Apparition

Stare at the smoke curling
Around invisible, oddly shaped objects
Suspended in space like children’s’ toys
Tossed up into the air
And frozen as if in a photograph
As it rises from a resting hand close by

Stare at the dwindling supply of liquid
As it slow-dances with neglected cubes of ice
Lethargically jostling for position
To take the first place in the last sip from this glass
Both forgetting, that if left long enough,
They will eventually become one

Stare at the speakers dangling dangerously
From carelessly hung brackets
Attached to careless walls reflecting
The emitted sounds of last month’s
Song of the moment
Ah, it’s all just noise

Stare at the speakers of: what happened at work today?
What is she wearing?
Would you like another drink?
Do you know who she is?
Who does he think he is?
What was I thinking?
It’s worse than the music

Stare long enough and even those tears that rarely flow
And must be reserved in abundance, dry up
Lids scratch gently at unfocussed eyeballs
Tracing their way across
This may as well be empty room

Stare at that still beating heart
Residing somewhere outside of the chest
Seeing all the way things were meant to be
And not understanding
The patterns and shapes the fleeing blood makes
As it spills on the floor

Stare at the door and the windows
Through which escape seems possible
Beyond which, flight seems credible
Light shines indelible
And amiable futures are ambling by
Awaiting a chance encounter
With a willing, talkative stranger

Stare at the faces of these few known friends
Whose features are now etched with subtle lines
That are surely, if slowly, growing deeper
Marks and signs that are inescapably connected
To shared experience
Burdens borne across several shoulders
Across joined inhabitation of time

Stare at the flowers and the rodents
The careful graffiti and the homeless in dirty blankets
The vodka in plastic bottles and the fantastic moon
Peeping through sandstone, bounced off steel bridges
Expensive boats and the ever-compelling ocean

Stare and stare and stare and see
In place of despair, endless possibilities
And laugh and feel and heal in pieces
Love in stitches, live like characters in
Bizarre, tragic, touching moving pictures

Stare again at smoke and hand and face and glass
And heart and future and music and past
Seeing all the ways that things may be
Eyes learning focus, to witness, not stare
As apparitions arise from air
Becoming angels solidly

July 2008 Derek Wilson

~ by Derek Wilson on April 5, 2009.