Eagle Creek Trail, Columbia River Gorge, Oregon. November, 2015
via Forest Rash — Elan Mudrow Photography
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Forest Rash — Elan Mudrow Photography
Aftereffects Of Fire
Here, where fire once raged
Our voice is diminished
As if our speech leaves through
Lungs weighing only of paper
And this trail we have carved
To stand next to old giants
With charred arms
Comes with symbols and words
Revealing deepened ruts
A string of infinite finites
With sunburnt shoulders
We watch the eyeless sun
That harsh gardener….
Pierce through a ghost canopy
Wishing to reclaim its spent dust
Thinking only of its collection
….Cold baubles of gravity
All witnessed by the moon
Who never blinks once
While we lay naked
Underneath its glow
In several forms of desire
Waxing, waning,
Silver, blue, and crescent
Its face constantly upon us
That burning face in the night
We claim as eternal muse
And use as fire for the poetic
Inventing expressions
To lay upon Luna, leading us
To scramble and patch together
scrapings and scratches
Producing representations
Of a once noble fir
Which lies deep in our lush memories
Vulnerability
Only through our vulnerabilities
Can we speak of ourselves
Where no genders build language
Where no categories structure
Your reaction to my voice…..
My reaction to your voice.
Either of us can be the words
Slicing into the coolness
Of our combined angers…..
Of our singular gentleness
Posted in Poetry
Tagged Anger, Art, Gender, Language, Life, Literature, Love, Photography, Poem, Poetry, Sex, Writing
19 Comments
Reincarnation — Elan Mudrow Photography
Pacific Crest Trail, Santiam Pass, Three Fingered Jack, Oregon. July 2017
Posted in Portraits, Uncategorized
11 Comments
Internet
I’m the child who strips sticks
off maples and oaks
To slap curbs like drums
Make them mallets
To tap out the melodious
Microtones of storm drain covers
I preform this inside
A concrete planned pattern
Where Chestnut street
Meets Spruce street
A tilted suburban loop
Built to maintain an evenness
Defined by the coiled pavement
Where, with purple, silver-speckled
Five speed Schwinn,
I race round the circle, of
Chestnut and Spruce, who
Are laid down with chipped gravel
And oil’s secrets
The yards of homes blur by
Separated by
A miscellany of fences and bushes
Then, it is easy to surf streets
If followed truly, leading
Down to the new fort
Built of spruce and chestnut
For decorative purposes
Upon the remnants of the old fort
Where the sluggish current
Of a river, once jammed with logs
Slips underneath various drawbridges
I am the child who swims
In the river, along with
Eddies and undertows.
If the shore never moves
I know I’m against the current
I must catch a sandbar
Stand upon it, catch breath
Then, reenter the swirling soup
Wait for the big ships to pass
To bob like a doll in their wake
With the strength of child arms
Pulling myself ashore
I’m the speck of flesh, river rat, drying
On the coarse sandbank,
A mixture of Junk and Nature
Rough on my soft, tender
Spoiled feet,
Which have never calloused.
I yearn for cold, green lawns
Water sprinklers, who
Accidentally hit the hot pavement
If not set correctly
And my sticks, the tools
Of the melodies
Which are left
Where I last filed them
At the beginning of this poem
Salmon River Spring
Cool kiss from the forest
Stirs an inner revival
Charged by its music
Fresh from the source
That drums upon rocks.
As if my very bones
Were strewn underneath
The stream of Orpheus
Whose rhythms sink
Past thirst, deep within
My core, my atomic spirit
Embedded in my soft clay.
I am as tall as shadows
Of family fir and cedar.
Old growth is in my pitch.
I cup my hands, tightly
Holding what all life desires.
My fingers are born
Into this song shape
Railing
Who is the ghost that walks the train?
The apparition tugs on our shirt sleeves
But all rides are displaced
We are logged into otherness,
Password protected
Our faces dug deep into ourselves
Reflections fed to us
Wires from out our ears
Wi-Fi, stuck in our gut
Download speeds of the central nervous system.
Our spines reverberate myriads of chatter.
A silent rustle, instilling itself
Convincing us without us ever knowing
How important we are compared to
All other representations of knowing
While we are in the midst of knowing.
It’s called automatic updates
The train moves automatically
We are in a moving bubble…..and
From the windows see sprawl
Hurling past us………………tame trees
Surly lawns, hybrid bushes
Dotted between office buildings
Who give out loans, advice, and massages,
Fast food made to look like good food
Good food made to look like fast food
We look to make it home, safe
To pass through concrete stops embedded
With glitter and tactile paving
Ghost, ghouls, and the sleepless.
All stops are washed down, nightly
To make sure everything is clean
We wait for our stop, or stops
Trapped in by the prerecorded
Professional voicings of destinations
Which are never really stops
Just representations of stops.
Glued to our world, the rails
We read in glorious fonts….about
Long-gone idiots and fools, ghosts.
We are fascinated
about the sky
How its falling
Why its falling
Why it should fall
What we should do when it falls
If it didn’t fall
There wouldn’t reason.
Reasons….
For us to be living it up
We could ride forever like this
We will ride forever like this
On this train that gets us to work
Takes us back home again
Between murders and wars
Youtube and hookup sites
These things that record us
Splinter meaning into twos
until all movement becomes reaction
To representations (ghosts) of
The electricity that sings about
Who we think we are
