Time’s DecayThe unspeakable the indeterminate hiding in shadow as cold as sadness as cold as absence as cold as winter spring’s shore was caverns and the traces left by tide the plasticity of ocean weed and the rusted remains of failed seacraft our hearts skipped arrhythmic against the monstrous worldliness of tourism chewing its way through the July swelter October was a desolate month filled with the odor of summer’s dreams a feathered hook to pierce a lip to drag across the wave something scuttled at the periphery of our vision spiderlike in the intensity of experience only existing in relation to silence we never expected to remember we never expected to be remembered but hours leached into days and the ice was melting everything ends in time everything blossoms from the remnants of last year’s numbness before fading once again. Spain MisrememberedThat time I went to Spain have I ever been to Spain I’ve never been to Spain within those careful contours those solitary mountains red earth and violet shadow blue fear that drips in fragments beyond the tipping point beyond the cold escarpment that gradually preempts the quiet dream of marble jointed frames of logic where fevered brows are set to cool where the muddy river is troubled by the tidal moon and Spain explodes around us as a new beginning remembering a different Spain one that I just recently invented a multi-story edifice of pure masonic genius cubed and drenched beneath the pealing of the bells a scorpion machinery of salt and reed the whimpering of pallid children dreaming of their fathers’ fathers’ incarnations riddled with burgundy and leather and horse-drawn fortitude that never sinks beneath its own experience where African geometry and Arabic mathematics are proof of all that has thus far been stolen Citizen as HeroIt was peripheral it was indeterminate the heat slowed movement to a narrative pace our hero surrounded by a range of options the engines of the boulevard softly purring so many incentives to succeed people sat on wooden chairs a long line of them waiting for the boarding to begin everything was shipshape on the waterfront one city bridged to another by way of electronics mysterious and incandescent the winning translation depended primarily on the quality of the ink that had been used there were strings and wires that crisscrossed the town the metallic memory of insect life as primitive in concept as citizenship. Aggregate/SamediThe aggregate collapses in slow motion death spreading over time no single event merely a sliding riding the fire is the baron’s mystery his empty eyes his plastic throat his borrowed throat your burning throat telling someone else’s story escorted by ghosts to a burning bush a swaying palm the stink of coconut that oils your shoulders the taste of salt that cuts the acrid flame your sad remains in a grip of iron as you collapse into his dream where everything is the spike of his action and nothing that you believe will ever be true again. DamageYour hands are stained with occasional damage with wire and glass and layers of instrumentation don’t allow anger to subsume patch yourself into wilderness grind the gravel into sand your power resides within your mystery your liter of sweat in an eight-ounce glass a locked door and a lattice overgrown with vines and you alone in darkness. WillingnessWilling to invest in a composite experience avoiding narrowness avoiding sparsity plunging deeply into the miracle of unredeemed wisdom willing to choose the knife and the pigment the lanterns and the fishing line a dedicated birthright as blue as the light engulfing him as he fashions his legend with tongue-riddled artifice gifting his theories to the nesting owls who clear the underbrush of opium and twilight their summer plumage blending into the complexion of earth. Poet and songwriter Paul Ilechko lives with his partner in Lambertville, NJ. He is the author of several chapbooks. His work has appeared in a variety of journals, including The Night Heron Barks, Louisiana Literature, Iron Horse Literary Review, Clackamas Literary Review, and Book of Matches. His first album, "Meeting Points", was released in 2021.
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