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Hanbell Gallery

One Year

Poet: Gabrielle Galchen

Based in New York City

This collection is somewhat of a story about the pandemic, starring from the lockdown to the present. It covers themes of mental health, self-love, and mortality.

Vintage Alarm Clocks

March 2020

 

When the world comes to an end,

I’ll hold you tight as, like a simmering cat,

The darkness curls in around us.

 

If I had all the time in the world 

I would admit that I loved you; 

We would pass our days into honeyed sunsets;

We would read each other’s soul like a Bible.

 

Beyond the plagues and indecisions

Of rowdy self-editing men,

We would end the tyranny of clocks

In a revolution of two. 

 

But I don’t have all the time in the world,

And as you look up at me I say

Hold me, dear love, 

Until every light fades away 

And we are caught in the 

Frozen goodbye of winter's shadow.

Planet Caravan 

 

Optimist, optimist,

You’ll see only what you want to see;

Your eyes are a deformed sieve.

You fall asleep on rose beds and wake to the smell of sunlight; 

You feed pigeons and carry everyone’s grocery bags. 

You’re a happy man (you’re a madman),

I envy you (I pity you).

 

Pessimist, pessimist,

You shake the hands of clocks and call yourself a businessman;

You dream of old lovers blurred gray as tarnished cutlery.

At crack of dawn you run away your existence along the coastline and  

Stroke prickles of sand like a Persian cat. 

You’re a sad man (you’re a sane man)

I pity you (I admire you).

 

Like unseeing flies, you both walk along opposite ends of possibility  

And don’t realize that you will meet each other.

Meanwhile words wedged between the lines of age

Watch you waltz through your days. 

 

Optimist, optimist,

Do you feel entrapped within clocks?

Would you prefer to turn tattered roads into a milky way?

You protect yourself from thinking, a sickness of the eyes. 

 

Pessimist, pessimist,

Do you think deserts cannot kiss rain?

Would you prefer to throw crows onto sunrises?

You protect yourself from hoping, sustenance of lies. 

 

You both prefer seeming to being, 

Whose music is less kind. 

You’re cowards (you’re human)

I pity you (I understand you).

But be careful:

If you continue on like this, you will turn into one another. 

 

Realist looks on and says,

Born of love or death, flowers are flowers;

Born of rebirth or sorrow, rain is rain; 

All realities entangled to one another like yarn,

And this is so because it is so.

Bicycling in Rain
Pink Flowers Blossom

Around Me

 

Everyone around me is falling.

 

Everyone around me is a candle

Caught in a storm.

The earth is graying 

With little white lights flicking the sky.

Trees are heaving down;

Rain is flying upwards;

The sun won’t rise because we no longer see it.

The streets are littered with what used to be;

In the air, bits of debris flit around like snowflakes.

 

Everyone around me is falling like baby birds,

But I can only ever catch a wing or two,

Perhaps a beak here or there.

My arms flail around like maddened hornets.

    

Everyone around me is a pasty photograph;

Their edges are blurred raw by what could have been;

They look at me expectantly to start time again

So they won’t remain still, distilled into themselves, 

But I am tired.

I kneel before them with seeds in outstretched hands.

 

If reality took on the form of mountains,

I would batter it into railroads upon rosebeds;

If it were a desert, 

I would fill it with dams like a wedding vase.

But what is cannot be seen

When it batters against what was,

So everyone is falling around me 

And I can only nod, silently.

 

Do the clouds look down on us and laugh acid tears?

Do angels throw back our wishes like stones into rivers? 

 

Sorrow lingers in the air like the scent of tobacco.

Everyone around me smokes reality on the daily,

Their lungs swimming as fishes.

 

I have tried,

And I am tired.

Generational Mirrors

 

Old man, look at my life,

I’m a lot like you were.

 

I’m a lot like you were,

I am you;

I am your madness,

I am your sorrow

(I swore not to repeat your morrow);

 

I am your mirror,

I am your soul’s bottomless sea

(You gazed upward until you barged into bats’ tree);

 

I am what should have been,

I am your mistakes’ charity

(All you did was drink from the eyes of lost possibility).

 

Old man, look at my life,

I believe in existence like mist

(You were one forlorn night’s droplet)

And the portraits of time

Paint me with moonlight

Gaping as a falling tree’s shadow. 

 

Old man, look at my life,
I am a parrot to your past;

We’re intertwined, mimed, two yellowing pages bound, 

I’m as you were.

 

I tried, old man,

To rage against the dying of sunsets

Like some foregone warrior, 

To reach up to clouds

And collect living like rain;

I tried, old man,

But I am for her as she was for me

And so I’m still here,

Confined to the age-old battle of doves against crows, 

Waiting for the last sunset.

 

Old man, look at my life: 

Did I exist right?

Live right?

Love right?

 

I’m a lot like you were;

Waiting for questions of tomorrow to be swallowed like sand, 

Concealing my love for her with departures and forget-me-nots,

Worrying my soul was made of two abysses

(A well glaring up at the sky,

Honeycombs singing sweet nothings to her eye);

Old man, did I not learn?

Was I too much like you were?

Christmas Jewelry
Dandelion Parachute Seed

Question

 

what if i never went there?

if i collected recipes to throw in sugar like dandelions

(like the years, birthday cakes quickly disintegrated)

if i bought a winter coat made of handkerchiefs,

if i sang a Siren’s lure in vacuums between stars

 

but i remember, looking down, now:

i threw pebbles onto desert rivers 

wrote my days to Shakespeare on sheets of weeds

brushed my hair as it fell like rain

(drizzles or torrents, tears are called love’s hunger)

 

maybe they remember me in alphabetically ordered timelines

(the edges are dotted with horoscopes);

every beating year is a letter,

A-G filed as youth’s happiness, 

Z as a plea: oh, but to forget oneself better than childhood lullaby!

 

i won’t fill the labels to the lines to the margins,

they blare red like a serpent’s eye

(but so do the sunsets within my own)

Since

 

It’s been too long since we danced

and sometimes I worried you wouldn’t want to 

but I hope we can compensate the past

with the richness of our ‘morrow,

every waltz a day lost 

as if love has a clock-cost 

 

It’s been too long since we danced

but you don’t know that 

I’ve been pulling you into my dreams

because you are my today, tomorrow, 

my sand and sea,

the sole crier to bear that creature of me. 

 

It’s been too long since we danced

but when we finally do it hasn’t; 

the Earth has properly adjusted itself.

We refuse to call before an era

 

It’s been too long since we danced,

I decide to tell you.

My words taste like cotton;

I awake to the mocking rustling of my blanket.

Blurred Dance Floor
Curved Street

Identical, Thankfully

 

Dear past self,

I’m just like you

(You’re just like me).

I wish we were different,

Because then I could claim I have grown,

But as clocks stand still

I look into mirrors and see only you in my reflection. 

 

You smile more than I do;

Our souls are situational,

The tree of your time grew flowers

(Mine boasts of blackened leaves and twigs). 

I know more than you do;

But once I have the chance to unsee these bursts of disquiet 

I will, I will, 

I will forget myself like love’s worst nightmare,

I will become you again. 

 

Dear past self, 

I’m just like you

(You’re just like me).

I miss you, I envy you,

You are more familiar than myself, this new self  

Who nods numbly at tragedy-normalities and 

Stares out the window of lost time like an aged widow. 

 

Dear past self, 

I’m just like you

(You’re just like me),

So come back to me,

You and your tangible sense of reality

(Its conducive environment to sunlight).

You were forced to cruise through your days 

Like the last soldier on a war-torn ship,

And I enveloped you like a whale’s shadow. 

But when we meet again at the far-right corner 

Of some lone café on 10th street,

We will laugh endlessly into the sunset,

And I will sift into the coffee foam.

You will forget I existed.  

So be it.

A Certainty 

 

The only fact is that existing rings 

Kinder chimes than thinking,

A sickness which questions too much 

To waltz through time passing. 

Trees do not breathe,

Waves do not beat,  

Winds do not whistle,

Birds do not sing,      

The world does not exist 

For us to think about it.

 

If it did, trees would inscribe

Letters along the veins of leaves;

Waves would whisper their messages

Within the mouths of seashells; 

Winds would echo words 

Born of every hemisphere’s wisdom; 

Birds would sing in front of audiences 

Larger than squirrels and sky.

 

But trees grow leaves to grow leaves, 

And waves beat to beat, 

Winds whistle to whistle,

Birds sing to sing,

And this is so because it is so. 

 

I am, I am, I am,  

And that’s it. 

Snowy Trees
Screen Shot 2021-03-28 at 10.25.08 PM.pn

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