Palm Tree Wasteland

The hours pass like cars in traffic
so that the day is stuck between noon and evening.
A hundred thousand watch it founder,
with eyes dulled and sleeves rolled to the elbow.
The air is no great river, as it can be-
so sharp is the smell of dust and perspiration.

This is a strange place,
a forest of steel and palm trees and neon signs,
half flickered out.
Carpeted in dust and sin,
it beckons the dreamer,
seduces and binds the hopeless.

It is the land of diamonds
It is the land of starving starlets.
In its heart of hearts
is a wee orange apartment who houses
a flat, marvelously outfitted with a screened window
that lets in the dust
and this sunless heat.

One orange jumble of plaster
in a sea of the lost and seeking.
It is where the cars pass like hours in a long day.

Man with the Money

A broad lipped mouth accustomed to grinning looks rather odd when twisted into a grimace. Yellow curls long since gone gray are matted with sweat and shake indignantly with every motion. Ah, and the sweat- how it pours like rivulets of rain down his back, his bare shoulders.

I imagine that he must be a business man, come to this hellishly heated yoga studio to banish the cares of a long day. A day that must never end. Imagine that, can you? A never-ending chunk of darkness and lightness and emails and conferences and throbbing temples. His kind forget the power of ending, so it is good that he is here now.

Chaturanga. We lower ourselves obediently, and I look at his shaking form from beneath heavily lidded eyes. His short, labored breathing disrupts stillness. Idly, I watch his sweat fall from his sides, hitting gray with a pitter-patter.

Like a little boy, his eyes are squeezed so tight that his eyelashes disappear. In the mirror, I count his grandchildren in the lines around his eyes. Many. Many, many kids. A big family. But no wedding band, although perhaps he took it off before the class. There is a white band around his finger.

Down dog. I fancy myself a sleuth now.

Eagle pose. He's shaking so hard it's interfering with my concentration and I feel myself wobble. Suddenly the whole room is wobbling. The instructor notes this with a frown.

I picture his wife, a small woman with deep auburn hair and doe eyes. They met in college, and got divorced when their eldest son graduated high school. She says he never takes time away from his work- he's an accountant- and so he is here now, trying to learn to give time back to himself.

The man grunts loudly, and flops onto his hairy stomach with decidedly little grace. I forget him as soon as my eyes are closed in savasana. Everything is gone.

3 AM

Before the sky was touched
in patches
here and there,
with pink and song;

Before breath could deepen
and grow heavy,
to blow like the breeze
in the stillness
of blue prison walls;

Before the heart could slow
its furious
rat-a-tat-a-tat-tapping,
and quench the fire it fed
in young veins;

Before exhaustion beat out
wrath and sorrow,
put out rebellion
with a mighty hiss...

There was wakefulness,
in the dusky moments before dawn.

It was 3 AM, before sleep came.

Becoming the Moon

Have you ever fled the safety of your house, in search of coolness, of stillness in the night? Have you desired freedom from the suffocating warmth of house lights? Or felt yourself a stranger in the midst of kith and kin?

If you have, then you have slipped from your room at some unholy hour, braving the creaky staircase and tiptoeing for the front door. With an ache in your heart and another in your temples, you must have gently shut that door behind you and looked into the darkness that caresses your cheeks. Your pulse has calmed before, in this strange new land. In this new land of velvety skies all stained with soot, the pavement glows faintly with heat saved from the late Spring sun. The air is heavy with the scent of flowers and grass and the breathing of slumbering souls. 

Perhaps you took a walk, when you shouldn't be out. All alone, finding in each footstep, a measure of space and glory you couldn't find before. Some strange and sweet tightness in the calves as you walked up the hill reminded you deliciously of your mortality and in such moments, you couldn't regret your humanity. After all, it is Man who can marvel at the beauty of his sweat, the purity in blood, the value of sorrow. Man, Woman, Child, Dog, Crone, King, Queen. Under the reign of heaven, there can be no distinction. 

As the crickets sounded, and the wind whispered, you have learned for an instant, what peace is. It's the happiness just out of reach, the hope that cannot die, the Night stillness you always forget in the morning. In a few meager moments, you come to understand the divinity within yourself. Anger, Frustration, Loss, Fear, Loneliness. For whatever ails you, the night supplies a cure that will last until dawning. When the birds sing to welcome the Sun King, the poison in your veins swirl anew.

What is Gray?

When two people fight, it's the air between them when they're done. It's the awkwardness in the way they can't look at each other, the stiffness in their stubborn, stubborn shoulders. Hours later, when they still haven't forgotten, it's the words that were said to hide how much other words hurt.

It's not the sky when it rains; it's the clouds as they come from chimneys and steel-plated monstrosities, hiding the rain as they spread across blue.

In the cemetery, it isn't the unadorned stone, but the one wreathed in flowers and not people. Be they roses or tulips or mayflowers, be they white or black or crimson. It's not when people's faces are stained with tears, but when children play and their parents yawn discreetly into their palms. It's when there is no grief, when the dead are carted away with relief.

When the sea is the color of steel, that is not it. It's when barks cross and break apart, spilling the poison men keep in their pockets into the waves. As the porpoises scream, and the sharks fear, and the whales weep, Njord mourns how his home fades. He is the God of the seas, and even he cannot fight so hard, for so long. It's the helplessness that churns in his heart.

When a baby has the eyes of a crone, it is the color of her cheeks.

It follows despair. It is accepting, resigned. It's not the burst of emotion, but the emptiness after.

It's the smoke after the fire has burnt out, the ashes when the embers are spent.

That is what Gray is.