I dreamed of a black guitar. Flat matte black, cedar rich. It played me, rather: the fourth string was missing, and I never really learned. "Was it broken," I dreaming wondered. It made beautiful music here. Was it yours, of old? Did you forget it here, leave it accidentally behind? For a moment I thought someone spoke. The light. The light white light pulled taut like a string far away. A scratch. A hum. I thought of you, and I woke.
last night without you the world did not end, although every building shook. i'm still picking up loose bricks and bits, cleaning house, mending the yard. even now without you. i feel guilty not inviting you. keeping you in the dark. lying-- or at least omitting truths (joyful truths, to be sure)-- to the face of my old friend. still somehow there was fallout. even the absence of you does some damage. even your shadow shakes tables knocks down a drink or two. and this morning it all felt like a dream. like some quaint, sober nightmare. not completely despairing-- rather nice, to be honest-- but still awful like a knife being removed (at last!) from a wound: you can breathe again, for a minute or so, you think, but now there is a new raw, red horror-- the hot sensation of drowning in your own living blood, suffocating, almost, in your own nourishment, breathless, speechless, as the oxygen betrays you, abandons you suddenly. it's almost enough to ask the nurses to put
It's been twenty years since He taught her. She is (to me) such an old student. I am His old student, too. She and I are peers. Peers. But she has Children. Twins. And she Rememebers Him. Her professor. In her way. On Facebook. And she taught her children a thing He taught her so long and not so long ago. And I already feel awful. I can barely remember. But she remembers. And she has Children. Which, to be fair, Matters. It does. I know. I see it. I feel it, deep in my bones. But He has had so many students. He Remembers her. In his way. Will He ever remember me? I came to Him once, with my wild dreams about my grandmother fighting wolves, and He held me crying, and said, my memories are real. And she's talking about shadow puppets on Facebook, and He Remembers her. And now He lives in my town, and I cannot muster the strength to talk to Him, because once He gave me a Religious Experience --interpreting my Dreams as easy as tea leaves. And she remembers Him. And
I could remember you better if you were a script, all your infinite eccentricities as a procession of commas and apostrophes: beautiful black ink on some beautifully numbered pages bound together on a clean shelf. I could pull you down when I began to forget, crack you open, even, boldly, highlight, or contribute my own hand in your margins a thought or two about a choice of word, a note of your character; I could check this or that memory, research, even, how much of myself features within you. I would hope to find a glossary: you feature so often in others I wonder if you are truly the most original work I've ever encountered. I would pause again and again, learn in earnest with what adverb did your author qualify how you said, once, in passing, how your father praised you once in front of his father long ago in Chicago, the pinnacle of everyone's pride and wonder, never knowing that wild metropolis would be my home away from home. I would learn you all that way. It is my
a box of needles. you mend a torn sleeve: broad shoulders. is it yours now? the earth shakes when you think of him. boxes fall. needles spill. the rain falls all across Chicago.
As a collector, on your way in this strange time of Life, please know, bone is more valuable than cloud. Flesh and skin and tissue and hair even more so. But if you are just starting out, or if you have lost much along the way and are just beginning again, keep the bones you find. Any and all will suffice to hold you down. The clouds are easy to chase, impossible to capture. They do come and go, and are only useful in the desert when the cold comes at last.
The roots! The roots! You need to put down roots! But home is a cage elseways, and oh to be a handful of leaves, to kiss both the sunshine and the storm-- in their roughness and their smooth-- that perchance the birds might perch around me, lay eggs, and sing; and as I breathe I bind the dust away back into a sleep; and watch the flowers rise and fall like rain; and when the winter comes I will let go and become a dark vein within the ore of the pale sky, blooming again some other Springtime.
1:14 in Dubuque. Desperate for good news. I beg the stale hotel air for a whisper. A hungry lightning rod, I thirst for a slip in the static; Oh, for the frenzied rush, the divine crash, the light! Oh, bright water of Helicon, set your brilliant waters down here! here! Room 306 in Iowa. I hear your thunder, far away. Bring your tempests here, I beg.
I dreamed of a black guitar. Flat matte black, cedar rich. It played me, rather: the fourth string was missing, and I never really learned. "Was it broken," I dreaming wondered. It made beautiful music here. Was it yours, of old? Did you forget it here, leave it accidentally behind? For a moment I thought someone spoke. The light. The light white light pulled taut like a string far away. A scratch. A hum. I thought of you, and I woke.
last night without you the world did not end, although every building shook. i'm still picking up loose bricks and bits, cleaning house, mending the yard. even now without you. i feel guilty not inviting you. keeping you in the dark. lying-- or at least omitting truths (joyful truths, to be sure)-- to the face of my old friend. still somehow there was fallout. even the absence of you does some damage. even your shadow shakes tables knocks down a drink or two. and this morning it all felt like a dream. like some quaint, sober nightmare. not completely despairing-- rather nice, to be honest-- but still awful like a knife being removed (at last!) from a wound: you can breathe again, for a minute or so, you think, but now there is a new raw, red horror-- the hot sensation of drowning in your own living blood, suffocating, almost, in your own nourishment, breathless, speechless, as the oxygen betrays you, abandons you suddenly. it's almost enough to ask the nurses to put
It's been twenty years since He taught her. She is (to me) such an old student. I am His old student, too. She and I are peers. Peers. But she has Children. Twins. And she Rememebers Him. Her professor. In her way. On Facebook. And she taught her children a thing He taught her so long and not so long ago. And I already feel awful. I can barely remember. But she remembers. And she has Children. Which, to be fair, Matters. It does. I know. I see it. I feel it, deep in my bones. But He has had so many students. He Remembers her. In his way. Will He ever remember me? I came to Him once, with my wild dreams about my grandmother fighting wolves, and He held me crying, and said, my memories are real. And she's talking about shadow puppets on Facebook, and He Remembers her. And now He lives in my town, and I cannot muster the strength to talk to Him, because once He gave me a Religious Experience --interpreting my Dreams as easy as tea leaves. And she remembers Him. And
I could remember you better if you were a script, all your infinite eccentricities as a procession of commas and apostrophes: beautiful black ink on some beautifully numbered pages bound together on a clean shelf. I could pull you down when I began to forget, crack you open, even, boldly, highlight, or contribute my own hand in your margins a thought or two about a choice of word, a note of your character; I could check this or that memory, research, even, how much of myself features within you. I would hope to find a glossary: you feature so often in others I wonder if you are truly the most original work I've ever encountered. I would pause again and again, learn in earnest with what adverb did your author qualify how you said, once, in passing, how your father praised you once in front of his father long ago in Chicago, the pinnacle of everyone's pride and wonder, never knowing that wild metropolis would be my home away from home. I would learn you all that way. It is my
a box of needles. you mend a torn sleeve: broad shoulders. is it yours now? the earth shakes when you think of him. boxes fall. needles spill. the rain falls all across Chicago.
As a collector, on your way in this strange time of Life, please know, bone is more valuable than cloud. Flesh and skin and tissue and hair even more so. But if you are just starting out, or if you have lost much along the way and are just beginning again, keep the bones you find. Any and all will suffice to hold you down. The clouds are easy to chase, impossible to capture. They do come and go, and are only useful in the desert when the cold comes at last.
The roots! The roots! You need to put down roots! But home is a cage elseways, and oh to be a handful of leaves, to kiss both the sunshine and the storm-- in their roughness and their smooth-- that perchance the birds might perch around me, lay eggs, and sing; and as I breathe I bind the dust away back into a sleep; and watch the flowers rise and fall like rain; and when the winter comes I will let go and become a dark vein within the ore of the pale sky, blooming again some other Springtime.
1:14 in Dubuque. Desperate for good news. I beg the stale hotel air for a whisper. A hungry lightning rod, I thirst for a slip in the static; Oh, for the frenzied rush, the divine crash, the light! Oh, bright water of Helicon, set your brilliant waters down here! here! Room 306 in Iowa. I hear your thunder, far away. Bring your tempests here, I beg.
- and those that would possess me like some delicate flower plunge the knife deeper. Shards crunch beneath feet; digging their heels in to keep. Petals due neglect, subjugate to lust. [Would the rarity of love become too much to ask for?]
STAR STUDDED SKIES IN THE SPANGLED LIGHT by RJBG, literature
Literature
STAR STUDDED SKIES IN THE SPANGLED LIGHT
Stars and stripes Genie in a bottle Spirits on the rise Illusions of surprise Magician of pantomime Gallant knight Mustang on the horizon New Mexico oasis Route 66 On a highway to no return California Angel Taken flight Neon signs Lit up on a billboard Star studded skies in the spangled light At the intersection of Heaven's crossing Technicolor rainbows at the end of the line
claustrophobic; slow shifts in leaves outside. we spit up, cry, and christen new curses. versions of you in another lifetime imprint my dash, picture day in hiroshima. can't believe you exist, can't pretend this isn't some apocalypse. listen to these desperate sketches: i need. you, free as a burgeoning web, weave cursive across a spite-turned verisimilitude. two persons grip the gear shift, sullen.
crush, i feel your pressure rise and falter. follow after every alter ego; i believe you've tossed the final petal. special, i felt up and down a city spread, a ruined legend. lucky gilt with full ambition, twisting at the touch. fucking flushed, you, strange as ever, blushed. a punishment of metal. dragged through avenues and fenestrations; names drafted in stars. carcinogen, you hack. hug but don't look back, brush off the fresh assumptions. track the fall of eyelines, undress but don't ever drug. you've no need for malfunction.
a bit of a dance, this, pointe shoes over a minefield, picking through the safe places to land, turning whole revolutions on a pin's head, and taking flight again, measuring and counting in minute mantras of four, hoping the sleeping metal stays buried, never waking mid-turn, consuming you-- delicate bird-- in their bitter, hateful fire.
I'm excited to say that I'm back. I've been busy taking care of adult life and feel like I have neglected my writing and my page and all the great work that's been going on through NaPoWriMo up until now. I have sheaves of everyone's work to read through and enjoy, so don't be surprised if you receive a random flush of faves from me. Or be surprised; go for broke and be shameless in your delighted alarm. Or don't: I'm not the boss of you.
And I HAVE been reading through a lot of great work. I am constantly so impressed by everyone's ability to create and develop new work and ideas. The virtue of this site (and what consistently feeds my fire
I've been deconstructing a lot of my work lately. It's developing into a passionate project of mine. I would love to invite everyone to view and submit glitch literature, cyber literature, and experimental literature to GlitchLit. I'm a very grateful contributor and hope to create a strong network for this new place in literature and poetry, where artists can creatively break down their words and pixels and rebuild and develop their style. Check it out!