Night, A Creative Entity

Curious to witness

the night,

a creative entity,

molding the light

delicate and withdrawn

into an embrace

the varying shades of saffron

over the entrance to the underground

ushered in by neon

through the moving canvass

it is projected on

shoulders and exposed skin

tattooed to a blinding whim

so long pent up within

the visual identity

now fracturing

the individual

on the cusp of discovery

a kind of ritual

sold for the price of an entrance fee.

The beat throbs

proceeds to rob all of inhibition

as they brush lightly

in this wilderness of exhibition.

With soft masses of applause,

all are warming to the Dj’s dream

to playlists that stamp energy between

white walls and velvet halls

leading to further alcoves of intoxication.

Surreptitious claws reach out for connection

for attention, there’s an apprehension,

featureless

yet with an intuitive fashion

famed for its derangement of the senses.

You dance willingly in this suspension

until the red light framed in doorways

draws your attention

and suddenly it is closing time

and all are expelled

like shadows to evaporate

through the steaming plates of chinatown

to disintegrate and drown

in the space between strangers

who’ll communicate with an empty eighth

to the first rays of light

breaking through the shade

and the window pane

breathing between thin sheets of white

on which the versatile night

will leave its mark once again.

Primitive Animation

You afforded us the briefest of views

narrow chasms

the light imbued

as it staged the original cinema

on your inner landscapes.

Like a shadow Astaire

that once danced on the walls,

now cast in calcite glistening,

becoming echo chambers

to leave us listening

to the rain water weathering

of rock in rhythmic drips.

Cascades of drapery

over a mixed media

of oblique movements,

the primitive animation

of subtle emanations

from the imagination,

like burnt wood and resin

beneath a landslide ceiling.

The way the cave of your mouth is sealing

the silent mystery of Chauvet.

Who’s left to interpret your printed palms?

Crooked alien fingers

and torch marks tucked away,

who’s left to gaze upon your rudimentary figure?

A Paleolithic Venus

with spearheads deeply embedded in skin,

becomes the root of this form of depiction,

the navel’s indention,

like a fingerprint,

is a sensual window into a hidden wound.

In this world light and shadow coalesce,

like an eclipse,

in the accentuation of the hips

set in black,

the curve of the abdomen,

or the lower back,

a deliberate staging

of pictorial decaying

touched up over time.

In unreachable alcoves

we’ll define the audible whispers of suggestion

against an infinite backdrop of silent repression.

The Unsettled Past

When you become a veil

between the past and the present

through what you feel

and what you relate,

what allows the both to meet and perhaps heal

the psychic wound between them?

The trauma is visible

in the landscape of a buried story.

Twilight persuades the edges to fall away,

 suddenly it is yesterday

and it seems nothing has changed.

But you know how it ends

as the sun bends over the Ko’olau rims

and dark begins to settle in

to the borders of our lives.

You feel compelled to tell it again,

at the foot of a mountainous urge

to speak the words by way of suggestion,

what lies behind the mist

as darkness lifts from where it was hidden.

It is gathering its powers again,

to squeeze the light into submission.

Every evening at about this time,

on the surface of the sea,

whole swaths sprawled bloody

as canoes are dragged ashore,

the sudden exile as the beach goers

gather apparel and drift away

from the longing waves and their approach.

Where nothing remains

save the shallow graves of footprints.

In time the crescent moon appears

as muffled sounds lend trickery to the ears.

The shadows of trees fill the park,

like the impression in the dark

of ghosts in your mind.

With no flashlight to guide,

with no distraction for your thoughts to reside,

you begin to imagine the walk, the stillness,

the ominous car parked in the corner of the eyes.

Soon there’s Kalapawai lit up with spaceship lights,

this haven feels like miles away

for those who play beyond the neighborhood curfew.

Waiting under the banyan at dead man’s curve,

a car swerves into view

with faces pressed against the glass,

you blink your eyes tightly

to see if this image lasts

of the helpless who pass into the wind

of leaves dragged behind machines.

It quiets down, you blink, and there it is again

as if on repeat

in the dark corridors of stone wall and tropical branch,

this proto projector permitting an obscured glance

of the fleeting macabre dance

of the hopelessly unsettled past.