Tag: time

Summer

It is the third time this year

summer aged for her,

every night for eighty-four nights

golden dreams reincarnate

as the hours relive

and we count with our fingers

with fatigue, not pity.

 

For even as her lips stretch wide

she is glistening with the sweat

of labor and heart disease, her

empty hair and amber teeth shredding

stream-like into bighearted bouquets

open for age only.

 

Now we stand by

with nimble eyes without words

We save our condolences

for her funeral in a summer evening:

Her body, hairless head and all

will lose its last color

shielded in white linen in vain

against summer invasions

And before she returns elemental

to her mother, we will adorn

her celestial eyes with colorless kisses

and pray

for the death of summer.

 

by MC

John Dies

I should have learned to be more cautious of pyramids like this. The golden advancements of sand triangular reversed, a mere blurb to the camel industry we so admired. Because the red sand flying is but another autopilot, and in my dictionary there is no such word as “fall”. When rumbling sounds conveyed to us from a distance, we guessed it was an incidence of explosion somewhere deeper in the desert (Explosions have become a daily practice now, a sort of national indulgence, one of those burdensome but indispensable rituals we carry under our armpits). I mean, if you think about it the pyramids really aren’t the ones to blame. They too have been brainwashed. The rest of us lead lives of abstinence, shuttled to hives that store instead of host, that imprison in the name of protection. That’s when everything started to blur, even the chameleon that has been in my life longer than I have myself. He happened to be a pervert and had to undergo redemption before I would let him through the front of my house (I lived in houses then). He was something adsorbable, an entity addict who expressed contempt for heresy—although he himself was heretic, and often walked nude in his pyramid pilgrimages.

The chameleon they took from me. Exiled him, they said, but I wasn’t sure about his staying exiled. (They said they had to exile him annually, due to his timely arrival often disguised ((for he was a chameleon, a born disguiser)) amidst red and blue cargo.) They said also he didn’t have a heart. I knew it lingered between sad and sadistic.

In better days we would run up and down the pyramids, cruising through the cortex of not just them but an entire native Egypt. Nowadays Egypt doesn’t exist and instead we go shopping in a boutique of resolutions. Minute was the expression for timelessness and we lost track, trapped in the stagnancy of eternity. Eternity extended in a single file of linear relationship and ended up looping. Timelessness passed and the colors had never been so diametric.

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by MC

Time and Again

Time and again you flashed a blue smile. You were eaten by hunger. The coffee store around the corner filled you with apologies. You sat there with your hands cupping milk, a checkered scarf twisted around your summer neck.

It was an island of indecency. Department Head of Justice, a short elderly with receding ears, stopped by to order chocolate flavored oranges. He had wood-rimmed glasses and cherry lips that talked only of chipmunks and housing prices. He dissuaded you from paying.

The grocery girl next door passed by only once in two weeks. She wore dangling earrings and purple eyelashes. Her teeth smelled of enamel. Flaxen hair shaded pink fluttered to the wind, printing sunlight into your eyes. They reflected a bouquet into little Jamie’s translucent crystalloid, as she peered nervously through the semi-opaque backseat car window, her hands pressed onto the sides of a yellow schoolbag.

Then from across the street came the businessmen in polished shoes and moustache. Dark hair parted in the middle and combed back to shield their baldness, they came in swarms, never venturing an investigative look at you behind the coffee store window. Cologne forestalled the stench of leather briefcases. When car beeps ceased and the street turned clean, a late engineer trotted by with blueprints flying.

landscape-at-krumau-1916Two university students strode hand in hand, eyes adrift and unstopping by the traffic lights. The boy tossed a slack of brown hair back, dazzling you with closely-set teeth. Jamie capered with light feet and quivering eyelashes, yellow handbag dangling at her shoulder. The grocery lady hugged her with nails painted blue, pink hair faded into a loosely fastened knot.

Night descended and neon lights flashed green. The short-sighted elderly with cane in hand glanced at the coffee store without heeding you. Footsteps thundered, the pop star in sunglasses checked the window for reflection. Shiny coverall and explosive hair cleared the dull of your eyeballs, the guards clustered in black and ties. Midnight, traffic lights illuminated darkly veiled troopers carrying coffins for burial. Shadows crept to shield your eyes against the iron rimmed glasses shimmering blackness.

An old man in faded leather shoes and whiskers crouched at the steps. The lady with yellow bowler hat looked into the clouds, unmoving by broken traffic lights. From the grocery store came a capering boy, swift legs wrapped up in striped bib pants. He carried a basket of air, holding sunlight piercing into your eyes. You flashed a toothless grin, time and again.

 

by MC