Everyone Is Rising

Nothing could fall.  Gray worlds turned into each other
 and emptied out their waters into this seeing. 
The worst things people could imagine were outdone. 
In one dream the world was covered in candle wax. 

Every idea made safe.  Every wish remained a secret.
  Somewhere down by the boats where he went to look at the birds
he felt the people rising, rising up
away from everything they made. 
He wanted words unwrapped like pictures or paintings
that let you see the world differently
....after all what more can you give a word than a new meaning?

on the canvas of his soul he chose to use anti paint,
mixing up a single grain of sand from every sand he saw
putting it into his eye to return to us in a tear
fleck by fleck his whole life long, slowly
glimmering far down the passageway
that lead through the hidden gallery of forgotten dreams

Everyone was rising, turning in the air. 
The flowers came unattached from their stems
like so many poets from their bar stools. 
Long ago the armies came this way, they knew. 
Nobler men fell here once, but only because
they stood their ground for other's ideas. 

The whiskey wells held mouths of flame. 
The crazy boys only wanted to destroy. 
Everyone was rising, turning in the air.

If not a single sound is heard,
nor anything recognized as sense,
nor the slightest remnant rise from the surrender...
if not a single song, we will have been all we were,
maybe more imagined than hoped or feared.

Take the other glass.  Look out now there the whale blows.
  Kevin laughs, his hands unable to grasp the snake. 
In the field you run out of words. 
Everything that once seemed a melancholy oppression of the spirit
is now a beautiful truth that cannot be told. 
Bury me in those sands there,
where the waves come in under the moon. 

Unbind these ribs,
let loose the darkened heart.
 I know you like no other. 
I am the same as everyone.