"Smoke and wind and fire are all things you can feel but can't touch. Memories and dreams are like that too. They're what this world is made up of. There's really only a very short time that we get hair and teeth and put on red cloth and have bones and skin and look out eyes. Not for long. Some folks longer than others. If you're lucky, you'll get to be the one who tells the story: how the eyes have seen, the hair has blown, the caress the skin has felt, how the bones have ached.
"What the human heart is like, " he said.
"How the devil called and we did not answer.
"How we answered."

from The Man Who Fell In Love With The Moon

Tuesday, September 25, 2012

A poem written by a moth that I read often.



She came around the corner 
to see body-sized mounds of rags and debris.
They could have been the warm torsos and arms
of the dead, wrapped in plastic and cloth, 
that she wasn't supposed to see
at the age of eleven or twelve.
Or twenty-five.

But they weren't.
No, they were not.

They were everything and nothing.

Like the brown paper bag
that caresses the curb under unseen stars.
Or the weeping un-heartbeat
of the car's turning signal.
Its melodic sobs asynchronous
with any other's.

Signal, it is. 
To listen.

The drive home is silent but for the city.
A moth's wing and a wet nose greet her at the door.

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