ÆRON BRENNER - POETRY

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And I'm not far from home here,
this day, watching the lake cradled by the green grass and blue sky.

And this feeling is familiar.
This warmth in holding.
This certainty of touch.

And I lean back, and the breeze whispers in my ear.
And I've heard these words before.
I've shared this breath.

These places are not measured by distance the way land is measured ~
where we start, where we're headed.
They're known simply by keeping close to the one we love,
as we share the reasons to rest.

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(Bell Lake, finding words with Lara)

No forecast for blooming,
for fragile desire, for backwards smiles.

Just torment for tasting,
just forward for facing,
pulsating, masturbating, still in training.

Simple beams of fright,
just charmed by nicotine hailstorms
and virtuous lies.

Today, her skin glows lavish,
like golden railroad ties.

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Where the flowers do go, to wilt, O land of blood-dark bitter dirt,

the shaded flag shadow hanged crooked from the hilt,

tilting but tall, tired of all that glory that was once worth ~

a boy calls out a name,

O Mother! O Mother!

The oldest prayer the throat has built.

His breath is short and curdled at the throat,

each note a battle fought for flavour,

for the grace of it,

for a table set by hand,

for a meal that love did tend.

But instead, silence without a taste falls behind.

Never heard nor listened to, they swallow the scream he screams inside,

and the night comes to the day, and the day does come to close his eyes.

O Mother! O Mother!

You who set the table ~ you who tended the meal ~ you with all your grace.

For what braveries there were, they kept him not,

for the thinness of them was ne’er to keep the sword, the bite ~

but the warmth of them, and warm there were,

was the last to hold him, and the last for him to hold.

It was there he remembered your name,

spoken to the ground.

It was there he saw the sun taken from the sky,

and he, the moon, fell into your arms.

O Mother! O Mother!

Hear his cry ~ hold him down so he has not to fight.

Miles from this wasteland turned t'ward the long grey waters,

the mother, O Mother,

shortened by the breeze,

by the years and the rain,

bereaved, she thinks of love and calls it by name ~

a young boy green, wide and bright of eye,

not yet the tide there wished him ill,

bare-footed, running wild amongst the trees still.

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I move through this space like the low wind ~

humbly, with coils beneath my skin, a purpose the weight of mountains.

One that does not knock at doors, but tears them from hinges,

scorching the ground and leaving trails of violet ember.

That is the only way.

For the passion unmet turns to the taste of bitterness,

and the sharpness of that fruit splits the tongue open,

and the cold leaves a person striking flint against their own bones ~

desperate to see the spark, to feel the flame,

desperate for the self and the changing of the world

for all who are the wanting,

all who are the needing,

and all who feel the pain.

From the mind of another, I borrow this: my gratitude has fangs.

I'll thank you as I take my seat in the throne of Enid

and I will raise my voice,

and I will call every waiting soul to stand inside the storm of what must change.

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Toward the hour when thought arrives without disguise,

the world withdraws its surfaces and folds its noise into the walls.

In the vacancy it leaves,

a space inclines ~

a narrow frame holding only one body at a time.

And there, as if drawn through a seam,

the ones I have loved step forward.

The ones I cannot reach by name anymore.

They meet me in this slant of quiet

the way light meets dust ~

without effort,

without history needing to be explained.

And it is not chance that these moments are fleeting,

they were made that way.

These moments thin on their own, they were always going to.

But it is the speed at which magic enters

that keeps a friend from fading.

It is the skies they call to

that awakens hearts until the breathing is easy.

And surely it is easy,

and surely we have the time.

And surely it is alive,

or these angles wouldn’t be forever.

Though they are ~

forever and for ~ there is a beat,

and ever for, we can breathe for every moment

they stay forever more.

They remain,

unnamed, yet here.

The pulse of them hums beneath my ribs,

a tremor in the marrow,

a quiet tide moving through the hollow of the night.

And I am held by something wider than a word;

the relief of being carried ~

through the dim hour,

through the thin press of air,

through the bodies we once touched,

through trembling beneath breaths.

And when the light comes into the rooms that hold,

it does not ask for anything.

It simply warms what is still here.

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“I am a flower”

The creature chants again, and again, and again.

“I am a flower”

These syllables like planting a garden,

not for anyone listening, but to grow something for themselves instead.

To make the words take root.

“I am a flower”

They need to know they can come from a land whose soil is rich enough to let them grow.

They need to know they came from soil dark enough to split them open,

that turned seed-casing to stem > to bud > to petals spread wide

like a mouth saying yes to everything burning overhead.

“I am a flower”

Someone reached for them once. Pulled until the roots tore.

Held them up to their own face, counting, plucked and held with dreams to be loved,

“They loved me, they loved me not”

And, oh, they were loved.

This flower shoved through rusted wire and clay,

through choking vines that loved the only way they knew how:

by wrapping tight. By never letting go, a rough life, a loved life.

This flower bloomed just for us.

Fighting through fields of thickets and brush,

just to see that a rough life is a loved life, is enough.

Above all, a flower is just a flower ~

dumb and brief and easy to crush, it’s the creature that makes it more.

It’s the dream that things could be called different,

the decision to call breaking open growth,

that being pulled apart by light

is called blooming.

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Pressing ice on either side of your temple,

you shut out the world and the noise and the love.

Stuck in numb desire, you hold your head down

as to not get lost in your gaze upon more than anything but the ground you walk ~

as if eye contact with anything more than your own footsteps might undo you,

so, you study the scars of the soil and your imprint on the earth instead.

And others haven’t a single concern about you.

Left unmoved by your frozen skull and frigid withdrawal,

they pass through the same cold air with disregard for the spoiled nature of lust

mistaking your shadow for their own,

their eyes caught by the green shimmer of want,

that living weed that grows between every step,

thriving on scarred soil and shared neglect.

And the floors and the corridors that shape the maze of wanting are never lit,

only illuminated from within, only traversed through touch and smell.

And you can let your hand drag along its cool wet surface,

and you can breathe in, trying to find the smell of something sweet.

And you will find nothing, often,

and you will change yourself until you do;

finding that the shape you mold into is the outline of your own footprint

in the dirt that you once crawled through.

And the lesson you learn is nowhere to be found

but in the gaze upon the dark light in-front of you,

until you see your own dim reflection in the dirt

and realize it’s been watching you the whole time.

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listening to the sounds of the earth and the universe