Walking home one evening
I notice a dim blue light; between
the black cracked glass of sluiced tree-gangs
and the chest-high grass gleaming with dew
flinging like flint in the mountain’s breath
I waited for Gabriel, or the baptist’s head
to roll down from the upward climbing reeds
but there was no arrival, kind of like pain
only less sight, and bird noises
there was nothing but a fantastic sick-heat
on my skin. And the blue swell of the fractals
that hung up between like fruit in the trees
of this place, the world’s negatives
My simple brain tries its best
to unlearn sentiment.
Like lifting a toenail, the soul prostrates
jeans heavy in the sucking purple mud
and I start praying to un-feel water
to reverse the touch of the wind
but for some reason
My heart always pulls back and under
before gushing beauty like peroxide
in a wound
I decide that if nothing else, before I leave
at least I will work out the exact color of this blue
until I can make it wait like a formula.
It’s almost a robin’s egg blue
the oxidized blue of a century old truck
the hoarse, whispery blue of my mother’s arthritic hands
wrapping bloodless around the skillet handle in ground freeze January
and I realize I can’t even look at it too long
before my eyes have to shut, and watch it gloat
flitting like a pink kite in the clear blindness
Eventually I get up and turn back down the slope
towards home. Working out a bad story about
inheritances and curses for myself
And when the ones who were waiting
for me ask where I was. It’s easier to just say
that I drank more than I out to have
and slipped into the creek
but when I blink between their movements
I can still see that pink kite
and when they’ve gone to bed, I can still get up
and watch a portion of blue squared in the window
long enough to remember my nebulous world on the mountain
and the feeling of being god
just as strange and lonely
as being the cricket
Author Bio:
Nick Vafiadis is a writer and editor for 'Satellite', an online arts and culture journal. He likes chicken nuggets, jazz, and bad poetry. Nick admires the work of Larry Levis, Charles Bukowski, and Arthur Rimbuad; though he's sure they would all be thoroughly embarrassed by his own work. Nick writes because he prefers it over praying or watching sports. Although Nick has not been widely published, his mother still believes that he is an undiscovered genius.
I notice a dim blue light; between
the black cracked glass of sluiced tree-gangs
and the chest-high grass gleaming with dew
flinging like flint in the mountain’s breath
I waited for Gabriel, or the baptist’s head
to roll down from the upward climbing reeds
but there was no arrival, kind of like pain
only less sight, and bird noises
there was nothing but a fantastic sick-heat
on my skin. And the blue swell of the fractals
that hung up between like fruit in the trees
of this place, the world’s negatives
My simple brain tries its best
to unlearn sentiment.
Like lifting a toenail, the soul prostrates
jeans heavy in the sucking purple mud
and I start praying to un-feel water
to reverse the touch of the wind
but for some reason
My heart always pulls back and under
before gushing beauty like peroxide
in a wound
I decide that if nothing else, before I leave
at least I will work out the exact color of this blue
until I can make it wait like a formula.
It’s almost a robin’s egg blue
the oxidized blue of a century old truck
the hoarse, whispery blue of my mother’s arthritic hands
wrapping bloodless around the skillet handle in ground freeze January
and I realize I can’t even look at it too long
before my eyes have to shut, and watch it gloat
flitting like a pink kite in the clear blindness
Eventually I get up and turn back down the slope
towards home. Working out a bad story about
inheritances and curses for myself
And when the ones who were waiting
for me ask where I was. It’s easier to just say
that I drank more than I out to have
and slipped into the creek
but when I blink between their movements
I can still see that pink kite
and when they’ve gone to bed, I can still get up
and watch a portion of blue squared in the window
long enough to remember my nebulous world on the mountain
and the feeling of being god
just as strange and lonely
as being the cricket
Author Bio:
Nick Vafiadis is a writer and editor for 'Satellite', an online arts and culture journal. He likes chicken nuggets, jazz, and bad poetry. Nick admires the work of Larry Levis, Charles Bukowski, and Arthur Rimbuad; though he's sure they would all be thoroughly embarrassed by his own work. Nick writes because he prefers it over praying or watching sports. Although Nick has not been widely published, his mother still believes that he is an undiscovered genius.
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