Adz, Blur and Om

"Things are not always what they seem, nor are they otherwise."

-Well-known Zen Adage

The heat is palpable. You can see it throbbing the air, waves of distortion rising up in tandem on the horizon, the edge of every vista like bubbles of boiling batter, are we in an oven? 

Walking inside, into the slough of AC. Soothe is the word. It wetlicks my skin, like a balm I guess. 

What is a balm?

A weird old word.

Where does that leave us then? Finger wading stacks upon stacks in the office. An avalanche of rejection.  A glare on the wallclock’s number 3.  Maybe it doesn’t say three…  I am thinking about your cheek.  A kiss on that tender blush. Like an apple.  The fleshy lines of your arms…

Where does that leave us then?  Not where but when.  A long time from when we started. 

I did not walk here all the way from the airport to listen to myself talking.
I came here to watch you.
I came here to watch you all.
To see you listening.
Listening to me talk.
Talk without thinking…

Parking lot snowbank remnants beneath the springtime stars, “it's open mic night muthafuckas!”

Remember? 
 

No, you weren’t there.  Maybe even I wasn’t there.  My head was elsewhere. Yes certainly.  Was I walking home? Dusty boys playing by the side of the road. I check online. Weather in GoogleMaps is always fixed. Is that old home still there?  Where was it exactly?  Streetview.  I was leaving work. What was that job?  Did I drive or take the train?  A plane, a boat? 

I seem to recall
air fanned by a flock of hands,
the cats flanks flecked with burrs,
veiled windows, lit by sunset, or streetlights…
the smell of wood floors and coffee grounds,
the smell of lost causes, the taste of boredom
your Jacobean mouth…

Remember? 

Am I my own vision?  Yes most certainly, but how am I stretched beyond it? 

And what is it beyond my own vision?  Heat, for sure, the lines all rubbing together but beyond that, what name this stage, this set, a wind from other oceans we hadn’t known, the codenames of lost continents. 

What is this place called?  Not where but when.  The camera clicks, flash a light.  What do I see?  When did we enter?  Let's give it a name to say when it starts.  How should we stay? The points aren’t fixed.  

Like a starlit lake in the midst of San Francisco.  Midst or mist?  
The moon was late tonight.
Tonight I touched the dry warm skin 
of the building
because the night is the cure
the cure is the beginning

 Let me through.

The streetlight glare on the digitalclock number 3.  

Everywhere blurry hot and halogen.

My ideas no longer ideas
just two fine French doors you live inside
like I live inside this promise
like we live inside dreams
the best dreams where you did not yet exist
Yet not where but when
when inside I knew 
knew you in the universe
the universe would create you eventually
and the universe would continue to burn,
A dream fire fueled by a heart’s promise.


Or youth.

I was the lithe flower then and now I am the fat fruit. I am ready for a fall.  I am ready to fall apart.  I am ready for the seed somewhere within me to spring.