By: S. Philips

Where Icarus Went

Weary winter light
Come the rye
Think I'll leave this bed 

Can’t trust it anymore
After last night
When I was

Flat on my back		bare face to the ceiling
Gravity	and cool white sheets 
Stopping me from falling 	upwards	terrible open space

But nothing could stop me
From folding in		going under 

Eyelids		so thin		so tight 		glowing yellow-green butterflies  
All I felt	pulsing		in my ears	in my chest 	through the silence

Gone
I don’t remember the fall 
But I remember what I dreamed at impact:

Just as it all became too loud	rhythm of warning and pulse 
The world stilled 

A jagged rock		cold roots on the ocean floor	 	turning her face 
Up towards the sky’s promises

I didn’t understand why she ignored the glittering sea
Blue mother
Icarus fallen but finally satisfied

I didn’t understand
Until I saw the shapes in the water	listened to their song

They told me to dive into the cold	forget		and find final stillness 		
Almost did 

The Doctor

The happy 
Have stumbled upon a silence 
Delicious vacuum 
In which the blistered graying throats
And their screams 
For attainment – for stillness – 
Are strangled 
By a man with a soothing hand 
As he whispers them to blackness. 
 
Only in this silence can they know 
Know what to work for 
For the world, eternally unknown  
And, thus, wonderful  
- We will never confirm otherwise - 
Must yield to quiet 
Before it pours itself before them. 
 
Dream of childhood 
Because the little ones know 
Know how to free him 
From his warm murderer’s cell 
With crafted stories 
Stories which they know 
Know they must live through 
To their conclusions. 
 
And he is satisfied.
Next.
 
On this early suburban evening
I can dull the dullness 
Of a strange body that used to play 
By making its joints burn.
Fat gathers on my hips, in my heart.  
 
I anchor myself at my oak-scented desk  
And let the arms of my leather chair bind me.
I hide, far away from the terrible flow 
And thank the walls for my blindness, freed   
Grateful that the 
Man
Doctor
Killer
Had a little time to spare
For me.

To be clean

Warm coffee on the road makes me sick 
Dark ashen asphalt, murky brown drink 
Foul-smelling fuel 

But it’s the only way I can get 
To where I’m going 

Maybe there 
I’ll finally be free to wash myself Clean
And forget – gift to the last horizon 
All that I’ve consumed 

(Another hope:

My rabid red consumption
Feels justified, sometimes
– Drunk on my certitude – 
When I think about how the entropy
Consumes me too

And some say
Drunken words are true)