1. |
Harmony
08:26
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clothes lying in the field
fallow and forgot
putting on blue skin
from the soil’s nightly rot
summer’s gone and the first of the rains run across the ground
pregnant and imminent i don the nimbus crown
from this place i will not be or from this time i know
but like a fruit picked ripe i’m ready to go
languages augment!
and lineages transmute!
the hide-bound just push around
get rough and rude
and it breaks open the head as the feet break earth
dropping a hem of lightning and dirt
all the length of skin (making faces within)
all that i once called mine
is shuffling about
making the rounds
on currents galloping godly
rattling down into the ground
it makes a hollow bone of this body
cleaned out
my filth is everywhere
dry on my thigh
and stuck in my hair
wrapped in wool
scratching my skin
like a baby sensitive
and everything new
and i’m light so light
like a baby swaddled
light so light
my love untroubled
light so light
the old woman smiling down
light so light
on the first morning
and before me
each one wearing a crown
masters of light
and masters of sound
each one beloved
and what i’ve always known
i watch them at play
they’re shuffling about
making the rounds
on currents galloping godly
rattling down into the ground
it makes a hollow bone
of this body
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2. |
Two Things In One
09:17
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the night dispersed and riven from its song
slides and hides with lidded lobes and remora
and suddenly leaking and pooling round me like a birth
my dream is leaving me unseen and unheard
from where it crouched like a cat fixing on a bird
like a black dragon saying "danger follows danger"
well, if I could have two things in one:
the peace of the grave, and the light of the sun
and landing lightly where I lay
a dragonfly changes shape
her wings folding closed into a case
the blue shimmer gone clean from her face
she says "wipe that sleep from your eyes, it's day!
you'll lose a third of your life that way!"
well, if I could have two things in one:
the peace of the grave, and the light of the sun
and to my perch, the brightening comes
to blight and blur the asterisms
my sleeping shade turned chromaticism
and like a ghost, I begin to veer
towards that shining frontier
advancing round the sphere
detaching the dark piece by piece
and sating the sun-eating seas
that wave in great lengths of green
so I'll come down and drink my fill
from the endless fire sloshed and spilled
but as I dip my ladle down
I see a slip of something on the ground
it's seeping slowly into my flesh
a shadow shrinking under duress
like a flattened flower reversing it's bloom
and taking refuge
in thin skin prone to tightening and cracks
it's liquid rising in generous stacks
while the blushing and the bone
is thrown in stark relief
mired knee deep
but just when night couldn't come too soon
the sun slips from high noon
to lengthen and weave the evening cloak
cooling my skin and climbing the slope
like a flood, like a word unsaid
the thing it named rising from the dead
well, if I could have two things in one:
the peace of the grave, and the light of the sun
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3. |
Solemn One
06:25
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solemn one take a step back
with empty hands
the rain returns at last
to the dry lands
seeking what you have hid
in desolate grip
moistening the tears turned to dust
unsticking what is stuck
clay pot and thirsty weed
cistern and seed
rippling rill and icy lead
sodden hills that bleed
well if you've come to suffer and seize
the water comes to shape the need
it must have seemed an endless dominion
friendless and grey
the All-King and his thieving minions
had the final say
but every well had been sucked bone dry
and the rivers ran no more
the bare mountains scraped the sky
and the oceans choked the shore
but drops on rock have begun to sing
not bought and sold but free
round the feet of the All-King
and down the cracks in between
try as he might the clouds won't be sealed
or from the sky be ripped
such a shade, once revealed
cannot be gripped
well if you've come to suffer and seize
the water comes to shape the need
under skin still and deep
a cavern's keep
down the dark vestibules
a secret pool
cradle safe and anciently laid
the abiding neonate
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4. |
Whiteness
05:16
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whiteness crossed the continent
a poison fog and where it went
villages were vacant
hearths and ways forsaken
whiteness with greed and iron
makes the deep seas barren
great migrations fly daylong
into whiteness and are gone
whiteness in its righteousness
bleaches creatures colorless
tolerates no shadow
people walk unseen
staring at a little screen
where the whiteness plays
and imitations of their days
plugged in their ears white noise
drowns and ancient voice
murmuring to bless the darkness
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5. |
Polaris
10:00
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pole star you little girl
in little bear
your winking craft is ferrous light
blameless in sable chair
and crystal glass
demanding aspects that do not yield
from your height, can you see
the hired link boys with unblinking shafts
embarrassing the night?
towering tall
held up in priapic thrall
underneath what bells are rung
and miners hung
spreading fear and doubt
from the moon curser's mouth
they haunt the paths with unwanted light
and I despair of this sight
for it deludes the circadian half
that makes it's nest at daylights rest
and denudes on the radiant strand
it's carapace to dig a space
for moon's brood in palladium sands
but for lying stars in a drylands sky
bitumen and crude our expedient path
the air is thick with an orange glow
as they bundle sticks for tonight's tableau
but Polaris, will you stay unturned
while those sticks are burned?
in the rising smoke will you scry and scope?
in the weeping ash i lean and lope
turn down, turn dull
many voices won't speak at all
where have they gone?
slipping from mouths
like coins to a well
and burning like a barn
Polaris I turn my face
as the day is spent
to Heaven's shining and ancient star fire
every star's fire
but tonight's entertainment
is a growing pyre
for night wings and night singers
a war upon the dreamers
they say: "we must hold fast to everlasting day,
we must keep the darknesses at bay!"
blister bone and crispy wing
a shuddering thing
fever run the kingdom come
in some respects I'm blind
a fingered kind of abstinence
and distance
but I recall, like a dabbling duck in fall,
you once called me
(scrabbling, stuck)
back from the wall
up seven stairs (3 hunters and 4 bears)
slinging soup, flipping hair
your stoop is swinging in the air
and the light that you shared
renewed the horizon's claim
your cousin's birth, girdling the earth
in true fire came gratefully
to the eastern lean
and imbued my faded aim
with home
where the dark river runs at eventide
where the moonflower opens at eventide
in the magnetic nourishing night
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6. |
King's Creek
06:30
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Chase Garber Portland, Oregon
Portland,OR based singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist.
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