OUTAKES from Country of Origin

OUTAKES from Country of Origin

We have so little time
to download memory
into the fatty tissue
of each other's heart.
We savor its life-giving substance.
We eat around earlier fires
in a gesture that's timeless.
You and I shared an aurora borealis
of dreams in the night.
The air above our heads
was alive with blue light.
Solar winds enter our crowns,
our last chakra.
We are tumbled like leaves
across the bed of autumn.
In morning sunlight,
our eyelids bathed in red
corpuscles dancing
between membrane and cornea.
I think about the time we don't have.
Last night the air was alive
even the reflection
on the pavement wore red,
clearer than blood, translucent.
Last night the sky was
timeless and of no age,
Last night I burned amber from the Baltic
because a friend was suffering
at the hands of love.
The division of male and female.
What separates us from ourselves
and each other?
I burn amber, pine resin older
than the ages of man­
because finding love is rare.
Seeking an island of refuge,
we bleed back into the sea.
I wear silver horses on my ears,
and coral from the sea's garden cities
not unlike trees. Yes, birches in winter.
Will you drink birch blood and think of me?
Plant a tree so it may discover
quadrilateral symmetry,
bi-lateral agreements
while our governments talk
of disarmament.
Now your leaders fish in our rivers!
Perhaps it's already begun
but razor blades
are so thin on the tongue,
their song is quick as this life.
Why do we choose suffering, calling it love
because we can only feel it with each passing?
I am sending you stones
because I know nothing else more
enduring than their secrets.
From lapis I fashioned a blue heart,
filing it each night
because something inside me was in pain.
So I shaped stone with stone,
and found my own stone heart
was alive after all.
I've planted stones
in the garden for you.
Somewhere inside all of this
there is a story waiting.
On the telephone, precious star
sounds distorts your voice.
Sunspots the cackle of space.
Our voices, thin reeds
bending in autumn wind.
Yes, winter is a voyage
across the dark tundra sea.

These were lines pulled from a longer poem, Country of Origin. I couldn't bear to toss them. I merely added punctuation and  a few transition words. Otherwise, it's stet. I posted this close to the original timeline when Country of Origin was written but I suspect I revised it much later (as I've a much later revision date: 9/28/89 for CoO)....to throw out this much work requires distance. Maybe at some later date I'll go back and rework this piece. But right now I'm preoccupied with getting the brunt of my work online.  7/11/2015