Alone

It was a dark night, it was a green night. The trees were verdant and full, lushly whispering words of their own coming death, of the falling to come. The stars were bright; too bright. The sky the deepest blue of the velvet cushions in the bordello across the way. And soft, so soft. Soft enough to absorb even the longest sort of pain. It was a night when she walked alone. It was a night when alone was the only way for her. And as she paced through the thick, thick night, the darkness thick like rope is thick, her spine was straight, her brow cool. Her neat, light, cotton dress moved about her, wafting waves of lavender into the evening scented of lilies and cinnamon.
She looked straight ahead, but now and then her chin tilted, she saw the stillness around her. She saw the movement within the bellies of the houses. She walked quiet, silent by, her feet making no noise. She felt the breeze shift to notice her, and then move away, uncaring. She watched the silhouettes in the burning windows with luminous, unjudging eyes. Only the night watched her.
She saw the white smoke from a cigarette float into the slightly rotting orange light of a streetlamp. Her gate smooth, she continued on, looking forward steadfastly. Her eyes did not waver. Her hands were relaxed beside her. A cigarette butt lit like the flash of a neon sign for a moment and then faded. She saw the fade drop to the ground, she saw the ground devour it in darkness.
A hand shot around her neck, another around her waist, and she was pulled into the shadows, the deep, eating shadows.
But her white, careful dress still gleamed out like a pearl. It seemed to light around her. It was the luminosity of a fish in deep, deep water. Suddenly, the white of it, like the waving of seaweed, straightened. The dark lines that had bound her faded, a sigh of death escaped the shadows for one moment, but was quickly absorbed by the pillowy night. She moved back into the light, and kneeling suddenly, gracefully, she picked up the cigarette butt and it turned to ash in her white hands. She let the ashes fall without expression; the breeze sniffed them, carried them away. She was alone again.

The cat and I

The cat and I had fallen out of love.We had been dear to one another, but now, after so many years, she hated me and I was short with her every meow. In her days she wanted a sort of stillness I couldn't muster - I wasn't ready to be old! My mind could not understand the wrinkles, the gray. Beneath that all I was a young man still. But the cat knew.
The cat was awake to every whisker that curled, and contentedly lay herself by the fire, relishing the rest that tired bones can demand. She licked her bowl clean, and herself, with stiff, practiced ease. But I could not contain myself in my old wing chair - I could not content myself with the silent, unnoticed, imminent immobility as I began to put myself to my final sleep. So I walked and paced and grumbled and drank, and the cat - the cat watched, blinking sleepliy from a middling perche near the warmth of the hearth.
Perhaps I had had a little too much to drink on evening, but I found myself stretched out in my favorite chair, my head quite fuzzy, and the cat close at hand, looking curiously at me. "How do you do it?" I demanded, my voice hoarse form my own quasi-stupor. I put out a soft fingertip and tapped her lightly on the nose.  "How - do - you - make it all so easy?" and I fell back a little in my chair, surprised at how the impact bothered my old shoulders.
"Harrumph," I said, and then reddened at the thought of how old my own behavior had become. I was a walking... I was interrupted by a polite mew and my cat's dainty foot on my lap as she stepped, still graceful, on my knee and then quickly lay down and began to lick a paw.
"You know," she said, nonchalantly, "it's really not as bad as all that."
On a dark, colorful gust of liquor fumes, I tried to compute her words. The dreaminess of my alcoholic hze took the edge from my surprise, and I looked at her bitter rather than shocked.
"My life isn't over," I stated back, slurring. I realized my nose was running slightly, and moved a sleeve to swipe it clean.
"Of course not," she scoffed, among a mouthful of fur that was particularly recalcitrant. "But you aren't dead yet, and you're not dying tomorrow." She stopped her self-bathing and, purring rustily, lolled back in practiced ease. "Just enjoy it," she said quietly, "You've earned your rest."
I looked at her, despairing. I didn't think I had. My life had been, ultimately, incredibly dull. Oh, the odd excitement, but for the most part, what had I done?
"You've lived, Charlie," she replied, her eyes half-closing. "That's enough for anyone."
I frowned. It wasn't enough for me.
She sighed and then, suddenly, her bright eyes, those eyes that had been closing slowly for years, burned into mine. A strange purr echoed in my ears.
I must have fallen to sleep. It was a drifting sensation: perhaps the alcohol had overwhelmed my aged nerves. My dreams were real and surreal as I had never felt before. Transported through times and spaces. I was in Paris, 1920, drinking absinthe. I was in Berlin, in Dublin, in Istanbul. I walked through a harem, I felt their sadness. I killed a man and watched the life leave him. I drowned. I climbed the peaks of Nepal, flew through the jungles on the waves of river wind. I toasted the great, toasted the wicked, and felt myself turn from bad to good to bad again. Again and again, the colors of life threw their panoply of activity about me; again and again, I saw the shadows, the light. I stood, exstatic, among the ruins of Greece, and as my body thrummed with a song to the gods, I spied the tail of a cat.
I never truly awoke. I surfaced on the carpet, the dying embers of the fire glowing by me, the cat curled by my side. How glad I was to be home, to be at rest. My heart still raced and my chest was tight. I reached to stroke the cat's small, curled spine. She looked up at me sleepily, and I started, realizing her eyes were completely white. She had gone blind. I stroked her gently, and then scooped her up tenderly in my arms.

"Time for bed," I said. "I am tired."

Summer/Passion

Long summer days
Sleepy in the afternoon
Of their season.
Hot and tight words
Languish when the sky is blue.

Clouds come out to dance
At night, under the stars.
My heart warms and bleeds,
I miss you.

The leaves are still dry
On the long grass - still green,
The green never dies here
It holds strong and true - like time.

Planes overhead
Tell the stories of
Passing action,
But passion is too strong
For days like these.

The Tree

There was once a Tree. It lived in a forest, and it was just like all the other trees. Together, they were young saplings, and in the morning the sun would rise on them, their heads nodding in the golden light, and in the evening, the breezes would blow on them, and small birds would call to one another joyfully from within their young, green leaves.
The Tree was just like all the others. And it was pleased.
But in time, the rest of the trees grew. They grew tall and broad, and the Tree grew only a little. In the day, the sun's warmth dappled it through the screen of others, the night breezes caressed it only in small, stolen breaths, and the birds built there nests in loftier places.
The Tree, now wakeful and unhappy, could not rest at night with the dreaming forest. Instead, it stared ever at the moon when that silver lady rose and fell in the sky. It strained to see her through the broken sky it could see, and every evening when the pale light fell upon it, it sighed a soft sigh, a small sigh, a sigh of relief. It didn't know why.
The days were raucous with the noise of the forest, the tall trees rustled mightily, and the Tree was lost. But in the night, only the silent moon lit the leaves and branches, and only the Tree watched her.
There came a night when the Tree was gripped with a great sadness. It had been sad before, but this sadness was like waves, this sadness was like floods. The pain within it rent and tore, it burned. The moon had not yet risen, and the Tree feared it might never rise - it might never rise again. In that moment, it knew it must find the moon, that if it didn't, it would perish and become yet another part of the forest's story, a story of the dead that fed the living.
It cried out in the way a Tree can, waving its branches, rustling, creaking, straining, and little by little, it felt the earth release it. First the root that was not quite covered was allowed free, and then the roots that spanned around it. Beautiful, they came up from the ground like vines, living and breathing, freed from the moist earth, free from the darkness. Until, finally, the Tree's heart root also was free, and the Tree, transcendent, terrified, beautiful, moved from its home, the place it had always been, and slipped from the forest, its roots like a thousand living ribbons, carrying it quietly and effortlessly out.
The Tree reveled in the joy of it, in movement and elegance and the freedom. It flew through the sleeping woods, and finally came to the openness on the edge. The place it had never been. Without fear, as if in a dream, it stepped onto the long grasses, its roots playing and dancing around it. And then it saw the moon. She had risen from the East and it had not noticed her pale, perfect light in its journey.
It stood, perfectly still except for the ever-moving, ever-undulating roots. It soaked in the silver of the moon, the brightness of the stars, and felt freed again.
And then it began to move - to dance - across the field, this way and that, spinning, leaping, stretching. The great moon above it seemed to get closer as it did so, the Tree, free, the moon, pouring out its love in white waves.
Today the Tree stands alone in the field. It is not a tall tree, but it is a beautiful one. Birds come to roost in it, as it stands alone in such a place, and it is happy. Each day it stands green and good under the sun, but it waits truly for the night, when the darkness shows the silver of the moon.

palimpsest

It's a palimpsest. It bears the scars and tears of time. And it wears them daily, and it moves in them. The limp of dancing too much too early, the sag of neglect at a young age, the strength of a sprinter, a leaper, a spinner, the graceful bend of a cheek, here, there. And it bears these layers and keeps them, and memorizes them, rewrites them, rescinds them, puts them back. It is the water. It is the sea. It is clay and yet it is its own mountain. My palimpsest. My darling. My enemy. My memory. My life.

Light

I am the blinking light in the arrow sign. And I blink for you. Ever going on and off, each time is my heartbeat beating against my cage, each time, I cast out the light that is the brightest I can muster. And I do it for you. I am in love with you, you the small sign that guides the traffic. I love your bright arrow. In the rain I watch the water roll down you like the most beautiful waterfall of tears. And I shine for you - ever on and on. And you will never know. Or perhaps you know, but you can never say. You always say "One Way" and for me, you are the one way I know how to love. Take this light, take it and know it is for you. This light that shines from me again and again.

Love. Love. Love. I am the blinking light in the arrow sign. And I blink for you.

Beauty

There was beauty and there was beauty. And she had only the former. There was something rather odd about her proportions - they somehow referred to bad health. And her skin, a glowing golden hue, sometimes seemed to sallow. And there was beauty, next to her, staring at her, expecting her to take part in her own lovely life. And beauty-the-former could not quite do it. Although she tried.

And then she met a lion. A sleepy, hood-eyed lion with the best of all possible coats. But the lion, though he cared for her, preferred that other beauty, that beauty she couldn't quite attain. And she longed for him.
She wished for him in the night, against the calmness of her pillow, which held her, but was helpless to soothe her loneliness. And she wished for him in the day, when she spoke to others and their voices rang in her ears, barely touching on the echo of the warmth that she felt when she was with the lion. Not her lion, she forced herself to remember, blushing, just the lion. The lion that lived there in its sandy cave, the lion that stretched in the morning to the sun, the lion who offered.

She had scampered past his cave and tempted him to follow her, and he had done so, and pinned her, and snuffled at her face in a playful manner, but had discovered that she was not quite the one that he desired, and so he had pulled quietly away, and no doubt she would find him with that other beauty soon. And oh, how it stung her - like the buzzing of a thousand bees in her head.

The other beauty lived beside her. Calmly, not noticing the breadth of their differences. The differences that she felt so acutely. And the other beauty felt and heard and cried and laughed and was, of course, as human as she. As inhuman as she, as much prone to love and to joy and to sadness, and she refused to make her a monster. Because, of course, you cannot blame the beauty for their loveliness, as you cannot blame the genius for their intelligence.

Walk with me, she asked one day, and longed to take her to the edge of the water and simply push her out on a boat int the sea where she could never return from. Each day the jealousy grew worse. Each day, she walked with beauty and could not reconcile her burning passion from the feelings of human empathy that encompassed her. Until, one day, the storm broke across the sky.

And there was beauty - as beautiful as you could possibly imagine. As beautiful as the rain and clinging white and gray and wetness could make her - every contour easy to define. And there was lion, circling her, watching her, wanting her. And there was she, watching the storm come in. And beauty was frightened and intrigued by lion, and she was alone and watching as the barren tree that beauty stood against was circled again and again by the golden coat that she desired to touch and caress.

And then she felt it, the rumbling underneath her feet, the way it trembled, the earth, and she knew immediately that the water was coming. And the beauty and the lion were in deeper ground. And she also knew, without a slightest doubt, that she must warn them, that all other things were the pain of living and that this thing was the truth beneath it all. And she cried out, and the lion turned, and the beauty looked at her with startled eyes. And although she cursed herself later, she was glad, for a moment, glad for these two whom she loved.