I Think I’m Getting Weirder Shifts Oasis

I Think I’m Getting Weirder

Stephen Mead

Starting to love dust, nothing dangerous, just how it floats, continuously miniscule ‘til there’s 3 feet of flecks. It’s becoming part of my element the way pastels always were just colored powder, the layered surfaces in a swirl, all existence composed of dots...

That’s what emotions touched except then the walls grew— Every stuck up paper breathing its picture like a forest, or person. That’s when plants also had eyes, listened by watching with something to tell pulling me into these hallways ignorant of how much the hues would one day

take over.

Shifts

STEPHEN MEAD

Tides and time manage them, adaptation, innate. Any dictionary can defi ne just what a word is. We take it further. Living looks for meaning, rationalizes exactly how feelings apply.

Tonight I haven’t the slightest clue. This shift is a rift, movement, a last resort in order not to be swept under.

Where are we now?

Arms reach forth, stroke sensation, but the vibrancy is raw. If I plug my ears, shut everything out, I can recall a song the radio played a while back. Blue Moon.

I saw you standing there. We were so young then with a different transistor beneath our pillows blinking red lights. I detected you near as a dance one does alone. This berth throbbed with an energy.

The train is pulling in. The waiting depot leans. Doors open, a cloak of mist. It waves as if valedictory. Do we know what has happened? The Blue Moon recedes, some hissing frequency.

On separate shores we break like surf. This means arriving.

Oasis

STEPHEN MEAD

Praying the seeds take, that the pregnant earth gives back its bounty, counts out the blossoms through uterus vines…

Praying to touch the heads, the tips of them in an amen celebration from chocolate swirls of grit…

Hands on, hands as lanterns dreaming of Chinese satin, the tooth ‘n nail buds royal as tapestries…

& pin wheels shall be placed, white stones, slabs of quartz, & bulb will signal bulb, a luminous

stillness in the night watch over bridges, trellises, fountains, a city Eden…

Man, how I hunger for some sweet green to lengthen, grow lucid in, to become what

I was: white stone, leaf curl, dew open as an orchid’s head

before all else.

Stephen Mead is an Outsider multimedia artist and writer. Since the 1990s he’s been grateful to many editors for publishing his work in print zines and eventually online. He is also grateful to have managed to keep various day jobs for the Health Insurance. Currently he is resident artist/curator for The Chroma Museum, artistic renderings of LGBTQI historical fi gures, organizations and allies predominantly before Stonewall, The Chroma Museum.

Nofa Dewi