Wednesday, October 24, 2012

The star we send on its way

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Proposal
For Rudy & Anita

Let us wander here to be still for the moment,
rest where the sun nests among the heavy stones
whose slow dissolution is invisible to our notice.

Let us here make a prelude to a vow to hold this
time together, our space conjoined within the
emptiness that gives rainclouds such deep fertility.

We will lift red glasses here, the bleed of breath
blown to new fire from the blood of grapes, share
quiet words that taper slowly into this natural silence.

Sit here and swoon, the world a blurred kiss below
us, the sea a cobalt gem of twilight catching all
we cannot keep in this fleeting reflection of it.

Here we leave all we take with us, the being
there, the parting, the star we send on its way
that it may return this time to our reawakening.

Joseph Gallo
October 15, 2012

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Tuesday, October 16, 2012

A rich elixir of sky

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Oddum

So the first thing out of the dawn’s mouth,
besides the sun, that is, is a word that circles
the dewy webs that dot the green bushes like
fingerprint starwhorls, a word whispered low
along lengthening shadows that strike misshapen
in bent stick figures against the straight oleander
to walk their own dark path down the gravel road,
a word that, in the beginning, was the word, sacred
and holy, before anyone thought to ascribe it to a
creator or give it structure in canon, a word carried
in the song of skittering birds and in the mute turn of
worms unseen beneath tree roots, perfect and divine,
given unto tongues of all languages in that first moment
mud sat up to draw in decidrams of breath from a
rich elixir of sky to spit out the skin of a universe.

And the word was: daydream.

Joseph Gallo
September 23, 2012

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Monday, October 01, 2012

The deep end of life

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Walking Oxygen

The sound enters before he does, the respiration
of a valve-locked regulator, the unison efforts
of his labored breathing, together making a wind
that brushes against the silence of this library.

The man has seen better days, before he had
to push the small handcart with the silver slim
tank affixed like steeled punctuation to a sentence.
No sprints today or ever again, say the slow days.

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Isolation swims in the deep end of life, you might say
to me were you here noting my observation of a man
who might’ve fought in Korea, lost buddies, hoisted
tankards of steely cold ale to the memory of their names.

But for now, he is walking his oxygen through the Dewey
Decimals, past spine edges split in fictions and non, systems
he has known and mercifully forgotten like the date he shipped
out, the day he crossed over, dim faces seen only in nighthaunts.

Joseph Gallo
September 27, 2012

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