breath) by Alli Schultes

breathe)

that first breath of heavy disorientation
parts petaled lips,
downy sleepiness wafting,
waltzing with cotton perfumes
as time bleeds together,
runoffs of watercolors dreamt
staining curled fingers 
cupped around fleeting whispered murmurs,
which taste like memories upon
waking tongues.
meet me in limbo
come, here, to this Dreamland
flutter-kick within hazy recollections.
let's muffle the sunshine,
cover our ears to discourage the silence

(breathe)

we are all Dreamers-
we have scoured the world over
in pursuit of passion, of desire,
but we neglected to check under the pillow,
instead shattering the fragile truce
between consciousness and slumber
with mechanical wails protesting
the caress of truth unburdened
by coherent thought.
Time beats many rhythms unto her drum
yet we cannot hear the syncopation
for the ticking of the second hand
upon the wall

(breathe)

your physicists adorn life
with clanking numbers, figures, equations,
re-sketching that which incites wonder
with underlying currents of mathematical reason;
all is explainable
and yet no one can show me
the gravitational constant
acting upon a woman as she falls in love;
there is no voltmeter, no instrument of measurement
capable of picking up the transfer of energy in a gaze,
the electricity in lovers' touches; 
no formula has been found 
to capture the phenomenon
of a kiss
upon a sheet of paper,
within a series of operations and functions,
functioning only to repress that which is impossible,
inexplicable

(breathe) 

we are confined by the same skin which liberates us,
limited by the scope of our wanting.
the breadth of our visions supplement
the encompassment of life surrounding us 
with small swallows of light,
so each being may radiate its innate divinity,
a halo
without heavenly obligations. 
swan dives are the only way to enlightenment
yet complete emersion is often mistook for drowning;
mermaid tails bartered away in yard sales
have become the norm.
inhalations morph from the therapeutic to the joyous
as we puncture the crusts of conscious awareness,
cradled in the embrace of pure intoxicating
existence 
and every now and then I swell,
helium- filled, 
yearning to leave fingerprints on the very air

I (breathe)