Will Mayo Starts off Fall/Winter 2016/7 at The Song Is...

Let's start off the fall/winter poems and flash fiction with some work from Will Mayo.

Long Tail Of The Lynx

By

Will Mayo

Almost without sound, he moves through tall grass and tangled shrub, past the mossy stone and the cobblestone walks onto the yards of the suburban oases. Mice and other small animals scatter before his path for he is a wild creature not reckoned for the gentle touch. He hunts his prey and then dines alone, not being known to share his company among the brethren of the night. He is without peer in the kingdom of hunger, or so he thinks to himself, as even animals of the flesh are known to entertain a passing thought in the silences between death and departure.

Yet when he sees the huddled figure amongst the garbage cans he bristles not a single hair and bows his head in honor. For though his claws are long and his teeth are sharp he knows a kindred soul when he sees one. He purrs deep in his throat and rubs gently against the stranger as a man might shake hands with a friend after the journey complete. Together, they walk down alleyway and shadowed street, alone in the long neon night, two fellow wanderers of the dark, caught up momentarily in some passing dream. Soon they will part ways, each going his separate path, but for now they share a loneliness that only the wild things of this world can know. The footsteps echo through the city like so much noise and then fade away.

Flickering Moments

by

Will Mayo

There is some debate as to whether time is in motion or merely appears to be so like a series of photographs run quickly through a projector to make a movie. But, to me, it all comes down to a series of moments, an old man laughing, the smile on a young girl's face, fireflies flickering in the glass on a hot summer's night...




Presence


by


Will Mayo




Once I thought of time as being an endless journey, a road from place to place. Then I saw it as a series of moments, of photographs even, run through a projector beaming its light onto a screen of nonbeing. But now at last I see clearly. It is one photograph, not several, and we are all there, all of whom we call our pasts, our presents, our futures. Together. Only there's the frame, you see. It's terribly broken beyond repair. Yet we pretend and keep on pretending. Keep on living.







“Worlds Without End. Amen.”










by






Will Mayo


God, it is said, created the world in six days,
rested on the seventh.
His world in turn was created in nine.
And before that in twos and threes
and endless combinations thereof.
As far as myself, here I sit,
in a small spare room
writing a few simple words.
Who knows what worlds I will create?
Novels, poems, or perhaps
the flesh of an old forgotten word?
My pen scribbles still.





Matters Of Faith


by


Will Mayo
Yet one day I was being admitted to the hospital for one of my many minor afflictions when the nurse asked me if I had any religious preferences.
"Why, yes," I replied. "Druid. I'm a druid. Just that it's getting harder and harder to find a virgin for one of those sacrifices, virgins being few and far between these days, you know?"
She too looked at me one long minute then walked away.





Photograph by Pensiero Laterale -- 2006

Sizzling

by

Will Mayo

I asked her to take off her clothes. She took off mine instead. I asked her to make love to me. Helpless, I watched her make love to the night.

When the thunder rolled in I knew that things had just begun. That was the night all the lights went out and the power came on inside our hearts. The current was alive with lightning and we simply wondered at it all.

Some of these pieces are more summer pieces than fall...especially mid-fall, but perhaps we will have some more warm weather.  I'll try to bring the fall in with some music. Here is Joshua Redman and Pat Metheny's version of Ornette Coleman's "Turnaround": 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7GMvJhVn_gs
I'm not sure if I've posted Charlie Haden's "Blues for Pat" yet:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VkHjig6MSI
In this video of "As Wichita Falls, So Falls Wichita Falls," we have a preview of winter:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwfVarzG1js
Here is the Pat Metheny Group's "To the End of the World": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yh_IwxO5-Bs
Even though that was the end of the world, I'll finish with "The Truth Will Always Be":  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DxfuGI_DaM