OF THESE IMPLICATIONS: STRAYS FROM THE SECRET DRUM – D.C. Wojciech
December 19, 2019
STRAY No. 1
who knows what can happen between moments.
a secret can live only as long the crows say nothing.
until the sleeves of every strait jacket are forever unfolded
& they return what they’ve taken from the Earth.
what you do with yr aura & its shadow is nobody’s business.
it wasn’t the thorns covered in my fingerprints
but the way one begins to see magic where once was explanation
, what with none of yr calendars asking questions?
when we keep time by how many loaves? how many fishes?
reality strikes down the gong.
I was talking to my cigarette all night lit up with escape routes & green tea.
in studio apartments of the mind the oven door
stays open all winter & there’s never any reason
to distinguish a thought from a humming bird.
a black marigold in the breast pocket is a concealed weapon
when you’ve spent yr life fighting something invisible.
STRAY No. 2
folding a hand to a fist
& calling on a murder of crows
to bring back the seeds of secret winter.
the wind is again paralyzed.
it becomes impossible to move
from present to past.
what they call death is a falling pinecone.
the way one doesn’t question a doorframe
in an earthquake.
what else can you do
when the key cutter sees through you—
will you greet yr grain
or will you drum for yr own shadow—
will you laugh like hawk eyes
or will you drive yr tears over the edge.
every voice of us overthrown
for every reason to be anything else.
opening every river when looking back.
for the various colors of dust
infiltrating yr shoes with 5’9″
of cause & effect.
on street corners & in dank rooms
where solace lingers for 30 years
on the tip of the tongue
or in the pit of the stomach,
unseen as yr life flashing
before your eyes.
until it does.
STRAY, No. 3
I spend the life of a cigarette
returning minerals to the Earth
in my mind
the tears of this walking coffin
cross the street with me
where eyes would be regularly
attached to dreams of fish nets
& a leg to stand on.
death all around us
like the architecture of silent carnivals
when we don’t know what to do
about the bombs, the guns, the tanks
, the coldness kept between us—
broadcasted live from bent spoon street corners
where the voices of the dead carry our infinities
on their shoulders with the rent money & the ways out
, everyone secretly on their knees
asking
why?
why?
why?
STRAY No. 4
always a secret implosion inside
to remind you nature doesn’t have to ask.
hit me with the truth right between the eyes
or else what is the use of speaking.
what use is this burning bush
I’ve been dreaming of since
before there was a greatest story to
remind you of orchards & flower beds.
before fear was a marketing plan.
before you could walk you danced
& before you could see you cried.
when they tell me Johnny Appleseed was in the garden
I laugh & see through them, my naked eyes.
these just the repercussions of cross-examining former selves for a decade.
may we all have the strength to begin again. and again.
no way out except within. to be sure, turn yr eyes
from stem to stern every once in a while.
politicians will say anything to insist they aren’t drowning.
the difference between a rose & a trash heap
giving secret lighthouses to those who refuse to
pray with the anchorman & his sinking ship.
Source Materials:
New Heart Sutra translation by Thich Nhat Hanh (Plum Village)
https://plumvillage.org/about/thich-nhat-hanh/letters/thich-nhat-hanh-new-heart-sutra-translation/
Madness and Solitude in Kahlil Gibran (Hermitary)
https://www.hermitary.com/solitude/gibran.html
Implosion, re: Astrophysics (Wikipedia)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implosion_(mechanical_process)#Astrophysics