Spoken Word Poetry, Elizabeth Ayres, Elizabeth Ayers

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Below are poems by Elizabeth Ayres. You can read more of Elizabeth's poetry in her book, Know the Way, available from Inifinity Publishing. Or click here for more information on the book.

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A NOTE ABOUT LINE BREAKS! Because each person's computer is different, the line breaks established by the author may wrap on your screen.

Circus Family

The circus
is in town the paper says the Guerreros
are the only troupe in the world performing the Seven
Man Pyramid without safety rigs. Four men
walk the high wire balancing two
aerialists who balance
a third but they're worried
they can't do it
with the chair on top an accident
last month paralyzed Wolfer
from the waist down family
pitched in to save the act because it's better
that way no matter how tired
or troubled each thinks
of the other: it's my sister, my wife,
my sister's husband strangers
can't be trusted. A recent replacement almost killed them all,
going for the platform to save himself.

Gape-mouthed, I read how Arturo, the father,
never used nets, said they detract from the excitement
of the act how Ruth, the mother,
walked the wire tightly girdled
through eight pregnancies how the children
balanced on low ropes from the time
they could walk how Jenny and Werner,
sleeping, had to be wedged
against the wall or nightmares of falling
would make them cry out how Jahaida
ran away with the elephant trainer. Four months later
she was back now Brian
has left his elephants to join her
in the act, just as Aura
left her earthbound people (clowns for seven generations)
to be with Werner up on the wire.

I think of flat, wide places: the desert.
The ocean. Think
how the horizon stretches between earth and sky like a taut wire. Next morning
I'm in a long line, buying
a ticket for the circus. I buy it
for the same reason I go to church: I need
to be there. I need
to watch someone act out
my beliefs and desires although,
waiting in line, I cannot name
my beliefs and desires. I carry
my ticket for two days, a pledge, a promise. Of what,
I wonder, as the houselights
dim. While monkeys cavort in Ring Two,
in a darkened Center Ring they rig the tightrope.
When the spotlight shifts the Guerreros are up
in the air I gape at the relentless floor
and when they pray, En el nombre de Dios,
I pray with them for I, too,
have been carried on a tightrope from the womb, practicing
my balance since earliest childhood, trained
to risk, plagued
by nightmares of falling so it must be for me
they inch their way across a high, thin wire, seven
people stitched together like a crazy quilt
when Christ was asked,
How often must I forgive he answered,
Seven times seven times now the Seven
stop for Aura to rise from her chair her legs
tremble, every muscle straining to whisper If I slip
we all fall and in the darkened stadium seven thousand
strangers are stitched together like a crazy quilt because
in the same paper I read about the circus I also read
that a woman who was blinded by her jealous lover
married him when he got out of jail that a tourist
had his hand chopped off because
he didn't surrender his wallet
fast enough that a death sentence
was commuted to life because four jurors say
they convicted the man on a gut feeling
he was guilty and there are new bombings
in Ireland and Israel and 50,000 children
will starve to death today we are all inching
across the same
high wire if one slips
we all fall no one
gets to the platform alone.

Copyright © 1998 by Elizabeth Ayres. “Circus Family” was first published by The Worcester Review,
Vol. XIX, nos. 1 and 2, 1998.

Why We Do It

Last night I dreamt I was dreaming
of a barren, cratered landscape pocked with ancient stones.
Burned by sun and swept by wind, the soil
had turned to sand. Giant cactus loomed,
misshapen arms thrust up to the sky,
begging for rain. Thirsty, I walked alone,
neither pursued nor pursuing, neither sought nor seeking,
while above me, stars wheeled in vast constellations,
and the moon gleamed like a huge tear, frozen.

When I woke I was a diver, suspended
in some nameless ocean,
tank of compressed air strapped to my back.
In this silent realm I swam, the stranger, the alien,
the explorer, searching
for something, some sunken treasure, some priceless pearl,
while all around me,
in colored constellations, schools of fish whirled.

When I woke at last, the moon shone through my window
like a pearl, and the barren shadows of leafless trees
were etched on my wall like coral.
Weeping, I thrust needy arms to the sky
in wordless supplication

and knew then what I know now:

that each moment is an ocean,
and in each moment we hang suspended,
while improbable creatures of impossible beauty wheel around us.

That compressed to the finite the Infinite
is a thirst: a naked bare seeking, the unknowable
made known as much in what it reaches for
as in what it is afraid to reach.
That what holds us together
is the same as what keeps us apart.
And that we are all divers.
Strangers, aliens, explorers.
Swimming in our silent moment.
Searching for our pearl.

from The Raven Chronicles
Raven Gazes into the Fire

You think I can’t count the cost? Me?
With these soot-black wings, this
singed song lodged
in a burnt out throat?

Raven Fights the Wind

Pitched against its strength, my strength
gets me nowhere.
I could give up, of course.
Turn back from this standstill moment. But then
what of the giddy slide sideways, and arriving
where I’m meant to be?

Raven Discusses Politics

I don’t know why
God gave you lips and me
a beak when all you do
anyways
is stab and grab.

Raven Longs for God

As night’s black beak closes I tuck
black bill into black wings, black tongue
still at last. I dream
I am made of salt. Fly
into the ocean, disappear.
I wake in the night, a black word melting
in God’s black mouth.

Raven Praises the Color Black

You can keep your fuchsia, turquoise, cerulean blue.
Sunshine yellow? Hah! Cadmium red? Poo!
I’ll take black, thank you, and fly far beyond
your spectrum or science.

The Seventh Wave

At Long Island's easternmost tip, gulls twirl
above the waves like ribbons unfurled from spools.
Their plaintive cries remind me:
whoever would belong to earth and sea and sky at once
might never find a home.

Two years since I was here.
The ocean rushes to greet me with open arms,
an old friend whose face has changed:
sandbars where there had been none,
a tier of dunes where there had been level beach,
and I, too, have changed: face
more lined, flesh
more slack, hair
all gray now, yet
I can hoof it two miles into town,
hoist groceries onto my back and return,
still lively enough to note
that each round pebble at the sea's edge
makes twin dimpled tracks in the sand,
as if the ocean thought it might lose its way,
left these marks to find itself again.

Yes. And the wind has rippled the beach like a fish's fin,
and the sand is littered with the footprints
of forgotten gulls and dogs,
and the golden light of the afternoon
sun pools in my footprints,
then the water fills them, then they're gone.

Yes. Waverack clings to the sea, and pinerack
clings to the hills. I bend down,
scoop up a piece of driftwood, surface smooth as a mirror.
I see emerald leaves, thick trunk, stout limbs, roots
that cling, all melted down to this sliver of woodrack I hold
in one hand. And the sand that peppers my memento?
A mountain, this speck? A shell, this glint? They say
all life on earth began in the sea, so, at the sea's edge
life melts back to its end. Alpha and Omega. First and last.
The dead gull I stumbled on, going in,
a ribbon wound back on its spool:
once-bright eyes clogged with sand, beak closed forever, yet
its wings were splayed out in a graceful S: that corpse
was poised for flight.

Yes. And I am for home now, to feed this would-be corpse.
Before I turn away, I watch the waves, how the water
heaves itself crestward, breaks, collapses
onto shore. I try to count them, wondering
is it true, what I read, that they come in sets of three,
marked out by a single wave, the seventh, the highest,
but I think you must stand still
as a mountain, have eyes sharp as a gull's,
before you can find such a pattern and my eyes
have found something else, far out, near the horizon:
a pod of seals at play out there, where
earth and sea and sky meet, yes, and I lumber up
through the dunes,
awkward as a beached seal, arms akimbo, poised for flight, looking for home.

The sea plagues pebbles to sand, and the desert
worries rocks to dust.
This beach is brown, and I await sunset perched
on a gray log, remembering
that other realm of gray and brown. Once,
up on a mesa, I found
a black spume of volcanic rock. Like a wave
heaving itself crestward it curled, and perched
on that ancient billow I looked
up. Low clouds
dot a blue sky like whitecaps and above
that ruffled surface, hawks
ride thermals like gulls. I am a diver, gliding
between cratered hills. Cactus
jut out, sharp as coral, and the green tentacles
of the palo verde tree riffle in the wind's current while wings
of passing birds ripple the air like fish fins I cannot
stay here long I look
up to that shimmering curtain behind
that shining veil beyond which
I belong the sky
bursts into flame and when day's ashes settle I still perch
on a black log on a black beach by a black ocean looking up
into a black sky.

Yes. And that smear of light is a comet,
last seen four thousand years ago when the Great Pyramids
were new and the great empires
of Greece and Rome were yet to come, civilizations
heaving themselves crestward, collapsing
onto some shore, yes,
and the milkwhite froth of the breakers
and the milkwhite froth of the comet's tail
and some one wave is the seventh, the highest, marking out
a pattern. In diving school they showed us
how every seven feet another color
disappears from the spectrum. Yellow,
gone, orange,
wiped out, red,
vanished until only blue
remains, blue
sea, blue
sky, Alpha, Omega, first,
last all of us
on earth winding back
on our spools, furled
up, finally
home.