36 Musical Colors

by Dwight Peters

that is this day begun, this day continuing into evening and night in lighted heights of higher and higher fantastic exuberance never left alone to die hungry in emptiness.

  Her quiet ferocity of self-acceptance gently smiling.

  We knew a mother who lost herself. Her personality forked into strange sharp edges. She arrived again only almost in her waking distance.

  Letting her back move against the wall without any entertaining of shame; the touch of her back with the wall together caressing, undesiring; curving in subtle round tones, arms, legs, stretched; her body unshaved with hair showing; her pure scent playing intimately with other perfumes.

  In green valleys undulating all together, we sang in singing songs sailing. We went and went further and followed it all into the open to find the reflection. All of us—calm, calming our own calmness into calamity; we never saw the end until it was over, and we never saw the beginning in the end.

  Grating nutmeg nude into fresh cream and fruit while tea leaves soak in cup of hot water: for a moment feeling as oneself.

  Exotica Mist

  Walking through the woods along the rough path that other’s had taken before, hands feeling the massive passing trees, thinking of everyone from all places from all times, discovering inability’s horror, potential’s joy, saying repetitions that repeat until tongues are numb so unable to speak while mouths still move; there comes a need to move away from any conceptualization.

  In silent words, intimate moments of quiet sincerity—it may perhaps be possible to be in such a relationship where what is said is beyond saying; in suffering, in struggle, in pain, in ecstasy—in the passion of passion—in simple simplicity—we may hear a silent chorus of the music of silence that is more than any limitation; more than particulars of ideas and feelings; beyond the death of perceptions of prayer and prayer’s prayer:—a living, wondrous music—a rediscovery.

  There is a fear that consumes all: in our homes we are scared; when we leave our homes, we are terrified. We are even afraid of our fear; it feels so normal we accept it as natural. In trying to free ourselves, we find that there are meditations that devour. And we find that there are mediators that are mediums only for menacing happiness, mistaken merriment.

  After walking from dawn until much later into the day, they rest on the mossy river rocks with their feet flowing with the current; the rain showers their bodies while the sun keeps them warm. The animals sense they are there but act as if they aren’t.

  Silent Beating Jasmine Drank The Flower Tea From Cup In Pearls Ribboned

  We always thought of death as the ultimate letting go, not able to accept death also, not happy that we thought about the thing at all anyway—until one day we lay together in the burning heat and found the same idea all at once in each of ourselves that we had already died—that we weren’t really who we thought we were or ever thought we would be, and that we just as well could have been someone else if other things had happened in other ways than they did. But they didn’t—this, we thought briefly, so we are who we are—and we can’t do anything about that. And then we just let it all go and didn’t give a damn anymore and the whole thing was over to us. We could have thought more about what it was that we were doing and why we did what we ended up not doing—but what seemed right was to say silently so that we didn’t say anything at all, that we are many selves and that in that way it doesn’t make any difference what we come up with while worrying and worrying about all this. And all this we came to together—before just letting it go. And go it did like how there was this guy who met his wife—and all this was a long time ago—and their relationship together created who this guy became to be known as publicly and seen as what he did alone that made him famous and respected for doing what he did, which was really what they did together, what he did in relation to his work and her and everyone and everything else—and without the relationship with her he would not have been the person people thought he was alone. And then too, there was this other guy who got married and then lost his wife who he loved and loved—and she died from a terrible sickness and for years he grieved and was in awful shape with his health, but he finally pushed harder to get out of not the knowing of loss but letting it destroy him—and he put behind him what he thought before what he was supposed to do and allowed himself to do something else which ended up being very meaningful in many ways not only to himself. And this all made sense to us on our backs burning up in the sun because we said at once together that it was like this, not only these times, that it was like this all the time and that all this came around and around back to us at that instant and burned around us, burned inside us. And we dug with our hands a hole in the ground and let our fingers be raw in doing it and fertilized the soil ourselves that we had brought up and mixed it back in—and pruning our limbs and planting ourselves so we would grow, and as we did this we had no worries.

  Each Part Is A Party When Giving

  Old steam pipes shout ancient voices into the ears of the young to allow them to learn from what was. But all that is heard is a mangled teapot and a curious bell. Hungry youth feed on night. Mistakes sometimes are made, so there is a serving of a platter of lights.

  Forgotten memories suddenly strike in full without blurred fragments. What it is that these are—this—is not what was remembered: a lapse of trenchant teeth.

  Finally tired of sleep after years of struggling against it, we were proud of our victory but desperately needed rest—sleep, although called something else.

  Currents from the emerald river tearing away from one direction and towards another. Along this streaming rocky scream, traveling through thick forests of massive red barked trees, breathing their air, idealizing oneself to be in understanding with the birds, fish and other creatures because we thought that we too had yelled wildly and been where they had been. But we were rather really broken and artificial and unaware. The river began to boil, and we were cooked in nature’s bliss and our own supposed happiness.

  A strange silence now. A bug dances to a universe of squirming rhythm, felt in the quiet dancing body only.

  Then, everything changes.

  In the absence of our interference, the once destroyed plastic doll was impassioned—though puzzled at how could, how was—this—and where—what—next; preoccupied with being alive, letting each of its parts move together in celebration when finding delight. It went for walks to find the right words for using with other people in daily interactions but found that it was alone.

  Rolling out our sight, we see a possible relationship of contentment. Missing those who we never knew of that have gone. We feed each other now with our parts of feeling flesh—all of our pieces, giving one huge party.

  Flesh Incarnate Addiction

  Who has seen the many shades of forest greens within the heady scented birthing earth, touching, fertile, real, possibility, exhaling into openness, leaving years of rust on chain worn bones to wash away with sugared dew, planting this seed to later grow, walking alive and wild under the trees in dank mud, lullabied to life by the violent air of nature?

  Sleeping on top of water’s gentle wave. Light in all directions. I will never sink. But only guilt keeps me from it. I am responsible for the impossible.

  Imagine waking up in a florescent white sand desert. You are now the leader. What would you do?

  I was told to fall quickly and catch myself fast, that way I had time to do what I could before I hit. I questioned why I would want to know anything. I was told that I had no idea of what was worth knowing and what wasn’t.

  My dog once told me why he bit people; it was that he didn’t like the idea of death and that he thought the food that he was getting wasn’t quite good enough. I told him that he had no idea of what was worth knowing and what wasn’t. He bit me, and then I fed him.

 

  There are many people sick and hungry and dying while I do nothing but bite them and try to find better food for myself.

  I spend more effort mastu
rbating than I do saving lives.

  Imagine yourself in a beautiful park of green grass and trees—in bondage tied between two trees with a branch bridled in your mouth with rope that goes around your head. Strangers walking past stop to whip you and laugh at your naked body. At one point you are beaten by a ninety year old woman, your father, and a giggling child all at the same time. You do like to be beaten—but not like this. For the rest of your life you are scarred by this and never regain your self-confidence. But you find yourself, you think, to be a nicer person.

  Imagine yourself to be a flower, where there are no senses only beauty.

  I have heard that there are some places in the world that don’t have winter and that it is never cold. I know that not all places that do have it have it in the same way, so that it is thought of as different things; but I wonder what it would have been like to never have been cold.

  I also heard that there was once a culture that lived in ice and snow but was never cold, and that they only ate the same thing every day over and over again, but that they were always happy.

  At dusk we all meet at the campfire and drink a tea from wild herbs and take deep