The Lush's New Writeups

The Cradle (poetry)

2009-09-24T04:41:17Z

The Cradle

The snow fell in sheets, blanketing each and every street
Every leaf of grass hidden by the gentle colorless cradle
Waiting for a child to fall, limbs spread out in perfect symmetry
A Vitruvian snow angel, snow pushed aside, made alive
Until the snow starts to fall again, flakes face up to the sky
Every flake with a path to follow, from the sky to the ground

And though the wind might lift them up they all settle on the ground
Nothing can stop this, snow on the rooftops, it'll melt to the street
And those flowers you see dying, seven deadly seeds beneath the cradle
Nothing can stop this, this is the way things go, circling back in symmetry
Those things that you see dying, they were made to die, that's being alive
And the snow starts to fall again, face up to

…

Kyphi (poetry)

2009-09-23T06:36:12Z

Kyphi incense smells like sex
Sliding smoothly under and over itself
As it burns

Curling clean and sweet smoke
An edible fragrance rising into the room
Kyphi incense smells like sex

Ex-lovers to 17 year locusts hatching
Cinnamon and cassia bark, cedar and sweet flag
As it burns

Wine and honey and raisins
Waiting for a flame
Kyphi incense smells like sex

Smoking down her life into a spoon
She smiles from across the room
As it burns

Close your eyes as I close mine
Embrace this soft retreat
Kyphi incense smells like sex
As it burns

…

Portmanteau (poetry)

2008-10-31T16:55:34Z

Awake upon the path littered in my wake
	noisome memories left behind
	rake you through the loom
That leads along a lie at last that love
	alone would loathe to live
	lost, leaching, and laboring

Nevertheless, and always the lesser

—

crescendo cedes to climax,
tilting misconception 'til conceived 
inn-errantly

Awake upon the path littered in my wake
	sidewalk cracks along your face 
	parlay my passing eyes
Into pell-mell passersby, tripping

—

perforce
	a plenary pile of persiflage growing
	peu à peu, like paellastrami phyllos
	
A human portmanteau.

…

The grand prize of life (thing)

2008-10-24T04:26:10Z

The search for truth - be it the subjective truth of belief, the objective truth of reality, or the social truth of money or power - always confers, on the searcher who merits a prize, the ultimate knowledge of its non-existence. The grand prize of life goes only to those who bought tickets by chance.

The value of art is that it takes us away from here.

What's left?

ώαlќ вÿ fαïτh, ṉøτ вÿ fεαɾ. ṡυρρlαṉτ ÿøυɾ fεαɾ ώïτh fαïτh. Lacuna matata?

ώhατ'ṡ ɾεαl? ώhατ'ṡ ɾεαl ṃαṉ? ï'll τεll ÿøυ ώhατ'ṡ ɾεαl, α τɾαṃρ вε…

Spanish Boots of Spanish Leather are Haunting Me (personal)

2008-10-17T23:59:32Z

So take heed, take heed of the Western winds. Take heed of the stormy weather. And yes, there's something you can send back to me: Spanish Boots of Spanish Leather.

Have you ever been haunted by a song? Where you become so absorbed that you can't shake it? Not the same as getting some hooky pop melody stuck in your head, and it won't leave you alone, and it repeats again and again, and it never ends, until it does... and that was nothing, that was a sneeze on the road to next December, and you'll not think twice about it, and yes, things will be alright. No, to be haunted by a song is entirely different.

Boots of Spanish Leather is haunting me.

Suze Rotolo left Dylan for Italy. She was his one true love, for a time. And this song is about how something like that fades into the long slow walk into oblivion, the long walk to…

Bye, Fish (fiction)

2008-10-17T05:57:27Z

I crawled beneath the desk and hid there until the screaming and the shouting stopped, until I heard smack, a cry and then sobbing silence. There was nothing I could do. Nothing about this night seemed different than any other night.

Everything was different, just not to me.

***

Trapped. Oscar Fitzgerald felt trapped. In a body that would likely fail him in less than five years. Oligodendroglioma. Trapped. He wasn't happy in his marriage. Trapped. The thought of spending what time he had left with Francine made him numb, but he was trapped. He loved his kids. He fucking loved his kids, Alice, Melissa, and little Robert. But Oscar only had an outside shot at living five years.

Driving home from work, the weight of his diagnosis pulled him down in his seat, as everyone else on I-64 tuned in to talk radio, the useless…