighttime jaunt.

They had trekked down to the funicular railroad that ran during the day, transporting people down the sloping cliffs in refurbished tram cars for a mere 1 pound. As they passed it by and started down the winding path to the beach, he found himself saddened that the trams didn’t run at night. The idea of a sliding drop into the unknown thrilled him; the absence of a navigable horizon a giddy thing.

Just getting on to dusk, there were few people on the long expanse. Most of the surfers had packed up and left, a few other couples strolled here or there, but for the most part they were alone. The sun had begun its slow descent into the boundless depths, tipping the waves golden and fluid, a shoreward rushing army of sunlight brandished high in relentless advance.

As they walked he thought of her and of his love for her, nascent, a natural, easy thing. Funny, he couldn’t look at her and think of her at the same time. He couldn’t see her cheekbones and not urge to contour them with a hand, finger, his eyes, catch the spark of a glance and not see himself, see their future, without getting lost. So, to catch her in his thoughts he had to avert his eyes, cast them down and resist her pull.

Thus, he had drifted into the sea. The waves lapped at first, like their beginning; an advance, a retreat, coy and carefully measured but with a building promise. The first wave to crash him nearly toppled him, but after he braced firm he met the waves with anticipation and a revelatory joy that surprised him. He had never been much for the challenge, for confrontation. But it seemed natural to gird himself against this onslaught, to feel a pride in the girding, and a purpose. Only after he belatedly noticed her skirting away he glanced upon the old lady.

Sitting on a greyed wooden folding chair, she brushed small, careful strokes on the seascape easeled before her, capturing the dusk, crafting a moment both vibrant and still. Approaching 90, surely, she barely moved herself. Small, quick turns of the neck, checking the sea, catching its movement, traveling through her hand to the brush to the canvas, chronicling the rise and fall like a true believer of perpetual motion. Behind her was a small beach tent, close-quartered he was sure. Large enough for sleeping, small enough to pack quickly, to hold in the crook of an elbow.

He left the surf and drifted a bit closer, close enough to see the strokes, the glisten of new paint on the taut-stretched surface. Close enough to see the sunset glint her grey hair to an embering red, a soft color, malleable and deep. He felt his hand being taken, tugged, and reluctantly retreated to the path, the house, the room, the bed, sleep and dreams of tracks leading into a molten ocean.

The next day was spent visiting all the sites they were enthusiastically informed that they simply must visit. They sat inside the Victorian bandstand, empty of a band but temporary housing for a few twittering birds, meandered through the valley gardens and had a surprisingly sweet sponge cake at a tucked-away tea shop. Then an at-last trip down the funicular to the promenade, the length of which was yarn-bombed and studied in great detail, each figure, throwing exclamations and silly remarks to the brisky wind. It was a beautiful day, a bit sunny, and squinting he picked out a solitary unmoving figure. The Sea Lady, as he had begun to call her, was back again in the same spot, painting the same ocean. About to call out a hello, or hello there, or ahoy, he hadn’t yet decided, the announcement of the last ride up the cliffs sounded and he found himself being tugged along, up the railway, over the mounds of beach grass, into the gathering shadows, departing the outside world for one made of him and her, entwined, warming each other from the ocean’s salted breath.

Sitting at a table outside the local mash and pie shop indulging in a rare rabbit pie followed by sticky toffee pudding, he caught sight of the Sea Lady again, a dot on the meeting of water and sand, and asked the waiter if he knew who she was. He struggled with the dialect, still, after several days, thought it sounded like a crazy mash-up of Swedish and Canadian and Scottish with vowels elongated and clipped at the same time and consonants all but absent. But he got most of the story, he thought, perhaps at least the important bits.

The Sea Lady would come every summer, for a week only, and paint. Always and only paint. The small tent he had seen was apparently her shelter. She brought her own food, and her tiny fire could be seen throughout the night, for cooking, for company, for a beacon, her words, there, a beacon out to the endless night, waiting for a response. Same spot? Yes, the same each year. And no one asked her to leave, gave her any trouble? No. No, she was left unmolested, unhastened from her vigil.

Vigil? Oh. Oh, yes.

Her lover. Maybe husband, no one was quite sure, and didn’t very much want to ask. A pilot, RAF most like, training off the coast near Redcar, just North. She had been in London when he was lost at sea. A mock sortie, or some sort, and no wreckage, no body to find, mourn over, bury, slowly forget. When he went out to sea and never came back, she did the same. Every year since, she traces his current down, down seven towns on the coast, possible sites for his returning, searching, marking the changeable nature of the sea, his new lover, urging it to give him up to her at last.

He paid the check, fuddled with the bills; already not good at remembering pence versus pounds, he let the waiter take whatever he needed and tried to push past the onslaught of emotion that had overcome him. It would not do to weep over the remnants of his rabbit pie. His half-eaten pudding. Already she was looking at him, quizzical, a slight squint to her eyes that spoke of something more than a question, something just less than a judgement. So he let her take him to the dunes where, hid in the undulating marram grass, they made a reckless, hurried love. He was too removed from the moment to pay much attention and wondered as they lay if she had come with him. He usually noticed. He usually cared. But his thoughts kept drifting heavy beyond the horizon, and her weight on his arm seemed inconsequential in comparison.

An afternoon later, making plans on how to spend their last night at the resort town, they had missed hearing a band play in the bandstand and she wanted to dance with him under the stars, was insistent about it really, though they had never been a dancing couple and were not likely to become one. He wanted to go scavenging for fossils beachside, one of the prime attractors to booking this house, this seaside town, and truthfully, he wanted some time from her, from her tugging, from her sidelong looks when he was sidelined by other thoughts, from her increasingly relentless pull. A compromise, as usually happened. He would fossil dig now while she napped and got ready for star dancing, they would have a lovely last night that they could pass on in story to disinterested friends and too interested relatives, and then 14 hours of jets and lags and a slowquick devolution to their normal.

As he wound down the beach path, hopes of unearthing a half-buried remnant of history gave way to the darkening hints of half-buried truths. He tried to wish them away, tried to whistle a tune to distract himself, but he had never been a whistler, and was not likely to become one. After a few earnest but pitchy bars he gave way and let himself look.

There. A somewhat submerged remembering. Her, darting around his life, a constant wave of close and far, here and elsewhere that had always intrigued him, had netted his interest and found him buoyed along at her side, watching while she skittered away and back, again and again, close enough he could touch her and far enough that he was never sure she felt it. It was mad, this kind of love. But he had never angered with her. They never fought. Always, she cajoled, always he acquiesced, amused. Always. Tonight had shown a schism, a trench that once climbed, only showed the next breaker, and the next. And the somewhat submerged thing lifted a bit higher, took clearer form, shone brighter than was comfortable and stopped his feet from continuing down the beach, arrested his eyes from the sand, and brought him to awareness of the Sea Lady just ahead, a fire already built against the chilling night.

Every other time he had seen her she was a study in still motion. Always painting, always looking, always searching for her love within the sea. But now, tonight, her hand drooped to the sand, the brush clutched, her body resting against the woodback, her head crooked to the side.

No. No, he didn’t mean to start moving, didn’t intend to go, but suddenly he was there, by her side, between her and the sea, between yesterday and the next moment, crouching down, seeing her eyes first, mostly closed, a glisten from the setting sun, then her mouth, again, closed slightly, just large enough for a sigh to escape, just small enough to hold in the soul.

He stayed there, gazing, cracking, breaking, so full finally of edges that he reached out and took her hand. No to go. Not to make stay. Just a holding, here, a together that would shore him up against being swifted from one year to the next, his life that he saw lain out on the shore, a long, thin line of disappearing. He crooked his neck into his past, and it was as hazy as the darkening sky. He couldn’t pick himself out of the shadows, couldn’t find where he was before this moment.

The fire popped, and startled out of his rememberings he looked up, instinctively to the house, the place his future disappeared to, to her, and saw her standing outside the front door, a speck, sparkling, winking at him, bright then dark then bright and dark again, smaller than he was comfortable with, and his legs collapsed, sending him down into the sand, turning him away from her, from the undertow of her, turning him to the sea, holding him in the moment, keeping vigil now until the dawn, until the last day of waiting was done, and the next coast could be found, together, apart.

 

the body and the blade

 

there isn’t a beginning here.

not because i am stingy with my startings, or ashamed, or coy.

i simply can’t give you what i’ve never found.

perhaps that’s why it’s taken so many months to come here again.

but a story must start somewhere, so i’ll give you a counterfeit launch from this harbor, and hope you overlook a dock propped up by tenuous connections, and a sea that swells and circles back, carrying us not beyond the horizon, but taking that horizon with us, a forever dawning and perpetual setting until it doesn’t matter any longer that there is no destination in sight, that there never will be.

do you feel the brine crusting on your skin? does the wind pummel your lips? can you hear the faint susurrus of fear in the bowels of the ship, in the gut that won’t calm? can your sight pierce the lowering clouds?

do you see?

are you there?

alright.

let’s create the wake.

an apt analogy, though unplanned, the act of tearing open the ocean, the gape, the wound we leave behind.

you see, i am that body. i am that water. i carry the cuts of my many tumultuous crossings, my sides flayed, the wide unfurling behind me the only indication of my course. and when i grow swollen and angry, when i roil and rise and seek to sink the ship that cleaves me, when i pound upon the prow and batter myself over and over and over and over and over against this vengeful vessel, i forget that i am also that boat. i am that knife. i am the stern churning, the unforgiving blade that slices deep and keeps going.

i am the body. i am the blade.

i am self-inflicted.

indiscernible now, faint and faded and flush to the adjacent skin, there are no ridges to remind me of their once-weeping. no troughs to stall the fingers of a casual caress. the scars are kept only in my memory now, of nights, of knives, of first incisions, of being careful not to slice too deep, of parting the flesh, of parting from the pain as it slid itself away down my body, the only release i could control.

my hand. my choice.

is it better if i tell you it was self-defense? is it more understandable if i say it was the only way to survive the destruction other hands had wrought upon me? that i could somehow make sense of it only by becoming it?

do you feel the blood crusting on your skin? does the blade purple your flesh? can you taste the iron fear in the heaving of your stomach, in the scream that won’t be silenced? can your sight pierce the blanketing fog of shame?

do you see me?

are you with me there?

alright.

now cast if off.

because i have. i’ve been becalmed for many years.

i carve myself in words upon a page now. i slide the sharp joys into myself, as deep as i can, and revel in the marks they leave behind. i handle the hilt with the deft grace of one grown accustomed to such letting.

i open myself with the long edge of life, and welcome it all in.

i am self-mended.

and i’ve always just begun.

 

the barriers between all of me

 

it’s time for a confession.

i know, yes, i confess here all the time, it seems to be the purpose of this compendium, a sifting of my digital detritus that drifts through the aether to shimmer vaguely on your screen.

but this is serious. this is something hidden, something never said before.

i’m a hoarder.

not in the physical sense. i don’t have stacks of newspapers lining my wall, or every pair of shoes i’ve ever owned, or, i shudder even as i type this, closets filled with ceramic clowns.  having had to move a lot in my life, i’m in the habit of performing a yearly zen-down of all my stuffs, donating some, tossing others, clearing away the dross to see the gold better.

i hoard inspiration. mostly images. but words, as well. and music. and ideas, although those can be very tricky to corral.

i’ve got notebooks crammed with phrases, sentences, slant rhymes, interesting word combinations and quotes, and a shopping bag full of hasty scribblings on receipts, post-its, ripped off box-tops, anything that was handy when the words came.

my biggest collection, however, is pictures. allow me to illustrate.

leaving for work this morning, looking down at the walkway to make sure i don’t slip on any ice, i see leaves, the size of a finger, fine and thin and a peculiar grey color. i think huh, those look like feathers. i get to work, where i don’t actually work, but look up pictures of leaves, and i find an artist who cuts leaves into people’s silhouettes, so i look up silhouettes, and i find a some of seahorses, which leads me to tattoos, which leads me to everywhere. and all along the way, like breadcrumbs, i’m collecting. marveling at the veins of a leaf, and the veins of curiosity that i follow, never-ending, the attractions along the wayside always fascinating.

sometimes, i go back. i read the photos, i look at the phrases, i gaze at the bulging amalgam of ideas arrayed before me, and i try not to think.

because inspiration is a fragile thing. like the complex system of ourselves, there are things unexplainable, random interactions of different elements that produce, sometimes, a flash of certainty, of yes, this. of course, this. nothing can be truly created without it. in the absence of inspiration, things are simply made.

as i’ve been simply made.

when i think of myself, i see my parts very distinctly. i separate, somehow, how i look, what i do, the words that come out of my mouth as its own entity, apart from what goes on inside me, so much less concrete, a writhing mass of neuroses and brilliance and survival and joy.

i am a collector. i bring things in, and process them through my slightly deranged filter, and cycle the results back into the aether. i’m constantly inspired by small things, by bizarre things, by things no one else sees.

but it’s always passive. honestly, and i think, perhaps, we all feel this, i’m convinced that i have little to contribute. that my words will never be as interesting when said aloud as they do while echoing inside me, or that my ideas will shine less brightly if brought out into a scrutinizing light.

it is amazing to me, then, when i’m told that i’ve inspired someone else. and i’ve been hearing that a lot lately. truly, more than i’m comfortable with. all i can think is oh, no, please, that vein will lead you nowhere, there’s nothing to see there… but then i remember the strange places i’ve plucked ideas from myself, and i take it for the honor it is, and follow it, like bread crumbs, sustenance as i go further down the path.

a path that began with a few little pictures.

i’ve always loved photography. it was something i shared with my pops, so it’s precious to me, as there was little of that growing up. he built a darkroom in our basement, and showed me how to develop film, and we would drive around town, stopping here and there when something caught our eye. but i hated when pictures were taken of me. i wanted to be behind the lens. passive.

one night, several years ago, my head was screaming and my insides were sore, and i was full, too full, and i had no lines anymore, no barriers between all of me, and it’s not rational, not at all, but i felt the need to document that. to have proof of what i looked like at that moment, what a soul looks like as it’s poured out of the skin. i had to do it. it was a compulsion. there’s no other way to describe it.

i was terrified to look at them when it was done. so scared of what i’d see. who i’d see. but as i went through the shots, all i saw was beauty. somehow, i had become beautiful. and my mind quieted, and my insides ached a little less. i was struck by the clarity i saw in my eyes. and i thought here. yes, of course. here. the pain had cleared the dross away, and i saw, i think for the first time, myself.

ever since then, the urge will sometimes come upon me, and i’ll take the weekend, and self-document. it happens, yes, when i’m screaming again, but also when i’m singing inside. no matter, it always brings me balance.

these photoshoots have been, until recently, private. my own way to cope when the collection inside becomes too large, for good or ill. sometimes, i go back. i look at my face, i read my eyes, and remind myself, again, of who i am.

yes, i am a collection of words and images. but i take in many things from the people who surround me as well. and i was inspired, by a certain, sweet tiffany reisz, to share my photos. i made a gift of my self. i spoke the words of my self. i shined the ideas of my self.

i’ve gotten braver with my shoots. and i’ve since shared them with others. because i’m realizing that i’m part of the complex system of life. a participant. one of the random elements that, when colliding with others, can produce a glorious flash that brings us all just a little closer.

so, now, a next step. sharing these photos with you. i asked the recipient to choose a theme. they gave me black and red. now i give you me.

my inspiration was rita hayworth.

i hope you enjoy what i’ve created.

 

 

 

the lip of a life

 

i’ve had cave bears on my mind lately. 

ah. let me go back a bit.

it all began with netflix. i’ve a few hundred items in my queue, yes, i am an addict, the worst kind, a junkie aesthete, though a full third of them are tv shows, which means anywhere from 6 to 60 episodes, which means it’s more like several thousand items. i justify this, partially, because another full third are documentaries. any kind of subject is welcome. the history of the helvetica font. the portrayal of native americans in cinema. the death of the electric car. educational, right? health food for the mind. i feast on a diet of learning.

one of my rules, yes, i have them, sporadic as they are, is that for every 3 or 4 movies or tv episodes watched, a documentary must follow. my latest selection was about the chauvet cave in france, newly discovered, that has yielded the earliest known cave paintings of upper paleolithic man, dated to approximately 32,000 BC. put into context, the artists were familiar with flint tools, and would most likely know how to play a flute. they used ovens to fire clay figures. roughly 10,000 years later, neaderthals would become extinct. another 10,000 years would see the first evidence of warfare. add a further 10,000 years, and the bronze age is smelted into being. a final thousand(ish) years brings us to the iron age, and the subsequent rise of the roman empire.

nestled above a picturesque gorge near the pont d’arc in southern france. the cave was formed by an infiltration of water, the entire area submerged for millions of years. vast chambers, some 400 meters in total, are populated now only by bones. ibex. wolf. cave bear. including a solitary skull placed conspicuously on the lip of a rock believed to be an altar. there are charcoal remnants from torches, and the soft, clay-like floor retains many animal tracks. and, they think, the impression of a child’s foot. one of the most unique features is the presence of handprints scattered throughout. walls filled with a pressing of deep red palms onto scraped-away rock, detailed enough to see the crooked finger of the artist, pointing back, almost at himself, as if saying here, this is who i am. i did this. here i make my mark.

nearly as fascinating as the cave are the scientists and archeologists engaged in its study. their passion, their knowledge of the subject, their deep need to know more, always more, some of them leaving behind old lives to take this journey into the dark recesses, a landslide having sealed off the entrance more than 20,000 years ago, preserving the interior in a near-pristine condition. the wonders they get to explore. think of it. all that knowledge, hibernating. tucked away, waiting for the right explorers to come along and open it up to the world again.

so, now the stage is set. or rather, the cave.

while watching the documentary a couple of weeks ago, i saw someone i knew. thought i knew. of course, it wasn’t him, but the resemblance was uncanny. unsettling. here, on the screen, was a man i had tried to forget.

put into context, he was familiar to me from the first moment. he fine-tuned me, pulled a fire out of me… and then put it out. he extinguished me. and since then i’ve been at war with his shadow, as i find myself formed into this strange shape, pounded, hammered, folded upon myself, rising only to be brought down.

it’s been years. and sometimes there are whole weeks, a month here or there even, when i manage to have a past that doesn’t include him. but the glimpse of a particular shade or maroon, or the smell of sawdust, or the vague way he would say “vague” and i’ve got his breath at my back again, and i’m helpless before the memories that awaken, never dead, never gone, simply hibernating. tucked away. waiting for the right triggers to open me up to him again.

he was the first man i fell in love with. opened myself to. fully. did i see that he would destroy me? yes. i saw. i didn’t care. i think i wanted him to, in some way. did i know that it wasn’t me he wanted, but a girl long lost to him? yes. i knew. i didn’t care. i wanted to be her, in every way.

but i never counted on my inability to stop loving him.

i didn’t see that one.

after it was all over, once he had finished pressing me with deep red palms, marking me as his mistake, signing his name to the scraped-away mess he had made, at the end of myself, i still loved him.

as he slowly faded from me, that faded as well. a lightening of his particular bruise until one day, i could look at the skin of myself and not see him upon me anymore.

but these minutes, these months, these millennia since, that is the reconciliation i’ve never been able to make. that i loved him despite the wounds. that i loved him.

and when he was suddenly in front of me again, his face, his eyes, i went under. submerged, fighting for breath, i thrashed about, grasping for that solitary thing that could push me beyond the debris. i swam through the bones of my past, searching, searching.

then last night, a light, showing me something i learned long ago, something i thought i had lost in the landslide.

it is never wrong to love.

never.

will there be pain? maybe. probably. will there be joy? hopefully. that’s the most anyone can ask of love. that it brings you hope. but hope is a very powerful illuminator. and when placed upon the lip of a life, hope makes sense of the vast caverns around you. inside you.

think of it. the wonders you get to explore. all that love, showing you yourself.

last night, love showed me forgiveness.

not for him. for me.

i was not wrong to love him.

this reconciliation finally made, i leave the remnants behind, and leave my own prints on the yielding floor of my past, pointing to myself, saying here, this is who i am. i am more. always more.

 

a strange and breathless opening

 

there is a series of strands, seeming random, anything but, that connects all art. a fine web that weaves the word to the note, the note to the color and the form and the movement. when viewed singly, these threads are insubstantial, snapped and easily stranded without context. floating. unanchored. but in stepping back, in widening the vision, broadening the scope, adding them altogether, there is an undeniable cohesion. the picture, in gaining complexity, becomes clearer. we are informed by each interstice and every nexus, and we are guided along the paths of creation, seeing how necessary one is to the next, how obvious the progression, how full the final composition. this is art. this is also me. and you.

this is us.

we are necessary to each other. not only in our connections, but also in the spaces between. our negative spaces rest alongside our midtones, and our highlights seem that much brighter in the panoply of surrounding hues. viewed from inside, the darkness can seem overwhelming. viewed singly, the void can overtake. but in reaching out, in encompassing those around you, adding their colors to your own, the saturation deepens, adds richness almost palpable in form.

i finally understood this concept after reading helen de witt’s “the last samurai.” a staggering novel of connections lost and sought, de witt uses her immense mastery of language to explore themes of separateness and the necessity of reaching beyond the surface of a thing to gain true understanding, true fusion. it finally coalesced, something that i had always obliquely felt: that a message is not restricted to the medium in which it’s conveyed. a musical note can be azure. a painting can whisper “hope.” and a word can be written in a minor key.

our lives are played out between fortissimo and caesura, with those around us adding their own lines until an orchestral movement is reached that swells, that ebbs, and that never ends.

i’ve run along the threads of art all my life. i’ve made sense of the web within by exploring the webs without, nimbly sliding from dance to writing to singing to design, investing myself in all my creations, letting what comes out of me feed my understanding of what goes on inside me. it’s always all been part of the same thing. i see little difference between crafting a sculpture or sculpting a sentence. but only rarely have i been able to combine them.

several years ago, i had roommates, brothers, who were musicians. they had a studio in our basement, and would often be recording themselves or our friends. i would sit and listen, glad to be around such raw creation. sometimes i’d be asked for input, sometimes i’d sing backing vocals. one night, when all of us were most likely inebriated, the idea of recording one of my poems came up. one of the brothers, vince, and i, collaborated on the project and ended up with a spoken-song. i’m not really sure how to define it. but it was one of the scariest, most wonderful things i’ve ever done with a piece of my art, a piece of me.

the poem, “the last pasture of the paziks,” is also about connections lost and sought. i won’t explain it to you. i’m not sure that i could. but it speaks of russian nomads, and vince wanted to tell the story musically in this theme. so there is tibetan throat singing. and a breathless walk through snow. and sleigh bells. and loons. it’s a strange creation. but it’s as it should be, i think. because it came from a strange creation.

i’ve shared many things here, with you. not everything, certainly. i’m as protective of my soul as the high steppes are of the nomad’s bones. but slowly i’m opening. and the support, and love, oh the love, that i’ve found by opening has been revelatory. in turn, i feel compelled to reveal.

so, here, a spoken-song. and the poem it came from. if you listen closely, you’ll hear my breath. and if you listen even closer, you’ll hear me inside it. i am azure, and i whisper “hope,” and i am written, inexplicably, but as it should be, i think, in the minor key.

 

(click on the bar below to hear the song.)

vince burnard: the loop, vocals. peter dewitt: vocals. cara: words, breath. from "the magnificent bastards" self-titled album, recorded and produced by daku mata studios.

 

The Last Pasture

 

the last pasture of the paziks

it is said of this land
that it was the Pazik's final stop
the Nomad's last resting place
that their souls reside here
above the high Russian Steppes

and on that deep winter evening
as we lay on top of the snow
we talked of their hidden land beneath us
and their spirits watching us from above
everything was sacred
every word its own separate song
i kissed my own lips with your name
i gave you all my white-armed love
and every time you turned your wet body to mine
i could not say no
shaking from cold and your beauty
i thought that this would be a good night to die

and when i asked you for your love
when i asked you to promise and swear yourself away
it was not in you to say yes
you pointed to the sky and i saw my winter Orion
and as you explained that the Hero
would be gone before spring
i looked over at you and saw my winter of ruin
reflected plainly on your face
accusing me of wanting too much
i saw your eyes closing to me
and i knew that your heart was closing as well
that the Hero would outlast the man

you left me in this field
and here i have stayed
dancing with my midnight shadow
squeezing all the blackberries until they died
and biting the budding leaves from the trees

tonight i lay in this garden and dream of you
with my legs wide open and my eyes shut down
can't you hear how my springtime is calling you?
i know you must hear my cries, but you do not come
throwing stones at god to pass the time
all i can hear are his cross-talking angels
all i can think is that this would be a good night to die