JONATHAN DOUGLAS DOWDLE - Symphony From The Splinter At The Bone (#6-10)

Jonathan Douglas Dowdle was born in Nashua, NH and has traveled throughout the US, he currently resides in South Carolina. Previous works have appeared or are appearing in: Hobo Camp Review, 322 Review, The Opiate, The Write Place At The Write Time, Blue Hour Review, Whimperbang, After The Pause, Midnight Lane Boutique, Visitant, Adelaide, Blue Moon, Bitchin' Kitsch, Pif, Mojave Heart, North Of Oxford, Vox Poetica, Blue Mountain Review, Furious Gazelle, HCE Review, And The Big Windows Review. 

​Symphony From The Splinter At The Bone (#6-10)

​6


I search for a word to become a sun;
For a word to become a sun that lights
The path to tomorrow; chasing away
Blankets of darkness, peeling back
Layers of dust;


It is necessary, for life's time is short;
Why weary the heart in wasting it
Upon hearts who believe in the eternity of
Whatever their plight? Sooner give me
Your face and laughter,
We may call them a church and a bell,
A house of a thousand prayers;


It is necessary for laughter to endure;
For tomorrow to remain a winged thing
That will follow this moment;
That will ask the heart to take flight with it,
To move beyond the illusion of comfort,
Into comfort's true touch and embrace.


I search for a word to become a sun;
A burning prayer, or a star,
A single word that will light my path
Into tomorrow, and a deeper awakening;
Where my heart may also once more be
A bell and a church
Singing out one thousand prayers
That offer, like your laughter,
Comfort's true touch, and embrace.


7
Time grows fiercer, and we grow fiercer,
With the heat of a world burning
Back on our tongues;
We wait to eat through down to the marrow;
To release the words at our bones;
To free the body for a moment for the
Soul's expression;


Time grows fiercer, and memory seems
Only a weight, a chain of bones
Singing out while the wind blows
Through their entanglements;


Time grow fiercer, we grow fiercer,
With the heat a world burning;
Burning down to ashes,
So we have something
To rise from.




8


I cross boundaries, to shape a word against
My spine; to shape your hand back into being
A simple hand; absent of thought;
Like a leaf that drifts across the skin
To leave the nerve singing;
I want to feel the passage of your motion;
To rise deep from the well;
To call out like a star
Burning back into being.


I cross boundaries, because
Otherwise I would only be a brute
Shaping you out to meet
The past, the fallen days, I would
Be seeking to replace old seasons
With the fire burning in your eyes;
I would be stumbling toward my death;
Rather than burning away my life.


If my touch returns you to feeling
Deep and safe at your core; if
You can build a house from it; a place
To rest your heart and prayer;
If my touch awakens you
To bring the world back into your eyes,
To build a future with what I have spoken,
With what you have heard


Then yes, I cross boundaries;
If only to leave a momentary life for this thought
That you rise and grow deeper
Into your own rising spring;
That you grow beyond survival
Into the breath of your own life;
Even in my absence; that by singing a single
Spark back into the fire;
You sing the song of burning at your bones
Just to shine on.


9


At last, at times; there seems
There is no more change; all thoughts
Turn wooden as puppets
Left to dance on wires;


Understand, please;
In the absence of transmission between
You and I, there is no you,
Nor an I;


We have become too often as
Only metaphors of memory;
Sooner I would wake up
Something new in myself, and see
A new feeling burning
Each day, brighter
In your eyes;


But you love the feel and weight,
The desire of the wooden world
Beneath your feet;
You chase change without changing;
You chase a reason only
To remain the same, creating what you
Cannot gather any longer;
The same faces as wounds,


There are no words between us,
I live and die as a metaphor of
Something dead upon your breath;
A fetid word or phrase,


Wooden, wooden world,
I leave you for the fire,
Brighten the center of the darkness;
Call it another invitation
For the sun.


10


At times, I wish no more
Than to be grow into a tree,
Sculpt out into a shape that feeds
At the roots, nourished by the best
That falls from your skies.


Place inside your chest;
The beating heart I have already seen
Pump furiously, with light,
Awakening eyes, like stars
To testify against
The night.


What I cup within my palms
For you to taste; is not something
I have etched out as creation,
But seeds I have gathered
From your own words; and kneeling,
Prostrate, long
To return to you.


At times, seeing your beauty; feeding
From the falling drops of rain;
I grow deeper at the root, and stretch
Toward the sky, hoping I can grow large enough
To return, to return
Your beauty to your beauty.