Snap! We’re All the Same
The grey shooting pyramid’s point stands prominent against brilliant blue as tourists aim cameras by the transaction of Broadway and Columbus with the Condor on the corner and the flying books with fallen words in front of the blue jazz mural bricks above. Andes Cosmos pan pipes float from beyond city lights. Here journals leather bound and images on street wall hold great possibility in alley cat scent as beat poet, deep set wrinkle line face folds and creases with gentleness. Water puddles from street cleaning, reflects anger from a man who sits and spits his life in monologue to the audience of a thousand ghosts inside himself by the entrance of City Lights. All we need is love. Where is his? Does science rule over everything else? No. There are things unknown invisible which float and heal, which touch and moves us. One needs to want this though. No judgment. Is it in genes? So many men sleep on streets, dirty beards with eyes glazed ~ the crazy eye glaze of lost soul. Peer through these windows for a second chill, the mysterious draw, the unknown knowing that something isn’t right here, the window to a room of rewind, of ghastly sorrow, of brokenness, of no return, of door slam shut, no way home, ghoul shock, moment of horror, frozen in time, for nothing to be the same again. Schizophrenia becomes company, walking hand in hand with constant static sound. No rest. No happiness. No forgiveness. Crazy sits on the corner of the street, angry as music and art appears around him and grows, dancing in circles and waves. The water puddles evaporate with the morning sun, the interval between songs is still, void now of shout streams of insanity as the sun slowly swings around Vusuvio’s.
Mister Chris Jeffries arrives walking down the alley behind green shades and an accordion with two friends carrying guitars like desperados. Gypsy jazz unravels itself, with crowds stopping, clicking photos, swaying smiling, notes flutter down to open empty case with nods of thanks and singing smiles. A fusion of music and art brings attention from wine sipping lovers sitting by the window above in the bar looking down.
Unknowingly, I hear a thought and say pardon to a woman with a long brown curly mane.
“I did not say a word. I am from Spain. This is my last day. I had to come down. I was upstairs with my boyfriend.” She points up; my eyes follow to a man, his head cradled in his hand, his face obscured by the reflection of the glass, z’s float through the open window. I look away. “I had to come down. I am a dancer.”
Later, she requests Spanish music. I see her dancing in the street.
“This is my kind of music.” She says, shaking her mane.
Later still, she strums a guitar sitting on the floor. Musicians share music, attention and time, juggling, smoking, dancing and talking. A celebration of strengths rejoices in the alley. Before she leaves, she appears before me and directs enchantment into my ear. The surprise of her holding my hands and the look in her eyes stirs emotion within. Tears form in my throat, I swallow them done. She leaves.
A guarded Parisian’s walls melt through stomp flamenco dance groove spin boogie, impromptu sing jamming and days spent outside together. The bashful, delicate flutter blink of her eyes meets mine through spins and laughter. There is space between for trust to grow as subtle attraction stems. In these times, communication is seldom with words, instead another plain, where indescribable notions appear invisible, a magic Cosmo roll around, children know without knowing, it lies in the innocence of all of this as we move through neutrinos, listening without ears, absorbing sensations, discovering new language. She is gentle and timid like a deer, with one stumble or loud rustle, she would dart away.
As the sun sets and the street lights cast fuzzy yellow glows over the alley, I bid farewell to the remaining sweet souls of the travelling photoman’s show. The Parisian deer will leave in the night for home. We embrace. On parting, the world again slows, like in those magic moments, which surprises us by appearing in the smallest words, actions, gestures, which poof appear and swoosh are gone forever; time stretches to the plain of what is. Something holds our bodies close, the connection unbroken, now face to face, in this sweet embrace of space, the air whispers with no words, gently it cradles us for centuries, we remain in the harmony we create, peacefully. I draw away, the connection parts, seconds tick like thunder as my mind kicks back in, dashing like it slept in for work to reconfigure, to catagorise something it can never fathom. The street becomes loud with chitter chatter and the moment has passed, collected in an ethereal scrapbook of wow.
The next day, a distant land phones.
“What have you been up to? Nothing. Loafing.” Asked and answered in half a breath by a man who I still hanker after for some connection, for some affection, for some acceptance, forever chasing an elusive thread which would connect. I agree with him, tired of justifying my existence.
Here I realize that unless witnessed, unless times are shared and experienced together by past reruns with new faces and different places or shock start right now understanding or from future endeavours then others will not know, will never grasp what it is, that all could be seen as wasted, that all could be gathered and held as priceless. That we ultimately stand alone in the company of those who have forgotten and are playfully nudged wink reminded by those who still remember.
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The Woman and the Wind
We dance and for a second she forgets and feels free.
I see the beauty that is in her breathe
before a rooted thought of wrong doing enters and she kneels down,
blindly searching for the chain to shackle herself back into the cage.
For she loves the ones who created the walls
and she hasn’t the strength to break those down,
not when it means destroying all she knows.
I watch her sit there and hum so sweetly,
changing tears to a tune,
distracting herself with so many other things
which fills her time and her space,
but there’s no stopping the racing of a heart,
it’s a magic science, a crazy chemistry,
which bolts thunder claps from the brain to the belly,
that moves the body quicker than lightning and the mind blinded,
cannot keep up with the heart of the body.
Flash!
Her body moves with another of the same form,
like an ocean with the shore, over and over,
it soothes as it moves.
The light is followed with a BANG!
The cell door clatters open and slams shut with a bewildered wind,
as she remembers that all she feels is not allowed
and retreats out of a cherished love for those who fail to understand.
The wind does not strike her; it is not angry, but gentle and warm.
It cradles her when she’s sad and lifts her high when she’s feeling blue,
it does not control her with fear, but with comfort and love.
It tickles her and makes her smile,
all the time misunderstanding the black shape which moves on the floor.
The wind wishes to blow it away, it uses bigger and bigger puffs,
and afterwards is left exhausted.
The black mark is unfathomable to the wind.
”It’s still there, that dirty black mark which follows you around.
Why can’t you leave her be?” It howls.
And she cries out with a muted voice,
which echoes the temples of distant lands.
“It is a part of me!”
The wind howls again, anguished and sad,
blowing the words spoken away,
unable to hear them through distortion of pain.
It picks itself up for another gust and another,
“Why won’t it leave? The place will look so much cleaner
without that black mark which keeps following you around.”
It blows unrelenting,
like a house proud mother wiping at a stubborn wooden table top stain,
unknowing that it is a knot, a natural pattern of the wood.
“Please, let it be. It is a part of me.” whispers the wood and the woman.
The wind slowly stops dancing and becomes heavy,
which sinks her radiant smile and twinkling star eyes to black holes.
I see the blindness of the wind, blowing at the black mark,
with more gust and enthusiasm at seeing improvement and progress,
as the mark moves away by the power the wind possesses, or so it thinks,
only it does not realize, that it is her beloved that it blows into a ball,
over and over, tied in knots, until she cannot breathe.
The wind does not see the position she is in.
It does not see the vases knocked over and smashed to smithereens,
like salt bubbles that explode from her eyes
when she loses control and snivel sniff cries,
“I don’t want to be so sensitive to this,
but it scares me so much to be cold and unaffected by it all.
When I think of homophobia,
I think of bullies spitting comments in a crowd or on a street,
of hate crimes and terrible things like these.
I never in my wildest dreams thought it could be like this.”
Flowers lay unnoticed on the broken glass ground,
trodden on by all those others who don’t look down.
(and jeez, there are many, too many for there to be more)
Hold up ~
For all the guns in the world, that ends a life with less than a thought,
could we not shoot each other a smile from time to time and try,
just try to get along, it is after all only love.
The rest doesn’t really matter,
it is only love that connects us all, that gets us through~
Thank you, now back to the poem…
As the wind blows unrelenting at her shadow,
wishing for it to not be there,
she stands up strong and bold through the blinding, deafening gale.
She does not move an inch by the gust, her hair wild like flames licking up to heaven,
she says, “My shadow exists because I have found light,
for it to disappear I shall live in darkness,
and like the bird set free from its cage,
it cannot return, once it knows what it has learnt.”
The thing which she needs now more than ever, is not shelter from the wind,
but for the wind to blow down the walls it has created over time,
and hold her in acceptance,
for no one knows more than the wind,
how wonderful and important it is to be free from all these things.
