1733 c/o Tommy Keane

 
Debts and Praxis


For you and we.

Only in sight of time can we stand, us, astride.
Only in spite for can we blandish such pried.

***

As we sailed in mirth on the shortest berth of our journey across a world,
we came bursting forth as braggarts besworn with our plans upon your shores.

Merely more peoples posited peerless, with fearful plans for freedoms,
searching always for lands of less that wills will always knead until more.

In your well-worn wild, with just barely a score hence mild,
it was the smiling shining promise of progress' premise that failed you to push back on your unlatched door.

In an idling unctuous swagger embittered upon patience but barely bedraggled,
we flew and floated, never besotted, gingerly carrying our plans for we.

A city to build, a home to make new, and safety truest and free;
never will burn, never be lost, never to fall back into the sea.

Our hapless hopes met by your hopeless rotes;
short of enslavement is the standard for thee.

You will lose because you already chose;
we will win because we see only sin.

But before it goes further, the scorched earth will roll over,
only to burn, but not let us in.

It's hard to catch up, when you can't see the steps.
It's hard to slow down, when you can't see the rest.

We had a singular vision, a future for which we made provisions,
so why didn't you just climb aboard?

And yet as you went away,
in your eyes you would say,
"Our progress just hasn't met yours;
our conquest doesn't beget yours;
our fondness does only invent yours;
our hardness is yet to be implored."

And regret is all that we all have inshored.

Our hapless hopes met by your hopeless rotes;
short of enslavement is the standard for thee.

Our hapless hopes met by your hopeless rotes;
a perfected invention is the vision of we.

Our hapless hopes met by your hopeless rotes;
enslavement to visions for dreams.

1684 c/o Tommy P. Keane

Do you hear(,) the Birds?

  

    

It started in December of the previous year, as it should have. A time to be frozen and a time to search for warmth. But it got colder than we expected. We sheltered one another. Wrapped up in alms and arms. Empathy and ecstasy, I'd like to believe in earnest alternative, but perhaps that is just misguided.

Even the seas turned to glass, immovable, and the lives they held were now trapped and shattered. With no sea, the skies yielded their living into the ice of death as well.

We stood there, in the snow, in that field, amidst that valley, beneath a faded sun. Under the treaded frost below our feet were blades of mocking green grass, peeking up at us. It was coming; it wasn't time yet, but it was coming. We held each other, deeply and dearly, but not in the right ways. The wanted ways. No, it was the needed ways only. The cold kept everyone else out, and we were close enough for warmth, but it was the necessity of our Winter. Ours of missed intent. But the blades watched us, waiting; knowing, without truly.

The thaw separated us. It separated all. The seas returned to motion, as land had no more surface connection, but it is always to be all-one deep down, whether we remember to admit it or not. The crystal ocean cracked and fractured, as life returned to the seas immediately yielding, in part, in death to feed the lives of the skies.

You loved the birds. You love the birds. You hoped for the birds. I think that's why you held me so close in the frost. When they died, you knew they weren't gone, or at least you hoped, but you took to me just the same, to be the hope. We can't put our hopes on the dead. They can do nothing but disappoint.

I held you in the Winter, I held you for the warmth, our missed intent, but I held you too for the truth. What is closest seems most real and true. Mountains require faith, until we stand upon their crests, and then it is our lives, our civilizations, which require our faith or seem too far lost. In my arms I found you to be truth, and you to me in mine. But is it crust or crystal?

Now in March, in our thaw, I am no longer needed and it is a want that is in question. The birds are returning; the blades stand, pointed, a carpet in their own right, no longer covered. If I am no longer needed for your hopes or warmth, is that my end to you? Alone amongst the blades.

The Thames flows again, as England stands alone looking upon Europe locked in embrace with Asia. In that Winter, the ice and cold, the frost and crystal connected them. Europe enveloped, but the new connection was lost while one had been there before the beginning of it all. But in crust or crystal, which truth chose; why? and which was chosen; why?

The birds are returning and your hopes return to their backs, your love to their wings, your secrets to their eyes, and your desires to their call.

I will stand in this field, surrounded by the blades. They will never pierce me, but they will remain an abstract and constantly conspicuous threat. A frost like this is few and far between.

Will I learn, or be found, to be wanted before I am needed in the next?

Will your birds, upon which you rest all, stay close, or will you send yourself away with them into the skies?

Needed or wanted, I am kneaded all the same.