there then gone

I Am Disappearing

I am disappearing.

Even the night brightens with dawn for a better glimpse of my apparition.
Houdini's heir apparent there then gone apparently vanishing into thin air.

I am swallowing my own skin.

Even the sun unhinges for a closer look at the bleached bones of a ghost.
An escape artist painting himself out of a self portrait within this still life.

I am surrendering to the ether.

Even heaven cannot divine where my spirit lies between earth and moon.
A soul skipping through time and space like a stone across black water.

I am disappearing.

Even science cannot posit a reason for the vaccuum left in my absence.
Hubble alone like some glass blown Galileo searching the stars for a sign.

photo: harry houdini circa 1899

sound asleep

The Background Hum

as I drift off,

the telephone waiting for a call that won't come

the clock content with quarter of, ten to, five of

the almost forgotten crackle of a dying fire

cat, dog, wife already awash in slumber

a triptych of breathing - motion, sigh, wave

my own heavy exhale / inhale swallowing light

floating somewhere between fading sound and roaring silence

the background hum morphing into a flickering dream

population : 2

Alone Together

we are alone, together

me, with my thoughts

you, with yours

and on long walks
across the frozen fields of stubbled corn stalks,
around the lake where ice fishermen huddle over augered holes,
through winter woods which hold the weathered history of our property

we talk in hushed tones between our own thoughts
of little plans for this life together, alone with one another

bridging the pangea drift

A Sort Of Homecoming

My father's father's father
My mother's mother's mother
And countless others

From Odessa
From Mamokus Lan
From an ocean away

From lands buried by perpetual winter
To a land of hope springing eternal

Sullen Swedes,
Resilient Rusks,
Laconic Laplanders
Crossing a vast sea of uncertainty
And finding their sense of place not so displaced
And waiting for them in the bitter and forlorn tundras of
Wisconsin, Minnesota, eastern Montana and the northern Dakota

The pangea that drifted apart so long ago
Inching back together in some small way,
The physical and mental distance bridged briefly
In this sort of homecoming for a stranger in a strange land

ghost of me

Being Before Being

Gliding the late night hours,
bright lit by moonlight and man-made mercury vapor,
I crash the ether from below,
magnetic north merely a notion at this altitude,
electromagnetic radiation (a motion, a current , a tide)
surrounding the becoming ghost of me gathering
in the sensation of sweet burning essence
upon torso, upon time, upon tongue,
leaving me mute, ageless, without form
and free to drift through memories
of being before being.

dancing the collapse

No Line On The Horizon

nondescript

before the moment of surrender

where a wave forms, then falls

in the chaotic choreography of chronology

without direction, dancing the collapse

as the past collides with the present, tense

and torquing the curl of time forgotten to the ocean floor

where crawling years climb fathoms in search of the surface

carrying the pressure of memories pushed through leagues

to form then fade like the smoke from two ships passing in the night

nondescript, in darkness where there is at last no line on the horizon

image by forty-one crush

that February feeling

Melancholy Melancholia

And a melancholy sweeps over me,
from things I have seen, felt, thought, dreamt

The swell of a sad melody drifting from
a February room like a cannonball to the chest

The overwhelming squall of snow falling
to subdue the illusion of a winter sun's warmth

And a melancholia settles over me,
leaving the cold of dull grey around my heart

curtain call

Taken Before Trees

listen

for applause

as you stand

all alone

listening

to the wind through brittle frozen branches barely audible

witnessing

a bow

taken before trees

as your

witness

to a wilderness of achievements barely visible upon the wind

blue period

Chaos And Creation

My own blue period, hovering

An aeroplane falling out of the sky

Decompression, pure oxygen deployed

An inflated sense of self

Under pressure to perform

Start at wits end

Begin the renewal of intellectual pursuit

Painting myself into brilliant corners

Picasso's profile in a cloud, hovering

The crash and burn imprint of my Icarus wings below

Little boy blue's arrival, coincidence coincides

A father, a phoenix rises from the ashes of impact

Fashioning art from the chaos of this life

Painting: 'Boy in a Striped Sweater' by Modigliani (1918)

for rachel on valentine's day

Flood Of Sunshine

the perfume of you flooding my senses

an ocean of salt air

a river of sweetwater

a field of wildflowers

a wind awash with honeysuckle and heather

a flood of sunshine overhead

the morning dew of you washing over me

miles and memories

Along Pavement

two lanes split this trip

- from memories bequeathed by oral tradition and newspaper clippings
of a snow borne birth at the end of an ice road slide down through dakota

forward

toward

an inevitable destination

- to memories alternating between 15 and 60 frames per second
flashing across passenger side windows like blurred postcards

i sent to myself

a sense of myself

coming into focus the further i travel

along pavement

within you and without you

Atom Tan

wear your skin

to find myself safe
beneath my better half,

above the flesh and bone
born from a god-given rib

the atoms of my eve

as heavenly as my own
as we walk this earthly garden

hand in hand beneath the stars above,

bathed in their glow, ancient and white,

and home at last across our own pale skin

painting: 'starry night over the rhone' by van gogh

from the ground up

I, Architect

built up, torn down

building myself again and again

brick and mortar

brittle and mortal

an edifice of artifice

a monument of machination

body, mind, soul

torn down, built up

upon a sound foundation

in the spirit of

an Eiffle, an Olmsted, a Lloyd-Wright

imperative towering over impermanence

the architecture of a life beyond blueprints

anchored to this Earth while reaching for the stars

Photo by Michael Aston

N2 (78.084%) + O2 (20.946%).

The Absence Of Air

You left before you were gone, the room filling
with the black poison smoke of burned years
and I dropped to my knees and began
the braille search for escape while crawling beneath
the smolder and smother of a love extinguished,
lungs singed and winded, left gasping in the absence of air.

pedal steel, you stole my heart

Country Song

wild when we met in a spring turned field
where i took the reins tight from your soft hands

i kicked the dirt as the sun was going down
behind you standing there in a simple shift dress

bit my lip when i pulled you close for a kiss
beneath a black-eye purple bruise sky blushing

a sun setting, a song settling
over us along with the waltz and weep
of pedal steel and the slow strum of heartstrings

self-portrait

Passing Strange

every day
on the cusp
of a self-portrait not as yet.

odd to think,

i am not who i was yesterday,
i am not who i will be tomorrow.

and yet,

you have loved me all along,
seemingly pleased to meet me
again and again.

loving me for who I am,
for who I was,
for who I am not

as yet.

painting: paul cézanne's 'self-portrait with palette'

winter light

Woven

fog waters shroud woods
arisen from smoke woven
of sun-gold fleece

a candle hiss prayer's
muffled missal bathed
in warm winter light

broken into beams
somewhere beyond the reach
of solemn elms

a babe in the woods

Learning To Crawl

i will crawl again
like a child

through the bosom of these woods
that surround, protect

unafraid of the coyote cry
breaking but a breath within the sigh
of twilight's coming quiet
settling with the dew of tired eyes

my child-like wonder cradled and safe
in the moss arms of this forest maiden
whispering me to sleep beneath
this cold blue bowl of stars

where i began,
where i begin again

waxing / waning

Empirical

Waxing poetic in the umbra of a waning Empire,
My Love reads Tolstoy by the light of a setting sun.

Stack wood to the sky and burn books left behind.

Blood moon rise through smolder plume,
Smoke tree shadows beckoning our exile.

Giants looking back over broad shoulders
At Atlas shrugging at
The architecture of murmurs sounding our demise.

A population in spiral upon a world stood still by the specter
Of ghost limbs in perpetual motion, up the hill backwards,
Sisyphus himself stopped dead in his tracks, dumbstruck by it all.

Doomed and repeating.
Doomed and repeating.
Doomed and repeating.

Break away behind the night falling black,
My Love and I dragging forests for fossils
Of forgotten oceans from which we crawled,
Beneath breaking waves, goodbyes buckling
Under the pressure of 5000 years of civilization,
Broken down into a rock silhouette of all that was,
Where we begin again in the strike of flint sparking
Ideas to build a new Science to the stars still above,
Not to reach, but to wander with only wonder,
Looking past satellites, long dead new world ancient ruins.

Calculating here to there
By footsteps in the snow behind us,
Calculating where and when
By the cinders of a fire that warmed our hands,

Searching the memorized Literature we abandoned at the dawn of the end
For embers of our Humanity, Dignity, Morality
Aglow deep inside and illuminating our Souls,
Their fire-licked Spirit catching a waning world aflame,
The tips of our tongues, dripping votives, waxing poetic,
of War and Peace,

And Love.