Transformations #5: fossil (find a home)

#5: fossil (find a home)

when you died

you became

a map of yourself—an idea:

how to build

the past.

patient water

replaced your sullen bones

with geology.

slow million time crept in,

replaced your fog-breathing

lungs

with a plaque

on the wall

of the much-loved museum

of good ideas

dead and gone.

we all should be so lucky.

we all should be so loved.

Transformations #4: gold/silver (spider alchemy)

#4: gold/silver (spider alchemy)

our hands make only

mirrors of the world.

the threads we golden spin

each morning fade

slow to silver

reveal us hiding

claw-like, chitinous

starving at the center of our dreams,

laying traps of slender wire

to catch a shifting wind.

Transformations #3: Radionuclide

#3: radionuclide (no new star)

born of (stardeath) love

glowing hopeful apples

in the secret earth

you (and I) give away (we

give away)

half our (starbirth) lives devoted:

light the city with our smiles.

realize the bones

beneath notional skin.

tear down the spiral stairs.

our children are (starlight)

not shadow selves

it's different every time:

the light goes through us

changes not who we are

but who we can become

half our lives wasted

away (starshape) smiles:

gold transmutes 

to flat pale lead.

Transformations #2: Pupate

pupate (born into)

as a wing is to an arm

blessed with sky

as hand to fin

a million millions older than.

swim this ocean

of words and gestures

hide below the hive

and change

skin a thin grey blanket

around the world

to keep our blood unmingled

each heart pupates

rearranges. (you)

slough off dead cells.

become.

scrape your fingernails

across this membrane:

emerge into the world

bloody-eyed and smiling.

Music Nights

Practiced with the trio tonight, plus one. Wonderful guest on acoustic bass. Everything changed. The songs came out different--different tempos, different accents, different feels. We played the same song eight times in a row, and it grew every time, improved every time, followed a different arc every time. This is life. There is no map that leads us from our beginnings to our ends, only this desire to travel in the company of good people a while.

This is as it should be. Music, when you give yourself to it completely, is a way to find yourself, your heart, in a dark and echoing room. It is a way to find the hearts of the other musicians too, and maybe even an audience every now and then. Music exists only in the space between the people involved; so when a new musician enters the space, everything should change. And if everything changes for the better, you've found a friend, there in the dark, playing music and looking for you, too.

Tonight we found a friend. And we found each other again, too. And all that's just the way it's supposed to work.

Transformations Project

Jenny gave us the idea. Tanis put the idea on a stage and asked for words. So I obliged. I'll be posting a poem a day for the next 8 days, exploring the theme of Transformations. Enjoy!

Transformations #1: Lycanthrope

a hand slides away

from the unblinking eye of the moon:

your bones betray you. again.

this is not. a sure. thing.

you are a tooth:

loose and bleeding

in the open mouth of the night.

leaves rot on the stairs.

blank memory

is no sure sign

you have not been here before.

moon slides away

from your hands; your bones

slide away from.

the moon slides away.

unfold. you cease to be

the paper crane, become

the empty page again--

back where you started,

blank. moonfaced.

the creases of your skin

are a map.

you cannot read it.