Friday, February 02, 2007

Briars

in an abandoned car dealership
a barren parking lot
on the western edge of the empty space

lies a brick planter full of bushes
once ornamental plants
plants that once decorated

are now reverted, wild in the
midst of an urban badland
signs of life try to break

beyond the confines of once
a prison pedestal,
dark purplish spiny tentacles

thorned blackberry vines creeping away
freed from preconceived notions
this morning, on the moist pavement

fallen leaves from the spindly arms
are mounded around vines
like funerary fuel, ready

for ignition, waiting for rain
stubbornly holding on to the moisture
from last night’s rain

the pattern of life across the hard surface
speak defiantly against waste
briars want to pull at me,

peeling bits of skin, making me leave
a little of myself behind for
the unborn souls of a unborn forest

–son dao, january 2005

Wednesday, January 31, 2007

Pieces

Sending that song;
sending those images;
they were supposed to

put the pieces back together,
but they are like a pile of
monzonite below a daylight moon.

It was to take something more
to make the magic work;
all the images sent were

nothing less than granite crystals
under fragile, baby nails
I was only made for a big flash.

Not this other thing that
might hold me here,
my only signature was a flower.

The emperor's symbol of longevity
the white kiku to bloom and die.
I am just a scribe; with ink stained digits,

a pauper in silk and soot
never meant to see that face
that now lives in my ghost life.

January 2007

iron

there are lines drawn across the night sky
seen only by broken souls and hearts not willing to heal

they are represented by the tiny moles upon my scapula
the broken remnants of where feathers once grew

they hunt me for the hopes of what is lost
they hunt me for a map that might be tattooed

but once my blood has gone to soil
making the the rocky ground go to iron

all humans will ever find is the ore
the thing that gives them tool for mutual suicide

2007

movement

lilting, like a still jellyfish [103 of 365]

movement, there is movement
below the skin. there is the sensation
of bone straining against muscles,
flesh, a million little strands of life
searching for motion.

eyes close slowly,
silently like a flurry of snowflakes
touching on water.
inside, behind the veil of eyelids,
behind the rosy glow of thin flesh,

lurks a universe of feelings,
an untamed expanse of geography
that no one has dared explored.
quietly, the synthesized fatigue
seeps into his tendons,

make movement seem like a dream.
making motion seem drunken,
lilting, like a still jellyfish
in a slow whirling ocean,
like the emotion given to him

in his ambiguity.
they float in his head,
flow through his tissues and
liquor him into a soft sexual lingering,
lasting rancor stripped of sharp edges.

they feel like her face,
that strange and familiar longing face
seducing him with eyes of a mythical cat.
the lean long body moving through heated air
like a trout in an almost freezing stream,

climbing upward against gravity
without even a stray wave of effort.
motion, movement, emotion,
he knows he has been invaded.
invaded by the wiles of her beauty,

her intellect, her skin,
a skin that cannot be evaded or avoided.
he tries for stillness, he tries for non motion.
the surface of his existence is momentary,
perhaps even coming close to still but

beneath there is Scylla and Charybdis.
beneath there is another domain
parallel to the flesh,
beneath there is another universe
side by side to earthly pain.

she has laid herself there,
in the multitudes of slivers,
into his molecules.
she touches herself and he feels pleasure.
she bites her lips and he bleeds on the inside,

tasting the salt, tasting the blood,
savors the taste of a kill.
hers, his, theirs,
the shared lust of a vampiric appetite.
the shared pain of a thousand lives
pulsing through the borrowed cells

of a thousand more.
closes his eyes again,
time moves behind cold lids.
time moves like water under ice,
the chill and the warmth indistinguishable.

the pulse of one's heart indistinguishable
from the many lives that have died to feed the one.
the many marriages between time and death,
the many marriages between loss and possession.
now the ice is closing in,

the surface of water turning to glass
like something so solid that was
just in the last moment fluid.
now the cold has seeped so far inside,
winter has reached the seed of lust.

winter has taken his corpus.
and she makes him sleep
for a thousand years with
the lasting, lingering, longing,
lovely taste of her sex in his heart.

beyond this featherless and flightless existence


He sat there staring. Staring into the little emptiness, the dark space that was between the illumination of the torch floor lamp and the little desk light. There was a little haven in spaces not covered by familiar rays.

The space called to him. The empty-full space spoke to him as if they had known each other for all their existence and perhaps longer. Whatever language it was made sense yet the words couldn't work in translation.

The emotions that got turned on inside, like a hundred fire hydrants, threatened to flood him, flood the room, flood his existence and travel back into time. It called for something drastic, something so familiar but vague at the same time.

He sat and moved his eyes, shifted his narrow vision among the items scattered across the desk: the fountain pen, its worn barrel, the quills and papers, the knife and pencil, empty cups of cold green tea. They all spoke something, told a story. His muscles understand though his mind could not or would not. His instincts were awakened yet his upbringing resisted.

There is the partially open window. There is the beckoning noise of the New York traffic, the Park Avenue cacophony. it is the rasping and howl of the after dinner rush of taxis heading uptown after post meal drinks. It is the distance and the cold it holds asking for his attention. In a shuffle and shove, he is on the table and little items are scattered all over the floor. A pot of ink is spilled, its scarlet stain grows upon the wooden floor like a foreboding omen, a poetic foreshadow.

Light comes up from below. Noises turn into a strange strata of chords, like Stravinsky's riot in the Paris Opera. Looking out he sees not anything man made but a murder of crows in orbit. It all seems to make sense. He looks at the growing pool of brick red ink spreading across the maple, onto the pale sheepskin, looking like a murder scene.

There is a last caw from beyond the glass, from beyond this featherless and flightless existence. The journey is brief in time but long in experience. The journey is not a plummet but a commitment. A marriage to something that had been secret all his years, all his moments. And in the time it takes to sprout a feather the people below find a pile of clothes, pair of shoes and shiny trinkets of an repressed life.

– sd, 2007

Monday, January 29, 2007

sharpening

This afternoon I noticed my senses acutely
for they are need of sharpening.

I realize the words of my loved ones
have been at me for so long,

they are like frail nails scratching at granite.
They aren't getting any sharper;

meaning has been lost in litany;
intent has been lost in ritual.

I cry small talk is not our culture
but Confucius sticks his ugly face up,

so I will have to also sharpen my knives
dismember his fear and hatred;

throw their remnants in a pyre
that has been waiting for three thousand years.

2007