Sky

Tip tip, tap tap, splat sputter, tap,
Sky pulls a grey cover over her pretty
blue face to hide her sadness.

She works to stay quiet but her crying
lets loose tears to earth sounding like
plucked harp strings or a struggling brook

in the midst of Winter's ice.
I feel the cold in her hands reaching
toward my face and into my blood.

She says, "I ask for little, just a little verse,
just a momentary touch as it is so distant
and cold up here. So ethereal is this

existence and I want to feel, for once,
something warm besides a shower
of fiery meteors caught in my hair."

October 15, 2007

Silentium Amoris

As often-times the too resplendent sun
Hurries the pallid and reluctant moon
Back to her sombre cave, ere she hath won
A single ballad from the nightingale,
So doth thy Beauty make my lips to fail,
And all my sweetest singing out of tune.

And as at dawn across the level mead
On wings impetuous some wind will come,
And with its too harsh kisses break the reed
Which was its only instrument of song,
So my too stormy passions work me wrong,
And for excess of Love my Love is dumb.

But surely unto Thee mine eyes did show
Why I am silent, and my lute unstrung;
Else it were better we should part, and go,
Thou to some lips of sweeter melody,
And I to nurse the barren memory
Of unkissed kisses, and songs never sung.

Oscar Wilde
--

This poem was sent to me as a share by an acquaintance. I don't think she had any idea how close this is to the roilings of my insides as of late...

Shedding

The measure of depth in the season
is how low the morning shadows
are upon my neighbor's wall when I wake.

Even this far past sunrise the angles are low,
slanted, seemingly sharp. They remind me
of the sometimes sharp lines made by

light and shade cutting into Scottish fog
in early winter. The visuals take me
to another place; momentarily,

I escape the scraping feeling in my chest
(like a stingray's tail being removed).
I am still here and the angles are changing,

the day's light transforms as I am transformed.
bit by bit, the fleshy parts of memory
are removed and when I turn to the mirror

I begin to recognize myself less and less.
Soon, all those live cells with living memory
will fade and like a serpent I will have shed

my skin and be fresh to inherit another set
of this experience in each and every
moment of beauty, madness, joy and pain.

October 14, 2007

The bird being a medium of song

Song

Air an instrument of the tongue,
The tongue an instrument
Of the body. The body
An instrument of spirit,
The spirit a being of the air.

The bird a medium of song.
Song a microcosm, a containment
Like the fresh hotel room, ready
For each new visitor to inherit
A little world of time there.

In the Cornell box, among
Ephemera as its element,
The preserved bird–a study
In spontaneous elegy, the parrot
Art, mortal in its cornered sphere.

Robert Pinsky

poised for autumn

all senses poised
for autumn
like a leaf on edge

october 13, 2007

Fuyu

In the dim fall light
At the window eating
A fuyu persimmon
Thinking of one that I
Might have shared with

October 12, 2007

roiling dreams

i spent the night in endless roiling dreams.

in the dreams i rolled and tumbled like one she told me of once and she kept entering my presence, my existence. i found myself curling up like a millipede or pretending to be a shut nautilus to push her presence out. each time stung like a centipede's bite but i could not bear the allure and pain of her presence, her touch.

i wrapped her up in an imaginary membrane and tied it shut to rid her from my mind.

in the dream, i wept. when i woke, my pillow was damp and smelled of salt.

Like Gunpowder

Below a splotched sky
He needs tea like gunpowder
To hold against images
Lingering from last night's
Dreams like she lingers
In his consciousness

Feeling flighty

Early morning
Chill of autumn
Tea grows cold fast

Feeling flighty
Feeling nomadic
Images of deserts

Turquoise then shells
Some place to find
Warmth for the heart

October 11, 2007

Pu-erh & Persimmon

I had my first persimmon
of the season today; another
sign of autumn's presence.
Its sweet, bitter taste
demanded a tea worth
its depth. So I made a
pot of Pu-erh and gazed
at its dark liquor. Its drifting
fragrance like a longing for a
lover walking beyond one's vision.

October 1o, 2007

Today I Drank Jasmine

I picked up these artifacts;
they made me think of her.
that night I drank tea;
ginseng oolong with friends.
Today I drink jasmine
and choose a quill to suture
words knowing she is gone.

October 9, 2007

– equusignis

autumnal cycle

october is here again. this part of autumn is my favorite part of the
year though it is always associated with great pain. perhaps it is something i do to myself to match the season; everything decays and/or dies in order to have a rebirth again in spring.

Wanderer

I think of her
how could it
be possible

that she does not
walk in my mind?

The warmth of
her footsteps across
mazes of my dreams.

October 8, 2007

sunday

i stood there,
watching the kettle.
waiting for the moment.
i wanted the hotness
of the water to brew
the tea of green but to
avoid the shriek of the
whistle of the boiling point.
why am i nervous?
with you in the other room,
covered beneath white and green?

september 30, 2007

If I wound another

"If I cheat another, I cheat myself out of the person that I could be. If I wound another, I will eventually find the cut recalled to my own heart. There is no appropriate confession, only the will not to fail again so readily, perhaps because while failure can be forgiven it cannot be excused."

– Jeanette Winterson

Prisms

It is still early, before 6 AM and the warmth of you
is rushing off to dim morning streets
then onto the distant campus.
My nostrils still are in a dreamy head of you
though my eyelids are lifted to wakefulness
and my fingers fumble to grind coffee
and froth stubborn soy milk.
The apartment now half empty,
I watch the cool grey beyond the windows
turn creamy white as the sun casts its rays
across the waking city. Sounds of the streetcars
and loud clinking glass tumbling into recycling bins
are so sharp compared to the muffled and
soothing hush of me pulling a blanket
over your shoulders; so different then
the barely perceptible lento and largo
of my fingers brushing your hair
away from your face so I might find
a hint of a smile or soft grin on your lips
while you teeter between slumber
and the light of morning. In these hours,
in these expanses of time and distance
while you are gone, I must remind myself
of the other half of me. The one that is still here
standing in the damp footstep of
where you stepped from the shower;
skin warm and moist (and I had to restrain
myself so you wouldn't be late).
I'll hold these sensory experiences
like fragile magical icicles that
won't melt in the heat and sunlight.
And with these, I'll have prisms that will
guide me in the images I am to bring
into the world this autumn morning.

September 27, 2007

Indian Summer

Beneath the indian summer sun
My skin wishes for the shadow of you
Standing above me; summer strands
Flicking stringy shadows across
My washed out, squinted eyed face.

Beneath the warmth of this day,
The salt on my skin dies to be tasted.
Crouched above me, flushed moist lips
Make me feel like a summer snack;
Hot trembling skin, smelling of autumn.

September 26, 2007

At Dawn

Dawn comes through the hazy window,
Morning's blue tempered by aged glass.
Beyond, cold air of early autumn seeps through.

In here, the warmth of you holds me;
In here, golden strands bring me summer rays;
The slow rise and fall of your gentle chest;
The in and out of your breath that I breathe;

These mornings are new, so new to us
Though they feel like the stirring of ages
In the way we entwine in one another.

September 25, 2007

Anterior Superior Iliac Spine

I was momentarily distracted
by the protrusion
of her hip bone:
anterior superior iliac spine.

It is not that my vision is bad
but the clarity in my head
was not on the clarity
of the closed glass door.

September 18, 2007

sister sea

i am sitting here eating tuna
and it makes me think of the sea;
its saltiness and its proximity to you.

i am not a jealous soul but in this case
i envy the sea but know it's pointless.
she will laugh at me and my impatience.

yesterday when i stared at her,
she knew what i was thinking
because we are both waters of sorts.

and she snickered and threw spray at me,
she left a briny film on my pale skin
and said that is what yours will taste like.

sister sea always knows what churns in me
and always finds cause to jest
of all the things i find irresistible.

sometimes she puts brine in my eyes
then asks what i'm crying for;
then turns and says gravely to me,

"think of it as a blessing, dear child.
you have crossed a threshold into a new life
few in this universe can even imagine of."