Pulp

There is a place and a moment
out there is the deep blue sea.

Somewhere between floating and sinking
the water changes between support

and demon, wanting a luscious meal.
Somewhere the colors make a change;

between cooler falling deep below
and blackness, is really a dark violence.

Violent in her pressures to hold you;
violent in her loving crush of you into a pulp.

Tea

(for Hina)

Time ends at a place
where your heart ceases longing.
It gives up the painful desire
to fall into the waterfall;
to throw itself into the glacier.

Pain ends in a place
when a tired muscle starts pulsing.
It gives up the tired motion to die
to roll into an easy lulling sleep;
to simmer itself into a gentle hell.

There is a sign on the other side
where your soul finds a right place.
It finds a color to soothe your mood
to seep into your being like strong tea;
to release the flavor you've been hiding.

14 June 2007

a blood trail or a snail trail or just vandalism

Copán
(for suttonhoo)

there is a line sketched out in dried blood
it's not a geography of vengeance or sicilian intent
it's just a place where a lost, wandering heart once stopped
it stayed too long and when it left, finally
part of its soul wanted to leave behind a trail
a blood trail or a snail trail or just vandalism
of the place where it once parked what it thought
was a noble, court love, flamboyant love
no one dared tell it that it was just an infomercial
that its grandfather had bought into some years ago
but these were crisp lines you would have to concur
ghostly fine lines in the midst of a snowstorm
splayed out like toothpick fences in a indian monsoon
yet in those tiny yet to be washed blood lines
there is a lineage of smiles and broad confidence
there is a lineage of sacrifice until a daughter's blood
so look at this map all you want and remember its purpose
for all the brothers who have followed have given to mayan gods

one god

there will be time. time enough. the words stumble around inside of his head. he is not sure what it means. he heard those words in a movie but the connection is nil. it is just noise. time shifted noise just like red shifted light. it stays with him or he stays with it though he knows he should just let it go. they are just thoughts and he should just let it wash over him and then they will be done whatever their purpose is. so he closes his eyes and takes a deep breath and lets out a sigh that sounds like the voice of an angel dying. or perhaps a demon, is there really a difference? is it really just a matter of point of view? one person's angel is another's demon. that thought is probably more accurate, use that one instead. can one believe in angels and demons if one doesn't believe in god? or a god? it occurs to him that he finds the idea of having more than one god more palatable than the idea of just one god. is that odd?

conversations

this morning a dark cerulean blue came to the horizon while the constellations were still telling me stories. orion was relating old hunting stories and cassiopeia was bitching how she got up there, upside down. they were refusing to fade into daylight with as much resistance as they showed when their exploits turned into myth. cassi said to me, just wait, it will happen to you too but you may not even have stars for people to remember you by. even upside down, hanging here, at least i've got multitudes looking at me. i glared at her and thought, i need a cup of tea. and there goes orion again, insisting i practice archery at night outside so he can correct my form. i tell him to chill out and keep his distance. i am of scorpius, after all. just tell me stories. that is all i need, stories to fill the restlessness which stirs a wanderlust within my chest; a wanting to go that can't ever be sufficed for how does one escape their own heart?

turquoise

i looked for you
there was this turquoise ocean
and i sat there, waiting for you

my friend who would have
come out of dying the glow
come out and give me me a hand

the hand needed to become stone
it's the place where we all end
and i waited for you

This is the silence of astounded souls

Crossing the Water

Black lake, black boat, two black, cut-paper people.
Where do the black trees go that drink here?
Their shadows must cover Canada.

A little light is filtering from the water flowers.
Their leaves do not wish us to hurry:
They are round and flat and full of dark advice.

Cold worlds shake from the oar.
The spirit of blackness is in us, it is in the fishes.
A snag is lifting a valedictory, pale hand;

Stars open among the lilies.
Are you not blinded by such expressionless sirens?
This is the silence of astounded souls.

– Sylvia Plath

from the outside

he watches himself from outside of his skin. he stares intently, thinking there is a light in there somewhere. it just must be hidden.

he sidesteps away from the shadow of the trees looming behind him. the trees of life he almost expects to abandon – the way he feels. this feeling inside of his chest. it's what happens when you constrict time and space by the force of emotions. reality is distorted in the same way that large bodies in this universe distorts space. how does he deal with this? how does he deal when he himself is the cause of the distortion? did einstein think of this? what if he called stephen hawking now? what would he say?

it's happening again; the thoughts. he remembers that he is supposed to breathe. three slow deep breaths and he remembers he is sitting on a cushion on the floor of this small room. with three breaths as if each were a brushstroke, he lets the cascade of thoughts splash over him and realizes they are just thoughts.

Spleen

The beautiful morning and its pale blue sky
feels to him, like a ruptured spleen.
His mood far from the sky and its crisp air.

It's the color of blood escaping the liver;
a crimson turned dark and burnt like umber
awash in some demonic purplish gel.

There is a space around his corpuscles
that shimmers like Antartic borealis.
It's a kind of dangerous beauty that lures

the inattentives to a downward fountain;
his own personal Scylla and Charybdis.
In the kingdom of animals, bright hues

are oft warnings of malacious company
but inattentives are like moths to a flame.
Hot or cold, real or fake, moths don't care.

(June 12, 2007)

Americus Rain

Moments of the South come to me
like soft rain falling on leaves.

Curtains of rhapsodies and
a choir of moaning droplets

Hiding sharpened points beneath;
an veritable arboreal punji array.

(June 7, 2007)

being productive

it feels like the first day i've been productive in over a week.

it's been longer since i've painted.

it was due time...

glaze and reflection

it is like a glaze; the way the fog comes in at speed unlike the breath from your lungs. air moves faster than your tissues know how to handle. temperatures seem hot and cold in interstial flashes; like dawn and dusk happening in sequential cycles but at the speed of an antique strobe. it is not the flash that gets you. it is the burnt piece of plastic and strands that look so beautiful after the light that leaves you wanting to say that it should not be over like that...not like a cheap flash.

it's never over like that. it's just you find it hard to believe that it is that way. it is hard for you to believe in a string of events, a string of anything larger than your senses can tell you. it is the source of our passion. it is the source of our love and hatred. it is the source of the entire spectrum of our emotions. we are lords to entities within ourselves that are and have always been larger than we can control. and that is the allure.

Limbs or crooked lines

Collision

Thinness or is it shallowness?
Limbs or crooked lines
against a thick flat grey;
a ceiling that reflects
as much as it shelters.

Branch or forearm?
Appendages
that have purpose –
how do such organs compare
with the spongy grey

that thinks or the red
pulsing lump that feels?
There are so many
extremities like a thousand
souls reaching out, each looking

for a new flavored Nirvana.
And they are all related to
two particles crashing
into one another in the vast
traffic jam of this universe.

(May 12, 2007)

To see further

a found poem (on blackbird.vcu.edu)

by PAULA CISEWSKI

Telescope Psalm

Am I afraid to be forgiven?
I’d have to wear nicer suits.

By the time everything is fair I will
have devised a system to send word

via the birds on my roof. But I am
of two minds about most subjects

and, in turns, one mind must elbow the other
who is snoring. That’s why I thought I enjoyed

talking too much tonight at the brewpub
until the silence of the long walk home

made a better argument, better
company. The sky’s library of stars and dust,

whatever is possible remaining possible
even as it’s gazed at through the private

telescopes of an entire hemisphere.
It’s now. It’s not forever. And this

forever shall be true. To see further,
those without telescopes sometimes

cup their hands around their eyes.

believe it or not

"Believe it or not, I can actually draw."
– Jean Michel Basquiat

bonjour à jeudi

thursday morning in vista, looking northwest. the fog comes like liquid, knowing that the warming sun on the other side of the ridge will soon melt it into vapors ascending into the distant blue of earth's ceiling.

twin tailed gazers

lola and bo bo at the window this afternoon.

wish i had a video cam to capture the synchronized flicking of their tails...

if only

lola on the window sill in the afternoon.

all our moments could be this serene...

endless seeds

drifting yet stationary
flimsy stalks dream of movement
as endless seeds are sown
on the flight of sister wind

april 2007

23

yay!!!

she tucks me in and wakes me up

Because she is the last to stay up and wait for me to go to sleep, Lola is also the first to see me awake. Well, she is the first one to wake me with a purr and a headbutt at before 5 in the morning...long before the sun hints at grey or violet on the horizon. I don't fight it or try to go back to sleep. Sleep will return or not when it does, or not. Meanwhile, these quiet predawn moments are precious to me. They are as precious as sleep or perhaps even more so because it is not often that I don't mind being up so early. It is not often that I'm fightin to go back to sleep.

So I watch the #9 cool grey horizon seep through the early morning mist and filter past the venetian blinds accompanied by a thousand waking songbirds chattering this Spring morning's gossip...

It's a cloud, it's a broken boat

it was a rather dramatic sky in the late afternoon and at sunset today so i thought of this tune:

Drastic Measures

by Sarah Slean

I should go to drastic measures
Steal enormous works of art
Write a piece for eighteen violins
It's no march
But it's a start

Rub their eyes and wake, distracted
Frantically they fill their days
Please say I will never be like that
Safe
Politely dazed
Politely cra-azy

Don't you want my love?
It's a cloud, it's a broken boat
But it might make you laugh a bit
Easier
I'm like trees in the midnight parks
Oozing danger, igniting sparks
We've been left by the viaducts
With the last flame of the universe

I never held a truer notion
Then when my dear I held your hand
May your shadow always follow you
Through
Our get-away plan
Out master pla-an

Don't you want my love?
It's a cloud, it's a broken boat
But it might make you laugh a bit
Easier
I'm like the trees and the midnight parks
Oozing danger, igniting sparks
We've been left by the viaducts
With the last flame of the universe

Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh
Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh
Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh
Oh-oh-oh

Cra-azy
Don't you want my love?
It's a cloud, it's a broken boat
But it might make you laugh a bit
Easier
I'm like the trees in the midnight parks
Oozing danger, igniting sparks
We've been left by the viaducts
With the last flame of the universe

Oh, don't you want my love?
It's a cloud, it's a broken boat
But it might make you laugh a bit
Easier
I'm like the trees in the midnight parks
Throwing tantrums, igniting sparks
We've been left by the viaducts
With the last flame of the universe

is this clear?

out shopping with brian for ingredients to make chili. we'd been at this mercado several times but i had not noticed this sign before so of course i blocked the doorway and snapped a photo. i was hoping to at least get a dirty look from the proprietor but nothing, not even a glance. maybe i'll read a magazine next time though it's not like i am in the market for a car... :p

technorati tags:photo, random, funny

morning light

something that explains the morning sun to me the way this morning arrived...


Distance as the Story of Plenty
by Erin Lambert


If the landscape has a pattern then it begins with your wrist,

between the radius and the ulna where it finds the will

to consider the oak and the wheel before inhabiting your pulse,

the heavy signature of a river, or hollow stubs of cornstalks

left to winter. If the mountain wanted to write you

of the many cries concealed within its famed anatomy,

or the bold and plentiful vision inherent to trees, perhaps

how even light finds its valleys come morning, it would have to

begin by conceding that it still cannot comprehend

how the crow is in everything, the caw so essential to the air,

though it would know the decisive knife strokes imbedded

in the flight, and how it was first conceived from the violet

of the evening, then cradled by the cold’s incalculable distance.

Saturday morning mess

I woke up to this mess on my desk. It looked good in the filtered rainy light though. I stared at the objects a bit and each one of them were telling me their stories. They reminded me of where and when they had come into my possession and by whom and why. They associated me with what was going on with me at the time of their acquisition. Even if I were not to keep a journal, little and large things around me always remind me of my own history in real time. They constantly give me points of references to where I am mentally and emotionally. Sometimes I come across something I've not seen for a while and either a smile will come to my face or the tears will flow...

on my desk. each item has a story. together, they could probably tell a novella's worth if i elaborated...

left to right, top to bottom: bottle of advil (essential); old but reliable iPod given to me as a gift from a very good friend; ink bottle (private reserve tangerine dream); edge of another ink bottle (lamy red); grandfather's old watch; dozier custom knife i bought right before a fly fishing/outdoor trip with mom back in 2000; aluminum fountain pen from japan given to me by an old friend after he went there on business; pelican feather quill pen i picked up on the beach on a camping trip with friends to the sonoma coast, ca in summer of 2006; insert from my most recently acquired moleskine; razor used to cut quills; red recife crystal fountain pen i bought as a present to myself in 2001; usb cable to scanner; top of orange juice can with screws from my old ibook that i just dismantled to take out the hard drive–the logic board died; buffalo horn money clip bought in vietnam during work trip in summer of 2005 with ican (ican2.org); xikar cigar cutter i bought on chestnut street in san francisco in 2002; cell phone headset; keys; burts bee lip gloss; button from a pair of khakis that need to be sewn back on.

This photo reminded me of a poem I'd written four years ago.

song birds

morning came to me in the chirpings of little feathery things.

in california, the birds are kind enough to wait til 6am or so. in south georgia there were birds that started at 4am, i love birds but then, i would have liked a Bellini shotgun then. but no point. i only kill what i would eat. no point in songbirds.

they say it's spring but there is for the most part nothing else

lit horizon

this evening near the time of sunset, i looked out at the view beyond the windows and saw an expanse of ocean lit up by a sunburst. though i knew the distance was at least 15 or more miles away, the horizon seemed momentarily close to me. it felt as if everything seemed tangible for a slice of time. it was fleeting but it was a good feeling.

soot and ash

to make soot and ashes of one's past.

today i read a poem by Jacob Polley. it was about how his father used his old diaries as fuel for a fire in the stove. it was a visual experience for me though i found it disturbing that someone would burn their old diaries.

would i do that? i asked and pondered.

would it be a sufficient way to purge your mind of those experiences and memories you'd like to forget? for me, probably not as the television screen of my mind is more vivid and higher in definition than the best plasma screen available. that coupled with a photographic memory, i would have to throw my whole self into the pyre.

makes me kinda stop and think, ya know? ;p

story

i once read in a novel that "i write now so that later i will have something to read." then later, i myself wrote the same thing. it was such a powerful thought that i kept it and believed it for so long. then one day i looked at the same novel again and in the ending it reads, "trust me, i'm telling you stories."

so i've been lying to myself. i don't write now so that i may have something to read later. i write now so that others may read it. others might even like what they read. but how odd is that when you are writing something that is so overwelmingly indulgent? what audience? am i thinking of an audience when i'm writing? hell no.

i have no audience because this is not a book for publication. this is a safe place for me to say whatever i want to say and there are a handful of people who look at it. and that is okay. it is okay because i trust them enough to say whatever i want.

so is this a story? am i telling you stories? good question. what does the masthead of this blog say? hah!

but there is a story here as all words contain some sort of stories, it is just sometimes we don't really want to know it so we don't pay enough attention. other times, we don't really want to know the real story so we pay the wrong kind of attention. perhaps this is how myths are created, quality assurance in storytelling. skin out the ugly stuff and leave the tasty, meaty stuff behind –– devoid of connective tissue. is that a little like the person who loves chicken but won't eat it off the bone? perhaps they ought to be vegetarians. perhaps they ought to just eat hamburger and nothing else. heh, i like that thought. perhaps i ought to press that on to someone!

so back to the story. i'm sure there is a story here but i doubt i'll start at the beginning. perhaps the fourth or fifth section of the book because if i start at the beginning none of the later parts will make any difference. it would be like having a nice dinner and being obsessed with whether the dessert you ordered is really going to go with the courses that are being served.

well, i lied. well not really. i just mean i'm not really to tell the story yet but there is one. just wait, you will just have to wait.

trust me, i'm telling stories.

random crossings: Easter, 1916

i had thought of this poem in a long time. years ago, i chose it to recite for a storytelling class in which i was being videotaped. looking back, i must have been so nervous the emotional content of the poem was lost in the reading. but today, years later when i came across something relating to Yeats i went searching for it and read it again slowly. it was so vivid in feeling that i could taste and smell the words; the sentiment and the pain...

and i realized it speaks volumes to what is going on with me personally and in the world we are racing in – this crazy world of beauty and violence, sadness and laughter. so here it is:

Easter, 1916

I HAVE met them at close of day
Coming with vivid faces
From counter or desk among grey
Eighteenth-century houses.
I have passed with a nod of the head
Or polite meaningless words,
Or have lingered awhile and said
Polite meaningless words,
And thought before I had done
Of a mocking tale or a gibe
To please a companion
Around the fire at the club,
Being certain that they and I
But lived where motley is worn:
All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

That woman’s days were spent
In ignorant good-will,
Her nights in argument
Until her voice grew shrill.
What voice more sweet than hers
When, young and beautiful,
She rode to harriers?
This man had kept a school
And rode our winged horse;
This other his helper and friend
Was coming into his force;
He might have won fame in the end,
So sensitive his nature seemed,
So daring and sweet his thought.
This other man I had dreamed
A drunken, vainglorious lout.
He had done most bitter wrong
To some who are near my heart,
Yet I number him in the song;
He, too, has resigned his part
In the casual comedy;
He, too, has been changed in his turn,
Transformed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

Hearts with one purpose alone
Through summer and winter seem
Enchanted to a stone
To trouble the living stream.
The horse that comes from the road.
The rider, the birds that range
From cloud to tumbling cloud,
Minute by minute they change;
A shadow of cloud on the stream
Changes minute by minute;
A horse-hoof slides on the brim,
And a horse plashes within it;
The long-legged moor-hens dive,
And hens to moor-cocks call;
Minute by minute they live:
The stone’s in the midst of all.

Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
That is Heaven’s part, our part
To murmur name upon name,
As a mother names her child
When sleep at last has come
On limbs that had run wild.
What is it but nightfall?
No, no, not night but death;
Was it needless death after all?
For England may keep faith
For all that is done and said.
We know their dream; enough
To know they dreamed and are dead;
And what if excess of love
Bewildered them till they died?
I write it out in a verse -
MacDonagh and MacBride
And Connolly and Pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

tuesday night's dream: the gauntlet

i was in sf or the east bay, but i think it started in north beach.

i was doing something with christine and david.

unusual cause the two of us have not done anything together for almost ten years. we met and went out to eat and hung out at cafes. when it was time to go home, for some reason that is not clear, christine was not going home and was leaving her car to me to drive to her place to crash.

i said ok but went somewhere else with david and andrea instead.

it was a little restaurant, kind of ship-shack but cute. it had little wooden tables for four people with small vases of flowers and simple but well placed settings on all of them. we walked into an oblong room with windows on the right wall and on the far wall. there was a view, it looked out over water.

i also have memories of a carnival somewhere along out there.

i don't know how long we stayed there but when we left david turned out that he was driving my old toyota from my art center days. we joked that it probably needed a new registration tag and a new headlamp so he'd better be careful.

he took me to wherever christine was living. i knocked on the door and a young woman answered. she was obviously woken up and dressed for sleep. i explained who i was and what i was doing there and she must have known who i was so she let me in. she showed me to christine's room. it was a spartan but comfortable looking place. all the furniture were made of wood. the bed was unmade.

the girl left me and i undressed and went to bed right away.

next thing i knew was that i woke up to voices or giggles, i opened my eyes to faces peeking through the bedroom door. they shut the door as soon as i sat up in bed. confused, i got up and wrapped something around me and walked towards the door. i pushed the door open and walked through to the adjacent room and was met with a sight that stopped me in my tracks.

it was a narrow long room with rows of beds just like the one i slept in. again, all the furniture here were wooden. the thing that made me stopped was there were about twenty young women sitting there staring at me and giggling to themselves.

there were "ooh's" and "ah's." it obvious i was not supposed to be here or this rarely happened. i felt not embarrassed as much as vulnerable or out of place. i started to walk towards the bathroom on the other end of the room. it felt like i was walking through a visual gauntlet. i remember whispers of mutterings of things like "ooh it's a man" and "whose is he?"

that last comment made me dash for the bathroom and close the door.

that is when i woke up.

hippocampus

he put his hands in his pocket
felt a spine and a curl

pulled out an ancient amulet
the crook of a tail wrapped

around his finger; hinting,
he looked down at his feet,

saw dirt, not sand, dry not wet
no need for a seamount

so far away from home.
he put the seahorse in a bottle

of seawater, promising
one day, they will both go home.

feb 2007

(bonsai) bent

for suttonhoo
in response to a photo on her blog of an old bonsai

tiny branches from
giant roots bent,
bearing the weight
of heaven to appease
human desires

mar 1, 2007

utterings

won't you tell me a little?
tell me the whispers between
the twiggy little branches;
the pale harsh light that
lives between dark trunks
too young to bear the full
weight of a thousand uttered
secrets of a fading kingdom

feb 2007

condensation

condensation on the inside of the window
indicates how cold it is on the other side
the still air in between clear layers

discusses the distance between two minds
discusses the discordance of given identity
against chosen integrity; oil and water;

fire and water; though in human terms
there is no self balancing mechanism;
homeostasis was not a lesson learned

in childhood nor in learned books
those who understand it hide it
like the air between layers in plain sight

mar 6, 2007

sotto voce

it is late and her voice;
her voice is lisping but
rolls in like lazy rows
of endless waves.
waves like the lazy
touch of a sleepy
lover rolling over my
restless cheeks; waiting
for some once promised
kiss; waiting for some
bouquet of blue irises
she said she'd send;
i roll over like dew on
the touch of dawn;
i roll over like a kitten
with vulnerable chin;
i lay stretched waiting
for my love, my fate
i lay waiting for her
to wake my affection
so i can touch the pale
light in her precious eyes

feb 2007

broken glass, swallowed

sometimes long sequences of delight and joy are followed by shadows of disappointment.

not from the same source of your joy but from other sources of your love or loved ones.

it is the nature of those who care for each other or feel obliged to care for each not by choice but by circumstance. it is the nature of mutual resentment, perhaps. what happens when for whatever reasons we can't clearly communicate to each other; years of misunderstanding; years of deception; years of whatever.

after a long time, it almost feels like the reasons don't matter anymore.

all that matters is you have this feeling inside of you that feels like swallowed broken glass and it causes this warm mellow almost blissful pain; and you don't really know what to do about it anymore except to experience it.

eastern light

morning comes with a cool breeze rising with the sun. in the midst of these hills the sun is lazy, staying behind chapparal and boulder strewn summits well past eight o'clock.

the westward view is hazy, trying to decide if it will linger or fly away to sea with the wind.

i walked the dog up the hill, breaking into sunlight; breaking into a movement of atmosphere cold enough to pull up my hood. birds chirped, not quite singing. they displayed their mustard yellows plumes like starlets in hollywood; brightly and briefly.

it is the setting for some difficult things i have to do.

to acknowledge disappointment i cause in others; to acknowledge i am just a person and to find a place for being ok within myself.

Jena

last night's dreams were of a traveling sort, again. it is not an odd thing at all. i am nomadic at a genetic level i think. anyway, it seemed i was somewhere in europe for a wedding. i think it was france, not paris but somewhere in france where there was a large river heading out to sea. i'm sure who's wedding it was. i don't even remember the bride and groom. the person i remember was something else though.

she was slight of build, had straight blonde hair and almost a perfect oval face. none of her features stood out more than the others, she seemed a model of perfect balance. she reminded me of someone who just stepped out of an early northern renaissance painting. she wore what seemed like an antique dress, lacy and slightly ivory. even her expressions were one of gentle calmness and restraint. i stood in front of her in a dimly lit room with wood panels that seemed they have seen their share of history, old and worn with a patina of a ten thousand touches from long dead hands. this is where it gets kind of strange.

we faced each other, not a single word uttered for a long time then i produced a quill. a calligraphy quill. she stepped closer to me and i leaned my head forward as if to see better. my right hand raised the quill and i looked sharply into her left eye and started to write on her cornea. gently and deftly the quill drew a capital 'J' followed by an 'e' then an 'n' and ended with an 'a'. i stood back and looked at the crimson color of the ink glistening atop the shiny and clear surface of her cornea. i was confused and then she smiled and the letters faded away. her eye was again the undisturbed deep brown of vietnamese lacquer. its luster and clarity seemed supernatural.

moments later, i tried to write the word again. i was unsure what the word was. was it her name? she still had not uttered a word nor had i. but this time as i wrote the 'J' and then the 'e', the ink dissolved into the liquid pool in front of me. the letter forms assimilated by the liquid walnut iris. what happened next was a little fuzzy. i remember kissing her and she kissed me back. she tasted of fresh picked fruit; somewhere between peaches and something else flowery.

the first words came out of my mouth, "come with me."

"i can't. i can't come with you," with no emotion in her clear voice.

"why?"

"i just can't, you wouldn't understand."

the next thing i knew i was looking from outside of my body. i didn't let go of her. i held her arms as if we were still standing there but we were falling away from me. and what lay below us as we started to spiral was not some abyss but the pages of an old open book. we seemed smaller as we fell away as it it were a black hole though and then abruptly, the book closed and i woke up.
--

so any takers want to analyze this one? ;-)

awareness of confusion [or lack thereof]

sometimes it is through the musings of another or the awareness of their suffering that you are awakened to your own ability for compassion and survival that sometimes gets lost because you are too much in your own mind, unaware of your surroundings and others around you. sometimes unawareness sticks to me like glue. how strange is it to have something to apparent and not pay attention? and how ineffectual you can be to provide any comfort to them...

i have a friend who is ill and in the hospital. in the last several days, i've found myself incapable of offering any comfort. this disturbs me. even though i know there is really not much i can do except to reassure her she isn't alone or forgotten, it doesn't seem enough.

i don't know where i'm going with this. perhaps i just needed to air my confusion and sense of helplessness...perhaps if i let it out it will fly away and something will present itself...

tripped me

he thought there were other people in the room. he heard voices. he heard chuckling. he was sure of it. he checked the window but it was closed. it was bright outside. even the blinds could not keep the bright white at bay. he turned.

across the hotel room above the dresser there was a mirror. blinking, he thought he saw people in the mirror. closed his eyes for eight seconds, he counted to be sure. lifted tired lids and there were indeed three people in the mirror. three people in different moments in time. wait, how could he know? how could he tell they were in different moments? he stepped closer, then closer to the mirror until the bed got in the way.

the cushy firmness of the mattress pushed back at him. he felt light headed, woozy but fought to stand. it was him in the mirror, but three times. he moved and tilted his head. it felt like looking through the eyes of an insect yet there were only three eyes. one stacked upon the other. the faces looking back at him remained stacked even if he tilted his head at an angle. it made the lunch and bad coffee in his stomach want to leave his body. still, find stillness he thought. closes eyes again, momentary darkness, the light seeping though his lids aren't the normal pink but green.

how strange.

opens again, focuses on the middle him. the one that seems as sickly in the reflection as he feels. the face is full of hesitation, just like he feels. that must be the real him. confusion, yes, that is there too. lost, sure, that is the real him. without moving his head, he turns his focus up. the upper him is staring down at him. lips look a little pursed. maybe the upper him is not so happy for some reason. he looks as if he is about to get chastised or something. not good. the real him that he thinks he is really wants to bolt, to run out of there, to make the flight or fight reflex kick in.

but he can't yet, not without seeing the lower him. that other face. the lower him is more focused. head tilted. lower him seems like he is looking up a little, just a little perhaps. but he wouldn't call it happy either, impatient. that is what it is. maybe he is impatient enough to get over this, this staring, observation, whatever this is. yes, that is what it is. maybe if he just stands still, lower him will get bored and then just go away.

he stands. still. deep breath. attempts a smile but nothing happens. middle him just looks confused still. moments pass, long moments measured by the death of spiders in the recesses of his mind. time is no longer.

there are only him's.

then a bell, then a bright light and a touch but a strange touch. he shivers and then jolts. he feels himself folding over at the waist as if he was going to get sick. the muscles of his abdomen pull and snaps him forward like trap clasping his body. the bell is closer, louder and the touch shakes him, vibrates in his chest. eyes pop open, darkness then a gap then a shaft of light from an open door.

a female voice, "sweetheart are you gonna answer that phone?"

– sd, 2007

the last rays

of friday's harsh white glow;
of searing cyan fading to magenta
spikily dispersed by pointed pines;

fast, stationary to flashing windows;
the cyclic thunk, thunk of steel wheels
ten feet below against steel rails

taking me fast to a southern view,
taking me fast to where night falls
like blackened copper into deep pockets

(23 feb 2007)

love is a stranger

love is a demon whose plains i roam like a mongol on horseback
mistress of my range is sometimes kind, sometimes harsh
she shows me a face of a blue moon at dusk
she shows me a face of a pale star at dawn
it is not by habit that i could guess her mood nor intention

love is a stranger whose bed i sometimes wake to sunrise in
mistress of my comfort sometimes hides her face from me
i am often left in a castle resplendent with candlelight
i am often left in a castle with a hundred windows and no exit
it is not by knowing my place that i am in her good graces

love is a jealous partner in crime who like me is a thief
mistress of my riches sometimes tosses me a golden wishbone
she brings me garnets and rubies but never a clear diamond
she brings me silks from far off places and uses them to bind
it is not by trust that i relinquish verses to her possession

love is a potion of a cynical heart torn witch i know
love is an addiction of a violent tempered god i worship
between spirit, body and mind love holds me together
like a thousand splinters trying to burst from constant heartache
like a multitude of hungers trying to meet their constant craving

late is the hour

late is the hour, yet my body and mind seem to be in another time zone where it is either early morning or early evening; times when everything inside is shifting from stillness into motion. it makes me wonder what it might be like to be able to go for four or six days without sleep and then sleep for several days straight through. or perhaps i just find something so soothing in the late hours of night's darkness when most everyone else is in deep slumber and my senses are not disturbed by their waking static. i don't understand the dichotomy of my feelings about people most of the time. i don't understand how i love and hate people at the same time so frequently. perhaps it is just a reflection of my own perception and attitude about myself, it could be; why not? if that indeed is the case, it should not surprise me. nothing should surprise me anymore or at least that is what i would like to think...well some of the time anyway. i think i also like to change my mind; a lot! hah!

body schema

listless and restless are his fingers,
wanting to draw and scribble
something; some face to comfort
the fatigue drawn out under
the falling night sky and rising stars.

eager and craving are the sensations
coursing through the vessels, past
tissues hungry for blood, dying
for warmth promised for so long;
for touches promised like dreams.

tingling melodies are caressing
the thousands of tiny hairs rising
up from his skin, from the goose bumps.
body schema reaching its limit;
body's thirst for soulful company.

imagined liquor reaches his lips,
she swallows a thought, he is quenched.
momentarily dark and light are married;
a bond like glue between broken pieces;
a bond like halves of a fallen seed.

feb 21, 2007

silent ether

for Kat

leagues away and behind glass
she lies in his mind, half awake,
scared and restless;

through a window she imagines
him pulling a sharp quill
across parchment, ink bleeding

into pools becoming sad eyes.
letters becoming whispers –
if she could only hear his voice.

beneath a cyan lined cloud,
he stares at once warm tea
waiting for magic to appear;

painting into his retina
something akin to cold comfort
and sighs into silent ether.

feb 21, 2007

plush

for Kat

words they exchange trail in his mind
like water ripples in the wake of fingers.

they leave fragments, word pictures
in his imagination, fleeting and ephemeral.

she stirs the water, conjuring scents
and lover's spirits, floating as steam.

the candle's flame reflected in glass
hides what waits behind the pane;

keeps a comfortable mystery
between the mind and the heart.

moments of silence are savored
like the hush of velvet curtains;

plush to the touch like polished nails
on soft, warm, clean, damp skin.

distance between them is like
anticipation before an embrace.

time apart between them is like
a virgin touch that won't let go.

feb 19, 2007

the white winter sun

puts a pale highlight
on my forehead
between my eyes.
it places a mark for me
to remember that there
is an invisible eye there;
that i must remember
to use to see inside myself
and find the reflection of
the one who holds my heart.

imagen

blossom laden
supine against
the closing sky

these arms reach
without body
to touch, caress

so with soft hues
seduction is left
to wanting eyes

2007

partly rendered images

he stares into the distorted reflection
as if it were an awake dream,
it is midday yet he wonders where
she will be when the sun sets across
the midwestern horizon;

time zone and geography denied.
why should he care,
why do thoughts even graze
the mind's vision of her visage?
never having had a single touch,

they live vicariously in each
other's imagination;
full of partly rendered images
and half said sentiments,
filling gaps with the desire of hope

and desperation of loneliness.
genies aren't found in closets
so the instinct to lustfully wander
is as strong as waxwings looking for cedars;
albatrosses fleeing familiar shores.

miracles aren't found in god boxes or
behind altars so the desire to mutter
dangerous desires is like a
murder of crows looking for roadkill;
constrictors embracing its meal.

with sunset in the rear view mirror,
she drives east into the violet dusk
her mind on the reflection of
a heart's imagination becoming
clear somewhere in the between.

2007

night

the night is still young but inside
it feels like this dark passage
has matured and leaves me fatigued.
i search the night sky for a moon,
a beacon but only see reflections

of a blank stare hoping for some
sudden change, hoping for a ghost
or a miracle or a demon lover,
whichever comes first.
in the glass panes, dirty on the outside

and cold on the inside there are dark eyes
gazing at me. vaguely familiar eyes,
i'm sure i knew them once
when i was younger though i'm not sure
they were any more joyous back in that life,

back in that tale.
perhaps if i open the window,
open the floodgates, something will rush in,
blow these old letters and toss the swan quills
into a little storm with enough force

to bring life back into these old tissues.
the spirit gets refreshed but flesh grows tired
from constant re-use without another's touch,
from constant scrapes without another's caresses.
bones grow brittle from bitterness and

vessels get stiff and hardened from bitter tears.
the night is still young but inside
it feels like the next day's sunset,
all things fallen ahead of themselves
looking for a way out, for a gentle repose.

feb 14, 2007

black and white

look, look closely at this black;
the soul's color in these eyes.
universes contained within;
all pulled tight by gravity;
a singularity of emotions.

look, look closely at this white;
the sun's blinding light
barren of expression;
flared out a million miles;
supernova of emptiness.

2007

blue coat

i was somewhere with dan.

i was excavating or sculpting. it was difficult to tell between the two. there was a large boulder and i had been staring at it for some time. it was granite and rough. i forged some tools; odd looking things like chisels yet with tiny finger like prongs; some had two, some had three or more. i made at least three or four of these tools.

with them, i was revealing a code written in the stone. it was like chipping away at little bits to reveal something like lines of braille. but as the lines continued, they became more like a bas relief seam in the rock. it was like two tectonic plates coming together, pushing together. it reminded me of satellite images of the seam running north south in the atlantic ocean. the middle crease was dark and on either side of the slopes of the seams there was white, like grey hair at the temples of an aging man.

we talked about it, wondered what it meant and then had to pack up.

as we were walking into an airport, there was a woman. curly blonde, medium height wearing a three quarter length blue coat tied at the waist. she kept glancing at me but not turned enough for me to ever see her face.

i glanced at dan, questioning. he shrugged. i figured it was a message of some sort. i just don't know what it means.

nothing new really, my dreamscapes are full of strangers who sometimes take months or years until i meet them in real life. perhaps this is why i make records of the encounters; so i can be sure later i was not imagining things...
--

strange thing later, in waking state...

i had a chat with an old coworker i had not talked to in ages. i had some business related questions to her...

i asked where she was working now? she said, oh! i'm at blue coat.

thing is it didn't really occur to me until i was writing the last lines of the dream journal entry...

nothing surprises me anymore. i still don't know what the dream means but that is the beauty of it, i suppose...

Empty Space

There is an open hand
but the space within between
fingers, palm and wrist
is taken up by the heart
that once lived in a chest.

Feb 2007

contemplations

The breath of his thoughts
are as tangled as his hair;
sculpted and painted visuals
of what lives inside.



Stone ground into a band,
something harder than bone;
lasting longer than flesh;
a reminder of fleeting breaths.

Feb 2007

death of an ibook

alas my poor ibook is getting old. it has been diagnosed with parkinson's disease.

so i'm taking donations for a replacement. :)

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

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

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

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

Killing Me

You are killing me with images of yourself.
You make me want to write poems
that will allure you to me.

You make me want to know
more about the beating heart
beneath your pulsing flesh,

the undulations of the skin on your breasts.
There is the gentle movement
like the blur of the pale moon in the night

and I want to watch it. I wonder about
the scent of your skin when you are asleep.
There is the rustling of the sheets as you turn,

they leave a trace of a muse,
melodies still lingering.
There is a stray forgotten hair

on the pillow next to you.
There are a thousand tales
caught in the five inch

strand of gold, silver and amber.
They stay forever out of focus
because your heart has too many colors.

They stay out of focus because
you know I'm not yet blind.
If I ever meet you

I shall have to be blindfolded,
I will discover the hollow above your eyes
and the gentle shape of your jaw

where it rises to meet your ear.
I will find jewels in the place
where earrings go to war

to have a place above your smile.

Tonight if I don't find you in my dreams I will die.
Tonight if I go as such I will have not a single regret.

2007

There's a coyote outside my window

Coyote

There's a coyote outside my window
in my dreams. She howls all night
at the midnight moon blue and creamy.

She sings and stutters
with a flamenco heartbeat
and warns me of the wiles
of beautiful women.

At dawn she lays at the foot of my bed
waiting for me to wake,
looking at my face with wishful, longing eyes.

and then they pass by like a sparrow

the sparrow

there is that in between space again;
another, it is something you are so acutely aware
of and at the same time feels like
it is the relative you have never met
at a funeral
so you aren't quite sure how to act.

it moves, the scene that is;
it moves and in the motion;
in the blurs;
you see faces that don't quite make sense to you.

it is as if they were relatives
or could have been relatives.
it is in the way they look at you;
so intent.

and then they pass by like a sparrow
looking for that little seed stuck in the rail tracks
that she can't get freed...

then it comes.
then it comes like a gentle,
seducing surge of a wave;
not quite a wave,
not quite the surge of a large swell,
but it feels like something that materialized
and grew and grew
and got bigger
and then became your skin.

it suddenly became your thin little membrane
between you and the rest of the world.
and that space suddenly became something different.
it was not a space anymore

it became the emotion that keeps you breathing.

(2007)

in spite of all the dreaming

Anaphora

Each day with so much ceremony
begins, with birds, with bells,
with whistles from a factory;
such white-gold skies our eyes
first open on, such brilliant walls
that for a moment we wonder
"Where is the music coming from, the energy?
The day was meant for what ineffable creature
we must have missed?" Oh promptly he
appears and takes his earthly nature
instantly, instantly falls
victim of long intrigue,
assuming memory and mortal
mortal fatigue.

More slowly falling into sight
and showering into stippled faces,
darkening, condensing all his light;
in spite of all the dreaming
squandered upon him with that look,
suffers our uses and abuses,
sinks through the drift of bodies,
sinks through the drift of vlasses
to evening to the beggar in the park
who, weary, without lamp or book
prepares stupendous studies:
the fiery event
of every day in endless
endless assent.

Elizabeth Bishop

because i could not find sleep

because i could not find sleep
after talking to you, a glancing of
words that might be thought conversation

i rose to make tea eggs
in the silence
of the southern night

and it made me think of a hike we took
that summer day, the time we walked up
that mountain ridge,

warmed by the sun

my skin remembers how its surface
was cooled when we descended into
the path along the creek,

breathing in
the changed smell of the air
as we passed among redwoods that thrived

in that most unlikely place
we entered a valley of coolness
surrounded by golden,

baked hills strewn with oaks

we could not have known
then as we know now
that we had found

the nature of our path but as yet unaware

(2003)

strange nights

last night's dream was so strange.

it started in a room or place where i was manipulating a machine that looked like a asymmetrical monitor that had a lever on the right side. it looked like the style of design from the 50's and 60's, kind of retro.

i was looking at the screen as if i was driving some kind of vehicle remotely. then the dream changed and i was in the actual vehicle as if transported. i follow through this maze of corridors and tunnels and navigated through streets. one street name was larch. i don't remember the other streets now.

i woke up and went back the same dream a number of times. i was in a studio or apartment staying four young women. i didn't recognize any of them but it was odd because they were all asian. the apartment was elegant but did have any walls between personal areas. the separate rooms for individual closets and bathrooms. i had the sense we were all getting dressed and going out for the night. it seemed like it was supposed to be los angeles except it was too pretty. there was gorgeous architecture and there was too much neon and clean. perhaps tokyo? we were going out for sushi and the food was exquisite. tasty and beautiful.

because one of the women could not flag a cab, we had to take the same kind of tube but there were not cars. we just flew down the tubes at breakneck speed. i didn't know the way so i had to keep up with the women. i remember on the way back from the restaurant i took a different route slightly cause one of the women said it was other way and it was because we didn't have to navigate down a deep narrow chute.

i woke slightly and went back into the dream and returned to the apartment but once inside it had changed into a house on a river. there were some friends and family there. the house layout sort of reminded a house i lived in when i was 8-10 years old. i was in a back bedroom and there was a stray cat that came in the house. no pets are allowed so i chased the cat. when i picked it up it was an animate thing but made of burlap and as i gripped it little black things the size of watermelon seeds started to leak out everywhere over the carpet. i was in a panic because i put the cat out and it got back in again.

Thresholds

Clean, 1.1.07

New Year's day. Blue sky morning, it seems like any other cold January day really if you look outside the window. Its threshold into another calendar year is invisible. It is most real inside our minds. I was browsing through cirkusprinsesse's blog and saw her recap of 2006 and it made me start thinking about similar things. It was a mixed bag of surprises, fleeting moments of joy, dark abysses of despair along with an ever present sense of humor that twists itself into many different shapes in order to accommodate laughter into each and every situation so that I could go to pieces but not fall completely apart.

So what happened:

- I found myself alive and still living
- I reconnected with some family and severed connections with others that are family
- I learned that contentment and sadness aren't mutually exclusive and can exist in the same time and space together
- I reconnected with some long lost friends who are dear to my heart and found purpose in the friendships
- I accepted that I am in fact an artist to the very core of my being and to be otherwise is to destroy my integrity
- I learned that I can be extremely self destructive in order to preserve my integrity and that it can be preserved in healthier ways
- I realized that I am here mostly for others and not always myself
- I realized that some of the people I cherish the most are the farthest away from me geographically
- I realized that human connections are impervious to the vagaries of time and space
- I learned you can be very close with someone and learn to love them even when they are thousands of miles away and you may have never or ever meet them in person
- I learned that sometimes people you barely know can give you more comfort than your own flesh and blood. It is bittersweet
- I rediscovered that I can indeed paint though I am not sure where some of the ability comes from
- I discovered that some things I want to convey have to be done with words, images and silence in mixed combinations
- I found that I can live with very little
- I am finally officially divorced after five years of legal limbo
- I am a proud new uncle (again) to a beautiful little niece named Kim-Anh (she is in Paris, can't wait to meet her)
- One of my poems got published
- I found that in the blackest of depression one can find beauty and perhaps that itself is reason enough to persevere and continue
- I learned a lot about the inner turmoils of depression from a dead poet (Sylvia Plath) and found that she helps me cope from another place
- I accepted and learned to be more comfortable accusations of treason in order to be faithful to myself
- I embraced the idea that the only certainty in life is that uncertainty exists so I try to live with that in each and every moment of consciousness

I am sure this list could go on forever but I think this is the gist...

Happy Birthday Papa

Happy Birthday Papa

New Year's day is 13 hours away.
I think of all those who have birthdays on that day
though you neither saw 1967 nor the age of 21.

I wondered often what the sky was like on the day;
on the evening you complained of the headache.
I imagine an indigo tinted grey sky ceiling
covering the streets littered with ochre leaves.

New Year's day is 12 hours and 45 minutes away.
I think of the January 1st that you missed;
I always imagined that it snowed on that cold day.

Three continents and 40 years later close to New Year's day,
my mind and memory still goes back to the once gone date
and the shape of my heart still carries the form
of a flame that must have been the furnace of your soul.

– Son Dao
(December 31, 2006)

My father would have turned 60 on January 1st 2007

Crossings

For Zsuzsanna

Crossings

He stares at the reflection in the still water
and understands why the trapped fox chewed off its paw.
The sun lies low in the western sky bathed in vermillion.

She sits alone in a crowded café like a pillar of salt
and understands why the caged bird plucks its feathers bare.
The background music plays out the soundtrack of her life.

Vast geography and time between faces that have never met
sometimes cross hues and vibrate identical frequencies,
connected by either an old sage's strings and red silk ribbons;
or the light, wave and particles of a quantum universe.

(December 31, 2006)

It's the season of bowing our heads in the wind

The Atheist Christmas Carol

It's the season of grace coming out of the void
Where a man is saved by a voice in the distance
It's the season of possible miracle cures
Where hope is currency and death is not the last unknown
Where time begins to fade
And age is welcome home

It's the season of eyes meeting over the noise
And holding fast with sharp realization
It's the season of cold making warmth a divine intervention
You are safe here you know now

Don't forget
Don't forget I love
I love
I love you

It's the season of scars and of wounds in the heart
Of feeling the full weight of our burdens
It's the season of bowing our heads in the wind
And knowing we are not alone in fear
Not alone in the dark

– Vienna Teng

Christmas Day

Christmas day comes to me dressed in grey clouds and the scent of Oolong tea. Hardly a white Christmas but it is a peaceful one. I have the split urge to stay in all day dressed in pajamas and do nothing or to go out later to see friends. It has been so long since I've been in desired company and in laughter on Christmas that I feel like a bear who doesn't want to come out of hibernation...

Silly SantaSon

I rose with the sun this morning. Something was calling I think though I'm sure it was not a Christmas
ghost. They don't bother with me for the most part. I am either too silly or cynical about this particular holiday. I find it distasteful that western culture has embraced something solemn and turned it into a global economic venture. It is not Christmas spirit, it is shopping spirit. I'm sure many people think of this but most may not say it. Oh well...

In any case, at least for a short moment I decided to be at least goofy and humorous about it all. At least for the sake of the children who still believe in St Nicholas.

Merry Christmas blogland!

Winter Solstice

The shortest day of the year and the longest night of the year. It is my favorite day.

This morning greeted me with rain clouds and heaven's tears. The angels must be crying for those who are lonely and aren't loved. The cold and damp of grieving hearts seep through the air through the glass of my windows and into my muscle and bones like sharp shards of heaven cast from above. Faith is something one believes in without proof. Being human is the conditioning of familiarity to all things even if they make one suffer. Do I want to be a person of faith or a human being? This is the question.

This season of holidays and such seem redolent of bringing these types of thoughts out of me. Each year the period between Thanksgiving through Christmas seems to me more of a journey of walking barefeet on fallen cactus or beds of hell's coals. Some say that happiness is a choice, I did choose to be happy today. However, often I find that being happy and being sad are not mutually exclusive. It doesn't sound nice but in my experience it is the truth as I have experienced it.

So I am left to try to find the beauty in the sadness, all things that are beautiful are not pretty. This is today's measure of surity...

Those who (have) transformed

It's grandpa's beanie. I put it on this morning because it was cold. And then I thought of him...

Years ago when I was about 14 years old, I was preparing to take a trip with my uncle and cousins to the Grand Canyon. He told me it would be a wonderful trip and that I should write down my memories, my experiences. He gave me a note book. I had never kept a journal before. I took the book but really didn't put much down in it. I didn't know how to translate my experiences and thoughts into language that another could read and understand.

At the end of the trip there were some notes in there, dates, places and most likely some doodles. I always doodled then as I do to this day. I didn't realize until much later that in each of my doodles were encapsulated the experience I was living through in that moment. I can look at a doodle or sketch and recall entire volumes of what was going on in that moment, people, faces, images, words, pages of books, conversations, feelings, etc. Some people use mnemonic devices, I used drawings; my own language of hieroglyphs.

Some time after that trip, I started to try and keep a journal. It was strange and difficult at first – this thing with language. Being a perfectionist, it was hard at first to write down the perfect thought because I viewed the journal as something special, almost sacred so each sentence had to be perfect, as if what if someone read it one day? I got over that eventually.

26 years later, I still keep journals and try to record things. Well not so much things or events, there are better ways of recording those. I try to record the events and emotions that go on inside my mind, my heart. The funny moments, the happy moments, the anger, frustration, disappointment and so often, the heartbreaks.

This journey, process, commitment has led me to places in the world and in the cities of my interior that I could not have imagined. Uncertainty has been the only constant, I have learned that surprise is independent of good or evil, happiness or sadness. Uncertainty has become my friend because no matter how sure something is, our surity in the very thing we have faith in that it won't change is very likely to be the thing that unravels us like a hemp cord overburdened in an artic storm.

Every moment in my life I am reminded of these simple lessons.

It is heartening, poignant, sweet and sometimes bitter that the gentle words of an old man who has now left this physical world still vibrates in me like the hum of my arteries pumping blood through my tissues. I am reminded that life is not made up of grandeur but of meekness and little details that often reside in corners out of our line of sight or in partial shadow. I am reminded that this universe we live in is made up of astronomically tiny pieces of sometimes matter that change in the very event of us trying to observe them.

I think grandpa too has transformed into those little Quantum packets and he is out there in the universe exploring the stars. No doubt he is mapping everything, but that is another story...

Bodies of water and strange faces

Last night I had another dream with a large body of water, I think it was a sea or ocean. I know it ran North-South and the water was to the West. Don't ask, I just know. I am always oriented in my dreams. I always know which ways the cardinal directions are. Maybe I was a navigator in a past life and I did something horrid and was cursed to keep certain aspects of that life: constant wandering and never being able to be lost into something I love. Anyway, the place was coastal. There was a very large, modern house in the dream. I was staying there but it was not my home. Again, I was a chaperone or escort or bodyguard or some sort. Me, a mercenary; funny as hell. But this time it was a little different, I was in charge of two young women in this dream. They were sisters and one of them, the older one was some kind of performer. We kept going back and forth to a huge old theatre of some kind. It was beautiful. I didn't understand why their parents were not around as they were not adults yet. At the end of the dream, we were preparing for a long journey to somewhere. I didn't know where, that was the end of the dream.

In writing this entry, it struck me that what if I was not a hired hand and this was in the future and the girls were my children? Yikes! I have had many prescient dreams before but at the time I didn't know it. They sometimes come true in days, weeks or in most cases, years after the dreams. Hmm, something to ponder...

Slipping through water

Had a dream last night that I was somewhere with mom and Khoi near a large body of water. I was canoeing. I remember my thighs being sore from kneeling. I talked to mom, didn't talk to Khoi.

Later in another dream, the body of water was larger. I was in a house on an island in a sound or something like that. Bernie and some others were there, he got his hands on a canoe that didn't seem all that worthy but he wanted to go out. I looked at the water and the sky and saw that there was a lot of wind and cautioned him against it but he went anyway.

You can throw someone a flotation ring but you can't make them hang on to it.

Condensation on glass

When I opened the blinds this morning, there was condensation on the glass. It is the first time of the season. It is a little strange how I've paid attention to the first's of the season this autumn. Not that I'm ever inattentive or ignorant of little things but it feels that I'm paying a different kind of eye to them now. Something inside has changed in the last months, even in the last days, I have perhaps crossed some kind of threshold. Perhaps life is coming back to me or I have wandered back into its domain.

I had dreams of doing something that required the taking of blood from patients in a hospital or clinic. That in itself is not odd though what was odd was that I was queasy about it. I am in real life never queasy about blood nor needles. The entire
dream had a feeling of discomfort. Odd really.

But the best thing that happened last night was right before I went to sleep I got a message from me dear friend Hilary that I had lost contact with for a long time. I was too tired to reply in full but sent a message to say hi and say I would write more today. I had the biggest smile on my face in a long time falling asleep...

In a raging river

I come into Friday morning with Oolong tea and the scent of Meyer lemons. It is not such a bad start. Outside it is grey with hints of cyan, the blue sky trying in earnest to break through but in honesty I don't mind a bit of gloom.

The last dream I recall clearly was endowed with water, no surprise. But there was a lot of water, a deluge. I was at some sort of research facility. It looked like an old NASA lab. Everything was old, nine inch monitors, old analog phones, men in white short sleeve button shirts and thick black framed plastic glasses. I was there to find a message, do a pick up. I am not sure if I found the message or not. It turned out the entire facility sat on pilings in the middle of a huge river like the Mekong or the Amazon. And for whatever reason, it was cresting and tearing everything apart. Tsunami? Perhaps. The building we were in was coming lose from its pilings and we were trying to evacuate. Debris, huge debris were flowing upriver, the current reversed violently. Trees, man made detritus flowed and tumbled all around us. I don't know if we made it out...

Certainty and Uncertainty

Wednesday has passed like a cloud moving over cold water.

Time spent sometimes feels like it is not spent well in the moment until one has had a moment to ponder what was just experienced. Then, then everything seems to have a purpose whereas hours or minutes before seemed pointless. Is all understanding only in hindsight?

I like to think not but certainty is a strange companion. She is steadfast only in her uncertainty. She always keeps one on their toes. Perhaps this is why she is so enchanting, we like to think that we like knowns but deep within the universe of our hearts we harbor an affection for what we aren't sure of, what we don't know.

It is like the temptation of opening Pandora's box.

Why do I personify certainty as a woman? Perhaps it is a woman that I think of as certainty/uncertainty...

Rainy Tuesday Morning

Sleep did not last as long as I would liked last night but I don't feel too fatigued. I woke up in the middle of the night to the "tid, tip, tup" of rain drops on the roof. The rain has been steady since sometimes after midnight. I tend to sleep better with the rain but last night wasn't so. Nevertheless I did go into REM sleep. The dream I recall was odd. Well, all my dreams are odd.

I was on some sort of school campus with a number of people with 4x4 vehicles. It was some sort of camp out. We were to spend the night spread out across the grounds of this place. There was a grass quad, tables, benches and chairs. I remember staking out a spot for my tent after a conversation with some people. I put a green folding plastic and metal chair to hold my spot. I then left to go back to my old apartment. I rang the bell. A young woman came to the door. I apologized that I had not come back to fetch all my things and asked if it was okay that I did it now? She let me in and we walked upstairs into the flat. It was much as I left it. As I entered the living room, my old cat Stoopid who I thought was lost came up to me. His fur was beautiful, soft and blue grey as I remembered him. He snuggled up to me affectionately. The young woman said he'd been waiting for me. I picked him up, held him close and smelled him. He was the same as I had remembered. That was the end of the dream.

Alas, when I woke Stoopid was still lost to me. I am sure he has either died or living happily with newly adopted parents. I had left him with a cousin during a period when I was moving around a lot. My cousin went to Burning Man and left the care of his animals to a friend. The witless friend accidentally let the cat out onto the street and he was never seen again. I was very angry and sad. Stoopid had been through so much with me over the years and to lose him like that... I never wanted to know who my cousin's friend was because I would have hurt him. And ever since, I've had a hatred towards Burning Man.

The presence of those you love through loss is something you never shake...

Rainy Monday

Monday's morning came softly like random half droplets of moisture shed by heaven. The light filtered by grey clouds remained soft and encouraged me to stay in bed longer than I might have. I was coming out of a series of dreams.

Again there were people I didn't recognize, I'm sure I would meet one day. It always happens like that. The recall of the dreams were not particularly clear this morning. The only one that is clear in my memory is that of me being in a desert town and riding a Harley Davidson motorcycle. That was a laugh! But it was like the Harleys of today, it was futuristic and more advanced. The bike was not painted at all. The entire finish was bare metal or polished metal. It was surprisingly light looking for a Harley. The people traveling with me were in cars or SUV's. I was the only one with two wheels. I remember a red lighted intersection where the signals were hung from cables across the intersection, like in the desert in Southern California. That is all I remember...

Mint

There is chalky dust on the windowsill;
traces of glory of a story that has ended.
Though it leaves its pigment behind, faded.
What was once emerald is now faded mint,
the hue reminds my eyes of faded photos
like the ones sitting in the shoe box in the closet.
I keep those hidden away, in the dark;
I say it is to keep them from dust, from light
to prevent the fading of memories; visions,
but it is really to protect myself from nostalgia.
To protect myself from living ghosts now gone
like a pagan's exorcism of the fire that lives within.

(December 2006)

She Brought Me

I sat at my desk, dippling paper with a pigment laden brush
wondering what this new day might bring,
having crossed a threshold in my mind and heart
then I heard shuffling of gentle footsteps behind me,
a familiar swooshing and tap, tap-tap; I turned,
it was grandma standing there, all dressed and ready.
She brought me bread and pepper roasted chicken for brunch,
said she'd be back in the afternoon to fetch me for our outing;
later we strolled in a place that brought back memories
like the plenitude of petals and vibrancy of Spring colors.

(October 2006)

Demon Lover

for Susan

There are places where he doesn't go
because it obscures the glow of her face.

He avoids certain colors of light
because it mistreats the hue of her eyes.

In the darkness he can sit for hours
to gaze into the warm light of her soul.

In the dawn's light he finds close comfort
and holds her alabaster skin in his vision;

for moment upon moment through time
and lets her soul seep into his skin.

Pomegranates

Pomegranates

I ask myself
why I've not

eaten pomegranates
given to me

and I realize
because when I smell

their sweet and tart
I will betray myself.

(2006)

Narrow Daylight

The narrow sense of daylight
can't explain the way i'm feeling.
And the turmoil that comes to me
when Southern Cross is high

which calls for me to take up on
efforts better left to a Seraphim.
But this is where I am and
the stars are my instructions.

They want me to turn Demons
with this melancholy visage and
they expect me to change scripture
with this downtrodden, drone voice.

Grappa

There are moments in experience
when all that you have sensed,
all that you have felt and endured
comes to the feeling of grape seeds
pressed and raped against the liquor
of your drying and precious life.

There are moments in lasting breaths
of other angels you haven't met;
they scribble unknowns on the walls.
They have unknown seeds in their gums
and cry scraping notes god has not heard.
They wait for us to lead them to rest.

There are moments in between
when everything seems to make sense;
when all the fear and all the anger
can be described in a single scribble
written on frail age old papyrus; then
I decide, they can learn it on their own.

i have no life

i have no life
it's what i tell people
knowing the life i have

is in a box
within another box
somewhere in another place

collected as images
tidbits of words
expressions in lyric

the minds has got to wonder
what the eyes are going to see
when the hands open those boxes

unpacking that life
re-reading that history
will the stories have changed

will pleasantries be stripped
the gloss of photos
replaced by expressions of regret

i have no life
like the life i've lived
the life i live remembers no past

the whispers in my head
are all my own
re-renderings passages gone

(july 2003)

Suicide Tears

In the thin air between
the sadness and confusion,
a silver cloud with a grey lining
follows his steps like an obedient pet.

He casts no shadow beneath his pains.
He recognizes no gems among the thorn laden path.

In the hoarse breath between the fear and anger,
an orange mandala with a white core
collages itself to the vestiges of wings.
He feels not the heat that can bring comfort;

He senses no gentleness of a kind god;
He walks a path of paradox with each step.

In the shudders that rack his frail frame,
his tears commit suicide in each of their falls.
Leaving a trail of rubies, sapphires and emeralds
in his lonely slushy footfalls in the soft peat.

the taboo of our egos

he looks like his mother
though less solid
and more like a statuette,

but he is fluid
on the inside not
really reliable for

our needs, not stone.
even wood can furnish,
even rotten wood holds

at least for the grain,
this won't do at all,
this idea of heart shall

fail.
we are a forest
of scalloped leaves

meaning "what was left" –
the wanderings of the mind
the treasures of the heart.

the taboo of our egos
can't possibly bear sunlight
damn them...

wrap them

in our burlap comfort.
hold them until their
turbulent breath

is quiet as least as ours...

Nothing happens by accident

Early this morning, before sunrise I woke up in a bit of a panicked state. I was thinking I was supposed to be leaving for Switzerland in a day or so and there was so much that was unprepared. Then I realized it had been a dream, a very realistic dream at that. I had been dreaming that I was moving back to Switzerland for school or something and that there was a lot to do yet.

I was in a cold sweat. I breathed deeply then fell back asleep within a couple of minutes.

As it often happens, when I'm having lucid dreams they come in series. When I was asleep I went back into the same dream. The dream continued and I had departed and was now in Vevey, the town I used to live in. It was full of trepidation as I realized I hadn't arranged for an apartment and my papers weren't in order. The experience continued and I guess things worked themselves out. I was walking along the lake again but found that the water level was much higher than normal. The paved path that I used to walk on was flooded and I was walking on grass instead. The giant sycamores were partially flooded. My old apartment was still there. Nothing else had changed except for the water level.

It was a nice reminescence. When I woke up again, the first feelings were that I really was going to Switzerland.

Later today, I was looking at a design for a friend and giving feedback. Surprisingly or not, one of the possible solutions for the piece was to use deconstructed Swiss style typography.

Nothing happens by accident, we just have to understand what the purpose of events, situations and people are for...

Heart, that sinks through fading colors deep

watercolor and graphite on paper, 5"x7". 2006. view large


I Am in Need of Music

I am in need of music that would flow
Over my fretful, feeling fingertips,
Over my bitter-tainted, trembling lips,
With melody, deep, clear, and liquid-slow.
Oh, for the healing swaying, old and low,
Of some song sung to rest the tired dead,
A song to fall like water on my head,
And over quivering limbs, dream flushed to glow!

There is a magic made by melody:
A spell of rest, and quiet breath, and cool
Heart, that sinks through fading colors deep
To the subaqueous stillness of the sea,
And floats forever in a moon-green pool,
Held in the arms of rhythm and of sleep.

Elizabeth Bishop