centripetal force

Ain't nobody got time today for form and process.

The wind cuts through two layers and the sherpa lining of certified work gear.

Or maybe it's just everywhere else that's cold.

A walking, heated thoracic cavity within icy knees and fingers.

Breach of protocol aside, it's a straight march to the dead center and the cracked stone table. 

Is it secret, is it safe - that burden left like so much litter, tucked up underneath this Fount of Over-Looked Blessing?

Somehow, it is. Right where I painfully dropped it - or was it wrenched from my Stockholm grasp?

And maybe that's why it all feels too easy - 

Everything is already where it is supposed to be. 

Albatross

He leans back, supported only really by the mast behind him.

His curly hair nearly grinding into the grain of the wood; an attempt to shore up knees, buckling and weak.

There's no respite in sleep. No escape from the deafening stillness of catastrophe -

the air in these doldrums is choking with holistic hypohidrosis.

A half-sigh and a guttural heave as he smashes his head against the beam in a half-formed prayer,

"Oh, Aslan..."

Impetigo

Burn it away.

None of the newer pharmacology will do it. None of these miracle drugs will effect a true cure.

They'll contain. And they'll cover.

But never cure.

So burn it away. Soften, hold up to the light,

and

ignite

the

fire.

Jump cuts

It's never enough.

Enough to quiet the words.

Enough to quiet, well... really anything.

There are always questions. Always doubts.

Always.

Shakespeare is playing in there. So's the Eagles, a couple of bars of "Where in the World is Carmen San Diego."

Random cartoon-like bubbles of conversations from days, weeks, years ago.

A whiff of a Central Asian road nearly a decade ago.

There are jump cuts enough to muddy the lines.

And the prevailing thought echoes the Teacher,

"Meaningless, meaningless. Everything is meaningless."

Shackles and tables

You can't rush a miracle.
Now, you can rush a miracle man, the lowercase kind.
But you can't rush a miracle.
They arrive precisely when they are meant to, as "those people" say.
Falling, stumbling, and caving in through the unspeakable
Until you turn one last time, and it's spread out
A cracked stone table, an eternal stream.
Room enough to sink into it, to die here.
But is it littering to leave this shackle behind?
Does it take too much? Presume too much?
Hard to say, you really can't rush these things.

Act 5, Scene 1, 259-263

That first sound, the final sound, before the world came unmade.

What was it?

A rumble, all basso profundo and ribcage-shaking,

A jitter, nerves dancing on the edge of realization,

An infrasonic hiss?

All the sound and fury of the past six days building up to this - signifying, well - who really knew?

And then...

All over the world

Five minutes til and there is already a line.

Vehicles with their low beams.

And five after, they're all unloaded and in action.

So many, doing so much, for so few.

In the pre-dawn shadows, behind the shade of task, is this Kingdom that fuels it all

Breathing

And pulling forward, at a pace so quick one stumbles, never quite regaining a footing. 

Thole

All of the old cliches grow tiresome. 

There are no words that rightly describe this. 

Or at least none that I can summon. 

No words right or strong enough to serve as foundation for such a weight. 

And never have I wished so clearly that were not a woman of words. 

But I am. 

Impatiens capensis

You never notice the first few.

They slide in - almost a practiced, practical ease - and hit their marks.

You don't feel those.

It's the next soft touch that drives the full complement home.

What was a flicker catches - a dry fire - spreading faster than you can breathe against it.

This is marrow-changing flame. A deep soul-itch that burns, burrows.

Scorched earth yielding no hope of regrowth, or rebirth.

(As if regeneration were possible from these charred nerves.)

This isn't a miry pit - although somewhere, deep you know that's there too.

This is an incessant, all-consuming integumentary wheeze.

In a pause,

On the shift of a wind, the memory of a scent.

Its half-whisper evoking what feels like a Green fantasy, so far from the here and now.

But it grows.

And sinks deep,

settling against these dry bones with the promise of distant thunder.