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Amelia  Apr 2024
visitor
Amelia Apr 2024
i am a visitor.

a visitor here. a visitor to your story, a visitor to mine, a visitor to this world. a visitor of my past, a traveller to my dreamt future.

so,
i am a martian. a martian to everything. a martian to all.

hence,
i am perpetually foreign. i am consistently uncomfortably foreign.

when would i be home? i'd often wonder.

when would i stop being a collector? collecting new experiences. collecting novel items. collecting temporary resources. collecting coins. collecting grains.

when can i place a welcome mat on the floor?
Every day you play with the light of the universe.
Subtle visitor, you arrive in the flower and the water,
You are more than this white head that I hold tightly
as a bunch of flowers, every day, between my hands.

You are like nobody since I love you.
Let me spread you out among yellow garlands.
Who writes your name in letters of smoke among the stars of the south?
Oh let me remember you as you were before you existed.

Suddenly the wind howls and bangs at my shut window.
The sky is a net crammed with shadowy fish.
Here all the winds let go sooner or later, all of them.
The rain takes off her clothes.

The birds go by, fleeing.
The wind.  The wind.
I alone can contend against the power of men.
The storm whirls dark leaves
and turns loose all the boats that were moored last night to the sky.

You are here.  Oh, you do not run away.
You will answer me to the last cry.
Curl round me as though you were frightened.
Even so, a strange shadow once ran through your eyes.

Now, now too, little one, you bring me honeysuckle,
and even your ******* smell of it.
While the sad wind goes slaughtering butterflies
I love you, and my happiness bites the plum of your mouth.

How you must have suffered getting accustomed to me,
my savage, solitary soul, my name that sends them all running.
So many times we have seen the morning star burn, kissing our eyes,
and over our heads the grey light unwinds in turning fans.

My words rained over you, stroking you.
A long time I have loved the sunned mother-of-pearl of your body.
Until I even believe that you own the universe.
I will bring you happy flowers from the mountains, bluebells, dark hazels, and rustic baskets of kisses.
I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.
Aliens
    They have no notion of past or present,
    everything is about oceans.
    When they ask for you
    it is really a story about seeing the ocean.
    VISITOR #1:
    Listen. It is failure of bridges that builds angels.
    GROCERY BAGGER/ COLLEGE STUDENT:
    Is this the depression
    we've all been experiencing?
    VISITOR #4:
    Please have a seat and forget the edge of that coast,
    you were not intended for this distance.
    GROCERY BAGGER/ COLLEGE STUDENT:
    I believe we're all owed an explanation.
    Where is this manifest?
    I've never ridden a horse, I am being dreamed about.
    VISITOR #1:
    You would not believe
    the stories redwoods have.
    You each get one phone call.
    GROCERY BAGGER/ COLLEGE STUDENT:
    But the voicemail I've been trying to reach,
    all morning,
    is full.
    "I dream of psychiatrists telling stories
    about dreaming of women
    they've seen in unedited videos on the internet.
    Sometimes they save her from that burning nightclub."
    VISITOR #2:
    If you're going, leave your voice
    somewhere in a room I know.
    COLLEGE STUDENT:
    We would have no need for phones if you didn't invent distance.
    VISITOR #2:
    There are trees that become stained with a purple blossom.
    During summer the blossoms fall and shadow around the trunk
    like a violet negative.
    What a beautiful dimension that must be.
    They pull her skirt down to examine the body,
    palms pour from a sidewalk in L.A.,
    everything is cracked-
    "My god she's beautiful, huh?"
    I think I met them before,
    a long time ago.
    THE MEMORY OF A VISITOR APPEARING IN A DREAM:
    What happens next? Come the exit of electricity from the body;
    on a long enough time-line all weather radicalizes and the people
    will grow into trees.
    You can read about that hollowness and never be prepared for it.
    It’s like standing on the edge of an overpass,
    and being completely empty of the urge to jump.
    This is what I remember:
    instructed to reenact creation
    she throws clothes
    from an open window above the 60 freeway.
      "You have to imagine there are people,
    surrounding you and talking"
This is not mine! The original is from Jamie Garcia. He does not post anymore. Otherwise I would link him. Brilliant and indispensable it needs to be recognized.