Depots

Fleeting stations

through which all things must pass.

Trains mercilessly invade

plans carefully laid,

scattered

like tangents in transit,

you forget where they connect,

waylaid in this depot

with barely a moment to reflect

that thoughts and emotions

are only outposts along the tracks.

Drawn from out of cracks in the earth

like an expectant birth,

the womb bulges,

stretched to the till

everything emerging from tunnels,

like insects from an anthill,

into the rythmic enigma of change

that you’ll attempt to arrange

into a coherent design.

There is a stationary map

where the motion gets trapped

in the riddle of its lines.

 

Time,

grave schoolmaster

correcting with sticks,

confronts the nervous with ticks.

The pressure to decide

when to move

when to abide

by an almost religious form,

crucified.

The mechanism’s in place,

the dominant figure

in this transient theatre

is the clockface.

Schedules shuffle

with spinning metal

voices rattle off another destination

to numb ears conditioned not to question,

weary to respond in turn

and form lines.

All are locked in their own depot,

void of context and without bearings,

amorphous and at the same time unique,

strung out on the in-between

they wait to be transported somewhere new

in the waking dream.

Waiting to be transported by one bullet

shot out of a chamber shrouded in steam.

 

Catch the melancholy sparks of fleeting sunsets.

Time no longer lingers

but grips with twisted fingers,

uprooting the moss that grows in-between.

There’s a scent you associate

with a clinging taking hold.

Words and feelings

unfold at the binario

so you go

into a life dwarfed by infinity.

The sky, like a fallen mirror was the sea.

The clouds were shattered pieces of memory,

even times the machinery

had you pinned,

you always knew you’d win in the end.

Wherever restlessness puts you

must begin from this depot.

Departures. Scattered Illusions.

Departures

You take it as a sign,

gulls circling in the sky

where the sea meets the land

the point of departure

to keep from sinking in quicksand

to keep from thinking that routine

is anything but an hourglass

that you planned to go down.

Choosing instead the unknown.

To loosen the thread and unravel

these temporary homes,

to forfeit comfort,

wind-borne and thrown

into the tatters of travelling alone.

Set afloat and where it goes?

You don’t presume to know,

this crooked course,

hair in a halo,

where every moment is slow-glowed

in an infinite wish to be everywhere at once,

on all points of a disfigured design

stretching over an entire area of time,

it props a half-cracked oar

in reason’s razor sharp door

that is like a mouth

surfacing to swallow you from inside

the grey-blue movement of the mind.

Sinking,

until thinking of nothing.

“The current runs on,

making wanderers of us all.”

Ideas rising from the sea

like all the monsters of mythology

dripping with marine algae

and all the barnacled accumulation

that grows around obligation.

Submerging here,

surfacing there,

rising above personality

like the waters of displacement

sending waves in its wake

to raze the port of your tiny city.

 

Scattered Illusions

All the elaborate plans

and exaggerated illusions

become scattered

under the hanging clouds

of what’s to come.

Faces and goals

become physical spaces

for the myriad roles

dispatched to railroads

on an enlarged panorama.

They watch each other in passing,

worlds colliding

where the glass is dividing,

time will not hold them apart,

there is no soundtrack

to lead these memories to heart.

Scenes to arise in song

long after the conductor has gone,

long after you were discarded

at some all night depot.

Whatever will be

now rests in neon debris,

trembling

with a repetitive flickering,

until lulled to sleep

in a place they will not wake me,

call me stranger

nor hold me close,

there is no closing time here.

Like an Unwanted Skin

In transit again.

The wind picks me up

when no one else would.

No longer entrenched,

it has me intrigued

as it rolls through the trees

innocent and irresistible

like the sudden scent of intimacy

in the passing rain

rustling the curtains on the windowpane.

Everywhere there is movement

moments mesh with memory

exposes the flesh left hidden away.

In waysides of this attraction,

lodged in liminality

exiled from the distraction

the non stop neon notions of progress.

This line of thinking

invades the frame of your perfect sketch

grasped with a stretch

soon to be replaced

as it is pulled away

like an unwanted skin

I can no longer take comfort in

this exhibition

its layers transparent and thin

swept away for a clearer vision.

See the tip of the insence stick

amongst the smoke,

slow lava flowing pictures

forming until the clouds broke.

Fallen suns illuminate leaf walls

shot through with veins

like highways in the wilting light.

When highways appear neverending,

I’ll meditate on the next bending

the blurred and broken lines suspending

like a flickering wick lit in the void.

Suddenly, a smoky cloud covers the full moon

inviting everything to pass through

on the raft of its luminous hue,

on that map you read of immortality,

an interlacing of all the destinations

the imagination could accrue.

Somewhere Swallowed

A Stranger here.

Growing out of strangled remains.

Once native, now hybrid

alien and abominable

almost beautiful.

A living sculpture of contorted bodies

camoflaged and hidden

amongst the thicket.

Some believe spirits descend it,

through limbs burrowing

as if legs dangling

longing to re-root

in some deep mystery

characterized by swaying,

transformed from out of the decaying

transposition by angels,

arms praying to the sky.

Absorbed in time,

in the scrutiny of its shade,

sedentary and watchful portal

causing slight shudders of uneasiness

to this passerby, unable to resist

 feeling there is more

than the eye and the mind

can entwine together.

It’s best not to confirm with a second glance,

that which should not be there,

that which compels you to penetrate deep.

From roads to unpaved paths

unmarked trails into the lapse on maps.

Going with a combination

of curiosity and apprehension

into a lush invisibility.

Confronted by vine

 too vague for fear,

a danger with no identity.

Something seizes your senses.

The path grows smaller

the strain to follow

the last vestige of order,

all straight thinking

is drowned out by the deafening stream

of sinking into it lost.

You’ve slowed,

steps more difficult,

all is obscured

by the green forgotten greeting

to the unseen shapes

of the unexpected,

shivering through

the unfamiliar setting

of somehow audible breathing.

Heartbeats betray your position

to eyes seemingly everywhere.

Everything within you freezes

as curiosity squeezes

through the banyan’s limbs

to mount fear and go where

the jungle resumes its

untrampled and unkempt conquering

of all around it.

The jungle,

capable of anything imaginable

and going beyond it.

 

The imprint remains visible

in the hillside, a recess,

 a seizmic crack

like a wound that is as fresh

as a sudden flashback,

like trampled grass

this landscape is

deformed and precious.

Left with a probing, 

  a seeking of direction,

resolution, solid safety.

No bandage can cover

the unspeakable remnants

scratched from an immeasurable darkness.

There is a pitiful light

in the valley of ink,

a jaw sinking its teeth

into TI leaves

meant to ward off evil.

Drawn on

Breaking that barrier.

Not knowing where to step,

how to stop?

A worm on a knife’s edge,

haven’t we all been there?

Alone and wandering

on the far side of the rail.

Did they ever fail to find you?

Out there somewhere swallowed.