swifts  &  s l o w s · a quarterly of crisscrossings

certain instances show themselves
Stephen Mead

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Joan as Mona

Time (I said)
The redundancy of time is
Rhythm (said I) rhythm is
the redundancy of time
Heart (I didn’t say)
the life of
the mind takes heart
(say didn’t I)
take heart life of the mind
& the spoken
& the unspoken, (anyway)
froze
or appeared to:

lovely love, the sweet secrecy smiling
till voices of self-sufficiency locked
& help became
razors,
a cutting,
who asked for
help
or the refraining from asking
when need was lips of a not nearly sealed envelope
drummed prostituted
(revealing most anything)
but more rhythmic
if asked
(in off hours)
though never asked

Mattering

Through fire, years as dew drops melt.
Only certain instances show themselves,
return for repairs, thinking perseverance
takes burning.

From the passage scars learn gentleness,
alter shock, dull the raw: a bump, a bruise,
the sore spot kept without forget
restoring feelers by rote.

How everything continues immersed,
a fever’s course, its contours, the quickly
melting layers of black ice trapping recognition
in a skid of blind paint brushes, the creation
unfinished, with anything transcendent, elusive:

a cloudscape producing supper, comfort, because,
further on, that’s what counts.

Projections

Breadlines, times of toughening
when the dustbowl soul should be most undermined
from all let-go-of things cupped palms shape.

How Nothing augments hunger, passion, love
longing to establish just enough sustenance.
It is humbled though, weighed down by the fact
that here even Want might fail.

No, I can’t entirely protect you. The night’s
errant armies smuggle missiles and riggings,
an inchoate assemblage real as the diodes flickering
streaks from those screens in Times Square.

If we could warm ourselves by looking in through windows,
those smoky blue storefronts, than the heat would be
perceptible and not a home fire’s last straw.

Oh well, this lit trash barrel and abandoned mattress
is at least something now that it is 10:59
and we have one more hour before
the harder endurance begins.

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Stephen Mead is an Outsider multi-media artist and writer.  Since the 1990s he’s been grateful to many editors for publishing his work in print zines and eventually online.  Recently his work has appeared in CROW NAME, WORDPEACE and DuckuckMongoose. Currently he is resident artist/curator for The Chroma Museum, artistic renderings of LGBTQI historical figures, organizations and allies predominantly before Stonewall, The Chroma Museum – The Chroma Museum (weebly.com)