gaze

the space within his gaze
will be filled with a presence
that for now is only carried
in the organ beneath his ribs

Passings

Yesterday I received news from one of my cousins in France informing me that her father, my uncle had died the night before. He had been fighting an illness for a long time. His pain has ended finally.

We only brief periods of time together but over the years, I stayed in contact and felt a closeness to him because he and my father were like brothers and much of what I knew about my father came through him. (My father died a week before I was born).

I wish I could pour out some beautiful verses for him now but I can't. Perhaps it is still early, too soon. Maybe I'm in shock but don't realize it though I knew this day would come. Maybe it is because I've been wanting to visit him these last two years but couldn't. Maybe I was meant to not see him in a state of pain and remember him as I saw him last: Boyant at heart, funny and wise...

Two shades too light

He pours tea
Into pale porcelain
The green of sencha
Is two shades too light
So more leaves fall
Into the pot
So he can match
The hue of her eyes

28 May 2008

Fusion

The distance is the distance
And the time is a wait
The time is a fuse between
Two preternatural embers
So the distance becomes a touch
The distance becomes closeness
And the time becomes singularity
The fuse becomes fusion

19 May 2008

Hot Sand

Outside, the sun wants to cast
My shadow to the east
My skin is heated and seared
Like images branded into memory

I step inside to a sheltering shade
It is like waking from sleep
And finding her image, the way
She looks from her gilded frame

My skin still feels like hot sand
But it's not from rays of Summer

15 May 2008

Out of the Corner

Out of the corner of my eyes
I always think there is an emerald
Glittering in the midday sun
Out of the reach of my ears
I always think I hear a voice;
A bird of paradise in a tree
So I keep my senses vigilant
But when a breeze brings that scent
I know my favorite muse is near

13 May 2008

What would we have

A found poem:

What would we have to

hold in compassion

to be at peace right now?



What would we have to

let go of

to be at peace right now?

--Jack Kornfield

If You Must Know

If you must know
I was thinking of her
The sun was setting
Sky turning into violet
And vermillion
Outside my window
And I looked
For the shades of green
That I know are in her eyes
If you must know
I was thinking of the distance
That separates us
And the closeness
In the words that we utter
And of how the deep ocean
Resembles our connection

(23 April 2008)

Found wisdom

*
Karma Is Not Fixed Destiny
Karma is often wrongly confused with the notion of a fixed destiny. It is more like an accumulation of tendencies that can lock us into particular behavior patterns, which themselves result in further accumulations of tendencies of a similar nature.... But it is not necessary to be a prisoner of old karma....Here's how mindfulness changes karma. When you sit, you are not allowing your impulses to translate into action. For the time being, at least, you are just watching them. Looking at them, you quickly see that all impulses in the mind arise and pass away, that they have a life of their own, that they are not you but just thinking, and that you do not have to be ruled by them. Not feeding or reacting to impulses, you come to understand their nature as thoughts directly. This process actually burns up destructive impulses in the fires of concentration and equanimity and non-doing. At the same time, creative insights and creative impulses are no longer squeezed out so much by the more turbulent, destructive ones. They are nourished as they are perceived and held in awareness.--Jon Kabat-Zinn, Wherever You Go, There You Are

New Line

I thought of: "Just because I read an article in NG on vaqueros doesn't mean I want a drink of tequila."

Now I have to think of a story around this...

Etsy!

Due to popular demand to purchase my work, I have finally set up an Etsy storefront! So please have a visit here or just search for the seller name equusignis and it will get you there.

Hold

if i can't hold you in my thoughts
then let this be all a dream
at the edge of wakefulness
let the glimmering images
of your smile be a phantom
in my imperfect memory
let it all pass like a handful of snow
melting through loose fingers
from your body heat and
i can be on my way down the path
between bare birches
their white bark reminding me
of your skin and once the shadows
have engulfed me wait for sixteen heartbeats
before you light the beacon
that will guide my frail steps
home to where you wait

Glow

There came a glow in these dark eyes
Because I thought of you
Even in this early hour
When the robins have yet to sing
Nor the ravens have yet to caw
There came a glow in this muscle
Beneath my ribs because
You visited me in my darkest dreaming
Bringing light I did not know existed
So in these eyes barely light enough
To give you a hue I think of you
And hope that when in your gaze
They will grow brighter and
In one day I won't see you
Merely through a photograph

6 April 2008

Astonished

It is astonishing
That in the cold numbness
Of your feelings
A passing bird

A bird in flight
Across your focus
Could change
The hues of your sunrise

It is astonishing
How your gravity shifts
Because you see a delicate creature
Unbound by the weight of the earth

Fluttering across your vision
Changing all of your dreams
What dreams have come before
What dreams will come after

In the turbulence of pale white wings
You'll never be the same as before
You think that the armor is thick enough
You think that experience

Has built enough cynicism
You think and think and then find that
Your eyes cannot look away
From the one fluttering feather

Passing through the air in the trail
Of the passing dove
In that moment
You find in astonishment

That your world
Your world has forever changed

1 April 2008

Ember

He stares out into the afternoon light
Thinking of her image
With eyes closed mouth parted

And forehead against the cold steel wall
Hands delicate as primary feathers of a swan
With grace in her neck to match

He stared into the image in his mind
And let lose his eyes
To the thoughts of her being

Trying to feel ephemerally
Her mercurial mood
Trying to close the distance

An expanse of continent and ocean
Trying to reach the source of the little fire
That burns beneath his ribs

Like an ember that sleeps for years
Before evolving into a forest fire

30 March 2008

mirrors

he

stood
outside

himself
hoping to

look

into the wells
of his own

eyes

but couldn't see
through mirrors

that kept
strangers

at bay

(26 March 2008)

Dream state intuition

Went to sleep very late last night though I slept well and dreamed of faces I have not seen in a long time as well as faces that I have yet to meet. It is strange how over the years of being a lucid dreamer, I have developed certain intuitions that become acute when in the dream state. For example, learning to recognize faces of people that are inconsequential versus people that I would eventually meet. When I first starting doing this years ago, I thought I was just having dèja vu's but upon going back to my journals, I discovered I indeed did dream of these people before I met them. The shortest time frame being exactly one year to the day and in other cases, there are periods of over five years before I met the person or people. How does this work? I stopped trying to figure it out and just record the dreams and go with it. The other sense I have in my dreams is that I always know my cardinal directions, similar to real life. In last night's dream, I was on a coast that ran north to south and the sea was to the east. I don't know where it was, I just know it was on the east coast. At first, I thought it was the west coast but "up the coast" was to my left, this I am sure. Strange as it seemed I lived there and I've not lived anywhere like that since Vietnam and then Scotland. It doesn't surprise me, there is that nomadic streak in me. I just wonder how long it will take before it happens...

Contrast & Classicism

A friend and I have been talking about some of the sci-fi books we read growing up and the cover art that opened the doors to our imaginations and influenced us into becoming designers. I remembered that I had found this in a bin of a waiting room a couple of years ago. It is definitely a classic both as a book and its cover art (which I believe is by John Berkey).

It is funny because in this last week several others have brought up the subject of classic sci-fi books and such. We such a bunch of geeks. I wouldn't have it any other way. :p

Serve

Midnight came too early
Dawn passed without sleep
And dreams did not come

Until birds ceased to sing
And I sit here feeling battered
As if night holds a grudge because

I was recapitulating my day instead
Of listening to her lamentation
Give me a hand or a cup of tea

To warm my touch and soothe my senses
Or give me longer days and nights
So I can two mistresses serve

25 March 2008

Dawn

Morning came sooner than expected and the dreams were late
Venetian blinds held back the light like a veil of the mind
Yet at dawn's close all truth became apparent