It’s All About

by Anna Ruiz

It’s all about doors and windows,
portals and gates
slammed shut, flung open, passed through,
raised or lowered,
creaking and squeaking, oiled or barricaded

It’s all about words and stories
on a mother-of-pearl half-shell,
in torn and yellowing pages
memorized and ionized in the head and heart:
pictures of incidents and paintings in still life
caught
like a time warp, frame by frame
and carried around like a festering wound
or as
a particular proud and glorious moment:
see how I hurt, see how I feel

It’s all about the inconveniences and inconsistencies
placed upon
the houses of the holy and the tabernacles of the profane
and we are thus insane in the membrane
and
swallows fly upside down to prove they can

It’s all about who rushes in and out of a life
without passing a hand or a second thought,
and those who decide to stay
It’s all about angelic laughter and serious considerations
of life and death and proclamations to distinguish
reality from what is perceived as another slice,
a roll of the dice in the matter of time and stories about time,

It’s all about the ambiguity and the terminal illness called Life
and where it ends and how it ends and the cessation
of tears, of falling on one’s knees in asking a
higher Being to have mercy and grant peace and love
forgetting
that love and peace are found in
nothing and noOne special,
an honest appraisal, an assessment of
One Who Lives,

It’s all about warm bodies and the anticipation and the
depth of merging and the agreed-upon price of one small human body
making love, having sex, getting screwed, abuse, a lie
or the ride of one’s life, a higher bridge to
ecstasy

It’s all about a turtle shout,
a dog and pony show,
a chariot ride across
the bluest skies,
it’s all good and misunderstood

It’s all about a walk down Strawberry Canyon
and children running naked
ocean spray on their
smiling faces