Men and Women who Hear Better than You and Me

There are men and women who hear better than you and me
The notes of their certainties clear as mid-morning light
Who have no need to concede what we can’t in our erosions
Who partake without asking and are joyous in the partaking
There are men and women who happy as they are
Have eyes that see better than you and I ever will
The heart and its colours, they know, were splayed for them
They love without questioning and are completed by their love
There are men and women for whom the world was written
And in the sure embrace of their assurance it continues
We, you and I, mark time in undecided fear
Looking at them who know why they are here

The epicentre today is a little, just a little, to the left of the middle, lengthwise and breadthwise, of the afflicted chest. Ordinarily, it is a faint throb or a muffled ache which is reminding of the static of radios as radios once were, with dials and needles searching for their soul along a purgatory of discord and then the notes breaking through hesitantly and, then euphony. The ache would be endurable, ignorable even, if it did not weigh so much at times. As if all the despair and hope of being was gathered together into a bullet and then shot through into flesh, ribs and heart and lies embedded there in a wait counted in eternities and infinities. Until, once every couple of ages and eons, a faint tap of footsteps is heard, treading forward in inches somewhere near, approaching. Then the static raises its tempo beginning anew a crackle, both terrifying and mesmerising, seeking either freedom or effacement. It would have been such redemption if a note or melody or even a call could be heard in that noise, and some do for a fortunate while, but today, in that epicentre, the ache is so clear that every curve and contour and depth can be felt, seen and sensed—so clearly defined because it is so clearly futile.

Eyes crinkle and blaze up with glee, lips purse and pout with mirth, cheeks suffuse with red joy, eyebrows arch up in mock tease, giggles erupt like tambourine jingles, the room becomes feminine in an instant and I hold onto something solid to not be sucked into that deliciousness suddenly zigzagging from the pores of the air. And yet, nothing of any consequence happened to set this moment off into tangents dashing into each other. But there it is, an ethereality shining like a sun about to flare planets away. An almost fatal alchemy. If I was not on my guard this would be annihilation.

Dark into the night where green trees roll over elephant walks
The moon sails the waters which ripple orange to its rabbit calls
One leaf falls to the wind drifting unhurried into the nightly cold
The woods stretch the shadows deeper to the frightened shore
I hold an eyelash and float to the wide sea of the saddest time
Into the aching deep around the froth of unremembered tides
Dark into the night, unbereft by the despair of all that went
Morning arrives, willed out in strands of scattered gold