The Echoe Bridge

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.