Prose

The Turquoise Soul (Dreaming)

/ Daniel Swearingen / 113 Comments


“You’ve got to always go back in time if you want to move forward.” – Snoop Dogg

“You have a turquoise iiʼ sizíinii“, Grandma Blackhorse says. She is looking deep into the campfire. The flames reflect in her aged eyes and make them look like they are glowing. “Don’t scare the boy”, Ms. Woods says. She is to my back; I can hear the sound of the dough, flipping back and forth slapping her hands. “He’s not scared “, Grandma says, opening her mouth to show a toothless smile, “he is soon to dream”. “Stop it mother, it is not their way”, Ms. Woods says, her voice lower, sounding concentrated. She is no doubt worried about the consistency of the fry bread and hoping it does not burn. “May be not their way”, Grandma, laughs, “but it is his way”. “It is his way”.

A lighter blue just before sunrise, still it is dark at 4:00 AM. Falling deep into a slumber, as the chants begin and end. Three-sixteenths a time a sliver, into a higher desert wind, high above this firmament, this journey, into your ways do I descend. Not of this world, but of this people, between four mountains that ascend. Night has fallen on the Black Yeii; let the light of holy boy begin again. Round and round the worlds bend.

So it is that I am dreaming, of the beginning and the end. Of a soul that learns from mercy, born for water in the San Juan’s
end. Star gaze I into the heavens of a universe where life begins, five billion light years of glory, while right here now I am ten again. Black, yellow, white rotates again, while the turquoise eats my sin.

A safer place has never happened, why oh why can it not be. That every grey hair on this planet should be a child with me. Spinning it would seem in a turquoise destiny. Seeing this stone ship, that which flew, with fires and ash from a deep cold blue. Now it brings me here, from time immortal, cast down by a dream so clear. Everything happens in time, a constant in movement by design. Forwards, backwards, jumping over rhymes. The answer to the riddle is those who seek will find. Floating in a dream three-sixteenths at a time. In a desert near, may be like a child the answer comes so clear. Never fear, be free, dream with me.

“Come boy, come here”. Grandma Blackhorse is motioning me over to her side of the fire, using her nose to beckon. I look to see if Ms. Woods is paying attention, but she is busy hustling pots and pans over to the house to clean. “Boy I said come here”, Grandma has raised her tone. I shuffle over to her, hesitant but not afraid for Grandma is smiling again. Grandma is holding out something in her hand, and as I reach her side, she motions for me to take it. I look for just a moment into her eyes, those eyes that have seen time, and perhaps traveled it too. When I look down, my hand is holding a piece of rough-hewn turquoise. “You have a turquoise iiʼ sizíinii”, Grandma Blackhorse says. -08.27.21- דָנִיֵּאל

Authors Note: Grandma Blackhorse’s piece of Turquoise resides with this author’s soul and rock collection, as it will until the stars fall from the sky and I fly the Shiprock home.

Never Never Land

/ Daniel Swearingen / 140 Comments


“So come with me, where dreams are born, and time is never planned. Just think of happy things, and your heart will fly on wings, forever, in Never Never Land!” – James M. Barrie

Nothing had ever forbade me to dream of that home I searched for, that place in childhood where I felt safe. Still it seemed to elude me in my nightly visions, for to go there would require a balance. A threading of the needle between lack of, and want to. The summoning of the spirit of will. A belief in divination. The conquering of great adversities to find “Never Never Land” and to own within my own nature, that I was “The Pan”.

3:00 AM August 7, 2021

Left alone it would seem in ferocious weather on a roughhewn stone, in a violent sea. Dreams in phases am I young man, or am I in want, an old man deceived. What would I say has brought me this mystery, brought me this sword that cuts flesh from bone. Sold me naked in a world not my own. What would I say surrounds me in darkness, comforts me more than a warm bed at home. Standing still, I feel so disabled, lightning comes and I am alone. I am so alone.

The dragons have risen to lighten my darkness, come to demand a payment a toll. Deals made in ignorance, while I was younger, have put a strain on my inward soul. Questions unanswered, one and another, why do we search to find what stories have told. Too many thoughts lost in reflection, time owes no man what he cannot hold. Still I say it bold, a legend of fancy, a legacy behold. I am The Pan.

For what is the discomfort here? In my own thoughts, a judgment made clear. Flaws ingrained by my own instigated fear. Aged frowning daemons attack. To what I would not wish for myself to go back. To find my comfort in what I do lack. Wrapped in darkness within my soul. Not to see this storm in phantoms unfold. Not to see the rocks that I must climb, lines on my face, say I am out of my time. Tick tock, tick tock, I should have ran. Still my better ghost remind me in this late hour. I am The Pan.

So on to my hunt, with old bones creaking, tame the dragon my childhood is seeking. To find the tunnels, to enter the arch, know the secret that carries the ark. A covenant of mystery I see, an ancient rite brought to me. Count the numbers ahead, they fall from the skies and enter my head. Enter the sea the spirits forbade. The sky is spinning, my best plans unmade. Enter the doorways ahead. The seal is broken and time is unwed. For I will go on, straight to the castle, the light just ahead. To find the final truth, in G_D’s plan. An old man young in “Never Never Land”. I am The Pan. I am The Pan. – 08.12.2021- דָּנִיֵּאל‎ 

Morgana

/ Daniel Swearingen / 115 Comments

“He, who rides a tiger, is afraid to dismount”. – Thea Harrison

July 30, 1982 or centuries ago…

It is a five-hour drive from Whitby to Glastonbury Tor, if the traffic is light, and the winds of good fortune are with you. Worth the drive if you ask me. Worth the time indeed. So much to do while you are there. So much to see especially at night. Especially at night if you dream.

In this moment, she is like an unsatisfied water storm whirling in my mind, and uncontrollable pleasurable orgasm careening undefined. That sweet agony that defies our outer bodies combined. Other times she is inside me, her tongue like an allegory, a legend refined. Wrapping her long, mind around me proving that life will not be with me long. Altogether, she is immeasurable part of a mystic plan. Serving her Lord and her Master, whether a woman or a man. I sleep this night in misery looking for her cause, is she a muse caught in my memory or just a rhyme gone wrong. Maybe I am a searcher for a sorceress drawn in different signs. Maybe I see her naked body summoned out of time. A blue crescent moon on her forehead, a perfect swoop back of her hair. Just a hint of a blue shadow under her eyelid that invites me where. Taking me across many waters, taking me on her own. Stars falling from the firmament, the cold waters how they foam. Swaying circles by a seashore, hearing drums, wrapped up feeling her unclothed home. Knowing you are a witch to my bone. Witch oh which a universe to roam.

Better, you are here with a lady, better you are from the unknown. Stories of you when you were crazy, screaming “roll the bones“. Lower you down just above me, where do spirits roam. Ancient cities explode between centuries. Eyes meet eyes. I moan. Crescents on totems dancing inside the circle of her womb. The stars above me from far away Babylon weaving a loom. Battlefields on her body of a different kind. Tracks telling your history from when Buddug said sweet fairy you are mine. Over and over the sky raining sand, the night upon us in a dream strange land. She breathes it cometh, it cometh where angels ran. She breathes, ride this fifth horseman as hard as you can, and then I see the red moon falling from her raised hand. The red moon is falling from her raised hand.

It is a five-hour drive from Whitby to Glastonbury Tor, if the traffic is light, and the winds of good fortune are with you. Worth the drive if you ask me. Worth the time indeed. So much to do while you are there. So much to see especially at night. Especially at night if you dream. Especially if you dream. – 07.30.2021 – דָנִיֵּאל

The Lost Book of Shadows

/ Daniel Swearingen / 108 Comments


“And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.” – Roald Dahl

“How many pages do you think we have”, he says his blue eyes wide with interest. “More than enough to make this kind of a Bible”, I smile, holding up the three ring black binder to the star filled sky. “It’s a book of secrets alright”, he says nodding his head furiously up and down, his taped black framed glasses sliding down his nose. “We need to hide it where we both know where it is”, I say my smile disappearing, as the night air around us seems to chill. Much too cold for the end of May, I am thinking. “Yeah”, he says. “We need to make sure we don’t forget where we put it”.

What is done here upon this night, by this stream, my boyhood rite. What is done here beneath these bluffs, shape-shifting shadows, on midnight’s cusp. What is done here while stars fall fast, turning the moon from full to the past. Time travelers move beyond my dreams, splitting the heavens and all their seams. For what do I see this vision faire, something found relieved from its lair, a secret lost upon life’s whim, buried beneath and now I know when. Tousled hair on two boy’s blue, who buried a book of all they knew. Down the Coolidge Arroyo, and then a swim, in muddy cold water, that sucks you in. Twelve steps ahead on an island mound, and then another swim, with a prayer not to drown. Seven steps forward and nine to the right, to the dark overhang, where we stand with our book and two penlights.

What do we own but our own minds, what makes us ghost, when we do die? The answers to what lies within, the secret handshake, the hidden grin. Who killed Bobby, and who shot Jack, the answers might stay in this book so black. Does time hold us, or do we hold time? Are we here as a glimpse, or a reflection of our mind? And what of dragons, and what of arks, are both really hidden in our friendship in this dark. For in this book lies craft and Zen, love and character, spells and sin. For dreams have told us, visions we have had, that the past is our future, in a circle it will last. And the doomsday clock that we have numbers circled within, will end all time, when a new age says begin.

“Do you think we will remember where we hid that thing”? My teeth are chattering, I am cold and I smell like muddy river water. “You won’t”, he says his voice sounding more distant and light. “But I do”, he whispers, almost quietly, almost gone, almost a ray of early morning light, for it is a dream. It is a dream. – 05.24.2021 – דָנִיֵּאל

The Call to Prayer

/ Daniel Swearingen / 91 Comments

“If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough.” – Meister Eckhart

Heed me, need me, call me please me, oh holy.

The call to prayer is my writing. A story not based in my pride. A part of me of which I am revealing, for which in fact, I know not how or know why. It is like a question that was raised to me this morning, as I saw the Colorado Mountains that reached to the sky. The words they came from compassion born from inside me, “If they glorify me above their stature, can you do not the same in word and in rhyme”.

The call to prayer rest inside me. In a place battered by hell. Deep in the valley of spirit and bone, a link to the divine that lives to tell. The story of letters and numbers, of seals and mystical grails. Sometimes uttered as sounds and music, sometimes screams and wails. It is true I have been not a temple, a prophet, or seer of worlds. Still when I pray something happens, the shadows inside me unfurl. Orbital echoes of summoning, that form beyond a divide, that whose names goes unspoken, becomes one with my creature inside. A feeling of fullness eternal, what is cannot be denied, for G_D as she most perpetual, has made me sane while the world goes crazy outside. To pray to bless my creator, the coals of her mercy inside, hallowed be thy creation, your footprint of breath carries my life. Your footprint of breath carries my life.

So here, I am a part of a missive, a call to prayer, let me praise, let me praise. The seals holding the eternal bond within me break when I open to pray. This a part of my union, between she and my life day to day. The call to prayer from the start of the cosmos, on to on goes it on to each day. How does it help to sustain me in the here and the now of this day? The answer is found in a mystery, a word from the ancient of days. “Know me to know you intensely; I am, so you are each day, spoken and born so intimately, am I not worthy of praise. Am I not worthy of praise?”

The call to prayer is my writing. A story not based in my pride. A part of me of which I am revealing, for which in fact, I know not how or know why. It is like a question that was raised to me this morning, as I saw the Colorado Mountains that reached to the sky. The words they came from compassion born from inside me, “If they glorify me above their stature, can you do not the same in word and in rhyme”.

Heed me, need me, call me please me, oh holy. – דָנִיֵּאל – 05.05.2021

The Precious

/ Daniel Swearingen / 109 Comments


Kaitlyn Swearingen

“The most precious on this earth is Love” – Lavinia Valeriana

“You are my “Peter Pan” she said, her bright blue eyes dancing reflecting the bright full moon that cast it’s magical beams through her bedroom window. “What are you then, “squirt”, I asked her trying to look as serious as possible. “I am your precious”, she said, her blue eyes turning into stars and planets and becoming a universe all-consuming.

In a world where time stood still, when all memory had gone to sleep. All our secrets held our hope, spinning circles, jumping rope. To the moon, you would cry with the fiercest look that made me smile. Such is this, and such is that, you drew the pictures, of our compact. Beyond two stars, second from right, magic perfected, when we took flight. In dimensions did we ride, upon the words of which we spoke, incantations so inspired by a story or a joke. Came we to another land in a box made for a boat, rowing water with our hands, until our laughter finally broke. Tis the season, which I fly, fight the witch was your reply. Make me precious throughout the land; I said I will for I am The Pan. Be they ghouls or evil cares, I will fight them upon a dare. Be my precious, my princess lord, as she knights me with a cardboard sword. Be my precious for all the years, never let this magic disappear.

So it went from night to night, when the dusk turned to moonlight. For the full moon went nowhere, stayed it steady within our lair. How full enchantment can make you grow, when your own seed has turned to gold. In a minute of childhood find, immortality in your mind. Not an interest or a care, when the moon is in your eye, throwing caution to the wind with my precious by my side. Thinking time will never end, thinking this time will never die.

Now the day came when time appeared, second hands from everywhere and on my scalp appeared a gray, and my precious went away. Such was this, and such was that, fading pictures of our compact. Still at times upon the phone, when I hear her voice so clear, just a bright note in atmosphere. How it takes me to a time, never ending how sublime. Moves me beyond two stars so near, second from the right, this way my dear. Succumbs me to a different land, knights me as “The Pan”. From the cradle to the grave how my precious saved the day. From the cradle to Neverland, full of wonder through times of sand, through the veil hand in hand. Through the veil hand in hand.

“You are my “Peter Pan” she said, her bright blue eyes dancing reflecting the bright full moon that cast it’s magical beams through her bedroom window. “What are you then, “squirt”, I asked her trying to look as serious as possible. “I am your precious”, she said, her blue eyes turning into stars and planets and becoming a universe all-consuming.

For my own immortal precious Kaitlyn. -04.02.21 – דָנִיֵּאל

Tippy

/ Daniel Swearingen / 87 Comments


“There is a certain part of all of us that lives outside of time. Perhaps we become aware of our age only at exceptional moments and most of the time we are ageless.” – Milan Jundera

Tippy and I sit on the river bluff looking down at the muddy water. A cold November wind shifts from the direction of Shiprock, and hangs over us briefly before dispersing its frosty feel to the high desert plain behind us. “I think, I have always had this same dream”, I say. “You always have”, she says, pausing for a moment to let her words get beyond the cold wind. “It is an eternal dream”, she says. Older eternally.

Tippy stops the clock in the desert, muttering in my dreams. “Once you are young, once you are old, forever you’re turning with me.” “Forever you’re turning with me.”

Tipp’s within me at thirty, dancing around by degrees. Her hair all assorts in mystery, a muse that creates or a witch that deceives. Eyes that sparkle with hellfire, a body that constantly conceives, of odes and rhymes, sermons that find, the Ark of the Covenant in me. Tippy parts weeds in the darkness. Separates them while I sleep, those webs of my mind built out of time, she removes them where I can see. There, their, there she whispers to me, licking the inside of my ear, she is she. Be old, be old, be older, than me. She grins such spells wickedly. Come be old, be older than me she bites her bottom lip, and looks into me. Treasures in deserts to search, she smiles, and I am lost infinitely, at thirty. Remembering ghost, in shades ere aloof. Tippy she floats, through time of my youth, always a shadow to me. Instead of behind, she quickens the front of me. Older eternally!

Tipp is right there when I am seven, buxom and ready, brunette to a tee. Watching me grow, incessantly, I cannot escape her eyes of hard brightness, stars of a night’s mystery. Behold the glow of paradigm’s mold, broken when she is with me. Plotting my thoughts not spoken, they line with her stars by degree. Sitting by muddy cold rivers, speaking symbols to the moon, watching the desert clock ticking, she whispers, “I birthed you from my own womb”. “Someday soon you’ll be older, no longer a familiar I’ll be”. “That day we are older eternal”. Older eternally!

Tipp invades me at sixty, a summons that blocks a plea. She looks to be the same shadow, standing in front of me. Somewhere a clock is ticking, in a desert that holds a key. My life has been so backwards, so much there that I did not see. Reflections and ghost, daemons that host the haunted spirit believed. The question comes to me now ways, what mystery is there to believe? The answer somehow comes from her now. Challenge and interest free.

She says, “When I had you by muddy cold rivers, in the high cold desert naked and free, you knew this day then. Older my twin, older eternally.” Older eternally!

Tippy stops the clock in the desert, muttering in my dreams. “Once you are young, once you are old, forever you’re turning with me.” “Forever you’re turning with me.” – 11.19.20 – דָּנִיֵּאל

The Ghost in an Old Man’s Heart

/ Daniel Swearingen / 99 Comments


“The secrets that lost boys keep birth ghost” – DS

Here in lies the power, the place that G_D has made. Here in dwells the temple, and it is a ghost that both loves and hates in the greatest silence! For it can cast, and it can spell, it can retrieve and deceive. It separates, and hides, and when it is ready it reveals itself. Into the silence. Into the silence.

I heard many words last night upon my bed. They were legion from sources seen and unseen. Strange expressions that built themselves like influences upon my heart. Sounds and strange syllables, lilted tongues of angels or daemons, one or more, one thousand in a reflection growing louder from each shadow around my room. Together they forced me into the silence. And I saw myself young, and found myself old, and though I felt cold, there was some comfort for indeed I saw I had never been alone.

For there were ghost with me in spring and fall.  Under cold winter moons, and summer storms of awe, and they chanted, chanted that I should heed their call. And they said so many things I could not take it all. Out of sky and earth and fire from my birth, till the day I heard a final song. And they sang inside my head in the silence of it all. For I saw them as a child, in the tumbleweeds that the wind would hold and blow, and I felt them kiss my lovers, with their familiar touch and glow. Yes, I felt them shake inside me when my anger did not let go. In the silence were these ghosts, as an old man where do they go. Oh, the power of all that is me, how much of it do they now know. Oh, the power of all that is me, how much of it do they now know.

Oh, the silence that awaits me, where the angels would have me go, the knowledge that leaves me, as these daemons fold. These ghost that have been with me, knowing what they know. It is not in my defense that they hold what they know, it is the power of recognition of letting this secret go. Oh, ghost that has become legion, how your fears have grown. Now here into silence I watch you go. Now here into silence I watch you go.

Here in lies the power, the place that G_D has made. Here in dwells the temple, and it is a ghost that both loves and hates in the greatest silence! For it can cast, and it can spell, it can retrieve and deceive. It separates, and hides, and when it is ready it reveals itself. Into the silence. Into the silence.

For the molested that turned into lost boys, that turned into old men with ghost. It is time to take those ghosts into the silence. – 09.10.20 – דָּנִיֵּאל

 

She and Ordinary Men

/ Daniel Swearingen / 2 Comments


“I was not a messiah, but an ordinary man who had become a leader because of extraordinary circumstances.” – Nelson Mandela

The angel came…

The homeless guy had a slight English accent, maybe from Worcester I’m not really certain though. He had been drinking for three days straight he said, still his accent was fairly firm, and his thoughts spoken plain. “I saw an angel of the Lord“, he said. “He looked right through me and said he was interested in ordinary men”. “The angel told me great things come from ordinary men”, he said. When he said that, I noticed his eyes lost color. Watered down almost. Supernatural almost, and yet quite ordinary. In that moment I wished to be the most ordinary, the most common, for there was the heat. There was G_D

The angel came…

Saw a boy through a thin glass, saw a boy dancing near Tupelo, saw a bright spot, a big bird sailing high above. In the indigo sang a child, under the moon, dancing near the moss oak that holds the old coon. The questions came as questions can. Is he a shimmer in the dark, is he a twist that makes you want to twist too? Possessed by thoughts of what he can’t say. Does he sing to the stars, does he move in you, is he chosen by all sides? Is he fame, or is he shy just lost now as a typical man? For it could be we are all her, exploding in all we could say, chosen by her to be alive, gifts unopened, a dream, an unbearable ordinary man.

The angel came…

Saw a stutterer, a man who needed tamed, saw him leaving through puzzles in the dark, lost inside, for want of purpose, lacking spark. And a big bird flying high, to a burning bush, a symbol, that can haunt you. Words in syllables and flames, G_D of shadows, fire and rain. G_D who chooses losers known by any other name. Is he fame or trying to hide, gone tomorrow, here today, archetypal by test of man? Commandments given; nothing hides. For it could be we are all her, exploding in all we could say, chosen by her to be alive, gifts unopened, a dream, an unbearable ordinary man.

The angel came…

Saw an answer in a dream, walking deserts, moving through streams. Moved through time, watched my children born, what does it mean. Watched a big bird flying close to me, and wondered why. In the open, under star lit sky’s, followed by the G_D of need, seeking answers in what I see. I ask above, I ask again, let me go for nothing ends. Still she sends the bird of prey, holding me until it’s day. Then I understand the art, understand from where I start. For it could be we are all her, exploding in all we could say, chosen by her to be alive, gifts unopened, a dream, an unbearable ordinary man.

The angel came… – 02.21.2020 – דָנִיֵּאל

A Night by the Hours

/ Daniel Swearingen / 108 Comments


“How did it get so late so soon?” – Dr. Seuss

I suppose we discovered our immortality on that perfect night, when the darkness moved by the hours. The night it had no name for it was all nights, all times, and I called you “Sweet Darlin” …

We wind ourselves around the western view; to me it is one color, for you it is several hues. A difference of opinion on a falling sun that takes away our breath, as in the east a large moon has begun. Our spirits take position in a higher place, silent in communion no words can they say. For they border on a boundary, of clouds and grace, an absolution of spatial logic, a jump into ghost held space. I hold onto your tight bodice, my lips drawn back as if to taste.  My teeth a sharpened color, white snow like, chaste that would be debased. In an instant, we huddle closer as if some spell would tell us so, a last walk on the skyline watching the evening as it flows. For it’s a night not held in sorrow, or an evening in shallow touch, but a darkness filled with flying, where no one ever says too much.

We have come to know a pattern, when the gloom draws us here. To this path below the snow-caps of “Twin Sisters” crooked leer. You say, “One looks like she is laughing”, I say, “No dear, that is a sneer”, you say, “what if for an argument”, I say, “you are just so weird. But in that moment when we draw our eyes together hands held wide against the sky, the sun tilting backwards on its even, for the night on which it dies. With our sightseeing further, as we call out to the night, come and take our lives immortal, under over kingdoms rights. It is earth that in the daytime, what it holds cannot appetize, but the glory of the night sky is by that, our paradise. Unadorned by life’s expectations, we have no breath in which to sigh. Glory, glory in our indifference, bodies unwinding, our cathedral the sky.

We separate not when the shades of night taste us; their own light shadows pass us by. We laugh without laughing, and memorize each precious instant, the largest of mountains we have yet to climb. “What say you’re an artist, what say I’m the painted”, I brush my hand against her moon-touched thigh. “What say we are without replication”, she sighs her lips drawn as if to cry. This night of all has moved in time, by hours, rhythms, and numbers that rhyme. We are different as we turn to the east and make our way home to sleep before we would know why. Before we would know why.

I suppose we discovered our immortality on that perfect night, when the darkness moved by the hours. The night it had no name for it was all nights, all times, and I called you “Sweet Darlin” …

For Susan – 01.15.2020 – דָנִיֵּאל