TO RETURN
from oblivion, death’s
certain stance—
Nothing left there—
The spent shell’s gape, limbs
a twisted grimace, violence scrawled
in a pall now mute with the echo.
Nothing you call that!
When I can see a ghost life of lace,
attached strand after strand, such a story of threads
woven whole to the touch unfinished except for
shattered sinew &
scattered femurs.
Oh tell me
(ashes to ashes)
they don’t walk
(dust to dust)
don’t talk in a language
which defies this last drama, that indicts
(I did not see)
Our indifference
(did not hear)
that alibi’s snag
(a thing)
bleeding tapestries seams
in dreams which can’t disappear.
Back Waterside
Hands upraised, palms, small
moons, fingers, the stalks of light
going under among shadows
& certain torment: angels in flames.
I have learned every method.
I could list the techniques—–
the twist of hemp straining necks,
a wrenched torso connected to foot soles
flayed in this, a modern middle-ages
of surfacing backwaters.
Your color is suspect. You dress, talk queer.
They have a folder, a profile—–
The police, the militia, this authority of personality
gone over, extreme—–
The waves beneath the smiling threats tow,
the surging current, its supremacist dregs
from the cesspool – once was steam, plant life,
cool green, the pulse plush (sharecropper, migrant)
of susceptible flesh who survived.
Synonyms
The wind sounds like whales
the way a land parched by drought
has water’s wave patterns.
This is the earth,
imprints as legacies.
Configurations approach the dock,
sonar schools moving in
to bop wood as breakers lap.
Eyes rise to decipher
exactly what’s out there.
What is heard cannot be seen,
only felt like a picture drawn
from experience years back.
It’s the same refrain,
the same frequency,
these shadows retain.
Time washes over, nature,
concurrent, recollecting
not loss in the aftermath,
but some stronger impulse.
It lingers, hangs on, heartbeats,
like children, building, filtering tenacious,
a synonymous pitch in the air.
Stephen Mead is an Outsider multi-media artist and writer. Since the 1990s he’s been grateful to many editors for publishing his work in print zines and eventually online. Recently his work has appeared in CROW NAME, WORDPEACE and DuckuckMongoose. Currently he is resident artist/curator for The Chroma Museum, artistic renderings of LGBTQI historical figures, organizations and allies predominantly before Stonewall, The Chroma Museum – The Chroma Museum (weebly.com)
Plato's Caves online 