Oak Creek Canyon Echo
(Written at 3:00 am on a motorcycle between Sedona and Flagstaff)
I want to write dirty and convoluted,
connected and wet
And in the mess of my words
Feel the stain run down
Over the nice clean ordered objective, detached
From the structure you claim to know about
I want to write congested
And ingested,
Not divested of that
Which causes me to feel and to think
The outpouring of what will not stop
And does not want to change, as you
Try to sever my relationship with
All the things that allow me to dwell inside
What I write about
Not often objective
But captive and subjected to
And part of the unholy unwashed
I want to sleep with the dogs of night
And if fleas are the only price I pay
I welcome them home
A gracious host that they may feed off
As the wounds stay open
Bleeding with all that is still unknown
Those things that I mention
Giving birth to what was not there before
And if death is the one that truly calls
I hear her voice
But she must wait
Until I make the translation of her words sacred
And of my own resolve
And if she takes me sudden
She risks my anger
As I will drag all new beginnings
Into what she seeks to end
Pushing her further from that monocled eye
And with one foot frozen
In the world behind
Refusing to leave
I curse the new regions with my words
Knowing that death, like life
Is to be passed beyond
Not staged or romanced
But catalogued once felt as
Forgotten turnstile
As her soulless call becomes
Mere lighthouse
For those places
—I refuse to go
(Oak Creek Canyon: November, 2011)
Copyright © Kurt Philip Behm | Year Posted 2016
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