Something Beautiful (Fragment)

            “Would you like to hear something beautiful that happened to me today?”

            “Of course, darling.”

            “So I jaywalked halfway across Venice Boulevard during rush hour,”

            “And no ticket?! Beautiful!”

            “Yes, it was, but that’s not it. Standing on the median and breathing each strip of metal that brushed past me with the threat of rattling my bones to the point of reverberation and eventual explosion, I considered taking one…one and a half steps outward, for that’s all it would take. At this moment, my brain inferred that I had actually stepped out, and the breeze of metal turned into a plow to clean the traffic lanes of my superfluous skin and feeling…these things just don’t belong on the road. So I heard, first my elbow, then my ribs, all the way to my skull, shattering inaudibly (to the outside world, at least) like a florist’s collection of vases falling to the floor: heaviest last, lightest (least important) first, during an earthquake. I caught a breath of the metal again and was alleviated of suicide by suicide. The fracturing made me feel whole again, long enough to cross all the way to the other side.”

            “That is beautiful, darling.” 

Planked by Wistful Nothingness

The boy is planked on either side by sky

Neither clouds nor grounds to give specifics

No circumstances that bleed into actions

Only the boy in the sky with his airy sonnets.

As Twilight caresses the evening streets

With her stern darkness to steer interests and vices

One’s broken boots evade the puddles of shadows

Treading smoothly on the ground with no sky.

No circumstances, no actions

Smooth broken boots on the pavement.

Sinking and soaking his eyes into the beguiling

emptiness brought him here to be pinned

                                                            underneath

reality’s vision of reality:

the dreams of our wistfulness

wistful nothing is all he sees

the boy is planked by the sky.

Flying My Kite (Part I)

Awaiting whistling in the wind

as it swindles your kite tail

into the rest of the atmosphere

where it can swim and sway through the sky.

Sails catch thrusts off the ocean

pixilated by spicy salt and tactile moisture

the tail dances as it’s caressed and inserted.

Lighting strikes from cloud to kite

and our eyes are cloudless.

Rain comes to wash our kite, sails, and tail;

refresh the pale color to vibrancy

somatically expressing the thrill of salt:

a gift from nature to the artistic creation

of beauty, play, and pleasure.

My precious kite.

“String it up! Let’s fly again!”

Our eyes are cloudless and sated with

God in the captain’s hand

God in the kite’s extremity.

Reformed air.

Salt.

-Grant Durando 

My Highest Cliff

It was bright enough to melt the sand

to turn each grain into liquid glass.

My fingers sift through the gelatinous shards

and watching it fall into moldless dust

I find my inspiration for a backbone.

I undressed my upper half to show the world

that I’m an alien, my belly button curves in and out

just like the mountains and valleys of the beach

as seen by the humble sand crab

and the dominating seagull.

My browning freckles indentify my shard.

Away from mountains and valleys

of beaches and predators

my associations

fall between aliens and fowls;

we can all fly, but do I have proof of their wings?...

indications of their abilities to mold my sifted glass

to form a precious mountain?

With no proof, there will be no hiking today.

My mountain is solemnly surrounded:

tufts of mist to moisturize.

The skies will force an opening

and give entrance and serenity to

my highest cliff.

-Grant Durando

Optical Distance

I watch my life pass through a telescope

mirrors and mirrors playing with distance.

Serrated edges of formative hope

outside the bounds of detail resistance.

Passing away vision to microscopes

magnifying the miniscule gearworks

grand as sky, dust becoming isotopes.

What time could it be if time only lurks?

Firm beliefs and steady motion reveals

binoculars’ forays to the expanse.

I couldn’t explain the way seeing feels

other than the dust, the river by chance.

Optics support souls to see the obscure,

wide vision structures uphold the demure.

-Grant Durando 

Draft

There’s a draft in my inbox

its unsent emotion chilling me

like the open window that I can’t close.

It’s a letter best left unsent

as an electronic, there is no delay for stamp

only a click delay: one finger worth 43 cents.

To let it rest and rust there,

devolving would lessen its value to me

but avoid evaluation by its target.

To disallow reincarnation in the psyche

of its addressee, and ignore the communication

so brazenly inscribed;

to let if freeze as a draft does

no.

I will get up and shut the window

not apparel myself with an extra garment

to shroud my goose bumps and purple skin.

Invest my 43 knucklecents to give truth

touch myself to make proof

that she loves me

she wants my honesty.

-Grant Durando

Skin

She sits alone by the river in June

he sits alone at a café table.

Different cities, burned by the same sun

the same skin turning red as confetti

falling through the sky, for them.

White, blue, to red;

reflected clouds, sky, and the sea

of spectators:

watching them solely on their cherished day.

She sits alone by the mirror

he sits alone by his man

Different states, lured by the same cult

the same skin burning blue as cerebrum

considering the end, for them.

Moles, lines, to pores;

experienced sun, time, and space

for breathing:

marking them for murder on days apart.

Different cities touched by the same romance.

The same skin: raising hairs, burning hairs,

naked for someday soon.

Alone

they’ll sit in the same shade.