The Hunter, the dark woods, & the dénouement

Ela Zubrowska : color is on flowers

And so your enemy 
stalks you. 

You thirst, you 
stumble; wonder if this heavy 
quilt of night will suffocate or free;

if wilderness conspires 
to make you know how small 
you truly are. Or how infinite. How 
frail. How alive. 

Ancient as this deer run.
      

                                         the drum, the heartbeat, the breath, the warcry
                        the breath, 
          the drum, 
                      the heartbeat, 
                                  the warcry


So now become the seeker.

Turn into the hunter.

Turn around and charge after

what's chasing you down, run with

dark blades emerging from your fear

to stop in the air and turn the other way,

poised to strike as your strange new weapon.


                      the drum, the heartbeat, the breath, the warcry
                                                       the breath, 
                                           the drum, 
                           the heartbeat, 
                the warcry

And then 
when you decide 
you're ready to die,

you'll see the bullet 
as it stops,

blooms, and pulses light, quiet

battle song pouring out of this nexus 

of unseen power encircling you—

                                  the breath
                                   the drum 
                                the heartbeat 
                                  the warcry
The drum, the heartbeat, the breath, the warcry

and here, in your 
near-death, your rebirth by
blood and dirt and hunger and butchered fear

you'll find out who you really 
are. It can't be done

any other way.

Hózhó náhásdlíí

 A Christmas Eve poem for all who walk in darkness.

John Hwang : Skid Row

Beauty before you, in darkness;

In darkness, beauty behind you.

Beauty above you, in darkness;

In darkness, beauty around you.

In the back of your mind

you know it

and yet as you run against this dark current

you can’t even breathe.

In the back of your mind

there is a way that winds forward,

toward open road, still waters, nights of kind rest—

the kind others speak of as a common starling on a wire,

little knowing a rare bird has come to bless them again with presence.

You could go crazy

imagining the darkness embrace you 
with such love instead of betrayal, 
because now it slices you open,

stabs you again and again,

rejects you for the millionth time.

You could go crazy

remembering light, remembering a time

when light on the water touched you,

made you feel something;

when light in the valley

broke open your heart and nourished it.

Instead the cruel yoke 
bends you toward asphalt,

down to kiss the dirt and pay it homage.

Instead the iron rod

beats you into a cell half the size of your

burst hopes shriveled dreams

so that you long to evaporate.

Instead your shoulders

fold inward as you carry endless piles of coal

that fuel nothing that feeds you.

Instead your luminous face—

if only you still could see it—

is cloaked by an executioner

who kills without giving its name.

This is why I send the light toward you

to meet you in the valley at the center of the ocean floor.

It rushes like a fury of lava even now,

though you don’t see it,

though your senses are shrouded in exacting poison.

Fur-tongued, muscles seized, plugged, cloud-blinded—

even in paralysis you reach,

second by millimeter by aeon by mile.

This is why I send the light toward you

as you reach, whether you know it or not. 

It climbs the winter cliffs as the city sleeps in misery,

its gentle hands moving over each frozen cell

and calling them back to life.

It weaves this way around

every battered reed, every shivering seed

saying 
all is not lost;

everything is never lost;

anything that is lost can be made whole,

can be called into being out of what was not.

And so this is how I come for you.

This is how you walk in beauty.

In darkness beauty walks;

Beauty walks in darkness.

It has become beauty again.
It has become beauty again.

Handheld

Everything is shared.

The lump in the throat

The bruise on your crushed face

The echo in your belly

The lines of prophecy on your hands

Everything is shared.

The simmering question that drove you into this alley

The doubt that you will ever be known

The childhood knowledge that you could run on air, through treetops

Tender things your father never said

Everything is shared.

Days sinking into white hot sand

Steel-spined walls keeping you locked in step

Your endless loss of blood and breath

Each undisclosed transfusion that brings you back from the edge

Everything is shared.

Afternoon, midnight, fracture-just-before-dawn fears that paralyze

Nameless desire that sinks you to the bottom of a well that draws fire from deep below

The framework of sorrow that breaks your bones one by one, daring you to want anything again

Other dangerous abstractions like hope

Everything is shared.

The fibers of your food, your absent shelter

Strange rain that keeps you alive long after you’ve quit caring

Light that shows you a picture of your secret heart spread across magazine pages

The static, the spaces, invisible frequencies surrounding your odd voice with compassion

Everything is shared.

Words that break open a cell, a rock, a tinderbox full of flint and fire

Keys to the codes that can’t be cracked in a single language

Microscopic movements collaborating in a long play of intricate foreshadowing

The building blocks of an apocalypse, of resurrection that would astound you

Everything is shared.

Your heart of ashes and feathers; part coal, part glint of wondrous stone

Your heart a planet; moving waters, hovering spirit, unrelenting green

Your heart the quark and the atom; your heart dark matter

Your heart breaking atmosphere; your heart a traveler

Everything is shared.

Everything is shared.

Old Land

Robert Frost once said something about a poem usually starting as a lump in the throat, a profound sense of wrong, a deep homesickness, a crazy lovesickness—and he is right. This simple traditional-spoken-word-ish poem is, like others, a prayer of sorts for the many spirits of this world bearing the weight of costly experience. If you feel that weight, too, it is also for you.