SILENCE AND DESIRE
After the flower,
after the waves,
and after the waiting
when society dies
and ships collide,
the last kiss is dry,
orange winds flow…
It is the sun.
BLUE WINDS AND ARTIFACTS FROM INTERSTATE 40 TO GEORGIA 78
(For Bruce Sehorne and Dan Hart, beloved departed)
Wind, wind, sleek wind blowing,
coursing its way through the last of winter,
bending through the plains, the peaks, the cities,
planting itself in this town between the hills,
where raw silk and T shirts conceal and reveal
all the fleshy confusion about just what the temperature is.
You thought you had me figured out,
what blue jeans go with which linen jacket
and how long it would take for me to miss the rain,
and I’m doing it now, missing all the rumble, the gray spotlight,
the shout of a crashed wave at full moon midnight.
Mendocino County, big waves, big rivers,
true land of the lost souls,
and it was home for a while, for a while until I missed
the sound of dipthongs and southern vowels…so I loaded up and ran,
one love on the horizon, the other in the land itself…
And now I miss the waves?-never satisfied,
always Being-Towards, direction doesn’t matter.
I’ll not go back, but the flight East? This is that:
Choppy drive into town, the windows are smeared
with jellied smoke, tape player fast forwards to Preachin’ Blues,
……a flat road into the swamps, gun across my chest……
Oh, oh yeah, let me tell you something, the journey is art, is life, not just whim, always feel on the road, shout
or a whimper, doesn’t matter, I gotta go, I gotta go now…
and the pine trees shake, shimmy and shake from highway winds.
It’s all a haze, all heat, like that, a hot, wet wind.
……………………..
A scratchy tango emerges and jerks, ah, Gardel, had enough
of Piazzola, give me the mourning stuff with a whiff
of dance and kiss, I’m filled with romance, with desire,
and yet there is no object, no she, no other, but I am filled,
and it’s called longing, longing for those legendary sweet
winds of late spring, whose touch is the life
of a thousand flowers, a thousand lakes and rivers…..
and here I am on the road: The Road…SouthEast:
dodging time, running.
I wish I wrote songs. I wish I could touch the heart just one
more time. And then the mists roll in, the air cools,
and it’s late winter, late, late winter.
……………………..……………………..…….
Well I’m always digging the strangest weather:
either standing naked on Pacific in Alaskan winds, sleet like
cold arrows when January takes a stand…
Or walking dirt roads in the scorching summer,
tinitis cicada roar…yellow sun so close, unleashed.
And just at that time when cold is too cold
and hot is too hot,
when I swear I can’t keep on in extremes the rains come, thunder breaks the shell and the land fills with the winds,
the heavenly winds, moderate, soothing, and always on time.
It’s all about romance. Go figure.
Of course the metaphor is change¬¬–isn’t it?
Great winds and charged ions.
Sometime in the Sixties St. John Perse leaned back on a rock
beneath the Savannah sun and thought about this,
but I’ve never found anyone who wants to talk about that,
so the scenes are solitary moments reaching Spirit, never flesh, never.
……………………..……………………..…………….
Catalogues and roadsigns flipping by, who really wants
the forced dialogues about spending money?
Desire is better than that. Meaning erased, the bad side of our times laid bare in images that do not relate. “Catch ‘em alone
on the road where all they can do is think.”
Oh man, don’t give me the hermeneutic for Bill Gates and a Sunrise,
don’t, please don’t interpret big tits and a car…
yeah desire, better long for what is thought, my thoughts, my fetish
for what is felt, for things felt: and the secrets of economy
wash away by the fast roadside, I don’t want to buy anything,
I only want to feel………. breath, cool streams, a wave,
anything but the bibles of this fin de siècle science
where Sex and Self express through purchase.
Desire is better than that.
Moving forward, the purpose of evolution is to go UP the ladder.
……………………..……………………..………………
Continuing on in the clutch of highway winds:
resting in the desert where the hills push back
the roar of truck and caravan, sounds like a storm,
feels like Santa Anna, the road, how strange, walked
a hundred yards out in shade of the red mesa, still the din
and blow bounces in Mahler rages of ambient disaster,
but the sky just sits and radiates blue, blue contradiction,
blue envelope around a petri dish gone wild,
I don’t like it, it’s creepy, back in the car I drive
a little bit slower. I don’t wanta contribute, I don’t wanta
be a part of this great hoax and horror, but I am,
and with sound and split winds I barrel out I-40
pushing my own storms agenda on the naked earth beside me.
……………………..……………………..………………
Sometimes it seems a signature is the last flourish we have that says “I”
in the world. Rush me something grand and changing,
a release from the ordinary, the stereotypes,
pick it up and throw it out, toss away the mass,
the character trait that is always expected.
I remember arguing Dasein, that perhaps objects couldn’t have IT,
now I disagree, now I see, yes, empirically,
that the winds do have Dasein, so much more than these
soul stripped dreamings I am left to lead on wandering ground.
Scene: March Lion breathes heavy in the tall grass…
I heard a catamount scream in the September night,
no one – no thing can chill like that.
Everything stopped.
Wind=Vehicle.
So as I signed the credit card slip at a convenience stop
in the Christmas tree peaks of northern Arizona,
I thought about my name on the page,
the difference between pronouncing who I am
and that of the feral I wish I was.
……………………..……………………..………………..
Alive in a place where the pain originates,
still thinking in terms of id, ego, yeah libido too,
sad because I can’t connect, can’t breach the space
between word and contact, where history
muffles the need of pronouns to posses,
and language as meaning is abandoned, moves off track
from intention to action, and that’s the pain,
the source, like a subway turnstile locking and unlocking,
a recognition…not a cure…we understand what we want,
and damned if the best wind blowing up out of this tunnel
is that of a freon blast from subterranean lungs.
Yeah, I’m running, hell hound hound hound of heaven
on my heels…..
the legendary image fading in my rearview mirror smiles.
……………………..……………………..……………….
Oklahoma in a flash:
Yield, a warning sign: Prairie Fires Will Kill You.
Tiny heat waves ripple steam through the dust.
Yellow smoke pierces the high white clouds.
Grand motions sweep, small images swirl,
the cottonwood and sage blossom, yet the winds
still roll with cold thunder and the challenge of light.
Detour, I wanta go home. Right now everything just seems
…but how?…and that’s the note,
the trill that signals Change or Die. Sudden lime horizon:
I see a tornado blaze across the sky.
Touch me, I’m afraid
the rest is a blur.
……………………..……………………..……………………..………………..
Black black deep black hair and jewel like almond eyes.
High cheek bones and a smile. And her skin shames even
satin, laughter and a smile, but there is no Beatrice, no Goddess Of Mercy, and I want, I snap time by the miles, friends by the gesture,
and I want this road to kick aside daydreams and let me love,
let me trust and to believe again in the force of love and intellect….
I don’t like driving through parts of Tennessee.
……………………..……………………..………………
And I move on towards the gentle Appalachians.
Pale white steam rising from the Roosevelt reservoirs,
those hills, those ancient sway backed, wet green hills,
green I cannot number, shades I cannot name, but home, yes,
green home and soft earth. And when I have reached
the high lakes and gotten out of the car, tossed the keys
into the laurel, I will be home. Cool, cool evening,
a season of peace in these breezes, and I swear I saw Garbo
out on the lakescapes, pure Deco beauty out of place
but fitting in, and that’s alright, the four winds gather in,
and yet another destination waits, another storm,
another life building in the kaleidoscope eye of the sun.
And I feel the winds, sleek winds blowing off the hills…
GUILTY
Stretched out from reaching out
in a feather world.
So light, so not, so little of everything.
I break the wounds and open up.
Guilty.
Shallow flesh. Shallow needs.
Burnt paper words, a flow of ash.
Throwing away my magicians hat,
and giving in to a belief in the thing of things,
yeah, the thing that shows what is never mine.
This is conversation.
This is meaning.
This is what it is when I speak too soon:
She nods and looks away.
Thus it ends.
For now anyway.
For now anyway it’s just another
choosing to misunderstand even
the bravest of gestures,
even the purest of intent…..
She nods and looks away.
Thus it seems to always end.
BAREFOOT MOONLIGHT
Forbidden splendor in a black dress,
barefoot on the wooden floor,
she stood like moonlight,
light in the shade of winter,
moonlight and mist,
the soft shimmer of treasures
mysterious and known…
she was surrounded
by beautiful women…
but I didn’t see a one,
all I saw was her light,
her smile,
black dress,
barefoot on the wooden floor,
all I could see was her,
she so cherished,
so wild,
adored.
VENUS
Every letter perfect memory
sweeps across these blue hot days.
Steamy early mornings
and humid, moon burned nights
move into the moment
where she is:
Confectionery perspiration’s
on her lips and limbs,
honey and salt in her gaze
as presence to absence
from her eyes to mine…
A loose fold of skin curling
round her knit waistband,
a rising line into her small breasts,
tender, pink, new,
but still a delicacy well involved,
known in these and other rooms
too long for the innocence,
the youth claims,
the awkward beauty.
H Lamar Thomas' Blog 