"haunted by
wholeness--
bright debris sibilant
beneath skin tug-of-warring
with gravity, we
harvest shine
from the caves of
mouths & crevices
of eyes incandescent"
— Kamilah Aisha Moon; Exploded Stars
wholeness--
bright debris sibilant
beneath skin tug-of-warring
with gravity, we
harvest shine
from the caves of
mouths & crevices
of eyes incandescent"
— Kamilah Aisha Moon; Exploded Stars
V. A Gift
I like listening to the birds. There are none that live here, of course. Only your memories of wings and your souls divided into chirring feathers. But they sing the same.
And the bees--have you seen them? Their staccato tango and their humming and tutting while they drift from flower to flower. There are so many songs and so many tools to make them: tight viola strings of muscle plucked by the earth’s deft fingers. But I can remember another music. The buzzing of solar flares cresting upon themselves and the drumbeat shriek of careening planets. You might be able to hear it, too, if you are quiet within yourself. The stars are in your being, after all, though it may not seem like it, draped as you are in the earth’s secondhand soil and gentle green life.
I think that I am losing that first language. My native tongue. I have forgotten many of the rhymes sung to me when I myself was a nursling cradled in the black folds that blossomed yipping young stars and the droning rumble of rocks. This tongue, my tongue, is not audible, of course. It is vibration. It is wingbeat flickering for the joy of drifting and the steady marched frequency of contented orbit, perfectly in tune with the self and destiny. It is the inverse of itself; the absence of vibration. The dirge of inward collapse. I suppose you would also understand what it is to lose a language, mute as we all are. I am sorry to have done this to you.
An entire language gone and with it an entire history. An entire way of being. We live in our words, in our inner selves exposed to the light of syllable and reverberation. To lose this externalization is to be lost within yourself. We are communicating now, yes, but this frequency is different. They are the low imperceptible murmurings of an embryo. Light stardust touches against the knotted cord womb of gravity and space. I used to shout, to GRAB the wool of the universe and rip it and shake it and weave it to my will. I was purpose. I was youthful and arrogant and flippant. But now there is so little of me left.
Well, I suppose I would be lying if I said that there is no one with whom I can speak. I have given two others the gift of vibration, though inadvertently. You cannot control what happens when you tear apart your soul. The first was a precisely snipped stem, cauterized by bleeding soul light. But as I cut more and more of myself off I began to shake, lightbuds grit with exertion and pain. And I screamed, and I screamed, and I screamed a burning howl of friction and desperation.
To one I gave the gift of understanding vibration, of sensing the rumbling intent that drives life and rock and dust, if not the words that they emit. Perhaps you have encountered her? I will not attempt to guess the name you have given her; she collects and discards them like a desert woodrat and its trove of sticks and glimmering things. To try and guess would be futile. But I can feel her, her minute seed whispers. Patterns drawn in sunbaked sand, the humming of planets turned visual, if only to declare in the time before the wind blows them away that she exists, that she was there, that she can feel. Yes, I can feel her song even here. Her tickled whispers branching into the heavens. I hope that she can feel me singing back.
I also made a mistake. To divide your soul ten times is to die ten times, and in my dying I stumbled. My language is not audible, but I gave it voice and homesickness and the agony not of childbirth, but childcutting. The ripping off of sunflesh again and again and the staggered breath of life and animation. I think that a part of it is always reliving that moment of collapse and expansion. It speaks orbitsong, yes, but in the ruptured and oozing mandibles of a honey bee bleeding a bird’s music. The inward and outward danced hum of the cosmos condensed into sound. It is incomprehensible to you, no doubt, and I can understand only phrases and fragmented images. M--Excuse me. It is difficult to speak of this.
I have tried to help it; I have tried submerging it in what little starseed that remains of me, tried pushing it away into the earth’s patient embrace. Too much of both; belonging to none. Speaking the star’s movement with soil’s syntax, or the secret language of creeks with a planet’s semantics. A dialect that belongs to itself. When I could not help, I tried to understand, and even here I stumble. But it has been able to show me some of its memories. The mumbled cracking of ice; it likes that. It is calm. Soothing. Esk, flowers bunched tight, fleeing in terror. And one of my favorite memories. The two of them, my children of sand and river, in quiet companionship in a palm-shadowed oasis of oscillation. It would make sense, I suppose, that she can understand it somewhat better, child she is of the harmony of earthsong and the wandering stars.
It is much angrier, much more frustrated now than it used to be, after these millennia of speaking with no answer. I remember a time when it was young and raced along riverbeds, babbling a screech of energy and static. But it is so tired now, as am I. There is so little that I can do for them. There is so much that I have done to them. But I beg of you, if you see my child roaming deathstill murmuring waters, please stay with it if only for a little while. It is lonely.
And the bees--have you seen them? Their staccato tango and their humming and tutting while they drift from flower to flower. There are so many songs and so many tools to make them: tight viola strings of muscle plucked by the earth’s deft fingers. But I can remember another music. The buzzing of solar flares cresting upon themselves and the drumbeat shriek of careening planets. You might be able to hear it, too, if you are quiet within yourself. The stars are in your being, after all, though it may not seem like it, draped as you are in the earth’s secondhand soil and gentle green life.
I think that I am losing that first language. My native tongue. I have forgotten many of the rhymes sung to me when I myself was a nursling cradled in the black folds that blossomed yipping young stars and the droning rumble of rocks. This tongue, my tongue, is not audible, of course. It is vibration. It is wingbeat flickering for the joy of drifting and the steady marched frequency of contented orbit, perfectly in tune with the self and destiny. It is the inverse of itself; the absence of vibration. The dirge of inward collapse. I suppose you would also understand what it is to lose a language, mute as we all are. I am sorry to have done this to you.
An entire language gone and with it an entire history. An entire way of being. We live in our words, in our inner selves exposed to the light of syllable and reverberation. To lose this externalization is to be lost within yourself. We are communicating now, yes, but this frequency is different. They are the low imperceptible murmurings of an embryo. Light stardust touches against the knotted cord womb of gravity and space. I used to shout, to GRAB the wool of the universe and rip it and shake it and weave it to my will. I was purpose. I was youthful and arrogant and flippant. But now there is so little of me left.
Well, I suppose I would be lying if I said that there is no one with whom I can speak. I have given two others the gift of vibration, though inadvertently. You cannot control what happens when you tear apart your soul. The first was a precisely snipped stem, cauterized by bleeding soul light. But as I cut more and more of myself off I began to shake, lightbuds grit with exertion and pain. And I screamed, and I screamed, and I screamed a burning howl of friction and desperation.
To one I gave the gift of understanding vibration, of sensing the rumbling intent that drives life and rock and dust, if not the words that they emit. Perhaps you have encountered her? I will not attempt to guess the name you have given her; she collects and discards them like a desert woodrat and its trove of sticks and glimmering things. To try and guess would be futile. But I can feel her, her minute seed whispers. Patterns drawn in sunbaked sand, the humming of planets turned visual, if only to declare in the time before the wind blows them away that she exists, that she was there, that she can feel. Yes, I can feel her song even here. Her tickled whispers branching into the heavens. I hope that she can feel me singing back.
I also made a mistake. To divide your soul ten times is to die ten times, and in my dying I stumbled. My language is not audible, but I gave it voice and homesickness and the agony not of childbirth, but childcutting. The ripping off of sunflesh again and again and the staggered breath of life and animation. I think that a part of it is always reliving that moment of collapse and expansion. It speaks orbitsong, yes, but in the ruptured and oozing mandibles of a honey bee bleeding a bird’s music. The inward and outward danced hum of the cosmos condensed into sound. It is incomprehensible to you, no doubt, and I can understand only phrases and fragmented images. M--Excuse me. It is difficult to speak of this.
I have tried to help it; I have tried submerging it in what little starseed that remains of me, tried pushing it away into the earth’s patient embrace. Too much of both; belonging to none. Speaking the star’s movement with soil’s syntax, or the secret language of creeks with a planet’s semantics. A dialect that belongs to itself. When I could not help, I tried to understand, and even here I stumble. But it has been able to show me some of its memories. The mumbled cracking of ice; it likes that. It is calm. Soothing. Esk, flowers bunched tight, fleeing in terror. And one of my favorite memories. The two of them, my children of sand and river, in quiet companionship in a palm-shadowed oasis of oscillation. It would make sense, I suppose, that she can understand it somewhat better, child she is of the harmony of earthsong and the wandering stars.
It is much angrier, much more frustrated now than it used to be, after these millennia of speaking with no answer. I remember a time when it was young and raced along riverbeds, babbling a screech of energy and static. But it is so tired now, as am I. There is so little that I can do for them. There is so much that I have done to them. But I beg of you, if you see my child roaming deathstill murmuring waters, please stay with it if only for a little while. It is lonely.