A Life Presalted

C O L O R S P A C E by Matthew Seaver, ed. M. Sparkle

no one ever says
‘confusion is not a color’
or ‘xclxzsvkp;’ is not a word’

it’s always ‘pink’ or ‘ain’t’ or some shit

(“___ is not a word” is very like “___ is not a color”
in that it is very rarely said unless it is clearly false)

and it’s always pink,
never brown, because brown
isn’t on the fully-saturated spectrum either
but pink is for giiirrrrllls
and therefore to be deprecated

most colors aren’t on the fucking spectrum,
the spectrum is a one-dimensional loop of area zero

‘white/grey/black is not a color’
is slightly less likely to be sexist
but no less likely to be missing
the point. the whites, blacks, and
greys that actually exist are colors

the whites, blacks, and greys
that aren’t colors don’t exist in the real world,

they’re abstractions,

theoretical holes in color space

anyway.

I may not be so pretty as a rose, 
but I am as thorny. My touch pricks.
And should you take a liking to my blossom,
I advise you: Have a steady hand, and
for preference some gloves. I tell you:
I do not want to hurt. The spirit is unwilling,
but the flesh affronts. I reach for you:
I do not want the blood that follows.

I wouldn’t blame you if you decided
that I’m a flower best appreciated
from a distance, and, if I wound you
and you stay, believe me, I try my best
to understand the gift you’ve given me.

I curl up,
wrap my arms,
wind flesh and then cloth
around my illness,

as if it is the secret
that is holding me together 

Yes, it’s true, there are still times I do not sleep,
but in my fevered pacing,
darkened windows no longer pull at the corners of my sight.
I do not look for monsters anymore
through the mirrored edges of night.

an epistle

though i stop my mouth and move with care,
my every action rings out like a shot.
it is nighttime: and, since darkness and slumber reign without,
i turn my attention inwards.
i am preparing to write a letter to my inner child:
to comfort, defend, to destroy him-
him who i killed, long ago, in childbirth-
because he will not lie dead.
his memory peels up like a scab:
in autopsy, i poke about
(with the end of my pen) to find where in him
lie the seeds of my destruction, what pathogens
could have passed the placenta,
could have survived my chrysalis,
the purge of my rebirth.

i bite my cheek, with my tongue i probe
at a sore, my toe i crack like a whip across my back.
all my enemies are fast in bed
and i must turn my venom inwards.
i am writing a letter to my shadow,
to everyone i have ever hurt and fear to hurt,
to that within me that wants to hurt-
to that, too, which insensate hurts regardless.
my sins, of volition and of error both,
haunt me. i dwell on the faces, the forms of those
unlucky to meet me: they loom, tall, stonefaced,
till i place my bladed guilt in their hands,
till i almost believe that it is they who threaten me.

i squirm, i twitch, i dance with a life
strong, rousing, discomfiting like a spur.
outdoors is colorless and unmoving;
frustrated, i turn my passion inwards.
i am writing a letter to my animus.
the man of a thousand faces is my lover,
and, if i am a dragon, then is he the knight who,
armor shining, comes to slay me.
my gut stirs within my chest as if
it conceals some life of its own. whatever lives there,
i have known it all my life.
it is this stirring i have loved like a fairy tale,
this unsteady potential that has betrayed me
cheaply, painfully, like a pop song.
it is this love affair, this model man,
this wolf in sheep’s projection, that i am remembering
every time some awful ballad sticks its hook in my heart
and twists. i am still reeling from the shock
of my lover’s incorporeality.

it is still dark outside, my work still incomplete;
weary obligation turns my steps back inwards.
i am preparing to write a letter.

I read not minds, but faces

like an atlas, displaying

the shifting lines of political alliance,

divided loyalties, revolutions, coups-

like a globe

, the continental shift of Self towards Other

and back again- the surge upwards

of new places, virgin to my searching eye,

driven by unseen heat and pressure-

I read a face like a roadmap,

, like trails in a park, crisscrossed

by the inscrutable footprints of deer,

I explore the wilderness

and catalog its wonders-

and in the mirror

, I see a barren and hidden place

battened down, and searching ever

for signs of life elsewhere, elsewhere 

Plaster ceilings

I have spent my happiest hours
crossing attics at a sprint,
beam by beam, on my toes
and on high alert, ever aware
of the danger of falling:
and I have fallen,

it is a wonder I am not dead.

condensation

each touch,
each word,
each footstep leaves a little ring on my heart
like a cold drink on a coffee table in the warm damp air

I take care to wipe it up,
embarrassed, as if I’d spilled
and not simply lived

I ain’t livin’ right

I am like a hunk of carbon
made sharp and clear as ice
by pressure and heat
painful, like birth is painful
for parent and child both

I am no theist- even so,
like the Ancients I prepare
on my altar, sacrifice
to Chaos, and to Order entreaty-

heat, and pressure,
to force my slippery sheets of mind
to something crystalline and hard,
beautiful and rough

long nights, and stimulants,
and self-imposed exile
to the purgatory of
my own examination

I wallow in the ashes of childhood
and emerge in flames
something like an adult
again, and again, eternal,
ever-dying and immortal:

the abyss my guide, my path,
my constant companion,
anger the wings that keep me
above, where light can touch,
the desperate fury of a life
that fears how gentle is death

love that can find joy in anger-
heat and pressure both-
and, with kindly alchemy,
reminds eternal dusk to be
sometimes, or always,
the promise of a dawn to come

I caught the tail end of my sentencing
from your end of the phone,
before you put it back in its holster
and you gave me the eyes of stone.

Now it’s life inside this prison,
these basalt bones and skin:
To my ears no voice may enter,
to my eyes no light come in.

a hedge

as the month turns june

the leaves grow their cuticle

and shed their soft youth

clover honey

i can taste the clover in the honey
but i do not taste honey in clover
i can chase that gold to its green-white source
but only the bees know the way back

i trust the bees with their secrets
with the knowing of the honey in the clover
i trust the bees to draw it out amber
i haven’t any other choice 

Sleep

moves

furtive

in the corners of my eyes:

dark like smoke

quick like fire

WHAT COLOR THE NIGHT

What color is the night
where you live?

Where I live
night burns in orange
and blue,
the palette of Hollywood movies
or of the harsh play of light
on the walls of dry canyons.

Light burns softly, like fire,
through the glass bulbs that grow
from iron stems.
Fall leaves burst, butterfly scales
where the wings were pinned
to velvet, pixie dust frozen
in the act of scattering
from some unseen hand;
red brick glows solidly, assured
in its warmth kindred to the light,
blocks of harmony against which
the green of the grass
and of the odd tree
jar, notes out of key.

You could be forgiven,
walked you through the night
in haste, ill-seeing,
if you mistook the blue for black,
but black it ain’t.
Though the town’s light
drown the stars that glow
in the highest deeps,
the ultramarine shines through,
honest, blue-blooded,
the blue of some Parisian shadow,
the blue of Midsummer’s sleep.
This is the blue that teaches
death, from which life is deviant,
silence, to which sound is foreign,
darkness, in which light is newborn.

Where I grew
(but I am half-grown),
night is a study in silver and black,
moonlight and the dark beneath trees.

This light and dark speak clarity
without form, vital science
in fantasy, certainty
in the impossible.
Where they meet, a grey half-world
in which one finds
outlines of the old,
sketches of the familiar,
ideas of the real
that have not yet matured
into solidity, not yet
come to their fruition.

What the moon touches changes place
with its opposite; what shadow steals
it repays with chimera,
a child of the faerie world,
beautiful and terrible.
What grey enfolds is less than real,
flesh that longs to be soul,
matter that longs to be ether.

What color is the dawn
where you live?

At dawn, the fae leave
their mushroom dances,
the lunatic dreams
abandon their post,
the surreal cedes its place
to the merely real
when the sun
takes back its light
from the sticky-fingered moon.

At dawn, all the world
is a grey too green,
leaf and blade awakened
reluctant from their slumber
to sing sweetness to the breath
of taut-bowed rays.
The sun turns its pegs,
gentle, firm, practiced,
tuning disorderly night
into purposeful day.
The drossy haze
refines slow to gold,
an image of the world
through a brass mirror
polished to highest gloss.

How do I sleep
when night beckons,
florid-cheeked and coy,
to the shy delights
of its most secret boudoir?
How do I waken
to a day so cold,
to a sun that watches
all, and has no time for me?