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 second of three parts in this series of images and poems. The first part may be viewed here.
A Soundcloud recording of this post can be found here.
Washington
Space: Crags
Stone tooth beware
Before the old
Before the gold
Moving in
Shaping up
Shaping out
Moving down
The last vista
Facial tantric
Sexless in stone
Currents in metal
Ecstatic
Petrification
Washington
Superior to me
Superior to you
Space: Stupor
Space: Blueprint
Movers and shakers
Zooming and then
And then shutting
Shutting on
Shutting off
Eyeball of an ancient
Dead corpse lingering
Our scents of gasoline
Washington
Blade space
Bladed: Space
Articles and aptitudes
Pilfer of sequences
Patterns of denial
Decay: Drudge
Concerned foraging
An ideal image
Always lacking
Of you slaughtered
Of me slaughtered
Obliged to obliterate
Space and eradication
Washington
Hordes of spatial
Glacial racing
Hearts of plant and gut
Mourning in spindle
Triumph of chasm
Creation and friction
Phantom when
Phantom: Space
And poignant
Too precious
The flocking and flooding
The taste of still memory
Washington
Memory as Space:
Memory as Space
Forms edge of worth
A cloud and we are
We were tough
We were knowing
And gazing
Gorging and morphing
Space: Death in us
Death in our truth
Shadow elements
Touch base and move
Move to death (more)
Washington
Gated Space
Is Gated Space
Snap of finger
Clutch longer
Try to endure
The Heat of Space:
Sit calm and rigid
Try to endure
The wild dance
Before enduring
Wilder gates
And wildest hearts
Washington
Space! Oh Space:
We see you and I see
The way I’ve become
Too entitled to admit
I: a strike of flame could know
A beat of a hammer
A shake of a stick
Flaunt of a rag
Entitlement
Before the barrel of totems
Space strange and alluring
Siren of land
Silence as sirens
Air and water
A void for sound
For my pathetic voice
Washington
Space we do tremble
At the thought of sadness
Overcoming this flight
For you and your kin
The kind of dissipation
We sitting are amidst
And we are the bones
Thin out like thimbles
Arch of solidity: bare
Glaring as necessity
Space: keeping us in
Locked throughout
Try to bury and fill
And zone
Sprint of hate
You: Space
You are hated
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.