Literary Yard

Search for meaning

By: Stephen Mead

Gingham

This is geometrical, this stitched
cross-hatching of order in squares & rectangles
so often seeming to flow even if ironed, hemmed,
the plaid weave of kilts given to cotton – this dress,
that Italian restaurant’s tablecloth, though the word’s origin
is Malayan, musical, multi-syllabic, a roll off tongues
for all-gendered wear – tops, bottoms, robes to cloaks – & look,
who is this who comes all decked out like a picnic basket,
a present in the now? Here. Open. Why this is another
junior-high-to-high-school & even-onwards, friend,
so often one-sided, delegated to acquaintance
& stranger later, as life-experiences differ views
to wider chasms only one notices the toxicity of,
an actual physical need for distancing
as a slow rift in commonality picking apart
the too-tightening seams,
the warp, the weft, while leaving still the complicated love
childhood dreams needed for future illusions under wraps
to carry that plentiful smorgasbord
gifted like a tree in perpetuity under which arms cross
with plates, utensils, cups,
after that person has passed.

Let Go To

Hold
on to
let go to…

So touches still go on—–
My held shoulders, your hands light as prayer on either side,
hands, lit within, pressing soft but firm, gentleness, the intention,
love the only belief.

And then your hands took my hands, light to light, an enclosed cathedral
within your steeple-hands against the fur of your chest
& the honeysuckle whisper of your voice.

Speak of angels again. I will believe, have belief in need.
Speak angel, I say aloud, my finger to lips, your lips in a photo,
fingers upon my own lips first as in life we had the same grace,
finger to finger, lip to lip, a smile, a sigh.

Do any angels really sing of such, & mermen, & grasses, & fog?
We had & have our own time – let go to hold.

Novalunosis

(Novalunosis (n.) – The state of relaxation and wonderment experienced while gazing upon stars.)

Pronunciation:
nova-loon-ohsis

This never-before read or heard word itself teaches new sight –
the far stars now not just lights that have already died,
fixed in their gaseous black bath to flicker through Time’s dimensions
of math, mass & speed – No, these little twinkles are grand again
with Peter Pan ships invisible between the great hoisting & rigging
that are planes as sails travelling each interplanetary reach
more mysterious with distances, the leagues of fathoms
the mind’s eye crosses by charting whenever

every night of wonder
is allowed again by skies parting their clouds like worries or parapets
depending on the day’s weather of bombardments
or reasons for feeling grateful to living, at peace as some moment memorized
of say a friend’s son at twenty-four, his twin nephews each hugging a knee,
their small feet on his monstrous size thirteen while he beast growls & carries them,
shrieking & giggling with delight across the kitchen floor, or so that friend’s story told
to reside as a movie sentimentally true to the science of neurons
that fire a cosmos in spirits lying face-up together or separate,
up on the roof evermore wide awake & dreaming.

Real Intimacy

Is this the same as flesh melding with flesh?
How stimulating, that sensation-series, the physical by rote,
all in all, after a while, a sort of jargon. Do it if it feels good.
The body never lies. Of course not & that’s how come
real intimacy goes deeper, uses the mind & heart—–

Long distance close or the dissolve through clover,
that picturesque shot fading to horizons?

What love is
is hard
& safe sex still an experience of lying wide open,
at risk.

It occurs while rinsing plates, figuring taxes,
taking out the recycle bin, those acts which test bonds.
See here, who left this toilet roll holder empty?
Who’ll change the kitty litter? Who’ll visit
those acquaintances neither can stand?
I’ll do it. No, me. But really, I insist.

Is this romance?
Share hands, laughter, tissues, love?
It’s all inclusive or
could we have sparks, get a genuine kick out of each other
without first nervous small words which fills living with promise?

Hand me the towel. Enough crap, OK?
I’ll dry while your fingers do a miraculous
dance with those suds. Therein is the rhapsody
of passions devoted to labor’s creation.
First, sacrifice & then, afterwards, sitting back
to revel in what growth is:
that fireside light, these intertwined limbs,
no thorns, no thorns here,
on the climbing stem of this rose.

After Retiring

Now time fluctuates more fluidly, as does age
depending on memory – daylight bright in this instance
or moon shadows out of dusk gradually growing glass-clear.
Ask what is the energy level of how we are feeling
in which passing mood to know how old our nature is in either.
Young as the night is short Summer says often enough
if seasons inspire creative work amid just the right amount of rest
& health is constant as that neighbor down the road.
She is up to the task of her lawn for hours, so it seems,
trimming blades with scissors, her tied up long silver hair
matching their gleam. Look close. Get down on knees
as if genuflecting to see what hidden herbs she is freeing
closer beneath the grass stalks – now Timothy, Sage & Thyme
given such good room to breathe. How aromatically
they take up air, creating space in patterns of roots fibrous
here in leaves precise as relay runners holding one another up.
It does not matter whether one is first or last
when slowly completion is this sudden all-over meadow
windswept as organza pillow ripples revealing arrowheads
bedding down on the flats surprising as feathers of flint.
Such shale of epochs they were carved from & how, now unearthed
do they appear as harbingers, as God gifts to make wonder hover?
So our ancestors were transported, finding such, spit-polishing,
rubbing, rinsing water-faceted for displaying drawers to collect,
present the treasured moments of, the back then
now there again where what is ever here, here, here

###

Resident artist/curator for The Chroma Museum, artistic renderings of LGBTQI historical figures, organizations and allies predominantly before Stonewall, The Chroma Museum ,Stephen Mead is a retiree whom, throughout all his pretty non-glamorous jobs still found time for writing poetry/essays and creating art.  Occasionally he even got paid of this. Currently he is trying to sell his 40-year backlog of unsold art before he pops his cogs, Art Collection from Stephen Mead

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