Palm Dawn 3
Art by Zen Oleary
Does it matter that tomorrow is Friday the 13th? Do such superstitions have any tentacles boring into reality? No, course not, we say, yet at the back of mind there whispers a sibilant "what if"? Memory chips from long ago coded deep in our DNA beep ominously in our heads. So I sit and wait for the day and the storm and the possibilities that ghost dance on the mind screen. |
It feels like a mini-rebirth as if I'd held my head underwater for days or retreated to former lives as a sea creature or the mindlessness of kelp fronds or some small critter hunkered down in the saw palmetto breath slowed & wet & waiting for a memory of the sun. Like any newly hatched creature I'm tired, blinking with slitted eyes, a bit ragged edged, gulping newly discovered air that is cool & damp & I'm blinded by touch and light & the sounds of breath & birdsong & these words that tumble into my life like errant butterflies molting messages that speak of images and lines and love. |
Waited in line an hour for gas & they're giving out ice at the high school if you can get there. The tanker truck rolled into the station & the crowd camped out waiting gave a cheer as if they were in church & the truck were a miracle in blinding heat & their belief had borne fruit. We've each dug our foxholes, spaces in the day's fabric, their only requirement walking distance. Citgo & Subway are the new names of our community center, help line & place to call from on a neighbor's cell. We're like bugs who've crawled up the wrong plant, one whose leaves we don't eat & we're flipping our antennae looking for the way down. Normalcy stands on its head as we grunt with the frogs on torn lily pads. |
i. words are not lean enough to sweat the smell of fear ii. mind flattens like a pancake or the scentless skin of a snake shed on a dirt path iii. skies breathe great long exhales violet hued & green twisting iv. thoughts plough ahead of the moment watering terror seeds in the back of mind v. when it ends your life is your skin turned inside out vi. dark skies and winds bent palm trees tossed jets like marbles |
Palm in Hurricane
Art by Zen Oleary
vii. people are pebbles caught in white water storm rapids viii. a jagged gash cracks the surface events & places un-sync ix. this is the story of centuries we thought we were immune x. the pictures of the world we've had in our minds sprout toxic mold xi. strangers' voices now intimate as lovers xii. we each recoil in our own way spent shell casings lined up on shelves as if in a museum display |
I walk around looking for different angles to take photos of rubble & sheared off trees. I feel like a falcon hunting images as prey. Enough, it's time to turn the channel but there isn't one to change. Humvees at the airport, soldiers with M16's, hot meals handed out from truck cabs along with water and bandages, a widow on the news husband dead two months her house gone & she in her 80's overwhelmed. This is a different kind of war, a random hit without malice, just the doings of the planet, wind currents & ocean, and we're in its path like insects under mower blades. |
How does a bird weather the great storms hunkered down under branches or nestled beneath leaves his small body pounded by rain that slams even us with drops that punch and sting with winds that skid airplanes across hangars and peel roofs. How in the screaming dark when trees bend and heave branches like leaves while limbs crack and debris skitters across the land how does a small feathered bird survive and come out with the sun the next morning to feast on grubs in newly exposed bark and hunt as if the world had always looked like this all landmarks erased and nests blown away and sing all is well, all is well. |
i. another monster storm churns the sea we've forgotten the magic words we never knew to keep it away ii. a frog lawyers the morning croaking demands & definitions iii. we are all flashes of light in a momentary wind iv. thunder runs sound-prints thru the afternoon rain dances your name v. memories fill the hour like the taste of honey lazy & rich vi. when you demand I resist & turn transparent too slippery to hold vii. I'm flattened by the day's debris by things undone unsaid charged with the lightning of desires viii. you appear whole a separate being yet your breath tracks mine & our souls' DNA is a match ix. have I told you it's your face that's imprinted in my words you're the light my moth-ness seeks x. troubles find us demolition derbies explosions & dirty bombs yet our souls are unmarked xi. I cannot tell you I love you without saying I love all xii. when we were children we used knives & swapped our blood now we tell stories around the campfire & share laughter they're the same thing |
i. this writing ~ like the rabbit hidden in grass who hears the fox circling ii. frogs argue fiercely with voices that punch holes in the morning silence iii. we build small bridges over chasms of uncertainty iv. things looks the same but the flavors have hollowed out v. like any animal I have found a burrow now to drag in a few leaves to ride out the storm vi. how simple fleeing makes things life condensed to an overnight bag vii. all my stuff like crumbs left from a feast or silent songs viii. if everything goes will I be reborn like a hermit crab hunting a new shell making love to the moon thru the holes in the roof ix. I feel like a turnip in a soup before the fire's lit x. I want to hear your voice to brand it in memory xi. the sky is a riot of colors & clouds a child's drawing gone mad |
Your Hands A Storm
Art by Zen Oleary
xii. how we cling to what we think we have & do not own |
I look around greedily trying to memorize what is here not things but the songs that run through & beneath them the curves of lemongrass & jars of air-dried herbs the citrus heavy with soon to ripen fruit paintings whose brushstrokes I still remember making & sheaves of poems in a heavy loose-leaf & books by favorite poets all this that sings of home & creates the music that's the background of the day like lush soil gives richness to a garden and I think of all the others I've read about past & present who've had to flee homes and I feel like one ant in a long procession winding back and out of the canvas of time and place, a procession whose sound is the steady shuffle of feet & a blinding silence. |
i. yesterday I walked slowly sipped the flavors of the garden and earth then mindfully let it all go let it fall away ii. this morning like waking up after the flu spent but clear & clean iii. now planning to take photographs of the storm back in the stillness of the moment iv. words from friends the light shining thru butterfly wings v. people fleeing ~ long snaking lines on the interstate dependent on gas in short supply vi. millions heaving in one breath we are brothers for the length of a storm |
Plaza Storm
Art by Zen Oleary
vii. the frogs croaking at the door blissfully unaware of tomorrow viii. virtual lifelines snipped by winds your words will vanish flowers cut from their stems waiting for power to be restored ix. this moment is all there is how true when like the story you see tigers above & tigers below x. in the old pirate tales one walked the plank the wood creaks under my feet xi. if I can't see you part of me will starve and I will have to imagine you xii. it is not going forth or putting on armor now that preparations are done ~ it is more a resting into the moment & inhaling |
i. I sit like a bug caught in a hurricane's web ii. nowhere to turn or twist I wait for its hot breath & maniacal screaming voice iii. people circle the hotel lobby like cows in a field aimless & on the move indulging in the appearance of purpose iv. ducks chug bread thrown from balconies preen their feathers on the lawn it's a good day in duckdom v. a sense of menace in the air like ancient unnamed gods awakened |
Downpour in First Light
Art by Zen Oleary
vi. when we step from this haven will there be homes to return to vii. movies on the TV speak to a reality whose language we have forgotten viii. we skate on the surface of the moment trying to leap crevasses of anticipation ix. wind and rain are the new currencies of the day x. waiting becomes the now stretched out with the rasping screech of chalk on a board xi. the day leaves teethmarks in the mind xii. morning & sunshine feel like shipwrecked sailors' dreams of land. |
The ducks ate dabbled in the lake tails up and bobbing feathers blown high like quilled chimneys or they wobbled onto land webbed feet squishing lawn mud & fat grubs fleeing from drowning. The ducks ate a marathon musical of smacking beaks & contented grunts nothing unusual their bodies said just a shake now & then dog fashion & a nip at a neighbor's tail feathers. The ducks ate or slept like fat stones littering the grass oblivious to all our fears predictions & preparations that's how the ducks did it. |
Is disaster the new ordinary as it has been for millennia & is now in much of the world? When the snug nests of our illusions are blown away those images of ourselves which exist only in our minds fracture & bend with the twisted branches of this now that spurns our definitions that is lived in nanoseconds of awareness & moments bracketed by the limits of vision & the reach of hands in a holding on in this staggering community of the dazed and bewildered who make do & celebrate a kitten found under the shards of what was once a house or cook soup in a communal pot on a camp stove & call it hurricane stew. If disaster is the new ordinary we need to change the stations in our minds & find new songs. |
Hurricane Ivan, Woodcut
Art by Zen Oleary
waiting a sense of being unfinished a projection a ghost making from the mind yet it is there real captured on satellite swallowing this day that has barely begun threatening the ecstasies of dragonflies drunk on larvae swelling in new rain ponds yet waiting for coffee for love for light for a hurricane named Ivan |
I'm hungry after the storms with a gnawing that wants to devour the day or inhale your eyes or sip the clear wings of dragonflies I want to get lost in the light spilling from leaves or swim in the heat shimmers on pond water framed with ibis wings I could eat trees or swallow beetles and rub my skin raw with the perfume of light or swallow birdsong in heaving gulps with this hunger that erupts from the bones which no words can feed |