The Faces: Frazetta

I want to wrap you in words
the way you wrap the white spaces
in vibrant colors that jump
into multidimensionality
at the guidance of your focused tongue
between your lips or
the precision of paint splatters
on fingertips.

I want to configure these thin black lines to match
the muscular curve of shoulders
that flex and knot under such concentration;
as if your directed intensity of gaze
could see into the bold lines and shadows.

The spotlight of attention is intense, indeed.

Intense, the way that respect raises hairs on my arms,
the way that curves of fertile hips
birth echoes of smiling lips.

It is intense when a subject that I have studied,
transfixed and starstruck
by the beauty of differently configured atoms -
the very glowing center of a forming constellation
slowly and heavily drawing in all of the heavenly bodies-

turns to affix an equal gaze upon my shell shocked face.

Mental Richochets

1-19

But where to start?
And how should I begin?

This has been a week of revelations, of spiritual visions and verbal revisions.
I’m not sure which I should address first.
The problem is that all of it seems so far away in comparison to this moment of morning-coffee peace.
The smell of toasting bread and sweet rolls tantalizes me but I will resist the temptation and choose instead to focus.

So basically I let my spirit fly the other night, through meditation.
I dug deep and was taken over by spirals of abstract thought,
letting vibrations of light and sound carry me as far as they could take me... and then some.

I keep continually coming back to this Saul Williams line:
“Through meditation I program my heart to beat breakbeats
and hum bass lines on exhalation...”

That line has resonated throughout the caverns within me from the first time I heard it and every time I have come back to it since, gaining new waves of meaning for my life with each visit and revisit.

In the darkness of the brilliantly patterned light, voices of mine sprung up from the deep.
I never knew I had such fear hidden away, such clear and perfect fear.

“I’m never going to be able to communicate all of this, to anyone.”

For a split second I was terrified that all of the beautiful thoughts and all of the mental ricochets therein would be trapped, forever. That I would never speak again, that I had gone too deep and lost my voice forever because in the time it takes for a second to split, to light sparks with flint, I had already bounded off into the ethereal..

I haven’t decided quite yet what to do with this revelation. Obviously my voice came back to me after I was done floating up amongst the constellations, after I remembered to breathe - after I remembered that breathing exists - and settled back down a smidge. I regained my voice and retained as clear a memory I could of what it felt like when I thought that no one would even know I used to speak.

Up until that moment, when my identity and honestly my existence was lifted off of my shoulders, when I came face to face with the pure and distilled essence of my personality and all of my hopes and feelings, I had no idea just how much it means to me to write.

Apparently it means a whole fuckton.

Shimmer and Drip

1-19

In that sacred space between it all - where everyday objects shimmer and drip like wax down the body of the candlestick - everyday thoughts dripped from my brain as if through a sieve so that all I can see is everything that actually means anything to me, and

and then, dripping over me this time, the music.
Vibrating me gently and taking force slowly until it is clear to me that I am a puppet hanging from steel strings, quivering at the most tender touch of fingers on frets. As voices begin to surround me, from the stereo and from the source unknown, I felt, overwhelmingly so, that it is a waste of time to do anything but devote my life to song - to open my lips and let sweetness flow forth; to stop suppressing my desire to sing.

I just have to be a part of it.
I have to.

It’s not just me, either.

I can see it now in Corey’s eyes, too.
An electricity is humming through us, changing the aqueous matter of which we are comprised and bringing us close together, easing our minds of stigma and worry, granting an ease and a confidence that brings us closer to getting our destiny.

We place more stock in our words and our harmonies, the ways our minds and bodies work and have worked together to create this mirror by which we see each other and ourselves.

“Feel yourself being quietly drawn
by the deeper pull of what you truly love.”

It feels good, like the moments we spend together are ramping up in terms of productivity, in terms of connectivity, in terms of feeling with certainty that we are back on the same page and back on track to keep exploring this world and this love together.

I am that close to it

 12-28

Each string of words is the latest in my attempts to explain the meanings of the universe because every morning when I wake up I can feel the answer running on the edge of my eyelids. When I pass the solitary hours driving around Jacksonville, turning my brain off with the aid of car speakers, I can almost discern the shape of what I am looking for amidst the ever-refreshing “opening sentences” that are constantly populating in my brain.

I am that close to it.

So close that every answer I am seeking out is a brightly colored goldfish standing still before me until I reach my hands out and everything I am looking for in the placid waters disappears beneath the obfuscation of chaotically rippled glass.

Rippled glass tempts me with promises to hold the answers still for a few moments, giving me a head start. I’m not so sure that this entity of woodsy-smelling comfort in the form of pillared smoke is actually a help or a hindrance, but this dance with the devil has loosened my fingers and my fingers dance as if the devil is still present. I feel much closer.

What is it that drives me to the pen? What is it about words that sucks me in so surely? The idea that black lines on blank paper can contain so many colors and shining surfaces, vivid images of any feeling you can conjure. What a captivating juxtaposition - perhaps that is how I’ve come to view pen-and-paper as a skill to learn.

Shine like Vikings

1-10

A quick scribble to commemorate a moment of grand happiness,
a little jot to capture how high I am on life and mixtapes

and new friends that shine like Vikings of the New World, 
musical and laughing; 

how deliriously lost I am in all of the faces that smile at me daily, 
delighting in my company.

Sage Francis and B Dolan 12-21

12-28

The bass rattled my entire skeleton
and my heart began to beat
break beats and exclaim FUCK YES on exhalation
the exclamation met in turn by a hundred sweaty faces

and now the adrenaline’s combined with
my bathroom smoking sins

and I’m
spinning
and lifted

I stand palms down in Camazotz
imagining my blood pounds through me
like the speakers pound the walls

watching the end of the world
with eyelids closed in deep meditation

Waiting, still.

Seeming shy, she scribbles secretly, silently, sequestered and solitary.

She smiles. Secrets can be sweetness;
sweet and safe, savory tidbits of scandal
to keep the excitement stoked.

With imprints of finger dents
travelling loose
through burst capillaries

your strength stains me.

Helpless to the thrill, aren’t we?
A bound-together “we”
made up of silent, anxious She.
Eyes round, trained on He and

you know that I am waiting,
patient, breath attuned
to you, and the strain you are creating -
the battle of focus and will -
and I am waiting, still.