Shadows in the house of lights
can be seen if you believe they are there. It’s the long traveled deep wheeled road that got me here. Near darkness followed like a spell, and the outlined view was found the old house with yellow lit windows,flickering from inside. In town it’s told a Civil
War General lived here. But never
came back. A reclusive daughter lived within for years then disappeared as
if she never really existed. The mother died suddenly decades ago. Only her name remains in the county clerk’s ledger of deaths. Family cemetery lay a short walk behind the house as if a
breeze away. I knocked on the door.
Climbed through a window. Found my way to the cellar of connected rooms, connected doors. And then, a narrow tunnel of red brick,clay walls and downward steps in the direction of
the cemetery. I recoiled from the
unknown that laced a fear, some •.
how foreseen, hidden inside like a
force of personal history like a self destructive sensation. I drove back to town. Told what happened. They asked, “did I see shadows without their bodies moving about?” I replied, “only my own.” They all answered with
a voice like a distant echo, “return to the house. You do not belong here. Hurry.”
I remembered the house garden pond. Now dried, leaving gold bones of fishes. Leaving everything in a haze.
A Lost Man of Days and Weather
While walking home, this man’s hat was blown off in dense wind. When he got home, there it was, waiting for him on the front porch
in sure direction like a hole-in-one.
Inside, the wife said, “thinking always about history, some day you shall fall into it like a kind of time-warped tunnel, no return.” He has supper, reviews the indigenous newspaper
as if written like letters from Plato, watches old Western episodes on TV, drinks a highball with two cherries reminding him of sunrise-sunset, goes to bed and dreams only in black
and white like starring in a silent era movie. Next morning he leaves for work. But the hat again has vanished
on his way. The one with a flaming
flamingo feather looking like it once ..
belonged to Robin Hood. From the office window, near dusk, he looks out and can hear a legion of Roman soldiers marching, wishing to be with them. Then with a great passion he asked
out loud, “why wasn’t I born in another century?” His stream-of-consciousness is seen with these types of series like reading chapters in a long fictional novel.
The dead made you forget myself
that is, the person I never was, even so presently-
Not to be known, to be recalled. My value from point to point uttered voices dying in spaces
of wind storms, sandy they travel,
though,
in slight stillness still visible, greater.
We are layers, you and I like a passing generation, now then–
Keepers you kept the moving so alive. Above, below, the same geography is of stone, bronze, paper, plastic and
icon like steel, soft as white linen.
Then you settled matters quicky by
exclusion, oblivion and dreary as if
the world be it strange. I am ..
unfamiliarly-blue among others like a stark sky, flat unto itself and the grave,
deepen weekly.
Turquoise, the necklace taken from your bedroom follows
like every romantic dream. Dreaming
yourself that is thin, beside the window view, you standing there, I shall actually touch such thoughts.
32″d and Pearl Avenue
The city is on fire again tonight. By way of neons, shops, outdoor cafes, colorful collisions and conversations between young adults. Blazing their diligent ideas and diversity. They have blueberry
muffins, red wine, coffee, Mexican
foods that melt heavenly while their fixed cerebraIs twist about. To an older generation this display is redundant. You never see them here in twilight hours. But among
the landscapes of voices and visions
the fair and fresh search
for ageless answers to endless •.
questions like so mal’)y cups of poured hot tea. Then a somebody one morning at the office asked, “have you heard yet? The Flat Earth Society lost another member
last night.”
Time line of a paradoxical life
1912
The Titanic goes down.
The Carpathia rescues survivors.
1918
The Carpathia goes down.
57 survivors, one is Frank Buckles.
1942
Buckles became a Japanese POW, civilian internee.
2008
Frank Buckles meets President
George W. Bush. •.
2011
Frank Buckles dies as last American
WW1veteran, age, 110.
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