THE ECHOE BRIDGE
I. POETRY
Poetry can taste sweet and salty
and damp
As it sinks into the buds of the
tongue in your mind
Like tears of sunshine which
linger in the residue of your laughter
And the laughter which lingers in
the residue of your tears
Like the glowing light which
dances across the sky
And filters itself through the
billowing kingdom of clouds
In rays of golden vapor, it begs
the question: Do you remember?
Poetry can sound like crickets in
the night, behind a crackling campfire,
Under the nightly heavens, all
sprinkled with stardust and crowned by silvery white jewel of the full moon.
Or like the song of birds,
fluttering above a gurgling mountain brook in shivering leaves which rustle on
strong old oak trees.
Poetry can echo in your skull
If you listen closely, like the
voices of childhood friends
Playing beneath a bridge with
several arches
Poetry can taste sweet and salty
and damp
And feel textured and
topographical.
Poetry can sound like a sea crest
licking the shore
And swell like waves in the ocean
carried by the whispering wind.
Poetry can look like the deep,
dark, indigo of space or like the fluorescent iridescence of dusk and dawn
Or the glimmer of lake’s surface
in the stillness before and after the storm
Poetry tastes like honey and lemon
in tea, on a rainy afternoon in early autumn.
Poetry can start off like almost
invisible
Like a little point of light
Like the distant end of a tunnel
Like a seed
Which suddenly bursts, released
through its own ecstasy into the twinkle of countless glistening and shimmering
rainbow labyrinths
Slowly it begins to consider
resurrection
And then, all of a sudden it
starts to grow out of the page
With frightening speed and
purpose.
It emerges from inside and
underneath
It swells and penetrates all
around you and envelopes and swallows you whole.
Poetry can smell like burnt and
rotting flesh
Or sound like a child’s screams
and cries in an underground Catholic dungeon
Poetry can look like the face of a
flayed African cadaver covered in blood,
sweat and tears.
Poetry can feel like a woman being
beaten in front of her family
Or a man being tortured in
America.
Poetry can sound like a soldier
asking for one last cigarette from the crazed and terrorized young face of the
scared and guilty teenage enemy crouching over him. A soldier pleading for help
or desperately reaching for his water or
weakly croaking the painful last words:
“
Tell her phh-T-T-Tell-hhh-Tell Her I –ungh-I n-never stopped – I-h-ungh-I’ll
never ever stop.”
Poetry can look like a boy choking
in a gas chamber or like a mother giving birth or like people having sex
Poetry can taste like life and
death, birth and love and pain and memories, hatred and forgiveness, nostalgia
and hope, confidence and déjà vu.
Because everything is a poetic
expression of itself, and the whole wide world tastes
like poetry…
I
II. LOVE
Is …
… empty, vibrant
and simply beautiful
III. HEAVEN
Divinity and purity
Forever out of reach
The secret truth of emptiness
My child, I shall teach
The one and only Golden King, that
Which rises to the heights
The bright and shining morning
star
Descends again into the night
He gives way to the silver mirror,
She is served by the endless
lights
And then the house on wings, the
obelisks of vapor,
The faces in the sky, which melt
and morph and taper
Into spirits that can fly,
The great celestial city which
fades or kicks and cries
Divinity and purity
Are not what the preachers preach
They aren’t even their names
Which point to them in speech
The vast expanse of blue
Untouchable and true
Fathomless, immaculate
Nothingness is you
IV. EARTH
The soles of my feet
Sink into your arms
You cradle and kiss them
And whisper old charms
Your face is my vessel
Your core is my heart
When we are together,
We’re never apart.
Your veins are my water
They hold my life-blood
Your dad is my father
Your hair is my woods
Your fruits are my juices
Your vines are my wine
Like Herme’s Caduceus
Our lives intertwine
I am your appendix
Nad you are my home
With my fellow creatures
Your landscapes I roam
Our mother is nature
Our princess the moon
We spin round the sun
And we sing with the loons…
Your valleys and mountains are fed
by my ash
My dung and plastic, my trash, and
my cash
My, you raised me and hazed me
You taught me the way
You showed the garden of life and
Decay
You are my womb
Your wind is my breath
It’s time to leave home now
And dive into the depths…
V. CREATION
Bringing little critter creatures
out of fold-in-paperismness
into ink-line-dot-being
Do you have a chinkle an inkling
to spare?
The shimmer of the red blood
Black text words scattered
staining
Scared of remaining, shivering and
Chattering across the varying
Levels of depth perception – the
echoe
bridge, the reflection connection,
The
essence of the meta-page.
Have you heard the word?
Have
you seen the light?
Do you live by day?
Can
you sleep at night?
Knock, knock, I’m at the back
door.
Ding, dong, come back to the core
Back
to the shore
Of
forever.
The in and the out
The
order of chaos
Let go of the doubt
He already forgave us.
VI. RECEPTION
The ebb and the flow
The waning and the waxing
The rhythm and the rhyme
I want to see your eyes
Glinting and relaxing
I can feel your soft lips
Tickling my soul
The butterflies in my stomach
Released on parole
I can feel the trunk at my root
Swaying in the stillness
J’écoute, tu écoutes?
Let me cure this falling illness
I will listen to you glisten
Swaying in the stillness
This hedge on fire smokes and
burns
Like a funeral pyre,
As the world slowly turns
The gut of the wicker man
Rumbles and churns
Bolts of illumination
Crack with cackles
Around the eye of the storm
Breaking my shackles
Making me warm
As the butterflies swarm
So many different hues
Just like a 3D painting
Reminding us –
We’re angels in the midst of
fainting
The song echoes in my inner ear
Bringing forth from the child
underneath
Everything that’s ever been holy
and
Dear
This continuous theologue
Of days and nights disordered fray
Presses me into the warm center
And I can hear it all the time
Not-saying but reminding me
“Don’t
be afraid.”
“Te quiero, Te quiero, Я тебя люблю”
What felt sexy like a dialogue of
me and you
Was actually a monologue, an
endless
Autologue of love pure and true.
VII. STORM OVER DESERT
This way and that
The road stretches out
Clouds gather
The desert stretches and yawns
Shivering in anticipation
“Flood me!” “Flood me, now!”
You can hear it
Listen closely
“La petite mort!”
A violent whisper? Whisper.
Whisper.
“Apres mois le deluge.”
The scorching raw hide
Of the ancient sands
Howls
Oh the novelty!
“Call Noah! Call Noah!”
Cries the vulture
The crow takes flight from the
creaky piney branch on the evergreen, a thousand winterseas away.
And, like the crows expanding wing
span, in the moment of scretch, before lift off
The shadow grows, engulfing itself
over the solemn desert and swallowing the yellow sunlight whole.
The stillness stirs
She is waiting
And I am coming, galloping like
the seven riders of old faiths
Raining down upon your barren
dunes and craters and you crumble and dissolve, back home into the distant sea
– the final battle over
From one form of waves to another
…Unimaginable.
