NaPoWriMo: A series of unlikely explanations

Your mouth is a sack of marbles
pulling a prized pearler
from your lips, it rolls
into the nearest earthen hole.

Many years ago a small seed
lodged in my throat, growing
thicker, in darkness now
I only speak in latin.

Teeth and tongue, repeat
lip and cheek, repeat
an army of minuscule muscles
struggling against silence

on potential

If you were to ask a caterpillar what it knew of silk it would only speak of hunger. The solitude required for metamorphis is exhausting; it's every instinct is attuned to accumulation.

But caterpillars cannot communicate; they are all legs, teeth and tastebuds. It's whole being is segregated into bundles of What Will Be.

Destiny need not be tangible. The caterpillar is a masticating blue print. Evolution winks and clucks it's tongue, "Kid you got potential; this cluster of cells will one day be antennae, this one here a wing."

The caterpillar eats on.

The heart of a butterfly is a long and slender muscle, stretching along it's nervous system, suspended between it's wings. If you teach an old caterpillar new tricks they will be recalled upon metamorphosis.

If you ask a butterfly what it knows of flight it will tell you that it is somewhere between though and emotion.

If you ask it what it remembers of childhood it will teach you to taste your dreams.

Deluge

The monsoon stalks me. Skulking round corners whilst I busy myself indoors; stays poised while I ready myself for the world. With the click of the key, I hear the patter of footsteps; clouds running across the sky to my door. The dog scowls. "I can't help it" I protest, "Not even the moon rules the rain." The tides answer to lunation. Sentient beings and seasons fall in line with the sun. But the rain answers to nobody. It is an outlaw, a vagabond, a rouge. The muffled light softens my focus. In that other place the sun exposes all things for their harshness; beauty is stark, boundaries defined. Here, I am washed so clean that new life grows over me. My skin blooms with the algae, ever mutating, I am perfecting the art of evolution. Mangrove seeds wedged between rocks send sprouts north and south. I make them my mentor, in this captivity I grasp upwards and hunt below.

Thunder Heads

The night before the rains I ask you to grieve with me. Imprinting the line of my neck on your bicep, I rehearse your hips storying your scent. Have you not yet learned to read the sky? Did you not know that the clouds mean leaving? Prehaps you didn't believe me; perhaps the monsoon signalled something else to you. The lightening severs the horizon. For my people it has always been this way.

wound care

There are days when the body demands more than the heart can bear. The process of healing cannot keep pace with the whirling dervish of fate. Faith seems to be the only answer; I hedge my bets on satellites and falling fragments of celestial ice. I've been investing my time in growing new skin, in monitoring the exhalation of dirt and damp, building barriers between the world and myself. I miss rolling in the dust with you, but it's just not good for my health.

Excercises in futility

I dove to the bottom of the barrel; scraped the sides until the water ran clear. I got so hooked on satellites until my fingers were scarred with stars. I let the waves break over me to remember the ocean is as high as it is wide. I danced in the quicksand until I learnt how to swim.

an equal and opposite reaction

emerging from the equinox, the shadows of my room no longer soothe, I am dappled and sunkissed, I elope with the rays, strain to capture it in my ribs. this is the perfect season. if I could take fairweather as a lover, i would surrender to the cool dark night. birthing a thousand discarded feathers, christening them duvet and doona and quilt. I ride the seasons as a tourist swims with wild dolphins; with fleeting touchs and minor elations. Click clacking images into an internal slideshow of long forgotten memories.