letting go

Canyon Wall

Gripping the canyon wall,
my roots slight hold
to security, to sanity
letting go again
from the geography
I fashioned over
slow flowing years

To hold
my histories buried
in layers,
silent in the new morning light,
they dare not speak,
upset these final hours of peace
beneath my shadow

Or the light that moves
in an arc
across the canyon wall
only to begin again,
will come to find
me gone
come tomorrow

photo by faludi design

deepest sleep, widest awake

An End, A Beginning

you grow more distant
as the sun draws closer
as you draw the son closer

the world at an end
the world at a beginning

i seem lost in a dream
as the night falls fast asleep
as the day breaks before I wake

counting out loud
the hours between now
and the hot white light of
around-the-clock exhaustion

my aversion to chaos
buried in the blurred waves'
tumbling, crashing ingemination
upon a fuzzy and wobbling horizon

lines drawn between you, me,
and a forever setting sun drooping
in a soft and fluid sky where there is
no demarcation between day and night,
you and me, sun and stars, moon and tide,
son and mother, father and son, husband and wife,
two are one inside this little magnet pulling, drawing
the sun closer, nearer to night, pushing us further apart
as i dream in deepest asleep and you dream in widest awake of

the world at an end
the world at a beginning

Odyssey of a dripping Icarus

The Fine Art of Surfacing

Submerged,
waiting what seemed an eternity
for the light to break the surface
of a self-made sea and its in-flux,
sparkling map of in-consequence,
knowing no Cousteau by chance
would discover me, barnacle clad
below leagues quietly conspiring
to keep me a secret from the sun,
from the firm of land beneath feet,
from the brine kissed sweet of air,
slowly emerging from dark depths
along the soft shone paved shafts
of luminous paths leading the way
away from fathoms' water bondage,
free to wander all the seven oceans,
an Odyssey awaiting never-ending,
manumit to fashion wings of wax,
a still dripping Icarus aloft at last.

muted

Dim, Dumb Stars

I thought I would be able

to speak, but I was
wrong -

I felt I would

be able to feel,
but now

I'm gone -

So long,

I'm with the other
dim, dumb stars
in your sky,

fading fast
so don't say

you see the light
shining brightly
and falling

on your skin,

where I once burned
within -

Barely even a shadow
on your shoulders
now

from this muted son -

specter of the sea

A Wave's Sine And Goodbye

A feeling of exhaustion,
of drifting away -
a fading line that once defined
a horizon,
a failing vapor trail
slowly vanishing,
exhaust's ghost essence
shrouding, summoning
this enervated, listing vessel
to the lulling grey
specter of the sea
where time is
consistently, simultaneously
relative and irrelevant
in both a wave's
sine and goodbye.

image: sea waves in granite

these days

Solid Air

In an attempt
to preserve these days,
guard them against the wind-fed
fires of an impatient and wild-eyed enemy
sweeping toward the gauntlet of trees we planted
without benefit of a plan of attack, somewhere between
here and there, upon a hill where solid air stands at attention
dutifully informed of our intention to launch our volleys into the valleys
that swallow 'now ' in favor of forever ending tomorrows that come and go
without a fight - unlived in, unsung, coming undone, trampled, trapped,
all but forgotten beneath the progress, the lock-step of clock armies,
of time-marches-on, against which we wage a slowly won war of
preservation over an impermanence until we disarm our enemy
and hold these days captive, leaving them to hang in solid air,
in the languorous splendor of limbo, in effigy of nothing more,
nothing less than themselves, quiet and timely reminders
caught in the slight spin of the wind, immobile and yet
mobile enough to move emotions from foul to fair,
a sense of peace even in the valleys below
at last , if not forever, a feeling of 'now'
pervading, invading like a timeless
avenger and conquering army
at ease in the moment
of these days.

creator, protector, destroyer

Trimurti - Her Love's Incarnations

Brahma:

with you,

my soul pulled from a hole in the ground

my son pulled from a hole in the sky


Shiva:

without you,

my spirit pushed back into the black of after

my scion pushed back into the black of before


Vishnu:

within you,

my presence poised between the push and pull

my progeny poised between the pull and push

full of forget

There Stands The Glass

there stands the glass
on either side of this window
between you and me,
reflecting badly on both of us
and i can't break through,
so instead pour myself
full of forget and empty regret
for there stands the glass

the man who fell back to earth

My Heart, Your Star

Could I be an astronaut
navigating serious consequences
for the slightest misstep as I float
untethered across the space between
my heart and your star,
fighting the sensation of free-fall
through atmospheres scorching my skin,
of plummeting back to Earth,
of drifting weightless once again
in night's black ocean waters
beneath a sky full of stars,
a geodesic map back to you,
the brightest but most distant of billions.

crush

A Diving Bell

under pressure from seemingly bottomless leagues, fathoms
crushing me in the depths of disappointment, disillusionment

my heavy heart collapsing like a diving bell buckling beneath
the weight of unrequited desire for you and i are mostly water

birds landing then leaving

Spoken For

listening to myself
think,

thoughts
split between
spheres

where
colors meet emotion,
numbers meet notion,
neurons meet sensation,
concepts meet conception

the math of language exponential,
built from the bottom up

from first person to third person,
from nurture to second nature

as feeling, thinking and speaking
take wing simultaneously

like birds landing then leaving, landing then leaving
the same way the word love leaves an imprint
not just in our minds, but on our hearts

even with no birds outside this window today
sitting here alone listening to my thoughts

a skin of armor

A Man In Full

You can bury me now because I survived each and every
attempt against this life I resurrected, I resuscitated
over and over again back from the great beyond.

Your weapons in ruins, in pieces beneath my wet feet
the remnants of your arms abandoned to the rust of rain,
your murder boots afoot no more, banished to the veil of fog.

The mist of history cannot touch me
now that the myths of its hysterical mayhem
have been rewritten by a man in full ready for death.

The boy, the vulnerable victim of love taken for granted
reincarnated, reborn beneath and buried safely below a skin
of armor where you and your aloof armies can no longer reach.

uninhabitated

Veckatimest

The tumult that I am forever feeling

like waves

raging, rolling, rising

beneath the calm of my skin

curling, cresting, crashing,

upon spleen, liver and kidneys

rendering me

at times unable to stomach the social fabric

before me

around me

surrounding me

drowning me

even as I seek the solitude of an open sea

outside of me

to carry me to a Veckatimest of my very own.

photo: veckatimest island by dana morris

the blasphemy of originality

An Omnium Gatherum (My Own American Gospel)

It was all handed to me,

The American Gospel,

somewhat overrated,

somewhat underestimated,

so I handed some of it back,

pocketed what I thought I might need

- humility, sanity, beauty, maturity,
immorality, insanity, vanity, intensity,
curiosity, divinity, morality, prosperity,
vulgarity, mortality, propinquity, cruelty,
solemnity, immaturity, poverty, creativity -

to make it through a landscape of years

changing me as it changed around me,

cobbling my gods, my religion together

from what I found along the way,

following in the footsteps,

the soft tread of the America of American

poets, prophets, painters, profiteers,

the Walt Whitmans, the John Browns,
the Andrew Wyeths and P.T. Barnums,

the blasphemy of originality

informing, defining

an omnium-gatherum,

my own American Gospel.

with the morning dew

She's Gone

She left with the morning dew,
three crows flew away to follow behind her
leaving me alone where we had stood in the fleeing dawn,
as a cold, raw wind rose up and whispered oh so softly, "She's gone."

If my words did glow with the gold of sunshine...

Asher Dob

Asher Dob,
I didn't know you,

but there were all those after-midnight, drunken rides home
with all the windows down, sucking July's saturated air
between drags off Marlboros shedding the hot orange
of before-dead ash sucked into the sober black
coffee sky like intermittent distress flares

and thinking
I fooled them all,

the stoner guys,
the coke-head girls
all gathered 'round
a forever foaming keg

but not you, Asher Dob,

you saw through me,
the periphery of me
standing at awkward angles,
forever on the outside
looking in, aloof, aberrant

with one dismissive glance -

beyond the summer sweat
of fresh faced teenage skin,
through the humid haze
of Thai stick-hash oil smoke

- across a crowded, claustrophobic
suburban, finished-basement,

the instant after I flubbed the opening lines
of The Dead's Ripple.

I didn't know you
Asher Dob,
but you knew me.

phantom limb sensation

Penfield's Homunculus

At my most devastated, my most pained,
I felt nothing but numbness in every extremity,
every region of Penfield's Homunculus dulled and deadened
in the aftermath of true loss, save for the phantom limb sensation
of your two soft, warm hands still cupped and holding my broken heart.

long form #1

The Rain Confessions

I. Make It Rain

Make it rain
and I'll eat the mud,
spit confessions in the face
of a father forgetting his son
following in his footsteps,
swallowing his pride
with a handful of spiders,
dangling darkly,
overhead, overcast
at last the first drops
of mise en scene
that seem to fit
this blue mood
painted from memory,
spattering the dirt, the dust
of days before you were born
when we hung lust out
with our laundry
to whip as well in the wind,
seed scattered to the four corners
of a bedroom, painted red
walls soaked with perfume
and formaldehyde
to preserve the moment
as living proof that we were young
and full of life, boiling beneath
thin skins, fresh scars and
plaster of paris hearts
beating in our chests
like the rain on this tin roof,
steel drum sound
drowning dreams,
stealing memories
you kept for a rainy day
waiting underneath a cloud.

II. Umbilical Memory

And you twisted my arm
because I couldn't
save myself

(beating back the ocean with one hand)

panic coming in waves,
clutching at the myths
our parents reinforced
for one another,
never giving up the ghost
that wanders insecurities
floating in an open and amniotic sea
from the moment of conception,
a concept born,

umbilical memory

, the best and worst of us
pumped, primed through
ancient gill, lost limb remembered,
the blood of sympathetic amputation
separarting us from air, from light, from death -

jigsaw puzzle of chromosomes and dna,
dominant and recessive traits,
tributaries of dead ancestry carrying
red hair, brown eyes, cleft lips and chins,
longevity, crib death, genius, freckles,
roman nose and nordic blonde hair and blue eyes,
down a river gently pelted by microscopic
genetic droplets, maternal, paternal
patter imprinted in our stream of unconsciousness,
in the imprint of our inked and unwashed feet.

III. A Cairn

All we have left is superstition and a stack of stones,
the petrified flowers of past civilizations, of past lives,
a cairn to commemorate the fears we conquered
while carrying rose petals in our threadbare pockets,
fool's gold mined from skies holding rainbows,
the bridges between sun tongue rays and rain spit showers.

IV. Her Waters

Wet,
swimming deep in a psyche drenched by thoughts of her
ocean -
quenching desert dry and wilting loins, a lion's pride at her
oasis -
cleansing the filth of prurient desire from a gutter-lust for her
orgasm

V. Where We Begin Again

High water rising,
I am risen
in the face
of familiar
misfortune
sweeping
me further
down,
down,
downstream
where the urge
to spawn
swells in rivulets,
the veins
and broken
blood vessels
carrying life
from the seas
upstream where
death dwells
in unfulfilled desires -

gut me on these rocks
if I cannot traverse across
as high waters receed
stranding me somewhere
between before and after the end -

break damns
wide open
and wash
the fishbone shell
of this man
down,
down,
downstream
where scavengers
stalk shores
waiting for the river
to give her gift
of life,
the remains of me
turning circles
in eddies,
turning cycles
where death is defied
in the shallows
where we began,
where we return,
where we begin again.

The baptism of the waters
we wade in.

The crucifixion of the rocks
we wither upon.

The resurrection of the rain
we wait on.

VI. Slow Erosions

I do not fear death's slow erosions

my face carved into crevases by the river's slow crawl

my hair blown from grey to white by the wind's cold howl

my skin weathered and worn by the sun's harsh sprawl

as I disappear back into the dust
where bones become clay
and whisper at long last
their final confessions
to the falling rain.

over my shoulder

Vanishing Twin

over my shoulder
what was left of the past
burning brightly as it collapsed
without any sound at all escaping

the sudden vaccuum swallowing
lost years along with the conflagration
that completely consumed the dna remains
of a chimera, a vanishing twin, the life I left behind

the shadow of your smile

The Sun Slipping, The Son Slipping

the sun slipping out from under clouds hovering overhead

the shadow of a bird back and forth across your face

the son slipping snug beneath your bosom

the shadow of your smile

ignoble beast

Gone Native

I left a life
I once fashioned
with my own two hands
from clay, blood and spit -
Spite, sweat, love, lust crushed,
beaten, bloodied and bull whipped
into a blind allegiance roundly blindsided,
battered and betrayed without benefit of a kiss -
And so I banished myself to the wilderness
where dreams lie awake at night
listening for the predator's
twig-snap pursuit -
Abandoned the safety of numbers
and wandered like a lone ignoble beast
the forgotten footpaths of a struggled ancestry
leading me back to a beginning unburdened by desire -
Exiled emotion to the outskirts
lying beyond this outlier's bleeding heart
barely left beating by the brush-thorn-thicket-torn
bushwhacking through love reclaimed by human nature -
A selfish act of self-preservation,
savage, sacred, profane and profoundly
liberating, the animal inside awake and alive,
survival ensured by civilized sensibilities long gone native

here comes the sun king

The Son Also Rises

It rained

the entire week

after you were born.

The son eclipsing the sun.

photo by nigrita

rattling a world

Sleeping Giant

the sleeping giant of you
in a room away

shaking foundations
profound

your little lips
trembling

each breath in slumber
rattling a world

even Gulliver
could never have imagined

the rush and lull of waters

Safe Journey / A River Of Repose

I did not howl,
instead gave myself to the river,
to the slow rotation of cello sounding
a lament as I floated toward god knew what,

noticing for the first time ever what lay below the surface,
what the sky above beheld, the shores passing by laconic,
leaving behind the familiar and familial sedimentary layers

of soft, crumbling sentiment,
of ash covered disappointment,
of ancient, fossilized contentment,

the rush and lull of waters
both threatening and soothing
all in the same uncharted stretch,

the reeds crowding banks,
where I left my dreams buried,
whispering, waving while wishing
safe journey down a river of repose.

Narcissus I Am Not

I'll Be Your Mirror

Looking back at myself,
deep into my own eyes,
seeing myself again
for the first time.

Narcissus I am not
but I have fallen in love with
my little hands, my little feet,
my little heart's beat reminding me
I am more alive than the day I was born.

You are a child.
I am a man.

You are a son.
I am a father.

You are a reflection.
I am a mirror.

moan whisper cry

Plumb

All quiet here in my heart as the Earth's creaking moan
pushes the world on spinning, as it has and will, just off-axis.

A baby boy defying odds, defying chemistry, defying biology
hushes the world with nothing more than the whisper of his name.

An angel now amongst us with the slight motion of wings unseen
rights the world for the moment, silencing the din and blare with a cry.

a rose-complected compass

Beyond Here

Beyond here, who can say?
The jab of lightning, punch of thunder
well behind us in a sky staggered and still showing
the bruises of where we have been.

We pause a moment to stand in the foggy light
filtering through the ozone-rich, still-wet-with-rain air.

Just over the next rise, the sound of a joyful cry,
a rose-complected compass pointing beyond here.

Who can say in which direction?
The sun seemingly rising even as it sets,
twilight torn between the dawn of where we are going
and the dusk of where we have been.

Fibonacci Number

8

Open our eyes in the morning
to find us anew in the pale,
perfect light of awakening
at last to a different dawn
awaiting us as you and I
arrive at the hour time has told
us that you and I become we.

spanish bombs and bullfights

The Riot Inside Me

press your little hand into mine

the riot inside me will stop with your smile

unwittingly we are part of a song still being sung

and you will grow to know the fight anthems of my youth

the splash of spanish behind hemingway's bombs and bullfights

simply a salsa, a samba, a rhumba, a tango beating in our hearts for now

from fetal to feeble

The Last Night On Earth

Curled here in the fetal position
on the last night on earth,
as feeble as when we were born,
from dark to first light now failing
with the encroaching darkness
that leaves behind the names
of our children left behind
to bury our bones beneath
the last best whisper of our names
where the wind kisses vowels
and the rain washes consonants,
mortality carved into immortal granite,
cradled beneath the bending boughs'
branch arms aglow in golden hour sun
stretching shadows clear across year after year
and dimming all the days since we were born
spent crawling toward the last night on earth.

photo by nadia / squiddity

here we are / here we go

Waiting On A Shooting Star

here we are standing atop such great heights,
the lights of the tired cities we left behind
transfigured as we drift away deeper
into the dreams we carried
along with incarnations
of ourselves,
you and i
all alone
at last
even
if for
only
this
one
last
day

cold roses

Thorn

All kinds of roses

will come then go,

from bloom to wilting

and yet forever willing

again to weather seasons,

welcoming our new springs,

surviving our long summers,

fading and finally surrendering

their wearied petals to autumn's

funeral procession plodding toward

a plot buried by winter's piercing cold.

photo by exif

little May flower

Fleurette

Little flower
passing through stations,
dropping petals at your mother's feet,
a new bloom about to be born.

emotional erosion

Ain't Love Grand

When we knew no different,

love left dangling by a thread
over a canyon carved by
the slow and steady

drip,

drip,

drip,

of
indifference.