Tag: underground

Change, Poetry

Swing Low

smirkpretty

I say
I wish you could see me now
but I don’t
believe you would recognize
sight. Eyes are useless
underground. Blind as phantoms
housed in walls
long since deeded to no one
of shared blood. What if the final form
is not trumpets and Velvet
Moon, not 3-4 blessed be
croon and gleam, pearl winged
Harry James melting
open cloud to gold leaf
Tiffany, but
a burrowing
creature
rooted under our feet? A mole
does not know dark or fear
burial. All this color
I imagine
only up on the surface
of waking
you see
through vision’s simulacra:
An endoscope
of whisker
magnifies. Scent intrudes
as stimulus while skin-stretched
drum converts wave to danger,
pleasure, prey,
mate.

I must look
the way you see
me now: as heat cracks
at cliff face. As confluence
of salt and iron pounding
back canyon wall
thuds measure
after measure into belly
bowl and marrow.

The echo.
The boom.

Up here I may
have a corner
on the market of names
for blue
but you take the curve
at full tilt
without the help
of oxford
and steel, with no street
sign written in any language
called language
yet you discern
humus and loam,
sixth-sense know the tongues
of strata you now inhabit
and have become
without any of us up here
understanding
that you did live forever
after all.
 

Creativity, Happy Days

Happy 100 Days: 12

smirkpretty

Bug's Subterranean Bunker
Bug’s Subterranean Bunker

 
While I lay in the bed singing Christmas carols from the old songbook, Bug draws. This elaborate little world is his latest creation. He stops me before I kiss him good night so he can explain all the elements of his picture.
 
Conveyor belts rolling down from up in the treetops carry suitcases to the inhabitants below. The suitcases have “all the things people need, like food and hammers” for underground life. The dude on the right sitting under the tree is fishing from the subterranean spring that runs along the bottom. His catch is stored in wooden storage boxes up above, and the conveyor belts ferry fishes down when people need food.
 
The ladders help people and dogs and cats go up and down, too. There are also slides. The little dwelling on the bottom right is a dollhouse someone built so the kids have something to play with down there. There is a kitchen for cooking. The brown stuff is the soil, Bug explains, and tunnels through the soil are for the worms. The guy fishing uses the worms for catching fish.
 
The skull, bones, and wishbone in the middle of the brown patch are remains of a deer skeleton decomposing in the earth, which Bug put in to show that this whole place is “way down underground.”
 
You know what gets me? Every single inhabitant of this bunker is in a state of perfect bliss. The fisherman, the cats, the children: all happy. The dudes schlepping suitcases are grinning. The fish swimming in the spring and languishing in their boxes are wearing smiles. Even the dead deer is content with the situation.
 
Predator, prey. Worker, player. Compost, bloom. No matter where anyone lands in the tableau, happiness is an option.
 

Uncategorized

Foxhole

smirkpretty

Down below the skin of things,
someone has prepared the soil,
spread the loam, drawn up hair
and root
for a bed. The mouth
of this subterranean bunker
lays its lips against sky, sipping
thin wisps, down
of feather, down
of cloud. Spooning
in that nest of damp debris:
a him
and a her.
 
She recalls the man who gave her a home
where she could die
in peace. Perhaps it never happened.
It is time to call back
the ghost from its powder
blue chair and beg,
beg
the long-dead grandmother
to shake off her slumber
and divulge the secret.
How to win such a man?
 
She would take a bully, a drunk,
a scoundrel,
a dunce,
as long as he gives her
that powder blue chair
and three square feet
of something like her own
place
to put it.
 
Ghosts take their secrets
seriously, it seems.
Grandmothers take theirs
to the grave.
 
Autumn arrives
out there. The blacksmith turns
the amber strip
around a stem, bashing the glare
with a hammer. Sparks
do not fly. Only breath, only smoke
from the fire.
He makes the unforgiving iron
bend to petal, to tissue.
A rose
plunged into the ice bath
hisses.
 
We become what we never thought we would be.
Finally,
we stop resisting.
Finally,
something gives.
 
Beauty
like birth
hurts.
 
The faraway mouth
of this cave
is nearer than it appears.
That pinprick of light
shivers
even wider while we squeeze
our eyes against it.
One pebble falls
then another.
 
Somewhere out there the future
clangs
like iron, like fire
in its relentless scuffle
with the past.
For the moment, we pretend
we cannot feel sand
skittering down our shoulders.
We feign sleep
for now,
for as long as our restless arms
allow.