Tharraleos

Sand

Her skin was the color of sand
And I tried my best to hold her
Against the bold blue sky of my veins,
Tried my best to count every grain of her,
To catch her in the top half of my hourglass
Where I etched the word “forever”
Without knowing what it means.
She told me
How the sun used to rise out of her hips,
Up her ribs and shoulder blades,
But never resting
I was a crescent moon;
A side-winding snake
I left sonnets
In the sand
While trying to count the clouds
I kissed all I could of her,
The neck and lips and chest of her
I was searching for the sun
I only found the earth.
When my hourglass ran out
I was counting the lines in my palms
Stretched out like a mile-wide canyon
She held her skin against the my sky
She held the hands of me so gently
It was the first time I noticed
She was breathing
I counted her lungs
I etched “remember” in to my hourglass
Ashes to ashes;
Dust to dust.
By the time we fell asleep
The sun was already rising .

I had that dream again last night
The one where you recognize me a moment late
Where you are sitting in a chair too big for you
You are blonder than the sand on Lake Michigan shore
Bluer than Willie Dixon Chicago
Electric like guitars
Holy as Muddy Waters
And I ask why you only ever have sad faces
You say ‘cause I only ever say sad things
And I wake up in a room
Too big to be without you 

04.30

I was born
In the year of the tambourine
My father called me cannonball
My mother called me mockingbird
But the gods named me after their fingertips
So I built ladders to the clouds
Collected shakers from rattlesnakes
Met a girl who fluttered like a xylophone
The color red compassed her wrist
The seashells in her hands
I hung as wind chimes on the sun
My father was born in the year of the metronome
He held the gods to their promises
He left his eyes up on the mountain
Where he wrote in the sand
About how to keep time
When the sun stands still
And the gods with their trembling hands that held me
Until I was born
In the year of the tambourine 

04.29

Spiral Side-step
Hurricane brain

I wore a cheap suit I stole from the dime store march
Fastened up with safety pins my mama lent me
I paid her back in photographs
Of flowers in jars in the sun in the window
She held the pictures to her face,
Imagining the smell

I wore a cheap suit to an atomic promenade
Funny to think we’re all atomic
Funny to think we all sang the same song
I believed there must be a correlation
Between joy and people dancing
I only got sweaty
I only got tired

My mama said to stop the burning
I must hold my hands to the fire
To draw the fire from me
This burning inside
All my life
I’ve held my hands to everything

I wore a cheap suit to an atomic promenade
I met a girl named Nina
I said I only know the Spiral Side-step
She said I had a hurricane brain
Funny to think we were both atomic
Funny to think I could think at all
We danced all night
I held my hands to her hands
It took me eight more days to realize
I was no longer burning