Discussions with Divergent Spirit Guide

Dreaming, disconnected from the spate of paralyzing

streams, static painted in morning cool mist, numbing

this prayer, this visceral conversation, with Divergent Spirit

Guide

I asked of thee, in fleeting reverence of slipping sands,

to justify this play for divine affection, a blessing of existence,

fleeting days aligning moments fracturing, fashioned out

of trepidation for passing lineage

This is an exercise, in its way an unfathomed form reaching out,

not unlike some lost shadowy figure thought unmovable

Hands, words, extended in cloying sentiment, reach repelled

by desperation gaze

Each side wanting to believe the equation’s integrity

My partition’s path laid out over many years, painful deliverances

of hollow triumphs, bitter cynicism segued into warmth and flow

of unmistakable gratitude, seen and raised and slowly laid down

to rest in memory’s grave

Denial and defiance railed and scrawled in regrettable volume,

exhibitions in deferred distraction and expressions in servitude, masking

the color of skyward eyes, into feigned affection for that which we share

interest, an increasingly fallow world

Sequences emerged from missing, tight air spaces, adjoined, evening out

retractions mistaken for truth and monuments running tactical

diversions, ironing out the creases of hysterical waking moments

waged from fevered dreams.

Hands alight in the symbolic bewilderment of belief, in solemn

questioning form

Oh, Hallowed Ground, I’ve walked, carefully treaded and spread

rigid snap-brush and clay, covering sacred imprints in the soil,

away from your name, indefinitely surpassed and encircled, brightened

in the holy light of decay

In the spotlight of significance, in pockmarked ritual surveillance,

in knowing acknowledgement and unknowing disembowelment,

in the unveiling of the customized context of your face and name,

I remain humbly detached and gainfully engaged

To the fluidity of text and dampening tone of voice in differing octaves, offering

conciliatory terms of re-engagement and remission, pathways

into the vein’s circulatory regulation of sinful pittance, carefully conveyed,

repurposed denial and compelling in its spite

What is implanted can no longer be connected to logic

or interpreted conclusions

Offer no logical outcome or connection to ancient parallel streams,

other than vessel carrying flow brought forward in open divinity

No remedial rewards for one’s constricted, tethered scope –

there are no shutters slung to slot the blotting light streams

Offer no solemn assurance, gazed upon tapestry,

averse to shades fatigued and enthralled in dot dashed formation fails

None collected in withered wisdom, or fronts discerned by elder committees

in the face of blunted wits, to mimic far slung eyes toward id and era forsaken

Offer reconciliation not with the sky, drifted and blue, far away comfort dripping,

chirping in dementia’s rhythm, unseen yet engaged within mercurial leanings,

sans salvation permit, withstood through feasibility study and minutes,

bidding commissioned and surveyed, swaying blades of grass leaning eternally

Offer none but the rain awash, obscured gravelly drift extension, reconciliation

within the scope of newly budding green, ensconced amid mournfully dissolving escarpments

None but salience, dispersed unwittingly in regeneration’s scion bared

ungrafted in mortal soil, tended and raised in fertile detail, recirculating elements,

fostering new orbits

Matt Mauldin
5/2017
Santa Barbara, CA

Appears in Patterns of Reconciliation