Kristin Reynolds
As a child,
I used to draw hearts on everything--
everywhere,
I would leave my heart!
Now,
I write them into my mouth
so I can taste them;
until I have become them.
Who I am
Who I am is unimportant--
as useless as whom you perceive me to be.
All that matters is what you feel when you read me.
Carry what comes through me with you--
in your heart like a kiss on fire!
or a tourmaline breath of wind,
loose up the base of your spine.
And when you go, please
leave the me of me to the wolves:
that dream is better left alone.
Who I am is unimportant--
as useless as whom you perceive me to be.
All that matters is what you feel when you read me.
Carry what comes through me with you--
in your heart like a kiss on fire!
or a tourmaline breath of wind,
loose up the base of your spine.
And when you go, please
leave the me of me to the wolves:
that dream is better left alone.
Of Lonely Rest
I.
It is a lonely rest that which gives light until tomorrow--
wrought with fragrant glooming sorrow,
the touch that was today;
soft in blooms of gray, come shadows
crawling low to fury, long towards their hurry, trying to keep
the tides at bay.
II.
I came to you unhurried like a wasp in nest of flower,
raising thoughts from hooks on cloudy bower:
so sorry is the how,
the trust in love and longing—while tired ghosts unfettered hang
from ardent, doe-eyed beds,
low down above our heads, fitting wreathes to each man’s skull;
so forward goes the hull:
stunned, lost, null.
III.
Desperate comes the night, when we are cast beyond the shores
of what once was or could have been; what is and is
yet to be seen,
and, as the turning earth obeys the only god she’s known,
the whole of life begs still,
calming
the wind
un-blown.
IV.
So this is where we fall.
V.
All around us burgeoned still—what have we done,
what will we do with these, our fevered seeds?
Babies cold against the chill, outside
a night we could not know
would certain
ever come.
How could I not tuck my hands deeper into earth?
See what bubbles up of worth.
VI.
Reluctant bough in rain,
no more warm sun to guide us
when the snow begins to fall.
It is only through the tattered weave of other’s twisted shrouds
we find what is today--
kiss gently, come what may,
while all around our feet,
blow petals strong and sweet.
Willingly removed
from tree.
Mid-night’s eyes come rising,
a beauty un-compared;
shining beyond repair, praying day will turn her breast
away, away, away
giving way to forgone chance
of rest beyond one’s cast.
VII.
This is the end.
There is no more beyond this,
no more behind, as well.
But a tranquil wasp adored, sheltered from incumbent fury,
petals safe around its ears;
hearts beyond its tears.
As all around its shelter blows
unrest which no one knows:
but the petals beneath twined feet,
opposed
only to death.
Crossing lines
Indelibly changing hues of black confetti speckle
the earth scented sidewalk, somewhere in a place I am not.
Somewhere a woman is crossing one line or another;
somewhere else a man swats at flies.
There was a small notion I had once—before or after another—
in which I remembered:
once, I was everyone; everything
knew who I was. I walked the whole world on new feet, made love to each man
and woman inside their delicate cup
of disaster and masterful beauty; inside the safety of nothing and everything—
past the dark enormity of passion, into the white unnoticed by most:
the perfect grace:
the perfect inception of truth.
And I knew I could be no-one else.
I knew right then, the heart gives from the space memories are made,
expecting no memories made—
all the heart knows is, that when it reaches out, again: it will find that self-same space.
In a house all a crumble on a mountain, on a satiated with anarchy night:
it rains. Here,
there are deer trails in lieu of cracked sidewalks, following a woman in the thick
of a dream,
as she follows the dull cries of raindrops,
and the unfolding of infinite space.
5 24 2011.
That’s right: I’m speaking to you
What is it you’re afraid of?
Dive in!
What could be more worthy a sea,
in which to swim, float, sink, wash or drown in,
than the uncertain sea of love?
How many men have died dry,
brittle, broken:
having tried to possess its current,
or were too afraid
to try even
one drink?
Who amongst you can shout to the world:
“I have loved!”
Who amongst you dove in naked and cold
at the will of the cumulative sea?
You there, with the big foolish grin,
fingertips brushing the ceiling:
you are the reason
this poem is here.
You are the reason
other men
swim.
© Kristin Reynolds 5 28 2011
What is it you’re afraid of?
Dive in!
What could be more worthy a sea,
in which to swim, float, sink, wash or drown in,
than the uncertain sea of love?
How many men have died dry,
brittle, broken:
having tried to possess its current,
or were too afraid
to try even
one drink?
Who amongst you can shout to the world:
“I have loved!”
Who amongst you dove in naked and cold
at the will of the cumulative sea?
You there, with the big foolish grin,
fingertips brushing the ceiling:
you are the reason
this poem is here.
You are the reason
other men
swim.
© Kristin Reynolds 5 28 2011
Visionary
These hills.
The air looks as if it’s being
filtered; a brilliant cacophony of fire
broken down to it’s highest expense.
There is a word without a name
for the fineness
of Polonius air,
when sunlight at the end of the day
places gauze over all the world’s eyes;
its essence eludes me now,
leaving only the taste of closed eyes
and peaceful beginnings.
Being a poet, this is unacceptable--
there must always be a combustible means
by which to infer grace from one to the next
and the next! With out this, who am i
but a dog barking
at my own dead bones.
It is a quiet culmination of beauty
as seen by beauty itself:
the reason for this penultimate journey--
this is,
outside of my window!
Yet somewhere, buried deep
under heaps of this gauze-like,
melodious quality,
innocent men rub their fingers together
trying to find the right word
for the holy of what they’ve just touched:
all the while, unable to move
their feet from a space both too big and too small.
Buried is buried; the end:
forget it, it’s already gone.
Once, my Grandmother was young--
a beauty tossing time in the fire like everyone else!
Raising the dead with flirtatious laughter,
flipping hands and hair at the fates,
no desire greater than
her own;
once touching a man’s skin with desire:
and he, all at once, came a priest,
never more insanely divine;
never more driven with spirit.
She died not knowing who I was--
whom I could have been;
how I would go on to both great
and unimaginable things:
or how, from the base of my own tender quality
how I owe this all
to her.
I told her this, more than a few times
in the years before she passed:
but back then, I was not so fine.
When she died, I had yet to be born.
Who’s to say there are no clocks in hell?
Or drug-store pocket-nametag saints
still searching like thieves in a fire
for that which can never be burned,
and yet, never be without fire?--
past this fire and into my face,
my backdrop: the essential quality of last sun
through the day’s slippery, dark lover’s door;
the hills like mossy backed turtles
driving slowly, towards their own ends.
I understand that none of this matters--
just as well as I understand
all of this
matters.
It is that which is boiled down
from what has ultimately been seen,
which becomes that
which has been understood.
What matters is what remains at the end
of a visionary’s day:
the substance he puts in his pocket;
the feeling he never lets go.
I wonder why birds will not sing
when wind filters the leaves from the dusk?
They must see they are slaves to the sound--
and turn into it,
instead of away.
© Kristin Reynolds 5 29 2011
These hills.
The air looks as if it’s being
filtered; a brilliant cacophony of fire
broken down to it’s highest expense.
There is a word without a name
for the fineness
of Polonius air,
when sunlight at the end of the day
places gauze over all the world’s eyes;
its essence eludes me now,
leaving only the taste of closed eyes
and peaceful beginnings.
Being a poet, this is unacceptable--
there must always be a combustible means
by which to infer grace from one to the next
and the next! With out this, who am i
but a dog barking
at my own dead bones.
It is a quiet culmination of beauty
as seen by beauty itself:
the reason for this penultimate journey--
this is,
outside of my window!
Yet somewhere, buried deep
under heaps of this gauze-like,
melodious quality,
innocent men rub their fingers together
trying to find the right word
for the holy of what they’ve just touched:
all the while, unable to move
their feet from a space both too big and too small.
Buried is buried; the end:
forget it, it’s already gone.
Once, my Grandmother was young--
a beauty tossing time in the fire like everyone else!
Raising the dead with flirtatious laughter,
flipping hands and hair at the fates,
no desire greater than
her own;
once touching a man’s skin with desire:
and he, all at once, came a priest,
never more insanely divine;
never more driven with spirit.
She died not knowing who I was--
whom I could have been;
how I would go on to both great
and unimaginable things:
or how, from the base of my own tender quality
how I owe this all
to her.
I told her this, more than a few times
in the years before she passed:
but back then, I was not so fine.
When she died, I had yet to be born.
Who’s to say there are no clocks in hell?
Or drug-store pocket-nametag saints
still searching like thieves in a fire
for that which can never be burned,
and yet, never be without fire?--
past this fire and into my face,
my backdrop: the essential quality of last sun
through the day’s slippery, dark lover’s door;
the hills like mossy backed turtles
driving slowly, towards their own ends.
I understand that none of this matters--
just as well as I understand
all of this
matters.
It is that which is boiled down
from what has ultimately been seen,
which becomes that
which has been understood.
What matters is what remains at the end
of a visionary’s day:
the substance he puts in his pocket;
the feeling he never lets go.
I wonder why birds will not sing
when wind filters the leaves from the dusk?
They must see they are slaves to the sound--
and turn into it,
instead of away.
© Kristin Reynolds 5 29 2011
Bridge
You know that moment that comes
yet never comes--
held in-between two sets of
parting lips
like a bridge of pure electricity,
and no breath:
this is where I wait for you:
parted, heart open, and waiting
for you to breathe life into me,
and I, into you, the same;
like a spring spade, coming in
taming Moses’ sea;
rooting into my throat until
you are
my every vein;
pinning my feet to the floor
lifting my face towards yours
like a reticent daisy
just prior to realized bloom:
until all moments
are found
between us,
and spring rises suddenly like intake breath
from earth
which was not
until now.
© Kristin Reynolds 6 3 2011
You know that moment that comes
yet never comes--
held in-between two sets of
parting lips
like a bridge of pure electricity,
and no breath:
this is where I wait for you:
parted, heart open, and waiting
for you to breathe life into me,
and I, into you, the same;
like a spring spade, coming in
taming Moses’ sea;
rooting into my throat until
you are
my every vein;
pinning my feet to the floor
lifting my face towards yours
like a reticent daisy
just prior to realized bloom:
until all moments
are found
between us,
and spring rises suddenly like intake breath
from earth
which was not
until now.
© Kristin Reynolds 6 3 2011
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