echos of the afterlife The standard dream is waking in a land of plenty, young, well-hung and happy, healthy, powerful, rich. The dream comes first when bodies stretch toward one-and-twenty, persists through all the years that hungry hands can reach and clutch the apples on the tree, down through the time that fingers crook to talons on an ancient bird whose visions of the looming phoenix often seem a cartoon conflagration, yellow, red, absurd. The heaven in the sky is mostly made of this, a lit continuation of the long-since past that stands for all the flesh can know of what is bliss, as if the spirit needs its meaty home to last, till edgeless shape, that can't exist or cease to be, translates the stubborn word to sound eternity.      tigers in red weather The storm or calm is summoning itself above the ragged mountains, somewhere west. It doesn't have a meaning or a song just appetite and being are enough to gather such a force.  To peel a word from a strip, and paste it on a breathing thing (and wind is breathing of the sky) labels something.  Red is a color, and a thing. A throb.  A surface.  Red is what we are slipping from the womb to a waiting scream, blindly blinking at light, and what we see when blue inside oozes out, sanctified wine, and what the sky holds for us, part of a rose, one petal peeling off to form a day that falls among the petals turning brown while buds bead among the thorns and branches.      then a song Simply to suck the air like a lint-furred lollipop, to carry the invisible burden blindly through the dark wood, is enough.  And then joy like a thin light seeps into and slowly fills the atmosphere till before you know it, the world pokes its sharp edges into your ribs, "Nudge, nudge, wink, wink," it whispers, and you laugh at the pain in your side. Pain is hope, implying pleasure. The burden digs into your shoulder and a whistle comes from within you like a bird startled from underbrush.      windhorses A portion of this wind blew across the ice of a lost, frozen world. Next to it, another gust will hiss above some future arid waste. Harnessed together, they pull and furrow through these years of seeds and husks and soil. I tremble on the dirt, a blade of grass beneath a temporary sun. Our lawn is busy with such mindless busy things -- and none of us would stop.      a sip of water snow on easter     dusting of ashes vanished later     resurrection of April grass     silver with sun the harmony     endless     clashes   Faith is a lens through which to focus light and set aflame the scraps and tattered pages of words attributed to gods.  A slight tendril of smoke ascends through a moment's ages, scribbles a word of letters you'll never write or speak.  It turns to sky through subtle stages.   A question can be an answer. Water can be shaped like a cup, which when you lift it and taste can fill you.  What else is there?     ©2007 J.B. Mulligan