god, a night light in eternity   -S. A. Griffin

god, a night light in eternity

there from the
beginning
at last
the tease of
infinity
grins

We Search   (English tranlation by Alejandro Cesarco)

We Search
each night
with effort
between heavy and asphyxiating lands
for that weightless bird of light
that burns and escapes us
in a sigh.

BUSCAMOS   -  Idea Vilariño

Buscamos
cada noche
con esfuerzo
entre tierras pesadas y asfixiantes
ese liviano pájaro de luz
que arde y se nos escapa
en un gemido.

from: NO TODO ES HOY EL DÍA   -  Pablo Neruda 
….
Contesto.

Adentro de la luz circula tu alma
aminorándose hasta que se extingue,
creciendo como un toque de campana. "

from : TODAY ISN'T EVERYTHING     (English Translation - by Ben Belitt
I tell you:

Inside the light
Your soul makes its circle,
refining itself
to extinction,
or enlarging its rings like the stroke of a bell.
To fly, we have to have resistance.  -Maya Lin

LEAVING HOME  - Mike Henry>
The Austin Slam Poetry website is: www.austinslam.com

I don’t think things should be able to kill you if you can’t see them.  When it’s my time, give me a meteor crash, a renegade elephant charge, the subtle shift of a steering wheel towards a guard rail, towards a physics problem, creating flight.  Give me something I can look in the eye, that I can rail against in the futile and unheard seconds before dark.  Something I can relate to.

Otherwise, it’s like when the wall cracks from a leak that has painted itself with an imperceptible slowness, a quiet march in yellowing shadow from the ceiling fan towards a doorframe, you know there’s a crack, and you know why, but you never saw the water. 

Like the water that soaks you as sweat, makes your clothes grasp a chair back when bad news has come.

In these days when I fear I have lost a certain stillness, when an attempt at the novel on my bedside announces the arrival of the myriad daydreams, fears, and math equations that live in the white spaces where letters are not, in these days I need to remember the simpler times.

How me and Robert would play pool in bars and divide up all that the world might hold, our myriad futures, the scattering days fat with possibilities made into sucker bets and jousting lances towards fate, distilling it all down into seven words … now, if I make this NEXT one …

How I’ll push a grocery cart for the rest of my life, so long as my wife will rest her hand on my lower back as I do, what it means to be sure of you.

How my friend Pasha would sit in bed and play guitar.  With the television on really loud at the same time.

I’ll remember Dad throwing me grounders in the back yard, the baseball skittering across the freshly mown grass like a small bird, how I’d scoop it off the lawn just like he taught me, just put your glove where the ball is, son, he’d say, how throwing the ball back and the anticipation that lived in the seconds as it arched towards the inevitable pop of leather became our own kind of conversation.

My grandfather used to drive me in his green Chevy Impala, a bruised and limping dragon that bore the scars of innumerable collisions that he’d never admit to, and we’d drive to the top of the hill by the cemetery, the highest point in town and watch tornadoes.  This seemed like a great idea at the time.  I remember he’d bring lawn chairs, how we’d sit together and I’d feel the rain slowly soak through the braids of yellow and green plastic, no matter how tightly I’d press my back against them, this slow invasion of dampness.  We’d watch the funnels chase each other like verses of slow hymns in the wheat fields, knowing they wouldn’t turn our way, never did.  Or even just big rainstorms, lightning cursing cracks across the darkening heavens, pointing at everything in all directions, remember, it would say.  Our moments together pass all too fast, leaving trails burned across our closed eyes, suggestions of friends now gone.  And I will remember.  Especially when my chair is wet.

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.  - Marcel Proust

To fly, we have to have resistance. - Maya Lin

from REFLECTIONS OF ORION  – Stuart Blazer

this air is familiar, it fills my lungs
with memory: how often I've looked at earth and wished I was there,
free to stare at stars not condemned to it

PHYSICS  - Carlye Archibeque

"How did this happen?"

--my husband upon noticing it was morning again

First there is a string and a cat

the cat is alive or dead and the string

is invisible. There might be a black hole,

or a black body. I'm not sure. But the sun,

the sun is involved, and a cat, I'm sure

of the cat's involvement and the string,

the string is very important, but invisible.

People, much like the cat, sleep in a round

box with a blue sky for a lid and some very

questionable substances, and one bowl

of food, and one bowl of water. Outside God

wonders if he should open the lid or just

assume we are fine. An alarm goes off.

Someone hits the snooze button twice,

and it has happened again. The cat is alive.

"Find someone who makes you laugh and sit next to them" --  the artist

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