human

the best thing about being human is that you never really know where you came from nor where you are going. you are utterly unpredictable. this, is human nature.

Themes, written under duress

something i found today. it seemed fitting for the mood and the moment...

A VALEDICTION FORBIDDING MOURNING

My swirling wants. Your frozen lips.
The grammar turned and attacked me.
Themes, written under duress.
Emptiness of the notations.

They gave me a drug that slowed the healing of wounds.

I want you to see this before I leave;
the experience of repetition as death
the failure of criticism to locate the pain
the poster in the bus that said;
my bleeding is under control.

A red plant in a cemetery of plastic wreaths.

A last attempt; the language is a dialect called metaphor.
These images go unglossed; hair, glacier, flashlight.
When I think of a landscape I am thinking of a time.
When I talk of taking a trip I mean forever.
I could say; those mountains have a meaning
but further than that I could not say.

To do something very common, in my own way.

– Adrienne Rich

evening

it's evening and venus comes to greet me
on the low horizon. against the deep ultramarine
she tries her best to smile at me and to tell me
that sometimes in love there are casualties.
sometimes in love there are the brilliant hues
of someone's eyes that you cannot save and
it is part of the matter of this existence.
i cry and she cups my tears, she holds
my shed emotions in her hands and
they turn into green emeralds which
she casts into the cold, cold sea.
she lifts my chin and says to me
"these are not things under your control,
you must let them go as you did the black doves.
they will come to you but perhaps not in this life.
they will come to you but not in the form you expect.
you must remember that when you smile you give life
to the ones you had to leave behind. you must remember
that when your eyes come to tears you've given
a new ocean to a multitude of broken hearts
to escape from their shackles."

2 july 2007

lacunae

there are syllables missing, consonants misplaced
and verses left empty. they aren't mistakes.

they are lacunae.

they resemble the spans of unfelt emotions
that stream through his heart.
he is not trying to avoid the feelings.
it is the feelings don't feel like
anything from the outside.

an intact seashell holding the emptiness
inside with all the care of a minotaur.
an empty flute keeping its yet present
bubbles from expanding into the outside world.

they are lacunae.

when he sips his tea, the heat bites
into his tender tongue and then the pain
is absorbed. for a creature of risk, chances
have been taken away from him.
he walks in darkness without bumping

into odd things. he dances on the razor's
edge without ever being sliced.
having given to the universe,
his empty spaces and empty motions
have turned into emotional mobiles

that Calder would have killed for.

feeble

the sun's rays are competing
with the deep blue of the early morning.
what starts as blue that turns to non color
in the deep distance of space.
what starts as blue that turns into an
inky night perforated with a million
phosphorus holes. it's the ceiling
above our heads, above our hearts and
holds our hopes that we can't ever touch.
these wispy clouds, they are so far from
our reach yet so close to our existence.
so close as opposed to the nebulae that
crowns Sirius the dog and Cancer the crab.
ironic how we name these celestial objects
so far from reach with mundane, earthly names.
ironic how we take things in heaven and
force them to our scale, our perspective.
so vast is the human imagination
yet when it comes to fear we always reach
no farther than the corner we are afraid
to look around. so vast is human experience
yet we find such lukewarm comfort in
dumbing ourselves down so no one else
need bother with our feeble effort.

1st july 2007