In the Intervals

Between childhood and aging,

travelling and settling,

I know our time here is temporary.

Though the tides

tied everything together eternally,

moments rolling in the soft distortion

of ever shifting clouds.

Wanderers, caught by candlelight

become silhouettes

in the snow mansions

of a dissolving union.

All that is transitory

the sky would express lyrically

through the windows of

these communal rooms.

The sturdy peaks pierced through

the ephemeral,

leaving stars and mana

a milky residue

that through the passing

of glittering stones

carried

hundreds of miles

would construct walls

and floating cities.

From the dark of speculation

we’re guided by coral,

shaped by the invisible.

Behind a veil of questions

we’ll ponder reflections

and the abandon staring back

offers no explanation.

Nanmadol.

What remains of the past

an effigy,

an extension of ancestors and

the energy of creation.

We’ll meet in the intervals

of bones and breaking waves,

as true nature stays

parallel

sourced from the ocean,

the largest of liminal space.

Thirsty, the sedentary receives

swells from seasonal rains.

Unstuck from routine,

boats are cast adrift

towards Argos, Phoenicia and Pohnpei,

the disappearing remnants

of another yesterday.

Gliding past the monolithic canvas

walls that do not obstruct the silence

but give rise

to the vines that

obscured entranceways

and distorted time.

The surface

of canals give passage

to the strange light of torches

toying with the senses.

Moments adrift

and winds becalmed

in a labyrinth of choices

pressing forward

through the blanks,

the sunlight through the palms

looking for openings.

As the wind picks up again,

you’ll consider the will and the breadth

to what has been left

upon this petri dish

of life and death.

It tells a story often repeated,

of benevolence and dissolution

crossing over into myth,

that realm of the unseen

and the power

to move everything,

while waiting in the intervals

as always

for it to pass somewhere

between vibration and illumination,

it will be built again.

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Confessions Without Borders

Midnight descends in a common darkness

of heavy emptiness.

The building’s a vacant gaze,

skull sockets for a windowless place

with no retention.

Thoughts simply pass through

this dimension into forgetting.

Soon silence transforms itself

into a multitude of birds

begetting the sun.

They call out in unison,

beak by beak

octave by octave,

voices rise from the grave

to the swaying nave

of a great cathedral.

They begin to break up the night,

to cave in that ceiling of dreaming,

revealing we’re alive for another day.

 

Pull this moment over you,

like a cap that casts shade

on the glare of all other

goals to pursue

perpetual platforms,

to pass through

circles receding

into a sanctuary of shadows.

The cool safety of shade baits

half-opened shutters of whispers,

to your closest friends

you’re a good listener.

The stillness you entertain

for scraps of thought,

 a fresh catch thrown

from languid skiffs in the sun.

A feeling of mist and abandon.

Voices hanging

like an aged and translucent skin.

Truths and prejudices

perhaps are no consolation

for a questionable worth

to wrap ourselves in.

Where does the inside end

and the outside begin?

The capacity to determine

the dimensions of an ancient foundation.

There are no borders only confessions

laying in ruin.

The boundaries are absorbed

into the coals of a dying fire.

Surface shreds of lives left forgotten,

mandala funnel void of countless impressions,

sudden shifts in the symmetrical spin,

the rhythms of experience chiming in,

resplendent, golden

moments like companions fading away

until new ones are born

out of the foam and clay.

Warmed by the building flames

of what became boundless

flashes of color

unearthed on a beach of lambent shades.

They’ll coalesce on edges

where all the driftwood merge

to go up again.

The Kicker

What happens to a kicker,

caught in the threads of responsibility?

Responsibility,

with hydra’s heads and a woman’s body,

is futility.

So he tries to live alone

above shopfronts dealing in abandon.

Without electricity

the squatter lights another candle

saying “There’s no soundtrack for the silence.”

for the writer, alone with the spirits,

or was it wine?

The divine shell of the right word?

Under the spell of the moon,

a voyeur by trade

caught in a strange perfume.

The ever-shifting paths

now at crossroads to illume

the hiker with boots caked in mud

or something immaterial like blood

from warriors felled long ago.

Scars on the terrain he taps with bamboo

staffs left on the side of the path

to one day resume the circle, reborn.

The kicker

detached and transient

on truck beds and benches with no blanket,

in rot gut alleys with marquee-lit features,

a fractured passenger,

through the shadow

of sunsets and season’s shift,

he’s circles in the reverance,

like wind and gone.

All the possibilities

peopled with walls that enclose

the character in a chapter,

while pages fall

flimsy to the willful winds.

See them blown like feathers

into the atmosphere,

to be hung for ages

from the axis there,

these sages shaving

secrets they do not fully reveal.

Here they leave you stranded

without boundaries of form,

secluded personalities reborn

through fleeting doors.

The awkwardness of finding words

to forge stakes in a moment,

to pinion the motion of flight

to give breath and devotion

to that which is just out of sight.

Attempting to grasp and pin it down,

you assign words and drown

out the sound of interference,

the majestic OM

the wind blOWs,

kicking up dust in its disappearance.

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.