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20 Cent Water |
Let us speak directly of our being as it appeared to me down at the 20 Cent Water Machine.
One man fills up his plastic jug and I think: Yes, is this not, surely, who we are: made of water mostly, a form drawn in shining dust, drawn in darkness from the hole in the middle of the sky, golden oceans lost in our heads, splashing on the sides of a Sparklett’s life. We all have corners we refill at. We fill and fall, die and born, made of things we did not do: Hands of Mesozoic jism jangle through our celestial rush-hour haze, a drunk trumpet spills notes from a rooftop, a radio in a creaky car passes by, one man listens to violins as another does but does. The water is on. The walls and doors are spilled with our spilling, our music does not rust.
This wine of being burns a votive dawn sparrow breaking the brow of the convict sky dripping tattooed names of galaxies into the flesh of the sidewalk. The flower of our fluid pearls a drop waiting to roll down the leaf into the dirt, the next life, somewhere else’s dream, this flower with no name spills the saliva and sweat of its seed on our shoes as it swims for the sun. Our mistakes are what make us run.
The world is turning. The engine guns for the flame that licks blue lips around the heart of a bird that holds a starry glacier in its eye. The world is a cold place and I know it. The world is no place, so what. The world is round. I have felt it. The world makes smells and I have them. The world kills itself and I was born here. This world is a blue flower with roots crawling from the ashes of another’s end.
There is a gift in these razor-lipped dew drops cutting us out of time. We are not contained in bottles or in the ultraviolet of this eye. What we are is ruby-eyed stardust swimming through the manhole covers and the trees while the machines roll loud down the street and an unknown kindness holds up the sky, the sleep of extinction cradling the water of our miracles.
copyright 2004
Steve
Abee |
