For Natasha Marin, Hailey Higdon, Tanya Holtland, and Raanan David. Images taken during a recent trip from Seattle to Walla Walla and back. This is the first of three parts in this series of images and poems.
Update: A Soundcloud recording of this post can be found here.
Washington
Space: intention
Daring: element
Keep face forward
Keep head correct
Facing forward
Position I’ve received it
Position of grieving
I’ve finally taken it in
Started to
Washington
Space: disease
And: bleeding
I have stuck myself
Gone awry to thorn
Too pricked to move
Splash dreams
Sucking away desire
Washington
Space: please
Corruption winding
Before a flat line
Before the perch
Of No Bird Here
Electrocution
Zipline Cherry Glow
Shade and Rock
Full: thanks
Washington
Shit: Space
We blow up
We blow upward
The infinity of grace
Glacial collapse
This is settling
Burning settlement
Beyond cloud time
Washington
Space is the strip
The hair unshorn
The eyes unclosed
The fingers open
We are like snakes
Do tangle and tighten
Do move with rattle
Without payment
Washington
Grabbed handles
Space: smacking lips
Cheeks are smacked
The sun neither rising
The sun nor setting
The blood rush boom
Is there boom and boom
The pound of quake
Gazillion years of quaking
Washington
Space: room is forward
A room for crazy
You got the crazies
Man is woman is
Forlorn and foggy
In the heat and the thick
And the stick and bickering
And the balls get some way
Type of cup to them
Washington
Of: Space
More spatial
More flailing
More trails
Covered in grit
Gritty cover
Open with sage
Strange failing
Open with yonder
Space: become haunting
Washington
Zero I could die
In the space of the dead
In the wild of the dead
That is out to get me
Me before us and us before
The dead, dead coming
The coming of the dead
The coming of the ones
Who will snuff the ‘o
Greg Bem is a writer, media artist, librarian, and traveler of a proud white privilege writing out of Seattle, but with roots in New England and Philadelphia. He has visited Walla Walla twice in his life and is determined never to repeat the route to and from. His recent major male writer influences include Edward Abbey, Rene Char, Georg Trakl, and John Steinbeck.