Uprooted
What kind of world do we live in. Is its translucent pulse obvious to everyone but me. I see powdery green grass, articulated detail copper leaves in designed disarray, seen through a Jeep window in a North Austin parking lot. I cannot raise my eyes, it is all too much, too painful to see, to truly see surface, not even attempting essence. Reading an elm tree as a philosophical construct: that is what it means to be planted in this world. For there must be a subtext to the grass (vitality, nature in man's ruins), it cannot be content merely to be grass-- delicate spikes grunged together in mossy patterns around the trunk, sparse bearding toward the curb. Not enough. How can I learn the world if I can't even handle grass.Wind and Sun
(from 1994-5) No stars tonight above the strip. We float under a canopy of neon, drifting from casino to casino. Elegant croupiers, sophisticated ladies, trade in dollars for nickels, dollars for quarters dollars for dollars until no dollars remain. The wind finds us, reminds us of the desert beyond And so we journey on until the boulevard has played itself out. No sign of the Mirage, the Dunes, the Sands, sands along the highway twirl their way into the sky. We fly into the sun. We fly into the sun.
Vital
Clenched between your teeth the words never spoken in rage. Resisted daily as though a moral abomination, sensual release. It could be yours, all of it, this brilliant sphere, if it could be spouted out in daily spooned increments. Absorbed through your skin like the contents of a dermal patch, free of contamination. But it comes at you in relentless pursuit, a snug second skin that never peels away from your steely carapace. Motes dance in the sunlight, an incandescent shaft never clean of reality. Reckless wind disorders branches, slipping through your door, unasked.
This poetry is the property of Kelly Sinclair and may not be used without her consent