The Midnight Science

The sky is cracked in light ruin

just beyond Ka’ena Pt.

immaterial

words leap back into the ocean

clouding the tangible

crowding the foreground

with half-lit banyans

loosening shadows to sleep on the ground

to seep into the sound of the sea

the midnight science

the alchemy that transforms all this to words.

The wind will turn pages

like the last breath

in the last struggle before death

symbolically closes this chapter.

If not the one book,

it was another

backlight

the source of sudden insight

divorced, restless feet to flight

on countless journies

coast to coast to close the distance

between night breezed sighs

and the light of island moons

pressing together thighs

breaking the midnight science of silence

pierced like splinters

you pull out one by one

until all their strings were undone

and there was nothing left holding me to you.

Held Suspended

When they pried open his eyelids

you could see the great abyss.

Not to confuse silence with discontent

or tall shadows for what truly exists.

The night will grow old

and the stars will break

from their cloud’s smoky hold

while the piazza beneath

grows ever more lonely and cold

to the lodger with no where to go but to wander.

It is cold enough to see all that is dislodged

like the smoke from chimneys drift up

to the stars, even more pronounced

in the bright cloister garden’s climb to moonlight.

Drifting past campanile towers of silent bells

wearing stone to break the footsteps

of whispers waking shadows

of crosses and cloister pillars.

The old well was a source of inspiration,

the deliberate drips

like paths crossing on trips

to the center of the city.

All the shades and silhouettes distract

with shadowplay to attract the attention

of those who pass by underneath.

Paper panels slide

like shifting channels late at night,

these luminescent snenes

appearing in darkened buildings

with the flick of a solitary light

the imagination

is held suspended

like a dangling figurine

tied to the end of a lucid dream.

Feet will never grace the inside,

the mind will never touch the ground,

until all the fabric was unwound

and falls silently as snow will

to the bare feet of the screen

where all the rest was briefly tantalizing.

When it is Night

When it is night

and the moon is drifting

across the darkened sky

like an illuminated lifeboat,

you pass with it

through the sea

where there is no border to its vacancy,

only the limitless light

the smattering of stars bring,

scattering their punctured points in the abyss.

Nightime in sea mist

no ships visible under this

floating ceiling.

 

Roaming the wilderness of falling fragments,

you catch the moon’s reflection in undulation

like a wayward cloud adrift on its own,

you lay in a bed of reflections

watching the ceiling mirror reveal the naked form

of stars being born

in courtyards of abandon

streaked in derelict palaces,

the forbidden places you know so well.

 

Soon the night caved in

the broken panes of sleep

fractured over the course of a minute

that felt like an eternity of breathing.

Deep sleep in a night of no alarms

rain-glistened and no longer weeping,

the canopy was your ceiling,

the sky, another dimension of skin,

where the jungle ends and space begins.

Disposed and Irrelevant

Solitude and silence comingle

in pursuit of the elusive,

in layers of memory

that remain long after you have gone

the way the rain

stripped the paint away

like all the colors of sunset

burned bright but would not stay.

Some are soluble in rooms

where background music looms

like neon tripped out on wet pavement.

Exposed to the elements

disposed and irrelevant

like a withered fruit, the sun

falls over the cliffs of the sky and disappears.

On the last breath the sea receded

and let go of all that was no longer needed.

One gaze to become the eye

One maze to wander through

and come out alive.

Thoughts in tact and without doubt

One raised fist to defy

the great dark and desolate drought.

The fear forgotten

like the last pebble

tossed into the ocean seeking bottom.

Nothing moves without it

Tricks of light illumed billowing clouds

over volcanoes no longer dormant.

Upturned leaves like glass

shine in the glow of morning.

Black crabs attach to sea stair

and disappear with the ocean washing over.

The wind wraps shawls around your shoulder

carved into the immensity

it seems nature unfolds seats for you.

A place to rest and see

with closed eyes go under

the delicate thunder of the wave’s break

all the dark coral under the sheen of a perfect surface.

Boats and their spires

tempt the great distance Tahiti.

The desire to go with it.

The ocean, at once beautiful and violent

hissing its impenetrable discordant harmony.

Following a crest into white abstracts

the spray whispers “It is wind that moves me

but mystery that holds it all together.”

This offering of sweat and sand

sea and land

plunging over a darkened reef,

Orpheus chose death,

exile, unlit and expelled

in the motion of black waters

between a swath of sunlight

canoes appear to break the surf

tiny apparitions bobbing with spray,

stay with me through the waking life

and in the dreamtime

this water curling overhead

nothing moves without it.