Night.
Audre Lorde: “Poetry is not only dream and vision; it is the skeleton architecture of our lives. It lays the foundations for a future of change, a bridge across our fears of what has never been before.”
My words below. Fragments.
Changing seasons.
Notes: Every night composes a new symphony to seduce the moon and entertain the stars. In the small hours, the deep intervals of silence that is not silent is then interrupted by whooshing car wheels on wet streets. One then another then none. One then another then none. Now the ambulance sings dissonant notes with a fading effect. The radiator pipes up with a brief drum solo. And then silence that is not silent. Still no lullabies.
_____
The magic golden light of evening reflected on the city towers comes a little earlier. There is a coolness floating under the night air. We watch the sky and the trees. We listen for the birds. We hold these movements as a beginning inside an ending. Autumn unfolds the next. We have no choice but to follow that parade.
In Print.
The Sketchbooks of Desire
(for Sandra Payne)
The beaming objects of desire
shimmer
through the hands in an endless
snake river
of faceted light
Organized and catalogued
by a purveyor of magic and rite
Hope flowing and falling
through pages
Pearls in flight across blank spaces
with wisdom wending without throat
Lucid in the empty paper skies
diamonds floating
side by side
tooled emeralds rubies and sapphires
Sketches of aching love
ordered and categorized
by a system of sighs
Alchemy manifested
Uncrushable
by design
[In projects + gallery exhibition catalog for “Sandra Payne: A World of Shine” Summer 2022. http://www.projects-gallery.com/store/preorder-sandra-payne-a-world-of-shine-exhibition-catalogue]
Changing seasons.
Snow falling on snow like pearls on the brow of Beatrice. The silver firmament above us. The streets below so quiet. The ghosts of midnight dreams gently walk around us - leaving no footprints.
From the Insomniac’s Diary: Welcoming the full Cold Moon. Guarding us against the deep heat of heart aches. Knowing we are both fire and ice. Knowing that we walk across tundras of sorrow that burn and bite our bare feet. Calling down the light - a cool wash for our hot tears.
Walking on regal carpets of gold and crimson just to take down the bag of trash to the alley. The trees on my street are finally letting go of their leaves. Floating and falling. Floating. And falling. Bare branches draw black stick lines against the clear, cold winter sky. I am the queen of the oaks, the poplars, and the ancient ginkgoes as their glorious colors fan out beneath my feet. Clang and bang go the lids of the garbage bins. Clarions to my resplendent parade.
Summer.
Notes from The Insomniac’s Diary: The tree frogs out chant the alley birds with their ah ah ah. Everything churns hot heavy sticky, The orange moon of sun flowers and smoke is waning. July is slipping on its own ennui into August. And now it all becomes Monday.
Saturday becoming Sunday. Deeply dark. Starless. Silent. Even the obnoxious lamps of the medicine industry seem dimmer tonight. No alley car radio joy speakers. No lover’s arguments. No tires screaming through the red light intersection. The moon seems undercover. The night is calling for a truce.
Spring
Mid-May and the Rain:
In between the wind. / The cloud and the sky. / Like the water ebbing back from the shallows. / A cusp. / A moon in crescent.
Sailing crow low to the tree. / The branch and the trembling leaf. / Like the bloom closing petals with the dusk. / An edge. / A life in question.
Winter and the season reminds us of change
The wind rising up tonight isn’t howling. It hisses in a long snaky high eeeee. Cold blooded. There is a loose can in the alley bouncing and rattling. Warning. Bundle up. Take care. Of yourself and the people on the street. Winter moves in low and bitter.
Thursday morning in mid-November: The morning’s light is golden as the sun glories itself up. My feet hit a cold floor and the hot coffee tastes particularly bitter black. Autumn greets me bearing messages from the cold heart of Winter.
Midnight Notes v.2020
Full Moon. Tonight, will you call down the Blue Hunter’s Moon? Will you bring me water from the Moon? Ice for my cocktail shaker? Magic for my soul? Look up. Feel your reflection because we are stardust. The next full moon on Halloween visible around the Earth is expected in 2077. Take note. Take beauty. Take light.
Half Moon. A brief passage from The Insomniac’s Diary: The half moon hangs like a tear drop against the round cheek of the night. So much heartbreak. Eyes closed against the sight and still the stars hurl towards eternity.
From the Insomniac's Diary as she contemplates Yom Kippur, even though she does not follow Judaism: In the darkened room the city lights through the window make ladders and doors on my ceiling. I will fly through. I will take the silver roots on my head and weave the moon. What do you know about being me? Little. Nothing.
What do I know about you? Little. Nothing.
You con me. You think you have to manipulate me. You think you don’t know how to love me. True. You don’t. But I love that you try. Can you love that I try?
Flying through the doors on my ceiling. Climbing the ladders of light. It’s a day of atonement. It’s a night of forgiveness.
I do.
The only vow I can ever keep.
Tonight an hour before midnight to the eastern sky | Full moon like a winking bright eye in and out | In and out in the cloudy dense gray sky | A single cicada singing his final aria in the tree that climbs to my 3rd floor fire escape | the two of us on the edge | The cooling of summer and the summoning of the next
Past midnight in the time of turning. A note from the Insomniac’s Diary: What in this world? So much in this world. The dark sky singing the sounds on the universe. Come hold all the hope in the half light of a half moon because it is waxing. What in this world can it - all it - mean? Vast infinite humming. Soaring notes of wind whispering in space. The small notions of small men mean nothing. Come hold all the hope in the soft light of your eyes half closed because you are sleepy. Dreams. No small dreams. Only the big ones. And then tomorrow. Which is, of course, today.
The Sky Diary continues v.2020 | The days grow longer
Spring rushed in tonight on wild winds - dancing a hard flamenco against our windows and singing deep, low, thunderous songs across the skies. She has conquered Winter with a roar.
Around midnight: The moon in my sky is Rose White. Full with pale open petals, she roundly holds our reflected light. So coolly she holds our pain. (“April is the cruelest month.”) Her scent of budding briars falters in the air. The sound of city sirens breaks against her calm. The vulnerable and tentative gaze up as our ghosts slip out the back door. Their paths lit by the moon. Ever mournful in the night. Ever April.
Sheltering in place 3.20.20: Wrapped inside. Dancing through our spaces. Calling down the music in the atmosphere. Bolts of color under our eyelids. We live between the rose-laden skies of dusk and dawn. The moon turns her dark side to us. We project our memories and dreams into the night like golden beams. We wait for the replies.
The Nights are Longer | The dreams more vivid | Autumn closing in
October | Half moon traversing the midnight sky. A bright white porcelain bowl cradling our fragile dreams and spilling them across the firmament’s dome till dawn. Which dream of yours will I catch? Which dream of mine will you hold?
November | Dia de los Muertos: We greet the dreams of our dead. We hold out the candles hoping to see them still with us in the night. We paint our faces like ghosts. We make toys like our bones and still - and still - we miss you. “I love you more than my own skin.” – Frida Kahlo
Notes from The Sky Diary v.Summer2019
1
Driving west, the sky is lined with clouds like Morse code. Dot dash dash dash dot dot dash. I have no idea what the message is or where the words might stop and start. Driving west, the sky is lined with blue and in-between spaces. It’s Tuesday and the day begins like most days – I am looking for the signs.
2
Driving west - He said look at that sky - it's a Vermeer sky. A place lit from within. Dark and light and gold. Light stolen from sun beams and filtered like candle flames in the gloom of a Dutch interior. We bask in the storm gray and gold before its brief glory cedes to the black night.
3
A fragile egg moon hanging in the frigid sky. A winter night with brittle breath and brittle ground waiting for the cracks.
4
The moon is hanging low in the east. She's shimmering silver tonight - surrounded by gray clouds in a black sky and dancing in and out of those veils. So mysterious and coy - as seductive as Salome.
5
Grief falls to the floor like spilled wine. I walk from window to window searching for the moon. I want to call down the light to send it to you.
6
An ethereal voice of a man singing a hymn floats up from the alley into the night. A fragment of spirit. Random beauty in the darkness.
7
The morning moon still waxes in the western sky - the insomniac's moon - the moon of no clocks. The moon - she beams in complete denial that despite the darkness - her light reflects the burning sun.
From Season of the Crow v.2019
• The moon swung like a white knuckled fist inside the dream of the insomniac. Half awake half in sleep - the fortune teller's card turned over to read "Tears."
• Weather report: Breaking apart like a piece of stale bread. Dry crumbs to dust. Another long night of rain and ghosts.
• Silent night but for the soft street sound of car wheels on asphalt like the rhythm of ocean tides. A whispered lullaby for the insomniac.
• Feeling the deep meaning of 'bone tired.' The skeleton dances a slow waltz inside the flesh - difficult to hide the skull beneath the smile and the lipstick.
• The sound of gray falls in soft wet notes against the whining bus brakes. The late afternoon is a low moan like Howlin' Wolf on a scratchy record.
• The fog falls in gray layers to the ground and the night embraces it in silence.
• This night: The silver moon hangs in profile against a deep blue velvet sky. A single unseen crow cries a greeting. The air is warm with the last exhale of summer.
• September is coming gently. Softening the light just a little bit earlier. Sending a breeze or two against the humid air floating above the river valley. She whispers the elegy for summer. Lulls us into the ends. The moaning of the blues.
• Coming home through city light streets, the moon is hanging bright still in the east sky - peeking in its journey through the tall green branches of trees where the secret tree frogs are in chorus. Summer stays for a little longer. Humid, bright, and singing
• Tonight meteor stars dance across the sky behind the storm clouds. Beauty we cannot see. Known but hidden is beauty still.
• St. Louis summer night. The air we breathe comes down heavier than rain. We breathe in so deeply just to catch the air above our Mississippi River valley. On nights like this we cannot deny our origins. We breathe the heat and humidity deeply. And on nights like this we cannot deny our music deeply rooted in this humidity. Smoke stack lightening fills the air.
• After the storm, it is a slow and weary calm. The real darkness of real night spreads softly over the western farewell of the pink setting sun. The trees stand still as their frogs start up the odes to summer - the last summer stanzas.
• The early morning birds outside my window aren't singing. They are relentlessly chanting as if in protest to the coming of Tuesday. I swallow the humid heat whole and rise to their call.
