Fresh To Death

Houses for God

flaneur-:

i want to build houses for God
guild and assemble
thoughts, 
inquiries,
and dialogues
construct temples to nurture beauty
and truth and creativity
in the minds of people
young, old
and every age in between, everywhere.
i want to build structures. houses,
theaters, amphitheaters, music halls,
fortresses, brightly lit up coliseums, and grand palaces
of elaborate design.
not to polarize
or to separate
not to barricade
or to cage
not to put up
any more walls
in this world. 

but spaces
strong, freeing, and 
wide open
spaces
to reform
remake
and boldly
remodel.

Grace this is beautiful. Love your poetry and expression.  I decided to record me reading this as a thanks for your friendship and kind encouragement in my writing along the way.  Stay tuned for the recording. Hope to hang out in DC again soon. Grace and peace :)

…and when I awoke, it was with a sudden shudder of expectation and whimsy,

Her presence is drawing near.

Night fades morning,

And daylight away.

Headlights buzz brighter,

As you draw here.

A breath…a dream,

That’s filled all these restless nights

For once, for finally,

Fulfilled in your breathless sight.

-M. Case

Closer

The magpie comes and all I can think is beauty, beauty, though you said it is a junk bird, though its commonness makes most ignore it: the blue bands vibrant against the oil black, the white chest and belly, the glistening eye and its feet like rotted arteries branching off into snow: this is how thin they are in the world, this is how wretched and delicate. And the ugly gurgle at the back of its throat, how it is always laughing like a broken kettle, and yet there it is still: beauty, beauty and I am charmed by what the bird cannot help but do with its long sweep of tail, its startling accusations of color: not like the twelve drab quail I’ve seen parading the street early evening, dust-streaked adolescents drunk from feasting on the neighbor’s berries. They are so fat and stupid these birds, I cannot love them for the little comma of feather bobbing on their heads. I cannot love them for the way they insist on running as a means of first escape until, at last, in one great muffled clap they rise, and the sound of their winging is a dull thunder, a thousand bed sheets pulled from the line and shaken together. Then I can love them, as I love the garden with its pockets of stone, forgetting the warning others would give of starting what must be abandoned too soon or too late, as we are ourselves too soon or too late: the problem of beauty being how it must be always distant, observable, taken apart. As if preference were all that marked us: pale ridgelines of grasses darkening out into blades of blood— It would be easier, always, to imagine how unlike we are than see how we have put our own needs in the other’s mouth. Watch with me. I am the one who ignores the magpie, garden, the commonness of a world that can’t keep its favors secret. I am the one abandoning the vision that preens outside this window, calling itself beauty, beauty as if I must name it, as if I must name you and me opposed or part of it: we are ourselves, always, just outside the definition. If there is a taste, a border, a particularity, then what are we to each other? I come closer. The garden is changing. Fat buds spill in the sun, redden greedily at the tips. Look: another row of poppies opens. And in their yellow cups, bees. - Paisley Rekdal

The Unicorn

The saintly hermit, midway through his prayers
stopped suddenly, and raised his eyes to witness
the unbelievable: for there before him stood
the legendary creature, startling white, that
had approached, soundlessly, pleading with his eyes.

The legs, so delicately shaped, balanced a
body wrought of finest ivory. And as
he moved, his coat shone like reflected moonlight.
High on his forehead rose the magic horn, the sign
of his uniqueness: a tower held upright 
by his alert, yet gentle, timid gait.

The mouth of softest tints of rose and grey, when
opened slightly, revealed his gleaming teeth,
whiter than snow. The nostrils quivered faintly:
he sought to quench his thirst, to rest and find repose.
His eyes looked far beyond the saint’s enclosure,
reflecting vistas and events long vanished,
and closed the circle of this ancient mystic legend. 

-Rainer Maria Rilke

To Say Before Going To Sleep

I would like to sing someone to sleep,
have someone to sit by and be with.
I would like to cradle you and softly sing,
be your companion while you sleep or wake.
I would like to be the only person
in the house who knew: the night outside was cold.
And would like to listen to you
and outside to the world and to the woods.

The clocks are striking, calling to each other,
and one can see right to the edge of time.
Outside the house a strange man is afoot
and a strange dog barks, wakened from his sleep.
Beyond that there is silence.

My eyes rest upon your face wide-open;
and they hold you gently, letting you go
when something in the dark begins to move. 

-Rainer Maria Rilke