Gail Gray, grew up in Lowell, Mass but now lives in Greenville, SC, USA. She is the author of five books of poetry, The Hazard of Waking Up, Spirals in Copper, and Planetary Tension; with Eye on the Universe ( online at Differentia Press) and Storms at the Edge upcoming from Virgogray Press. She is the owner of Shadow Archer Press and editor of Fissure, a magazine of experimental art and writing. Her poetry has been published in The Asheville Poetry Review, Counterexample Poetics, Cokefish, Exquisite Corpse, Eviscerator Heaven, Being, Big Swollen Toe, Sisyphus, Zygote Abstract Libertine, Gloom Cupboard, Main Street Rag, sein und werden, Clockwise Cat, Shoots and Vines, ditch, Deep Tissue, Troubadour 21, Anastomoo, Full of Crow and the So It Goes Anthology She is the author of a magical realism novel, Shaman Circus.
The Trail of True
A series of realizations,
eerie unfoldings
the facts laid flat like Morgan-Grier cards
the tableau vividly colored.
No sepia tones, no misty dreamshades.
The shocks delivered in handspans,
as if strung on a necklace,
each attached with precision
to it’s individual ring.
Final. Hammer on anvil
or clack of typewriter keys;
jolt of the carriage flying,
slamming
stopped
locking each line.
Yet linked.
Linked so perfectly together
no denials of truth remain.
Guarded, sacred images, redolent of autumnal lakesides,
swept away. The opening of a rusty-hinged door,
the figures inside, strobed
in passing shadows,
vehicles high on a wall.
An optical confrontation to
perception, as if the taunt of reality
is not enough.
The hushed rush of escape,
A sound, I never forget.
Figures: once only a name, or a passerby
viewed in peripheral haze, stand now, illumined.
The afternoon light, proclaims in sharp angles.
Accentuated, to tell the uncut tale;
render the misread trail
redundant.
Remembrances of last night past: Encouraged by a morning for the Sidh to yawn itself wide, mist rising in wraithy clouds, pocket ghosts erupting as the leaves hung wet and heavy –yellow the color of Dias de los Muertos mums, the color of sadness - orangered tears not yet shed, held back, unleashed in city lashings. The gods will have us huddle beneath their weighty emotions.
This All Hallows Eve I’m not a corpse bride but John Fowles’ widow straightpinning my dreams from behind a black widow’s veil, dotted with crystal tears stitching together the edge of a night fit for Ichabods and Lizzie Bordens. No Green ‘cept neon in Greenville tonight. Conchis, The Magus and Baron Samedhi back seat drivin’ we’re speeding the streets, Laurens then Augusta Rd. the asphalt bleeding streaming serpent’s kiss Aida Wedo stop and go rainbow colors, garish and stunning, reflected back from slickwet pavement, over and over refracted in fractal rainbows, the Fibonacci principle skateboarded alive washed up from too fast tires on unsafe twisty jack-knife roads, ‘cause everybodys gotta get there. Costumed crazies everywhere. “You going’ to a party?” The dude asks holding the door open wide, a blurry-eyed King of the night. That’s right gotta run the parties already started all over this wet but not damped-down uptight-except-for-tonight town. The rain offers release or subjugation, whatever your preference. Gives permission to let loose, let the wild jagged rippin’ it open darkside night toss you here and there, in and out of one reality, one dimension to the next, grimaces as grins and a new friend on every corner.
Take a right ignoring the yield sign down Mills Ave. Even here 973 miles away from Joan Fabrics and my meme’s house on Salem St., observer since my Faith Home Orphanage tenement childhood, Gilbride Terrace, Lowell, MA, the lit-up windows of textile mills make me look. Damn, almost a dead voyeur, miss that curve, slide through the stop sign slam the wheel hard left down McGarity down the hill, slip slopping through the ditch braking in deep wet grass the Gulf Stream air lavishing ravishing the night with voudou kisses and threats of El Nino all the South Carolina winter. Kilted LokiRake to the rescue. He hauls beer ‘cause I gotta fix that black veil.
Che’ Rivera, subtle maybe not so subtle herbal host-offering revolutionary. The temple’s where you take it and the Medusa queen waves her snakey hands ‘til the Ouroboros eats its tail and all’s right with our night, our sliced off night smack in the middle of a nation that pretends death doesn’t run the whole show. I’m here to remind them.
Let’s raise a toast and dance to dried blood cello sounds and Murder by Death.
Crunchy kills Cricket over and over. The cricket sings over and over. My mother taught me Never kill a cricket, they’re good luck. London superstitions or not, my good luck M… o.. H.. ee. t.. o Cricket deep boom voice from the bottom-of-the-well forgives me for waking him up gifting deep hugs and streaming jokes.
All around, kindred in the eyes on altered faces, five-year-old unreadable texting vampires, crazy cat ladies and Camis doubled, free and uncaring, what the hell go for it? Pour a libation over the railing of the high porch perched cornerwise on the crumbling sagging fringe of the West Side mill village, thanking the pantheon of pithy gods who hurl huge broken tree limbs, a synchronicity sign in our honor. It’s too wet for the Samhain bonfires and Tiki torches but not for the blackheat circle of macabre stories passing the black silk story stick, Bacchus, Morrison and Ozzy smiling from pumpkin flesh deemed it right. Doll yards and drowning Scots. As above so below. So shall it be.
Altered foods, altered memories, altered futures, a handful of pomegranate seeds and I’ve slid into that Hades comfy zone, where everything has ten meanings, layers on layers, mindstuffed: many pasts, some chugging beside me: inventors in gas masks, beauties in Geisha kimonos, green eyed gemstone-marked tragedy goddesses crawling in snakes, wild things in crowns and scepters because this night we’re all kings of the underground, trolling the River Styx for our futures, escaping out of the pit, erupting from the fissure in the cracks, the skulltoothed smile urging us on to crazier days ahead so we’ll be who we are not who they say we are. Tonight we just ARE. Crazy laughing giddy with each other’s essence pouring out because our chosen masks are in place, the old ones slipped and no one cares, forgiveness all around, passed like whiskey stashed in flasks, no need for big bottles tonight, we’re already drunk on the planet’s wishes as Saturn slides into dance position with the scales tipping my way. Neptune goes direct and Pluto smirks from its hidey hole. Uranus floats in Pisces to kick all dreamers into overdrive. All those chunky bits of rock methane ice iron linin’ up slo mo getting their hip hopping break dancing salsa twirling swinging pogo mosh pit slamming feet ready for that big party on the 12/21/2012 Milky Way slide but don’t collide, just coincide ride.
We will have power one day. If we’re dead, fuck it. Being around to see not so important when we are the creators, we leave the legacies, the stripped-down tales of our everyday clashes and crashes. The awakenings. The cravings driving us to more impossible collisions. It’s time to shatter scatter the stars even the physicists say so but words are power movement rivers running deep in the souls even those who don’t get it just yet. One or a thousand lives away they’ll get it one day. It takes 20 years to sepia-tone a memory, 50 to make it legacy when all the bits have been scattered buried forgotten burned. What survives is the stories the future wants to read. Everyone’s gotta know where they came from. The pit, man, the yawning devouring pit will spit it back out in time, the right time. Our time. Lets smirk between the lines.
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