Journey to Ixtlan

“Memories’ Grasp” is about the numbness of relationships against the background pain of memories. Even the most intimate embraces of today are not enough to put aside the dead of yesteryear.


Memories’ Grasp

It comes back as a shadow, relation to the dream
one would be in the light, the other in my sleep
neither I could touch, not in that special way
their distance is not the cause, each fills my life's expanse
nature asks for payment when bodies are embraced
now dead are present, the living in the past.

False echoes are all I have, warmth in the bodies held
sadly they are a ghost, cold as the arctic breeze
color mocks the rainbow's hue when flesh is all I see
disguises meant to trick when tints are turned to gray
the curves are real enough, the lines with passion's pulse
sadly they were prized to be the path from pain.

I forget when it began when the act has found its end
was pleasure my only goal or was it forgetfulness?
the fury blessed one moment, now the present finds reign again
the firmness is discarded when undress finds its shame
the dead will fill its breadth when the pit asks for its due
especially when the numb walk in memories' grasp.

© 2017, Sean Green. All Rights Reserved. 20170217.

Listening to the Placebo internet radio station will lean the lyricist in darker directions. My poem “Heaven's Memory” is about fondly remembered people no longer in our lives. It is about the perceived terrible difference between what once was and what is now.


Heaven's Memory
Poem for Day 171 – 20150620

There was a time when heaven
was incarnate in this place.
Now glimpses are all I have,
enough to live but not to love.
Echoes of hope bouncing
across gaps in the worlds.
Heaven has been displaced,
memory is all I have left.

Heaven has left,
memory in its place.
Heaven no more.

Is my soul is the only price
for a memory of heaven?
Excursion harshly blessed by
a single photo, dance, or song.
Memory flickers at their touch,
others a poor amor substitute,
the songs signposts of places lost,
heaven's void filled with my tears.

Heaven has left,
memory in its place.
Heaven no more.

What was my role in that place?
I forget how I came by the luck,
the fortune to walk in heaven,
by fate's desire to taunt me now.
Heaven lost to move the world,
time's price for the good of all.
I'll pay my due, dance the tune,
take my excursions where I can.

Heaven has left,
memory in its place.
Heaven no more,
no more since you're gone.

© 2015, Sean Green. All Rights Reserved.

I've been actively doing photography since 2007. My first contradance pictures were taken in 2008. Look back at these, and then looking to the present, makes me think about the role that pictures have in our shared realities. The ones I took this week seem so real, but images from years past seem real too, but that reality is no more. What is real, and what can pictures tell us?


Pictures Proof
Poem for Day 045 – 20150215

In the moment,
all things seem eternal,
nothing more or less
than what we have now.
Nobody has gotten older,
no one has left this place.
Could it really be this way
or am I only wishing it were?

Recent pictures are my ally,
whispering their white lie:
nothing is changing here,
everything is as it was!
Last week, last month,
these pictures echo the now.
Fissures appear in the wall
between the now and then.

The veil has been raised,
but the fabric is thin,
cracks in our shared space,
with more pictures the clue.
We were younger once,
with people now absent by our side.
Do pictures reveal another moment,
as eternal as the one now have?

Reality is etched in sand,
on the time's tide swept beach.
It confirmed to you and me
by camera's remembering eye.
Calm the mind, all is well,
the moment is eternal nigh,
change is the only constant,
pictures proof of moments shared.

© 2015. Sean Green. All Rights Reserved