InDecentSeas

Heart holds are lightly gripped, and gestures subtly drift down a sidewalk sideways. Leathery hand swings back into the last evening where new fingers stretched towards falling sky. Pieces of a projection reign in the yearning eyes, like daggers finding their scabbards after all the violence just becomes noise.

I slipped again with no slope while a sudden gust of wind carried a smell I couldn't place, something old and burned. I've lifted the lid and peeked back into the coffin where they're still lying, still rotting without reason. I'd eye another site, another stone's placement and ask for proper direction, reaching deep beneath the ground before I found home, except Home's not here. Home isn't anywhere where I can't hold you so close that our breathing slows to a wheeze. Still, there's no distortion and the lid snaps back, closed to the smoke. Even though you're here and home, there hasn't been breath in so very long.

I set myself against a rushing wind, leaning into the gale so my pointed parts help carve my way through it. Tears slip from squinted eyes, blown loose by the unrelenting chaos of nature. I lose footing, stutter- step backwards on heels and stumble over the bones of yesterday. I'm a tumbleweed of flesh and blood, battered against the ground and pushed back minutes, days, months of slow steps where my toil left a trail of sweat. Every scrape becomes scar, as I am tattooed by turmoil. Though I may find no bracing, and lose bearing, there is still time. Each tiny defeat adjusts the angle, and I push headfirst, harshly and aggressively forward against the allegedly insurmountable.

There's beauty somewhere. Maybe it's in the reflection. After you've stripped away the layers of dirt, washed the surface of its grime, dried and buffed and shined, it must be underneath. When you stretch out your fingers and run your hand along the form, careful not to snag the points and sharp edges, it has to be gorgeous. When you search for sensations, maybe the search is best. Maybe beauty lies somewhere else, only discoverable after every ugly thing has had its time and passed away.

The stressors slide to the other side, and I am more alive. The imbalance begins correcting, and all those things it was affecting with weight displaced from peace and grace breathe and blossom. Things clinging that upset my being are shaken down nearer the ground, and I'll soon feel freer being me.

In the fashion that makes you, magnificent orator, most comfortable; in broad, sweeping gestures, compress the uncomfortable truths beneath steel plates laid out as far as your grandiose arms will allow. Oh, great mover, master of moments, the protector against the unearthing of buried laborers, save us from the painful juxtaposition, deliver us from the abominable divergence, guide us backwards through time to the golden era, time immemorial, natural order and familiarity. These, the pleas of the fortuitous, the yearning hearts bound to image and status are cries made for conquering tribes. Long-standing stampers-out of departure from an ill-conceived regularity hustle for their nut. Maddening is the distance of flattened dreamers dwindling out against your deliberate weight. And those dreams, all simple and reasonable, are meager allowances within otherwise confining circumstances. They flutter and falter, falling from the sky on scorched wings. The damned await your just

I'm barrelling into battle with nothing but scars. I'm holding flowers. Wild-eyed. Terror-filled. I'm squeezing the last life from them and screaming.

We shuffle outside and throw our heads back, arms around each other, to gaze upon the altered states of our mind. The moon waves in a wash of color while we catch impossible moments of star stuff burning up before our very eyes. Sharp chill begins to bite, so we pull closer and swoon. My love has never been so large. Through my very Western understanding, she might be a whole piece of my person, a cosmically magnetic presence that pulled me back for another completion. Whether the feeling is placebo, imagined, or implanted in my thoughts by some subconscious remembrance, it matters so little. I am certain I am whole again, positive of the lasting effects of finding everything so very attuned to this frequency.

Praise of the moon seems high in frequency, with multitudes of western heads bowed in reverence to imagined spiritual guidance radiating from a dissonant internal hum. Those placebos, those platitudes, are all irreverent gestures towards more ancient practice. They're the last ripples that reach the shoreline. Distorted from their original altruism, they lap against soft earth that's holds fast against such gentle pressure. A barrier that says, "Return to the sea, and build."

I've composed mounds atop the ground where I've buried what I hope will encourage bloom. The corpses of once beautiful creatures intermingle with all the horror that I hope so fervently is rotting into something usable. The charred remains, the western-facing ruins of every fairytale, each hopeful indulgence that overturned and upended, the flowers that soured and succumbed to sickness all lie there, covered in old earth. Ceremonial temples embellish the tops, adorned with precious metals and brilliant stones. They sparkle and shine to the unsuspecting eye, but they're all built on decomposing offerings. The ritual is occurring underground, where the sun and moon see no change. The foundations above will sink into new soil, the settling a strange placebo. It will be indiscernible from the normal passage of time, where mother nature wears us down to lie with the other dead things and nurture new life with our expiration.