Leaving the Stranger City (Poem)

Life inside seemed to shimmer and fade,
like koi fish in a pond,
flicking their tails, disappearing into murky weeds.
People vanished then reappeared,
smiling with sunshine,
then just as quickly flitting into frowns, twisted like broken thorns.
Stories began and ended with nothing and everything,
plots seemed stranded as the sand outside the city's walls.

"This is no place for a wanderer," the solitary man grumbled,
Kicking loose stones fallen from a looming cathedral,
a church forgotten in the shadows of the street,
windows and mortar broken like jagged teeth.

"I hear stories, see places and then they're gone,
nothing to put my finger on,
nothing to lean my head against,
ephemeral and permanent,
two worlds pitted against each other in silence and words."
"On the other hand," he murmured,
"this city is splendid for a split mind,
exit and entry both blurred,
city lines etched and erased,
soaring mountain hunched over in the background,
while a desert stands smooth sentinel in the front."

He shuffled and sprinted along,
Comfortable and fearful of not knowing what lay ahead,
what story might be erased,
which words might form on the sketch-board of his day,
or who might put their hand out,
and invite him in, just for a moment..."just for a moment."
After all,
no voice startles like the one you cannot hear.

Inside a Stranger City (Poem)

It came upon him suddenly,
a city as a a snake rearing up its hooded warning.
The glass quieted, stopped its crunching,
and the fiery sun's eyes went to slits.
Rough stone pocked with weeds tumbled up and up,
hatched and slashed from dust, grain and glass.
Domes rose wearily in half-circles,
peeling and breaking as old onions,
welcoming him warily.

"Now how did I get here?" He questioned himself,
one brow and suspicious eye lifted to the city's gate,
hanging  halfway on hinges,
his skin sand and sun-stained. 
"Did I sleep alone along the way? Did anyone guide me?
And where is that din of noise that crossed such a distance?"

With his hand resting and waiting on cracked wood,
he turned his head far sideways without moving his body,
squinting behind at what might have been or where he could have traveled,
and thought it odd that the trees he had loved had vanished.

Moments later, head bent forward,
the man with shadow-work written with the sun's drop took a step,
and pushed open with one hand the doors whispering a thousand stories.

Stranger City Travels (Poem)

He walked miles through shattered glass and grass,
iridescent and gecko green,
splotched and splattered in brown, it waved in tiny circles in a dusty breeze.
Trees scrubbed the sky with their needles,
roots turned and tripped over each other in their haste to greet him.
Sunshine stood still,
severing clouds,
sitting and smiling malevolently close to dusk's nervous arrival,
casting shadow fingers long and skinny up the mountain's spine.

He curiously eyed the darkness etching lines on his body,
and continued on.

The city appeared etched and blotched onto the horizon,
small, shaky lines making up its skyline,
apparently getting no closer the further he walked.
"But...this is impossible," he muttered,
stumbling over the next rise,
only to hear heady noises undulating with the hills,
rolling from an immeasurable distance.
 "What will I do If I can't get there...?" mumbling to himself,
slipping and sliding on lines of grass and glass,
listening to the sun chuckle with unshakable laughter. 

A Stranger City (Sketch in graphite)