Miniature Ages

[Ryzenfall]

I'm making a short visit to what's left of this forum. Here is something I recently completed. Enjoy...









I remember our first collection.
We collected ourselves wearing band-aid smiles
over throbbing scrapes of reticence
and excitement, the involuntary risk.
We played a game where you join
the called-out limb to your partners’ match;
and Chelsea asked if I was in a pair
because she was brave.
I shook my head, and we came in fifth.
But no one could kiss at that time, making
the shy-born three way tie.
Jennifer asked if she could join my space.
We spoke of hopes and hometown libretto
silently placing bets in our mind
about the coming days, going in blind.
None of us ready for the arriving new eyes.

We ran to the collecting room
Elias and I, always late
cursing the hill we had to climb
every Ray Ban afternoon.
The backs of heads glared at us
like painted stones on Indian land.
We’d slowly turn them over; we turned for them
being sacred strangers in the dirt.
That day we learned
a game of tag using long water foam.
Christopher leapt over the fence that night
and chased Skyler with the whip
because he knew him before.
We all ran toward faces we had already met
and I didn’t do much running then.

I remember waking,
packing bags for the private locale;
Jig-sawing them into compact trunks,
which still had more room than our cabin space
sold-out seats, all gaps filled in, like promenade-
bound limousine vibrations.
Haley asked, who is someone we want to know better
so Kelly, with a smile, threw out a few
and Chris knew his answer.
I said Christian, because people thought we were friends
but it wasn’t yet true.
We pointed out the odd shaped buildings,
how they didn’t seem like they should fit,
yet spoke a kind of purpose.

Orange hands caressed the hilltop church
through the Mist: her feet on the valley floor
as flocks circled round her billowing heads.
The room past the steeple held us in warmth
like the bosom of a grandelder oak
or the scarred palms of Glory.
The remarks we made were lost in the height:
while the wooden roof held our balloon cordiality.
First we learned how to laugh, collected;
As Andrei walked on all fours and lolled his tongue
and Steven became a two minute queen.
Emerging clowns with no slip-on colors
save for our breaking skin.

Pods hang, long black seeds,
and watch with the rocks, along the cliffside
where we pray and unmake our noise,
returning to collect again, prepared for nothing.
Step forward if you were born in this state.
-Nine to twelve.
Step forward if your parents have parted.
-Too many.
Step forward if someone you love hurt you.
-I hear the snapping of strings.
Step forward if you’ve ever felt alone.
-Everyone.
I thought about Nick, him being away
and how even he’d have stepped,
how we all had, knowing inside that covert curse
but kept daily playing the fool.

Stories the alien voices told
began to sound somewhat like my own.
Foreign fingers caught my hands
because they understood
or because somehow, they gave a solid damn
and weren’t going home till they let me know.
Stephanie said I’m glad you’re here.
Through her fever, Hannah heard our burning chronicles
until each group reformed to the ring;
And a mute circus raged in the center space.

Ashley said it was different this time:
The old road bending someplace new.
Hoping that we’d might become some place
like home, Arek shared losses, torn from its cage.
Rebecca confessed she felt too safe to be held;
And for our scars we kept warm, held something like envy
like a cancer kid in a trauma hospice
where nurses see only running wounds.
Bursting kernels: we emptied our soil.
Katie, like a cordless bale of wheat,
she did not plan to say a word at first
But someone she loved hurt her
-And we all stepped forward
We trampled the circus of metal walls
drawn to her half empty cracking glass
like a planet pull.
With arms like rope, firmly laced, we spoke with God
out loud, without being told.
And our insides gave without being told.
I felt the keen crochet of seraph arrows,
threading pure vows, soaked in time,
lifting us on the mend.

I remember the shore
in vivid Holga tones
like a polaroid of a bulwark rise
grass slopes and sandblock tiers
dove-swooping to the far low breaks.
The ocean flaunting its wind chime glister-
each Milky Way star bathing in the waves.
We dipped our heels in the cold
shuddering at the tide’s receding wrath
delighted by odd life in shallow craters
but mostly that new closeness
forged in warm tears and a holy fire
then set, thrust beneath gelid pools.
I took a picture of Sneha holding the starfish
and we all left, wishing a hundred things.

The grass was dark when our cars pulled in
to parking lots glad for us.
I stood in the silent line
making up a hand motion language
with Felicia, single file.
It was late but we felt no ghost
of sleep, fatigue, or need for proof.
We collected behind the blind circle
made of candlelight.
When you are called
pick just three or four people
by giving them a touch
who stood out to you, regarding what I read.
The first four were chosen as the rest of us
closed our eyes, most already content.
There is quiet, there is shuffling of feet.
Someone who made you laugh.
I can almost hear the smiles
as the room becomes light.
A friend you’ve met who you didn’t know before.
An awareness of undeserved
privilege becomes staggering.
Someone you consider wise.
Soon I am called up, and I break the limit
because I must.
After everyone has gone and we blow out the lights
there isn’t much that I feel I need…

A modest auditorium
was a workshop for hearts
incognito, looking back.
Our caffeine twilight operations
propelled and crawled, while invisible instruments
took their time.
Everybody watched the Kevins dance.
The back row moved as big as the first.
And Rachel played fierce so well
within that grey hood
that I would not even recognize her
until three weeks later.
Most nights we challenged the cold
with body heat and progress
until it was as though we could
progress no more,
And every step was drawn in our marrow.
I knew the toe touch
and the Indian run
or what have you,
But I didn’t know a word about Nick
except that he was from San Jose;
I hadn’t learned
that Tracy seemed quiet
only because I hadn’t given her
the time to speak.

My defiled nerves throb
less under the buoyant grinning lights
and cloth covered fays quick stepping,
contours shrouded in sheets of fog.
I recognize Becky to the left
from photographs of recent friends
so I gave her my name
under orange lights
thinking she’d take it as an added weight
but she smiled in the dark morning
and was glad
because she is simple
like a mountain is simple.
We were all of us landscapes
in a garden body
whole for all our brokenness.

Shuffling, fugitive moments
leagues of people, gurgles collect
the sound of incubated invention
just before it’s debut
like an iron vice
of warm epinephrine.
We step onstage impulsively feeling
more immortal than usual.
Lights explode, the sound keeps pace
and we pay no attention to the men
behind the boards.
We move as if we were
calculated, like a single
jazzy equation.
The Toe Touch.
We funnel oceans through pipes
forcing elated animation
through our just one chance.
The Indian Run.
Finally the routine is
archived, just like that.
The voices of the hidden
seal the memory
in a bright ecstatic resonance.
And we all knew, that
win or lose
that chapter closed with
Happy Endings.

Simulating future collections on a modest coast
where smoke tastes the sky each night
from fires beneath like worldwar trenches
Fernando and I sit above cobbley waves
and I listen to him formulate
abridged and unrelenting tragedy
one upon the next, like windblown tide.
I do not feel like a father
or someone wise, just a sponge
taking in the bitter apple blood
and waiting for the wine in time
made sweet by oaths and hindsight.
We return to the fires
a circle of song, and our swimming daydreams.
We bottle sand as a finger string
planting quiet vows in the crackling night.

I remember the old spring
the year ending and the air
struggling to express its ardor
with just the heated breeze,
as Time smoked acid clouds
while his Minutes caught the second hand
then grasping, watched it swift away.
Such high disorientation
of our final collections,
tripping and ballooning
festivals of sentiment.
Conductions of meeting for meals
as if that were enough.
The meeting in halls
in brisk-to-stalled passing
as if we didn’t expect them.
We saw the approaching Distance
and we wanted everything
while completely content.
There was nothing that was not ours;
Nothing we could not ask for.
Reluctant, excited, we flew waving hands
all along that final week
climbing into the wombs of jets
and the morphing summer hours
Uncollected.

After several weeks
even days
or perhaps all along,
the stale impotency of wires
is acutely exposed.
Faces fade like battered magnets.
I hum stunted songs as I paint my walls
as I tile the floor,
as I tame the mountain yard
or read print fiction
letting the Absence soak through me.
I toss the string and tin can
over hemispheres and pace
in circles across the collections of days
that bleed into each other
like bruised mango casualties in a weathervane.
While Tiffany shuffled notes with our names
on every page with no breaks
and the distance leering inches away.
To drifting islands from a broken continent,
demons sweep on cue
and heaven speaks in the open space
but I step along the days;
Fingers on keys
of a robot computer type and speak.

Returning to a whalebone shell
of our institute of little homes
through a streamer’d door
into a dimly lit collection
of brightly lit expressions we
haven’t beheld in what must have surely been
miniature ages.
The champagne rhythms and gleaming beats
urged us into our arms
in succession
I remember the relative ease
and how openness
became intuition.
Lies about my handicap
of finding companions
how I had none and never would,
were softly slain
by Mackenzie’s constant smile
that can stir strength from bone
and Kelsey’s giving eyes
that herald worth.
When stars collide, they make new colors fly.
I believe we can say we know the feeling.

Another mystery location
to guess and to invest hope
in secret and in en route banter.
The road fork split between
complacent closeness
like silver linked chains,
or forging our iron rings into
a single baton, placed in the running
Hands of God.
We stirred on the brink of a disc earth
facing ghost horizons
our backs to their mirror image of oblivion:
A nervous navy on the edge of the world
slowly casting nets becoming blithe over wine.
Vanessa didn’t laugh at our jokes
but she still tried for a valiant while.
Giovanni and I would gaze off the balcony
over glowing pools, like perfect neon accidents.
We’d talk about the joke of bedtime, like
old veterans trading tales of young risk
and the minutes sown to this new field of family
then I knew we chose uniting fire
or Someone chose it for us.

Some are fond to convene and plot
over maps and graphs, feeling
important in their conference collections.
But I knew we didn’t care about that.
We just wanted to charge the fields,
though even Christ at a heinous sight
paused to weave a whip
before wrecking the temple thieving den.
So we sat to chart our courses
and we took heed because
when you are the front line, you listen keen.
All our outlining spilled
into side street talks and
scenic route dialogue.
Rachelle trusted the good things
so we let the stories circulate.
We talked to Kathy about how she speaks
and how everyone sounds funny
somewhere on this finger-painted world.

Erica laughs in the middle
of a story, and will not stop,
a bright toned virus of gaiety.
By night our calculations change
operating through waning eyes
that learn to watch backs
more than clock and mirror.
Letters by moonlight and tungsten lamp
scripted with care to spell an unbound reckless hope
we struggled to pen a single line at times
not for lack of a path
but rather there being far too many.
The dim room flickered with stifled words
and laughter, as we wrote to our sleeping friends,
Hannah asked if signing unnamed was a good idea.
I remember the letter to Sarah
how she was somehow yet a stranger.
Still a sister though of whom I knew nothing of
but we were both riders in the same cavalry.
A week after that confession
we met at last at an easel in a crowded room
talking of paints and borrowed hours,
So I learned Heaven also reads our mail.

In the navigator seat as Anna drove back
Through windmill fields
as we bottled thoughts
and she shrugged off her ballroom antics.
The miles lulled us fast asleep
with a makeshift soundtrack on repeat.
We wore a strange flavor upon our skin
like Mayan paint
finger stirred and made
from the crushing of leaves
and natural things.

Back in our home halls and the modest
heart workshop, our minds became instruments
to build an opus from scratch and
culture scraps, fresh and friendly.
I’d sit with Nick and Matthew each
night in the middle of the hall
phoenixing our stale ideas into
something like comic gold
until we started babbling like drunks
who’s ducks-in-a-row scattered ages ago.
And Nicole would tell us madness
like ways to eat fruit snacks with finesse,
second winds and epiphanies waiting
after half-confused hysterical fits were done.
Andy would tighten the loose screws
sometimes building walls himself
not for applause but that we could have a standing house.
We’d gather by the stage, wide-minded
stealing breath with our antics
after every jocular anecdote
crucial to the last man and corner.

Days creep close, like whispered wolves
and finally our final night
held us in hourglass arms
slipping us out of its grip
into well invested destiny.
And I dreamt about faces I’ve never seen
washed out by sun and blurred scenery
until All I Have shakes me out of my sheets
and I watch my limbs move on their own.
In the morning air is hidden some kind
of promise, and through the cold
I try catching it with conscious purpose.
Our soles creak across the polished floor
as we collect our costumes in tired silence
then walk to designated rooms preparing
for the arrival of new community.
We dance our newly composed masquerade
that already feels ages old, one last time.
Costumes slip on, doors unlock, we sit behind the curtain
to the subtle bedlam of murmuring.
Our film plays, then we play the stage
and stray arms save Nick from breaking a leg.
We rise to the ovation and escape
as moving pictures take our place
in the kind of line that we could stand in
for all our not so natural lives.

The gymnasium dam broke
sending many glad waters
and we stood like parched stones along a splintered riverbed
holding banners with our names
so our flocks could find us.
Look! A girl, here she comes
and she stays there. In front of me, with belonging.
She pronounces my name with a question mark.
I nod like some puppy dog caricature.
More arrive and we start that flimsy game
called break the silence with panache’
and I am terrible at it
but no one cares, and some don’t notice.
We just soak in the beats,
the frames we’ve been waiting for since the days
when we did not even know
how to imagine on key.
Walking out of the cluster we take five-dozen leads
to five-dozen rooms, passing all too soon.

Weaving webs through red brick castles
collecting Orient silk for welcome rug pathways
braided from our spinneret speech;
Ringing from our acoustic motion,
and baptized in water clearer than blown glass.
I remember a passing look Johanna tossed and the knowing,
buried and bursting from slightly composed souls.
The smile Brooke wore could fool even science
but she was a silent running soldier.
Each of us rode in a veiled war across thrumming plains
while keeping lights lit behind our eyes.
It’s all a sacred dance…
a threshing floor and a chosen acre,
a fighting ground and a banquet hall.
We wrote songs to life with our minds
and made permanent ink by holding new hands
The day ruled even night, and sleep was a conquered kingdom.
but each name learned, and story sung
Was oil to our burned and rugged gears.

I remember the garden hills
and the waterfall we built ourselves
that the patrol in quotes could not stand.
Dustin turned up in case our names needed saving
because we gave them away, for levity’s sake.
That young boy passing, with the Mexican eyes
asked me for a water balloon
because we owned more than he might ever have.
Then we rode to the winged coliseum
on fumes of wealth, to watch the sky go dark
and explode in shaded flame again
for a few deafening, unspeaking moments
save for the sounds of awe.
We screamed with our lives the sounds of wonder
and let them ring until we broke
like the cloven brass of Liberty.

To the small stone volcano coast
we return with our multitudes, well introduced.
Low cruising gulls watched as we claimed
each ounce of estate with red and white stripes.
I ran to the break like an emancipated slave
and swam to the buoy in the arctic draught
clinging to the bobbing chain, I was the last to let go
and chills wracked my body till vision was blurred
I heard joys escaping from the mouths on shore as I sank
then some ocean angel pushed me to the shallows.
I watched the dancing lines as the pounding slowed
and thought about drowning among friends,
or strangers of hope, beneath the widest sky in all the world;
How this heir of Eden deserved nothing.
As Derek rounded us together for the wrenching contests,
and games of collision, we muted our disquieting
until the sun dove south and endowed our sight to flame
from the round smoke blowing lips of stone.
We made a circle collection of singers and strings
sending hallowed lyrics with the columns of ash,
pillars of fire and cloud to lead our way,
like ancient chosen tribes
beside broad shorelines.

Under strings of lights and layers of formality
we glowed in a hundred ways
to the tune of an invisible conduction.
Tiffany and her metaphors of novel magic
but we were spellbound at her candor.
Our plates cleared. Crowds retreated
and we collected in an antique sanctuary
lined with lamps, pews and whispering.
And here began the end of a magnificent voyage
through barrier seas, endless droughts of sleep
towers of memory, and a shared fleeting road.
Our words poured forth at this hush in the motion
like the last overnighter of a waning childhood.
Even sharp light glowed soft on Leah’s face
and even featherweight tears fell heavily from it.
We were still enough then to hear from Grace
and glimpse the vast rain of undeserved.
Natalie she could not explain
how her theories were shattered by miraculous steel.
Look how the impossible bloomed.
Don’t tell me there is no good king,
for you have not seen our case.
You were not with us when
we reaped boon from the futile.

It seems the film has ended
with no credits to roll
yet I see names in my sleep
and behind my eyes and their sauntering.
We return to the leading of printed systems
and with ease I lose my footing
for so long were we guided by soul
as convention morphed to something large.
Small scales cannot hold
any measure of a massive world.
Now who climbs vines
who have scaled towers of fire?
And who bends to still figures
since meeting gods who breathe?

I remember unwritten collections
after hours in the quiet upper room
listening to Tatiana’s tape and stitches
and recalling my own historical hurt
from her slight vignettes
like flecks of silhouette
of some shadow puppet cabaret
with a few more mirrors and a little less smoke.
This walk is not one through the park
but a sinister valley of lightless casts
yet we know the heart that beats
is not alone, and let alone ours.
It’s volleyed ore
that makes a sword.

I walk past the 6th Street Grill
collections peppering the corners
the lamps rim their heads with maple honey light
as Taylor in cashmere crosses the tile
his infectious glow strengthens me.
Karissa makes a face
darting out her tongue like a roguish child
she packs her love in a passing moment.
There’s a way Shantel can make you know
her hope for your good day is real
she packs her love in a passing moment.
Hour long conversations hidden in brevity
like Emma that one night, costumed in pigtails and horn-rimmed glasses,
secretly a lady in a ludic guise.

I swim down the streams of duty
and skate down their frozen face when the calendar turns loose
making stops into the cross shaped chapel
our meeting place after the stringed light evening.
It seemed so long ago. It seemed no moments passed.
We meet here, a regular remnant
and graph roads of trails to come
while a late sun filters through stained glass;
Ripe roots and plum colored fruit
a brushstroke sky to hold the stars of God.
I sit in silence with Jacob
and we watch the dust take their spotlight.
They are seen and are gone
like the wisps of steam from my chamomile,
like the callow bodies of every one I know.

I take a seat behind Stephanie
and in the few minutes before the lesson
we talk of ordinary things
and invest in the attention of the other
knowing ordinary is not enough
when adopted under one name.
Family is not common, scarcely found in true form
so we commandeer these common times
and immerse them with speech
told by lips stained from the wine of a promised land.
I mix my living between three states
and it’s present heavy as of late.

I remember our last esplanade
and we all missed the same turn and would have it no other way.
High heels clack the pavement.
Ties descend sharply into layered corners.
Our streams of consciousness collect by the sea,
together we are art unimaginable.
Chris greets us, her hair on blue alert;
Carissa starts a constant smile despite the end in her eyes.
Our candlelight banquet slips like sand from cupped hands
spilling over the oily stage as the curtain falls on closing night.
We meet our secret benefactors
It’s a happy birth of incubated names.
Natasha watched the sea like film
with a soundtrack of orchestral colloquy.
We float to the balcony and watch the city walk on water.
That night we were ocean under electric towers:
we spilled over reflections
we were moved by deep clandestine currents.

I remember slipping into the passenger’s seat
looking back at the ferns and the torchlight
Driving out of Claudia’s flooded joy
and words like silk with armor value.
Out of Matthew’s selfless presence,
his authenticity brooding magnet effects.
After searching in vain for time abating tricks
I lie in this moment, eyes closed and still,
moving at sixty five miles per hour
and I slip into adamant streams of lightspeeds.
We sift treasure from the swiftest of days
For haste is gained from their richness.

And once upon a season of time
There we were, collected.
Silver toned notes in the same clef.
Blood-earned lyrics in a sojourners’ ballad.
We tread through parted seas
and loved our strange neighbors.
We harvested showers of manna
To feed crowds on our land.
Mirrors, prophets, the weavers wheels
warm sea shorebreak, a glass of rain
a gated garden, a barrack of stone
a sixty two stranded chord…
We became them all,
not by might but by spirit
and watched the inconceivable
dance alive before our eyes.
We touched the eternal, for a finite time
and held it in our hands, and our fondest of thoughts.
From the steaming cities of hum and industry
to white blanket valleys that plumes the breath
to sandy islands of palm and steel
to the sun soaked roof across the street
to the gates of pearl and eminence:
Home to history to where our trails bend forth,
ahead our vessels sail.
Though our horizons rest in the maps of God
we’ll always have Location B.