It is all we bring with us, all we own, us huddled over it all.
A Grimy plastic lattice shopping cart, crammed with bottles, plastic and glass, labels non faded, but nevertheless, little is what it ever seems to be.
Screw-capped burdens of shadow, despair and pain so profound, there is a sound to it, like the clink of pennies falling from fingers and rolling away, under wooden floorboards,an endless, splintering loss.
Stoppered wide-eye fear, and the dead smoke of wait-for-it-to-come-to-pass stickily brown in the bottle like congealed blood.
We are simply scars upon scars, lips that are wordless, eyes that know much, ache-stone-heart and helium balloon stomach that will float away if you don't hold it down.
Scar upon scar stoppered horror, not celluloid bogey- beings horror with red eye holes, but blood frozen to powder horror. Absolute horror is wonder inverted. It is the utter wrongness, of impossibilities, come to pass like gorgeous fairies dying at our feet, when we were still children. Horror is theft, of gifts wrapped smoothly with tucked in triangle corners and taped down, and only misery and maggots in the box.
That is what we bring with us.
Other bottles though, reside in that cart of us.
Bottles of bubbles, with stick figure wands, that turns soap and water into rainbow threaded flight.
Moments of spirit smiles, uncorked joy, bewilderment, happiness, deep stubborn hope as warm as the fur of a loving dog or cat on ones lap.
First kisses, long awaited and the butter moon outside the window pane, and the first snowfall reflected on the wall. Slow blink and shy grin, freckles and pebbles and British chocolate and potato chips, and a new uncreased book to read in a hot bath, when all seems simply too foreign or too lost.
Looking upwards into the skies, hand in hand, or alone but not lonely at that moment, hands clasped perhaps but gladness in the ribs and hips, for mere existence as a star among stars in a universe, such as ours.
...and we collect the water turned to wine hours, shared with friends, murmur-talk to those rare ones we trust.
Words about everything and words about nothing, all something, and words with sweet fleeting strangers who spark and smile.
All of it, warm wind words eddying waves,and green gauze veils on the neck of summer trees, with sighing, heavy, curls bent brightly towards sunbeams. They wear times gentle passing, as a belt wrapped around their round trunk-Mother bodies.
There are bottles of our blood-roots within us, most known to us as old pictures in sepia frames. The ones who came before with half forgotten stories, and the bottles of our future blood-promise, of nestled infants not much bigger then a brick of flour, who curl against mother, the scent of milk and heaven, fresh on their breath.
Our eyes drink in the flowers of riotously sedate gardens, and take heart in the delighted mischievous growth of wildflowers on the side of the highways, like giggling toddlers, running after bunnies. A dandelion heart, touching ours, with flight and seeds.
The scent of the air in moments, a transitory sigh, cinnamon and vanilla, pumpkin and apples, roses and shampoo. Salt and skin and lips, trust, love.
Earth, under fingernails, over fingers, mud and soil, the ground and us reaching down to work the earth who reaches back up with palm-up, wide open hand, feeding birds and beasts and us, always us, the cleanliness of simplicity.
Our anchor rocks, stolidly squat, absorbing the warmth with slow sentience. They have always been there, since there was an always and of course the infinite lighthouse soul beacons, always there.
We breathe, and we laugh in between, when we can, and draw strength of sinew of body and bone and bright-eyes and store bottles of wait-and-see and sun-dust-on-eyelashes.
As seasons surrender into each other, like a couch in the window, our shadows fade, and wounds fade too, as we collect all that we are into our carts, we can bear all of this better, as we find the courage to collect what we most need.
And our music, surrounds us, calling out to the silence and secrets, and pulls them forth from inside with wise threads, like a whales call in the night of the ocean, black water sounds to describe all things left unsaid.
Eyes reflecting candlelight, endless fire, endless spirit, a forge, a hammer beat of sound and the fire of flickering spirit and the words. They are the keys that open substance and spirit, a sorcerers spell casting, hot honey flowing into veins which need blood infusion. A simmering cauldron of syrupy alchemical absolution that can be poured and stored within.
We are both more and less then what we are right then and there, at any given moment.
Love-is-lightning-is- love-playing over our masts and spires like St Elmo's fire, and love needs no save, because it is always there, if we look within.
We are day by day cleansed by the beauty of this world. Marks and scars are warrior marks, and storm clouds just the gray matter of a laden dream-scape. The chalk outlines of wounded nightmares, have been taken out and shot, no need for suffering. That wet on our hands, is not blood, nor tears, only rain.
We may rise from the water, wash off the dust, and let the the droplets fall from our hair
No need to dry off.
Let us stand in the sun...
