gift

i came across your name by accident

without a face, i found your melodies
then i found your voice
full of melancholy with rhythms of hope

you spoke to me as if through a muse
and told me stories of a past
as if you walked through them with my eyes

and a feeling heart that bled my blood
for souls long gone that i've yet to meet
so i ask myself why this gift?

why this gift that i will never know?
in the afternoon light and the darkness of night
when your voice comes on in my dreams

job description

i asked her what is it exactly
that angels are supposed to do.
she sat there across the small
granite table, smoking her brand-less
cigarette and exhaled. moments
passed quietly, neither one of us
uttering a word or squirming on
the leather cushions. she closed
her eyes for a long minute
and i could only pay attention
to her crimson lipstick. then she
looked at me and smiled,
"why do you always ask questions
that you already have the answers?
i mean shit, we work for the same boss
for god's sake."

july 28, 2007

I am not a man; I am dynamite

a found poem:

I am not a man; I am dynamite
–Friedrich Nietzsche

Sometimes you are the single source,
the fist with all the flowers. Sometimes
you are the golden bass, a whisper-
revolution in this country of dust
stretching across the pond’s dirty
bowl. Like a razor through silk
bedclothes, your fin breaks through
the tunnel of sky and one vain cloud.
Sometimes the hostage next door, you
are Sunday every day, and at night
a teenager in Auburn, Nebraska,
slamming an aluminum bat
to a goalpost until your head can’t take it
to make something fucking happen.
Sometimes you are the single source,
the fist with all the flowers, a walking
iris, whose promise to die by late
afternoon makes you the word,
too much to bear. A syllable is
a latch, this word a door you shouldn’t
have opened on a room, its very air
unstable with history. In the wrong
hands and right conditions such
a word will detonate, the way Ambrosia
hides murder in its chest; to find
the brute, look for grieving; how
many souls packed themselves in
until Bethlehem beat them into bedlam?
You are the single source, the fist
with all the flowers—the bass, the razor,
the hostage, the boy, the bat, the ignition,
and yet we sleep on in this field of arms
where I am yours and you are mine.

LEIGH ANNE COUCH

evening greets me with a cool air
she takes my colors and stares at my ring

she breathes at me words
that only unicorns can understand

so i wait patiently
for the evening star, so bright

so i find patience
in this enigma i've caressed

and i wait for her to put me to sleep
i wait for her to let me dream

and the sky
in the spaces
of its broken clouds
tell me stories
of a long summer
full of verses

and then the
violent rain comes
heaven's tears
pelting tender skin
angels kiss me
and leave violet bruises

afternoon streams in my window,
past the feeble shades
that try to keep the heat from
this tender skin.
they glow on their edges like
stray moonlight on a clear inky sky.
this tender skin that becomes
an ally with night,
struggling with the desire
to forsake the sun.
afternoon will fade, i know.
i wait for venus in the western sky
and jupiter in the eastern dim.
my world unfolds
like a box painted black
on the inside and
it is the darkness
i'll wait for some
presence i have no proof exists.

human

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

Themes, written under duress

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

A VALEDICTION FORBIDDING MOURNING

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

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

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

A red plant in a cemetery of plastic wreaths.

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

To do something very common, in my own way.

– Adrienne Rich

evening

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

2 july 2007

lacunae

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

they are lacunae.

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

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

they are lacunae.

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

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

that Calder would have killed for.

feeble

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

1st july 2007

Luminant

(in light of Firefly)

Violet and crimson bleed into the burnt umber
like a post torrent migration of emotions.
He stares into the darkness but the darkness
offers no protection. Colors intrude into what
otherwise would be a calm void.
Colors in their brilliance attack his retina
like hornets invading a beehive.
Purples taste bittersweet and reds burn
like cayenne on his emotional palette.
He wonders what might be an antidote
to these feelings that are like sharp crags
upon tender skin. These feelings that are
so beautifully vicious like a cheetah taking
down a gazelle in a blur of yellow ochre
and streaks of blacks.
Spots are only spots when stationary.
If you see them as a blur, then it is a forelighting
of death bathed in luminant scarlet.
Even with eyes closed the hues do not recede.
Light from the outside color the pink
of closed lids like an organic projection screen.
Light from the outside illuminate in detail
the creases and folds of his pain.
He is not allowed to shelter from them
even in blindness, even in darkness.
The only comfort he has is in the knowing
that eventually even the most brilliant hues
die into grey, into a lackluster that only time affords.

don't tear the silk

silence. he waits for it to come. he knows it will come if he is patient, if he waits long enough. is it enough? faith? does he have to have faith? perhaps. faith is not something he has ever felt he could be an owner of. it is not so much that he has no faith, he just can't seem to accept the concept that faith is something you can own. it seems or feels paradoxical. so he waits, he thinks that perhaps he can wait as an exercise in some kind of mental and emotional exertion. it is not about patience. he could think of it as a challenge, as a kata, a movement of non action. a stillness like in the motion of a calligraphy brush in the fraction of existence right before he plunges the ink laden head onto but imaginatively, into the rice paper. a splattering of blackness, stray drops throwing themselves into a pattern preceding the next movement of the brush, an extension of the hand, a linked appendage of the arm, an exploration of his mind, his vision, his instinct. all that power, potential and dynamism withheld so momentarily before the energy explodes. to know the degree of power that comes when the brush is released is to mirror and comprehend the stillness of its opposite. now, he feels the reverse. in this moment of waiting for silence, for stillness, his mind churns with thoughts with almost violence with the movement of a cyclone trapped in a funnel spider's web. don't tear the silk is his intent. flow with the surging energy, flow with the swing of emotive gyrations but don't tear the silk. just turn and bend and turn and whirl, and the quietness, the tranquility will come. it will come at its own pace in its own moment. for now, just sit. just exercise non action and the silence will come.

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