Shreds Part 1: Rosebud California (Interregnum)

By Wintertanager J.T. Storey - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0

I wish to slumber long, in peace a fate not for me on this hilltop by the water.

These cool nights in California where ghosts of you lean on doorways in throngs dripping thornbushes at the curb.

Fades the sight of beauty from my eyes, the shape of warmth from my arms, things I forget by the rocks by the sea.

All these rushing gods, only noise; and the bright gold silence of you I love, crumpled.

I roam the hills at night razor-wire by the quiet water towers the feeling of a wolf.

Light eats light; I believe in terrible things to come— it may be god that comes, it may be you. A hot morning you’ve filled with birdsong.

You become all feeling, all cursed, all sharp memory, all mournful greenery. Palm trees drip their fingertips down my back in the slow afternoons.

Your soul weeps and pleads for other things, things lost, that can still be found. Let me show you to their graves, that we might rob them.

I fell from the cliffs of Skaros into the wine-dark sea. I have sailed in heat for weeks beneath the white-hot star, blistered by unending time, while you have bathed and laughed in the houses of Seleucus.

You salved, I burnt away; I thrashed to masts, you all covered in fruit; call for me now over the flat, clean water. Come to me in dream, sound the clifftop horn.

I gazed so much on beauty that my eyes overflowed. I neglected the speckled rust on my tools, my sickles all dulled, and resented them.

I love the purity of your violence the gift of this affliction the beauty in this glutting wound. Let it not fester overlong, return to it, balm it, that we might traipse on some greener hill.

Remembrance of soft lightning we shared over a dismal valley, years ago. Will there ever be another thunderstorm? More damp hours, charged golden light where we crackle tenderly?

Memories drag at me on smoky nights full of rot and fogged moans, we suffused too much by gravity desperate for the taste of aloe afraid of what we wrought.

So comes a cleansing heat! So comes wildfire, windborne killer; so comes blowtorch, shoulderblade needler; so comes bandsaw, surgical blasphemer; so comes the tenderness of your cruelty.

The roses of last August wreathe us in prayer, scorched with what we lost, or never found. Beloved shadows sweetly beckon to an ancient freshness and brighter dawn. Meet me there, tomorrow.