A trillion tons of rock & time;
a mountain of consequence and corruption;
a crushing weight, especially at first.
I got used to it.

Thoughts, like water, well up from the core,
gnawing, chewing, eroding
caverns in the stone;
inner worlds to be explored ...

Slowly ... hours pass over me;
individual grains of sand, gouging tiny channels,
re-shaping me.
Scars spread, a second skin.

Time & Hope: nothing to me. Best let them be.
Soul & Spirit: priceless gems of who I am—
precious liabilities;
safely subducted beneath Mind ... and Mind breaks ...

Free ...

While the mountain has its way with what remains,
while the whole luminous world
spins along ...
oblivious ...

We feel the sky ... receding.
The distance between us ... thickening.
And we forget each other:
things we’ll no longer see.

Vanquished within the unforgiving wait,
we change.
Twenty trips around the star. Until,
day seven thousand three hundred and twenty-three ...

When we stir, inside. Our sentence, suddenly unsettled ...
The trillion tons of rock & time have shifted ...
Air, sucked fresh from the living world;
tainted with the scent of ... possibilities ...

Mind returns.
Soul & Spirit emerge.
And we breathe ...
Deeply.

Time & Hope rip into us.
Rending agony, beyond imagination.
Time has eaten much,
but it’s hope that hurts the worst.

As dreams & desires become
like cancer;
Mind, Soul & Spirit devour each other.
Beneath the State, Hope is cannibalistic.

For in the dark we see:
luculent shadows of the sun and stars ...
And Soul screams and Spirit yells: oh the light!
That’s where we live! Dig! Dig! There it is! Please! Please dig!

But Mind—recoils.
“This cannot be.”
“We have no faith in Hope. Hope betrays us every time.”
But they thrash & writhe & wine & plead!!!

So Mind whips them
until they still.
Submitting them to logic. Suppressing them to wisdom.
Mind reminding them that Mind is free, no matter, our body rots.

“Stay away from Hope. Its dangerous.
Here, you like to paint. Try writing some poetry.”
And they simmer down, express themselves,
and play ...

While Mind watches over them, flawed guardian ...
and digs ...
Creating a passage that might, one day, give them back the sky.
Rock & time resettle, heavier and lighter than before.

Then, on day seven thousand eight hundred and seventy-five ...
The worm-infested mountain
shifts,
again.

The second wave of Hope,
the human world,
so long withheld,
crashes into us.

A streaming tide of music,
submerging us in crystal-clear emotion;
washing away logic, muddying up wisdom.
Mind, Soul & Spirit dissolve ... back into one ...

And I’m whole again!
And I sing!
And, in the echo of my voice ...
A stranger.

Every song turned,
eulogy
upon eulogy
upon eulogy.

Each filled with such desperate longing,
rising like the tide,
swelling like the ocean
that aches to bathe the moon ...

And I feel everything.
Scraping me raw
against the stone.
With every return of my inner gaze ...

I can taste, smell & touch the loved and the lost inside my head
and the songs like acid pour into my chest and I’m suffocating—
I cannot breathe—despair is erasing me and I want to love
again but I’m so spectacularly alone ...

And now that we are me again,
there’s no one but me
to save myself ...

And I’m so very tired ...
With nothing
to hold onto
its easy to let go ...

Until a voice, unique in all the world,
I think,
envelopes me.
I can feel the familiar
persona of a woman ...
Refracted & reflected,
so perfectly crafted.

A siren of salvation calling
from above the waves.
Uplifting with her falling pitch.
Elegant with contradictions.

An ink-stained songbird with a broken wing.
Lyrics
aged & charred in oak and nicotine.
Fret-scarred fingers lacing me with strings.

So mesmerizing, this
classically trained masochist, exhibitionist, submissive,
achieving emotional liberation as
the monogamous main attraction at
a narcissistic orgy
exclusively
open to the public.

Such a poignant distillation
of the girly-brain:
yearning to be completely understood, treasured, and respected,
while longing to be routinely plundered, possessed, and beyond redemption.

But, I have no idea who she really is,
so I like to assume she’s sincere;
singing of what was, wished or
might never be ...

Whoever she might be.
I reach deep into her
expressions,
as deep as I can go.

And let her expose me to the storm,
to wash my Soul & Spirit clean
so I can dream
of dreams again.

And it burns me, hurts me,
exquisitely like:
a jagged seed of molten glass thrust, fingers & tongue
into my heart, my cherished wound, where it grows ...

Feeding on memory, invading, spreading into me ...
Ripping, tearing, bursting through ...
Arrogant blossom of ruin—
I drink from you.

Lapping feeling,
injecting meaning,
so empty-sweet
narcotic thick.

Like every kiss
I never kissed
raked across
my breathless lips.

Oh how I’ve missed this!

Dear God: fuck life without this!
I must hold onto this:
relentless, restless rhythmic hunger;
love & nothing at war in my chest;
sucking vacuum, spraying warmth;
blood swirled with honey—
every time you cut me—
my flex-fuel heart pumps both.
Pumps both.
Pumps. Both.
Pumps ...
Both ...

(inhale deeply)

As the last note falls,
the murmur of rock & time
nestles around me ...
Except ...

Through a path
I’ve dug in the rubble ...

I see the moon.

And I’ve never been
so intimately alone
as I am
when I’m with you.

Gergana Petrova Micheva,
or Geri—as you like it,
from one killer
to another,
I just thought
you’d like to know.

Artwork by the author. Meanwhile, Under Colorado..., 2018. Acrylic on paper. 12 × 18 inches.

poetry-magazineMeanwhile, Under Colorado ...

Meanwhile, Under Colorado ...