Wednesday, September 06, 2006

Airflight

For a poem

Words
must dance
a certain way.

In continuous presence.

Doesn't the moment
live us,
if we are living it?

Even if it doesn't exist.

Fading horizon lights
as the wing lifts

Tilts, gunmetal
surge into sky.

Which doesn't exist either.

Air
breathed
here as much sky
as up there.

Every breath
is sky-breath.

A velocity of words

Flowing over
the sonic sphere,
winds of sound
made into meaning.

Perhaps I fell in love
with letters

Winging across the alphabet.

Oceans flow
into each other
like bodies of knowledge.

Are we a rhetoric of ourselves,
our love or war or loneliness-
how can what we say
be empty?

I cannot imagine our lives
without their ceaseless
expression.

The heartbeat at our throat.

As I tilt my chair back
in the pressurized cabin,

These words, even in their
voicelessness, the droning dark
on the ascending flight.

7 comments:

  1. brenda, your words give me pause...to think, to feel, to experience. and when i leave, i am always richer from having spent this time with you. thank you. :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Every breath
    is sky-breath.


    (Oh, for a breath of fresh air.)

    Oceans flow
    into each other
    like bodies of knowledge.


    Breathing oceans and oceans breathing.

    the droning dark
    on the ascending flight.


    What is and is not simultaneously.

    Thanks, Brenda.

    ReplyDelete
  3. the voicelessness, the dark, the pressurized place, "winging across the alphabet" and how we look down from up high and try to choose words that collect what we deeply mean so that we can spill them out and allow them to be shared...

    beautiful journey Brenda.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I cannot imagine our lives
    without their ceaseless
    expression.


    I reckon that from a writer's point of view, that sentiment comes very close to home, to the pen (or keyboard) and paper (or screen) that have become extensions of a writer's limbs, of his very existence. ^_^

    This poem, it does nudge a thought: that words are like 'nature' -- everywhere around us, sensed by us.

    Thank you. Cheers.

    ReplyDelete
  5. An intense couple of days, and I see 4 days worth of emails piled up, and these beautiful comments - thanks Sky, MB, Narrator!

    Great to have you drop by, Soulless, and I briefly browsed your poetry site - looks good.

    Where was I? Filing. Back in the nitty gritty of the working class, on the underside of culture. And while I haven't for a long time, nor intend to again, done a job like that I am grateful to be reminded of the perspective.

    I finished this poem at that job - my notebook tucked in my bag, surreptitiously pulling it out to scrawl words, a line or so.

    And something I'd read from "high art" about the emptiness of meaningless words and I was reminded of how I don't believe any words, especially ones of idle chatter, are meaningless.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Airborne, whilst toiling on the underside of culture. As above, so below.
    Wonderful.

    ReplyDelete
  7. I love the idea of words scrawled in a surreptitious notebook, the tension of the "hidden writing" matching that of the poetry itself.

    Though, I wish we lived in a society that rewarded creativity a little more tangibly, if we didn't venture into that "other side" our stories would likely hold less power.

    ReplyDelete

A Pulsing Imagination - Ray Clews' Paintings

A video of some of my late brother Ray's paintings and poems I wrote for them. Direct link: https://youtu.be/V8iZyORoU9E ___