Ever is the full white eye keenly fixed below
I figure it never found its muse
Or can never get enough.
Perhaps it alone is concerned, in the end,
And searches still for spirited,
Audacious Icarus.
I eavesdrop often on the wide, arching palm fronds that rustle
And murmur to rooftops of red Spanish tile,
Which, overlapping, lay silently, working on their tans.
Further down
White diamonds glitter on the surface of the bay
Rippled by wind and wake
And as in a cosmic sea,
This school of stars dance and leap
Beside one another, weaving above the nebulous infinity below,
Winking up at their mother
Far above.
I came from Gasparina, Calabria,
Ov
Sunday afternoon
Is made for nothing in particular
For mint juleps,
For plows tucked away,
Sleeping in the barn
and tools
Hung up on the wall.
Today is made
For raucous youth
For laughing
and joking
Playing pranks
and singing.
Dancing.
Whenever inclination strikes.
And as the day dons its timeless robes
Of peaceful quietude
As the warm dirt road is daubed with shadows
Of fence-posts and trees
The heat and vigor of day concedes
The attention of an audience
Or none
To the whispering crickets and sighing grasses
Today is made for filtering
The consuming, tabulating nature of labor and industry
For closed eyes and drifting thoughts
For gi
No words
To speak
Or be heard.
My heart is drowning,
From holding its breath,
Such precious, precious breath,
Longer, and yet longer
Where there is no love
Sweet, sweet love.
Shared sentiment
Longer, and yet longer
With that hard and innocent
Mouth that gapes and gasps,
Searching,
With wild desperation,
From those bulging, flashing eyes
When the fish can jerk no more
Upon the hot and crumbling Earth.
Until it had grown,
Oh yes, poor, pure heart,
And stretched,
Distorted,
Bloated with the aching, biting pangs of loneliness
Only emptiness
Echoing against itself through arteries and veins
Like those starving, sponsorless children in Afric
I get up from my couch
From my writing
My wishing and waiting
Climbing up and up through my life
Up tangled trails
Leading nowhere
But lost time.
“The kitchen!” I hear, catching the echo from somewhere in my head
Long after it was said,
And like a ghost, I’m already there, without anyone knowing, almost, even, myself.
The carpet dares not venture to cover the linoleum; too many stories have been whispered lowly
By the kitchen light
And the toaster
Of why there is not any carpet there
Anymore.
It is quiet, except for the distant echo of the drip-dripping from the roof
Into a recently empty bucket,
Who has resumed compl
I Hate When People Get Old by Kitsune1987, literature
Literature
I Hate When People Get Old
I hate when people get old
And wear more expensive things
Fancy clothes that they hope will make up for what's underneath
Clothes that hang off them like so many treasured memories
That no longer match the outside.
Clothes that, in their newness, with vivid colors and smooth, crisp edges
Seem to complain, to resist and reject all the while,
As though to insist that this person no longer belongs.
When gold and jewels drip, and pull at the neck and ears, perched upon
Narrowed fingers and wrists, seem as if they could fall right through, on the word, waiting,
As if they could sense that they won't be there much longer, anyway.
How I wish that
Last night I dreamed
That I was home,
That I was leaving
For a place I didn't want to go
That I told you
I dreamed
We went to Brazil and Hawaii,
where I've always wanted to go
That the water at the beach there was turquoise and warm,
And that nobody was afraid of speedos.
As we whizzed by, I captured every moment
On video with my phone.
They never let me leave with anything but the memory,
Though I always try.
You told me that the ocean is dark
And deep,
Where the owls float at night.
I dreamed at last
That I was still home
That I got to say good-night to Mazie and Daisy
And gently ruffle their feathers
Once more
Before I had to leav
Challenge: You are about to experience the inevitable loss of your hands. You may choose one last gesture to make with them. What is your choice?
...
More vague: You may do one last thing with your hands before your sudden and inevitable loss. What do you choose?