These Songs of Quiet Falcons

In the sticky heat of the evening
all these sounds around me, all
that surface static keeping me
from the chasm of being alone

Between the records that I
fill the night with, after
the television has ceased
to blare and rumble, when
only the tidal noise of
the dishwasher and the
river's run of the traffic
on the highway are there,

When the slow mutter of
my ancient dog as he
looks, half blind into
the indistinct night,
and I am still within
myself, considering
the strangeness of
existing within this
flesh, with its oddities
and unknowns,

I consider these sensations,
wonder if one of them is
a harbinger of sickness,
of the clinging infirmity,
that slowly eats us,
pride first, and makes us
mute, unimportant, forgotten
over time,

And again, I think that these
thoughts are only insecurity,
only incipient moments of
hypochondriasis on my part,
after all, perhaps it runs
in the family, over and above,
I'm moody, and these things
tend to catch one out without
the noise to block them,

But falconry then drifts in,
after the radio story, and
the longing to be so honed,
so beautiful in form, so
well-suited to the purpose
at hand, instead of being this
great, undetermined creature,
more brain than body, more
thought than flesh, but yet
tethered to the mundane at
every turn,

Yes, falcons come to mind,
and their bloody games, the
quiet of them when they are
hooded, the simplicity and
grace of their dream-like
faith in the wind,

But dreams like these move
time but slowly forward, and
it is a hot night, and what
little noise there is will soon fade,
leaving only the half made man,
bound to the keyboard, struggling
with these concepts just slightly
beyond his reach.

Circular Breathing 6:

(And to these travelers, nothing)

And with that, we entered Wonderland,
and all the curses of dreams gained
and found wanting were bestowed upon
our heads, all hopes crushed by their
simple fulfilment, the taste of
something long yearned for and yet
all wrong somehow on our tongues,
for we had changed upon the road--
what we imagined to be Eden catering to
dead and ghosted versions of ourselves;
catering to dreams wished into the
vanity of truth, betrayed by that
which kept us alive, and what
screams against the falsehood of
dreams attained, knowing that
is the road of the dead and
those who wait to die and are
worse than dust.

But the biting sting of the dust
is not the worst, for we have
waited, even when we said we'd
rather die than ache a moment longer
because we knew that attainment of
our dreams was out there, that
all the falsehoods of the road
and the legerdemain we'd perpetrated
while the sirens screamed had
allowed us to live, perhaps kept,
perhaps whored, but never betraying
the truth of our vanity--that we
would win in the end, that a
version of ourselves, or perhaps
only a ghost in that Dark Hereafter
might one day attend that catered
feast, but on that long road, with
all the diesel fumes and grit
upon our tongues, all that time we
were wrong, yearning long for
fulfilment damned, our minds
turned simple, our reason crushed
under the myth of a Wonderland
we could never truly survive to
enter.

Circular Breathing Five

Alive in this rocket powered utopia
the body is remade for sport, for
play, for the sake of something new
to look upon in the mirrors of
our wholesale paradise as it
slowly becomes us, and we are
gradually transmuted into
marketable wares, commodities
to which others may aspire, all
chromed corners and surgical
improvements, all tidy and doll-like,
unencumbered by the tiresome
humanity we wiped clean and
sanitized, as we would a
crumb-covered table in the
stale aftermath of the
afternoon's lunch crowd,
resetting to zero, forgetting
everything, becoming new and
if not innocent, at least fresh,
at least delectable in our
artificial, wholesome beauty.

What beauty this wholesome image
rendered in artificial line and
color, delectable only to those
least discerning, those fresh,
willful innocents who crave
the new meat, everything before
forgotten, zeros in their eyes as
the lunch rush begins in the aftermath
of morning, tables and hearts
sanitized, empty of humanity,
empty handed as discarded dolls
sterile as surgical chrome, all
aspirations delegated to others
the commodity of their wares
transmuted into abstraction
only to gradually slow,
paradise sold wholesale, at
least faded mirrors of it,
new from the look but recycled
suited only for play, the body
of truth unmade, utopia unbound
as life's last rockets struggle
to darken the sky.

Patrick M. Tracy
2/26/09