Earthbound Stargazer

She crafts her stanzas with
Moon dust, fire, and liquid gold.
She wanders, prying stars from the
Smooth black night, and soars.

Her life is snapshots of verse, words
Locked into image, images folded
Away into memory, like the time she
Turned up the music inside the car and
Felt the tremors caused by the
Authoritative bass boost. She resides
In solitary moments of quick darkness,
Extinguishing and rekindling light.

A goddess, she brings forth a
Heavy emerald, a green jewel.
The pureness of the jungle radiates
With colour. Life buzzes, and
Rainy leaves sway in uneven sheets. In her
Streaked orange skies torn by
Sunlight, the clouds always burn thickly.

Pelts of rich green moss layer her
Solid rock of imagination, her brightness
Accentuated by the flitter of yellow birds, by
Silver water glowing with sunlight,
By the padding of a wolf’s paws across
Soft grass. The musical wind whispers.

He sits, still as a lotus flower
Poised in reverence, his eyes absorbing
The transfiguration of language becoming
Reality. The holiness of her syllables
Blinds him, leaving him transfixed
Until his eyes see nothing but white.

He is a poor man, armed
Only with the inadequate ardency
Of matchstick prose, still sharp
With the acrid odour of phosphor.

She contemplates music, drinking in
The hard drum beat and letting
Guitar riffs snake and reverberate
Inside her head. It’s like a drug,
She thinks. And she’s inside the bubble.

Before she knows it, she’s singing, too.
Then screaming with cathartic intensity,
Oblivious to the complaining neighbours,
To the distortion in her voice, to her
Throat’s harsh, broken chords.

He visits the emerald jungle often,
Tasting the dewy lushness of the plants,
The smile of the Lily, the sweetness
Of good soil and decomposing leaves.
His heart is mangled by fierce desire.
He wants to be the kind of artist who changes
The world with a single brushstroke.

That night, he wanders around the
Streets, looking for inspiration.
The cool moon offers no consolation,
While the stars glow with furtive heat.

He sees beauty out of the corner of his eye:
Rubies in a cruising sports car’s
Tail lights, watching as streetlamp
Reflections glide elegantly across the
Unmarred vehicle’s shell, perfectly curved. A song
Of power hums from deep inside the engine,
Determined and full throated with fuel.

Over there, the traffic lights. How diligent,
How eternal! A triple rotation of colours,
Vulgar and manmade, yet more languid
Than a river, timeless as a repetition of waves.

He describes the scene. He narrates. He tells.
His phrases are nuts and bolts, bits of
Useless scrap metal and assorted rubbish
Thrown together. It is the rawest kind of beauty,
But he does not put it down on paper.

The potential inside him aches for freedom.
The first lines are forming, deep,
Deep in his soul. But his hand never
Reaches for a pen, and his eyes never
Search for his notebook. Instead, he
Thinks of failure, thought of how
His words can never catch up with
What he feels…and stops.

Another burst of self consciousness,
A desperate plea from his pride, and
It was all gone. He stowed them away, those
Precious, first lines, those verses that
Had crossed the boundary
Into a region of unexplored beauty.

If only he had understood that
The world began in fire. If
He had struck those frigid matches
Of his, he could watch his very own words
Burn golden, running hot and spilling
Across the pages like molten silver.

He did not know how she did it.
Neither did she know how he couldn’t do it.
If she had known, his dry imagination
Would have turned into a lake of
Glistening ideas, fiery with life.
Perhaps the world would have been
Different, history rewritten by
A different victor.

All he has left to rely on
Is the friendliness, and the solid
Reliability of time. Perhaps a
Day will come, when glorious
Bravery fills his heart and he
Unsheathes his sword, the
Sharp tipped fountain pen,
To resurrect himself.

Soon? Or late? Or never?