My lovely metaphova

Lately I've been carrying around bits of poetry like a secret. An unfinished secret I can't share because I don't know where the edges are. Scrawly scrawls, testaments, and pictograms tucked away into books I haven't read, mixed in with notes about pointless meetings, hovering behind the creases on my forehead. The sense of burgeoning returns. The sense of coalescing.

Perhaps it started as I drove away at dusk, asking myself "What I am doing?" Of course, I am always asking myself that, over and over again, with every breath and every unexpected shift in energy. But this time the words were clear and crisp in my mind. Like autumn. "It is just autumn, it is just autumn, it is just autumn" beats something inside me, something looking for reassurance. And when I got to the coffee shop there was a picture of a woman who looked like me on the Dia de los Muertos altar. I tried not to stare at her too much as I attempted to read. Her picture, at the back of the altar, was underneath a sign that read, "Do not light a candle too close to the wall." I can't even light a candle for my doppelganger.

But wait. That is not really where it all began. I want to tell the story of the beginning; I want to find its pulse. I want to feel the beat of the beginning under my fingertips, under the curve of flesh over bone, skin on skin. The shimmery movement. Except the pulse that I feel doesn't seem to be the right one. Perhaps it is a question of beginnings. The human desire for a starting point. My desire for this to be a story, and I, presumably, to be the protagonist. Or the narrator. Maybe it is simply the power of narration that the postmodernists and the neuroscientists blink at, somewhat blinded, pupils tightened, mesmerized by the glare.

What it really comes down to is that I cannot settle on a metaphor. Hell, even "settle" is a metaphor. The verb has 32 different uses, didya know that? Including "to become pregnant; conceive." So, I cannot conceive of a metaphor. I have been carrying around my scribbles, my metaphors like ova, awaiting fertilization. Carrying metaphova around like a secret. Waiting for something to germinate. But it appears that I am not, metaphorically speaking, getting any. So my lovely metaphova can only wait in the mottled light of my ribcage, curled in on themselves like a fist. They can't implant themselves in anything fleshy or bloody or smelling of the earth.

My metaphova. I have been thinking about the stillness near the ground. I have been thinking about tectonic plates. Of things slowly shifting beneath my feet, even though I am standing still. Of things carried by currents. Of currents. Of sea ice breaking free from the Arctic shelf. Of the movement of icebergs. Of icy landscapes bearing silent witness to the sky.

I have been thinking about all the things with wings. All the things with wings. All the things with wings. I have been thinking of birds nesting along my spine, once at each chakra. The hummingbird at my sacrum, the bluebird in my heart, and so on. And the tiniest bird in my mouth, nestled in the curve of my tongue. Breaking stems off my words for bedding. Being fed with each kiss.

I have been thinking about the people I buy birthday presents for. How I want them to nest along my spine, too. I guess in some way they already do; that is where the dreams of them reside. The dream of Chris curled up with the bluebird, the dream of my mother curled up with an egret. The mixing of the material with the immaterial. The mixing of metaphor.

I mean metaphova.

Whatova. This took so long to write that I don't even really feel this way anymore. Except, maybe, for the bird on my tongue part.

This blog entry brought to you by my current song obsessions.