Sculpt the Wind

Your eyes are falling bricks, 

water-ballooning into white doves before hitting the ground,

Twittering through ear canals,

inverting my heart into stained glass.

Your camisole flaps in the wind

and reminds me of the world of limb baskets,

stretched to catch the falling men.

Around waists, shoulders,

raised to sculpt the wind and music.

Water trickling through your fingers

and dying at your feet.

Wave your arms sister.

Wave them to grant the water passage

into the halo around you.

Crystalline and drying in the sunshine

of your machined blur.

Stomp your feet sister.

stomp them to vibrate the box 

you were born into.

stomp them to shatter 

the arrogantly wrapped arms

at your shoulders.

Raise your voice sister.

join the chorus 

of the river castanets,

clanging through the rocks.

The song we’ve worshipped

so long from a window sill.

Our vocal folds 

are origami swans,

yet incapable of flying.

Brother, fold your arms.

Fold your arms into the pits,

dark pits of sweat and stasis.

Brother, raise your thumbs,

and massage your sore shoulders.

Brother, lean onto branches of human limbs,

let them claw your chest to nothing,

and unwrap your voice.

Human, stare into the pebbles,

and remember caves inside and out.

Human, grab horizon lines,

Dip them into the ink of your cloud,

and write paragraphs 

to announce the arrival of nothing.

Human, laugh with the others,

take shelter in that great innate jitter

that splashes across bodies in primal waves.

God, pull on your puppet strings,

bend the notes of offered hymns 

into replacement limbs for the amputees.

God, look at the human islands you have made,

and dry up the distance between them,

or machine new bridges of empathy.

God, run your magnetism

across the face of metal earth,

and eat explosions like mushrooms

tossed into a universe salad. 

God, let me be angry with you.

Let me be angry with you

and everything will be okay between us.

Be the wall that I bounce frustration from.

The polished mirror

that reflects the anger back to me.

Self, please gather your thin neurons

and weave a mental sweater

large enough to cover echo chambers.

Self, remember me when I’m gone,

and you are alone.

Self, hug your love onto the soil,

and mock the distances

between your nose and the worms.

Self, understand that sculpting words

will only supply your home with marble busts.

Understand that an ink pen 

is not a life preserver.

But understand truly

that a pen without ink

is even more useless.

And your molecules 

will one year sing a chorus

for the sunset,

embedded into pocketfuls of shadow.

Reviews

[Sydney]

I really like the little changes you made. Again, some of the meaning is cloudy to me, but that doesn't really matter. It's gorgeous. I did make one observation in the last stanza; I like how you changed it to "self", however, even though it would break the pattern, it would also be fluent to write the last paragraph in letter formation. What I mean is by starting that stanza:

"Self,
..............
...............
............"

If that makes sense. Only addressing "self" once and let the other lines follow, maybe addressing "self" once more halfway through the stanza. I hope that made sense. Just a thought I had reading it through this time, but it's still wonderful as it stands. This is definitely one of my favorites

[Linda Marie Van Tassell]

Anthony,

First, let me welcome you to The Café. I have to say that this poem is simply stunning. There are so many quotable lines from beginning to end that are just stunning that I'd literally have to recite the whole poem. Sister, brother, Humankind, God, Self ... your poem is a request to them all. I believe this is the first poem that I have read of yours, and it's simply stunning. It just IS.

Linda Marie

[Anthony J]

Thank you so much for the welcome and the review!