Garage sale flood

I

Soulmates

Happen

When there are two moons

In the sky,

Pulling round

All the tides

In

Twin

Swells

In the dreams 

Of a half dead author who just

happens to have kept a 

Flower of memory

In a corner

Of the yard

Almost under the house

And here

Here, these two different souls

Feed the same river and become

The waterfall

Curiously exploring, freely falling, 

Flashing, becoming an object of wonder

Until the world, seeing a shimmering mass

Seeing that water is water, transparent,

Turns away, laughs, knows

This spinning duo

Has its own, natural logic

And if Nietsche saw the waterfall

He would see its end

But they do not join.

That is a decision 

like the planning of a garden

-What should grow 

And what should not.

And these souls are not joined

Although sometimes they look at the spade

And imagine the logical, sincere uprooting

Which is possible at all times.

But as it is, his roots are allowed

To reach out, flail in experiment, 

And settle, knowing that

In those confident eyes

There is a world in which

She is satisfied to spin.

Both gardens will grow

Plants to reach, enjoy the sun

The rain that reminisces only in wetness

Will feed both alike.

Seasons will reproduce 

But the single season

The blink

Will show the state of things passing by in a beat

The nature of those gardens

That were twins

But have grown apart. 

And if they don't grow apart

What do we say?

We murmur

At the God who created one moon

When silently we called for two

One moon remains after the dream

The other disappears between sleeping and waking

I wonder how often I will dream of two.

And wonder if the garden could have been fuller

Nourished not by the depleted remains of the waterfall

Built on its bed

But he divides the sky to give me rain 

And pulls the tides with the one moon

We only have reflected light

And she trapped it for so long

I would have died in that windowless house

Is this a lie?

How have I done any better?

The questions cannot be asked 

The test cannot be performed 

Weighing the beach by a single grain of sand

Using a sketch of the gallery basement

To map the mind of God

The ram will never come

This was not God's voice.

II

God is all there is. I will float above this tide of junk, ebbing and flowing with my false friends, false promises, false hopes and false desires. The mirror is covered in weeds, and the uncovering demeans the gardener. The tired charade of walking on and over the same patch of ground with the second glance at so-called smiles, the pointless sifting and categorising and painted resilience and hidden love turned into bitterness. The images of turning and promising are false friends in every sense. Does she love me? She doesn't exist, so turn her into a user for realism. Wish to be an object of use when real alternatives can no longer exist. False friends false for their unreality, a true friendship of false desires. God's singing, leaves whirling, wind winding through the trees, sun gleaming, all nested in a person. Reality dead, grave who knows where. And God is the creator, orchestrator, symphony director, in this decomposing swamp of self destroying experiences. The bacteria greedily await, organisms encasing each other in succession. Algae forms with time, life feeding and always growing. And I could break it, if I wanted to get out, washing myself in the Jordan, taking his hand and facing the unseemly mess, conscious of the fever and sweating it out, coming back again and again for another rinse. Until it fades into the background and nothing is left but God, someone more permanent, trustworthy, patiently helping me to take out the lies tattooed on my skin, until my burning arm is weak and free in his hold.

III

Flowers for the love-sick, but I’m not.

My mind is clear. Clear as the white-blue light through the leaves. 

I was hit by an unusual storm, a freak accident of grotesque sketches, blue hour memories not mine but clearer than, spinning phrases, beauty stolen from the city’s heterotopias, gold-drenched forays into death, everything unwise and exploratory.

And I sit on the water sculpture having tried and failed to reorganise my life to fit the books and cars floating into my house. Is it water? Or is it dry and crisp with the winter sun and a bag full of garage sale trophies? 

You bring the hurricanes and the sun. You shaped the leaves, dripping that organic material into the mold such that the fibrous material would hold the light in that careful way, such that the scene we see would be the germ of that recurring and now shuddering click of the camera. She was a marvel and you created her.