Michael J.P. Fitzgerald
Taraxacum
I walk, a dandelion cub
upon a brightless breath,
dancing without reference
in the dust.
Feigning aimless,
a coal heat soaking through my shirt,
all the panoptical collapse of night
and none the cool gloaming.
A sure length of road wended
at small hours,
affronting the sleep I ought
on the happenchance
you will be strewn across your stoop,
a book tilted to the light you under,
manhattan in a beading glass,
the canary yellow dress
feinting along your legs -
to nod, only,
to remark plainly after this woolen arcade of evening,
to see you.
Sulphur-Bottom
Hope die as the whale die
with difficulty and regret
chafed
cursing both the damned, curious sun
with all it's leaning over
and the circus vast of its own lungs
both
'This is why I came here'
would that it could whistle
but for all the crushing
arresting all but basest breath
and that the medium of its new
shorter life
were not so thin.
Life is a thing of grace in equal shares
no matter our assumptions
or the temerity of our comforts -
we are not likely:
not the whale
not I
In all the sky,
there might be one ocean
to be crawled from
and one life to bend
relentlessly towards folly;
If love, then, be a thing of life
I am not so proud
as to think we are the only creatures
so afflicted.
A Stone Don't Heal
or
Orpheus's Offer
A Sunday in September, 2011
Today, consider the fallacy of invincibility and the burden of pride. Ponder the
miraculous insistence your own body has to mend; you cannot stop a wound from
closing but that you tear it open again.
For surely you were only wounded.
Yet, just as surely, you were wounded.
So, consider the dead – the actual human dead – who died without reason, whose
deaths signify nothing and from which nothing human grows. The mystery is in
there, and tragedy, same, that awful knowing – find it, own it and mourn them how
they deserve to be mourned: ugly, exhausted and with the distance that time and
community offer. Mourn them reasonably, as best you can as stranger.
Loss at arm's length can barely prepare you,
but even if it's just one day, you have all of it. You can try.
Tonight, another ante of hours. Is the god I bluff before sleep a dog or a drop? If it
did not come, a gift or a spite? I never dared the ire of sibling Time or Gravity as
bold as I deny my rest, but neither has my protest ever stood. Always stumble into
elsewhere after all.
Perhaps the dream is just armor against the fall.
Perhaps it is just comfort to think so.
Is an hour a thing? Like a stone or a bird? What will climb from the husk of that
name when the game of human ends? A petty thief in that coat of sand, asking itself
of me in eights – someone else's bargain, this, and old. A heritage. A debt paid dear
and every darkly down.
In the gossamwareness of the dead reckon,
after sleep has made its offer
and, in horror, you've declined:
what body, pale, moonly, will beg to moor your clock to waking?
What dread longitude awaits your measure?
Michael J.P. Fitzgerald is not an MFA candidate and has not been previously been published. He has studied for several years under the influence and his work is forthcoming in the future. When at home he is. Some of his favorite books are as well. Contact him at MichaelJPFitzgerald@Gmail.com.
Tweet Pin It
