All that is Impermanent

The sky holds all that is impermanent

in the eye’s reflection.

Like infinite sand grains

a gaze through the

stained glass illusion

that if anything stays true

to the way we remember it,

it is in the quintessences.

If the pain of loss is

an empty beach,

the pounding surf is

soundtrack to all that is out of reach.

The tranquil intervals that

swim through the inner reef

are carried away

on waves of

galloping horses and white spray.

A distortion to the veneer

that faith makes

surface over

all that is unclear.

The sea ,the source of

both reverence and fear.

A clash of cymbals reveal

a pair of swallows

from the deepest recesses

of symbolic release.

A swoop and a figure eight

to trace memory,

to find a face in the waves

stranded like a moon

still plain in daylight.

Years later it still remains,

smooth as a shell

over the sea

symmetrical

as a drop of water,

a pule lehua landing

on the wild naupaka.

Each thread of cloud

ushers in the change.

Light and shadow,

the interplay of branches,

in the totality a sway

and the cut of a blade

that touches

but does not alter

the horizon or

the immensity of space.

The world has swallowed us

in this place of benevolent delusion.

The elements lending themselves

to the spirit’s intrusion

between moments

layered like dreams

over the creative streams

cascading like sand

into the fissures

of impermanent footprints.

One Word Left in the Fog

Standing by the window,

her face pressed into

the primitive shapes that

the night tattooed in frost.

Her breath against the glass obscures the field,

like the emptiness before the first thought revealed

with a finger, one solitary word left in the fog,

Alone.

It is a labor to remember

the last letter

left in an empty box.

The faceless stranger,

her only visitor,

adds to the stack of morning papers

strewn in the hallway, a kind of intermediary

to the threshold she would no longer go beyond.

With a sigh she picks one up.

“This world is no longer mine but I’ll go along.”

The illusion becomes entertainment.

The passage of time, amplified at the end of life.

Like the ancient tree that loosens its leaves,

shaking free of the debris that years have left behind.

Independent? For nothing grew in your shadow.

A defining tenet, now stretched with solitude

and the absence of birds who have yet to return.

There’s an eerie quiet to the canopy these days,

like the aftermath of a storm.

The port is empty, all the boats are pulled in.

There’s barely a soul to witness

the moon stranded in pools of rainwater,

filling empty flower pots.

She could almost smell the wet soil

beneath the disheveled rosebush.

There’s a pale fingernail of light

that clutches the edges of dark liquid.

Seeking a glimmer at the bottom of the glass,

she begins to lose her grip the deeper she goes in.

Dark thoughts swallow down,

dim light on lips,  dawn’s another sip.

The will, like a lifeline,

when you’re drowning one day at a time.

Another slip into the refuge of dreams,

classical music, stained windows and high ceilings.

The angels and their voices singing Ave Maria

by morning have become the chortle of crows,

their mocking accompanies

the graveyard fingers of dead trees

scraping at the screens in the wind.

 

When movement is like a broken machine,

thoughts become mechanical

in the pill swallowing routine bouts of hypochondria.

Looking in the mirror, has her hair grown whiter?

No longer

Appointments,

she cannot go anywhere.

Is Shangri La the solace of distraction?

The statuary silence of friends in picture albums?

The light of a visage upon opening each page

becomes a surrogate visit

within the yellowing of age.

Where mouths do not speak nor expressions change.

Without new memories,

these effigies will pass

one by one

into the darkest corners of the basement,

through a door seldom used and slightly ajar.

She will not go down there anymore

for fear of falling in the dark,

what does she have left to hold onto?

She remains rooted to the kitchen table,

nodding off again.

Her face pressed up close to the empty glass.

Upon waking, she’ll view the room through this prism.

Everything still spinning, the ceiling circular,

closing in to the claustrophobic sensation of being trapped.

She sees her reflection, light is refracted but nothing is raised.

She can only bury her face

and stare plainly at her own mortality.

Through this glass darkly,

full of spirit but no less lonely,

the days lose their bearings in the fog

the ticking wall clock,

the liquid corrosion of

a dripping faucet

amplify the sensation

of time slipping away.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the Metaphor of Rivers

Nothing remains stuck.

On the breath that expresses more than thoughts

to flow down valley

like a wind in Wailupe

that tickles the chimes in the Norfolk pines

rooted to a moment, despite movement.

There is a clearing

where solitude is revealing instruction

to a tangle of brush strokes

imparting light to the surface renewal.

In the metaphor of rivers there is no arrival,

only its illusion.

There’s a gentle loosening of leaves

expressing the value of paperweight

that does not incorporate words

but notes something of gravity to the motionless,

to those mired to the banks.

Though in their lines lies a vagrancy,

the realization that all are carried away eventually

by the wind and by the rain.

The river journey comes to its insatiable mouth,

infinitely consuming itself.

Can movement be a mirror on these surfaces?

To seize a half-formed image of oneself,

sped up, transparent,

as if on a current,

lifting the anchor you go with it.

Moving downstream to draw from the periphery

some sense of apprehension.

With a craft that compulsively fills the contours

with some semblance of direction,

overshadowed by the next bend

by further distance ill defined

in waterways that resemble the last.

Released from the grid,

the river was aided by floods,

while the sky slid by

on an infinite sheet of glass.

Poetry was like the passing clouds

that gather fragments of its brilliance,

before inspiration dissipates

before the rain precipitates

what needs to change and what can be saved,

what remains of glass shattered

into thousands of mutually arising patterns

interwoven in the aftermath

of another passage to sea.

 

The Wind Finds a Way

In the push and pull of seemingly conflicting currents,

there’s still this magnetism, a sweet spot

between the sail and the wind.

When the shadow wound is on the water

and a faint light from within

glows like a furnace at night

beneath a forest of reeds.

Between the sea and the rocks there’s no quarter.

Shallow water finds its source,

a wellspring of coincidence

punctuated by the reluctant acceptance

that nothing prevents change.

Careful construction is easy penetration

for a wind that finds a way through this half-formed home.

So you braced for a hurricane

that never came to fruition,

never matched the media or hoarder’s premonition,

left only with the disquieting anticipation

under an eye that does not discriminate.

Omnipresent, in watchful amusement

while we prepare for the future.

Disorientation, the perfect prescription

for our illusions.

As a teacher, its lesson is clandestine

becoming clearer after ruin.

Picking up the pieces,

you get a picture of our torn veneration

with fragments to bandage the resistance.

Aimless, in a ditch,

you long for the momentum of younger years.

Like a ship long since stranded in an ancient sea,

Miranda pinned to an eternal rock

has elements of this story.

The desert, that which was sunken,

will rise again like a phoenix

in the ephemeral light from the east.

Barren and with no obstruction,

mysterious springs straighten our tilted mast.

Plotting a course towards the horizon,

on dry rivers once running only to illusion,

these tattered sails that harbor your inclusion

with a wind, sea-bound and knowing no end.

The Dream Lends Light to Darkness

Entombed under the weight of sleep,

it comes like a relief,

a blade of light pulled from a darkened sheath

In the midst of that jungle,

through the dense trees, a glittering El Dorado

appears through the lens

clear as a mountain stream.

From the deepest valleys

dreams nourish the source of words.

From watersheds, unconscious threads

follow cracks between rocks and the riverbed,

a silken transition

that transcribes light to the water’s edge.

The glass over this surface

scratched innumerable stories into liquid mirrors.

The illusion of today gone tomorrow,

the process words seem to follow.

Solitary thoughts with painted wings

point the way inspiration

lends light to temporal things.

Where the breeze mingles with the sky,

the imagination holds up the butterfly

seeking somewhere to land.

The sharp branches of Kiawe

do not ward off this delicate advance,

now coming into focus,

patterns of color to contrast

with the stark bark of reason.

Relenting once again

to the tumbling of events,

the breaking of waves,

the last gasp of energy

scattered like ash in an enchanted rain.

Dreams will burn brightly

through the smoke of illusion,

leaving fragments for the waking to reclaim.

She Stepped out of Time

A solitary white shoe lies at a fork in the path.  Who it belonged to was nowhere to be seen, not since July of 1941, when at the corner of Chatham and Marianna she stepped into a black car and out of time, leaving only questions in the decades of search that followed a torrent of remorse.  How the image of a forlorn shoe on a forest path can act as a trigger, pulling at the material, smearing it with mud and neglect, unraveling the mystery of an overly active mind as it searches for resolution among the empty bottles and other remains.  Years go by and the story gets drained of its lustre, paths leading only to dead ends. Just off of that road that twists through the pasture, infamous for its bends and with a reputation that lends to the atmosphere.  Thick was the surrounding wood and swamp alder. A solitary white shoe illumed by moonlight on the forest floor, fallout from a black car, like a prop that would suggest much more of misplaced trust than anything else as it tiptoes into time’s tragedy.  Like the dog-end of a cigarette, it is strewn over the psychic wound in the landscape, inanimate object from the distant past still holds a powerful resonance as its cautionary tale is suspended like headlights in the fog.  Keep your loved ones close, or at least hold on to that illusion as that car draws nearer.  It appears ancient and square-backed, what sets its wheels in motion also seals shut the heavy metal doors.  As it passes, all of life get reflected in its windows.  You’ve only a moment to notice the details, half-asleep from the passenger side.  Some roads are bumpier than others, like it or not we go along for the ride.

How many miscellaneous articles like this one are destined to the fate of evidence, that this individual once existed?  Now merely a pine grove stone for remembrance, with no loved ones left to maintain.  While the shoe will remain in a police cabinet or where it was left to the elements, to the corrosive rain.  Memories can live in attics and lover’s lanes, dilapidated sheds and sometimes in plain sight.  We can distance ourselves but they do not disappear.  You can hear their tiny footsteps like frequencies along the webs the imagination gets tangled in.  A white shoe shimmering in a forgotten corner, belonging to the ghosts of fading yearbook photos.  She would have walked with them through the halls of English, spying the tower down Oakwood as you did but in a different era and over the expanse of sea and night, like a coastal beacon casting its light, shortening the distance suggested by time, so there in the forest it lies, a solitary white shoe and who it belonged to subtly reveals something of her essence again.

 

In Memory of Frances Cochran

 

The Heavy Cost of Light

In time darkness is softened along the edges,

losing a grip on the rim of the moon

but still visible in the shaded pools of Nuuanu.

Mostly unseen, this transitioning

into morning surfaces

serene streams of penciled lines

drawing out the movement,

the illusion of time,

how all is subject to its division,

a revision of the bliss we knew as children.

Our passage, an indentation in someone’s memory

and nothing besides belief in something grander,

a glimmer in thickets of bamboo and banyan.

In the translation of a moment’s whim

the word gets out like a wind

through the gnarled branches of past instances.

What should have stayed within palace walls,

escapes like a confession

and in this expression

we diminish what is sacred,

wringing out any secrets with a reckless pretension

as we transition online and appeal for attention.

Photos shrink the moment,

while egos inflate with over exposure,

every posture crowding the foreground

obscures nature until it is rendered irrelevant.

Under compulsive scrutiny

we cannot escape the desecration of those walls.

It comes inadvertently from increased foot traffic

in the worn out light,

an oppressive weight as it falls into disrepair.

 

All that is Concealed

The poem was like a silhouette

that waits for form,

a subtle weight in white sands,

it baits the creator

to express shape,

to conform to something

beyond the illusion of escape.

What is is what will change.

A beach, a set of words,

being released to the storm surge.

There was no scale to measure

the drawn drapes of a blue room receding

only to resume where there is no longer land,

just a moving wall and a disappearing man

dipped in ink

crossed out in dreams,

a rapid eye, a blinking screen

enclosing all thought

in static explosions of surf.

 

Into the drink, the before birth,

all liquid comprehension.

The gesturing wind

was an extension of limbs,

trees and inaccessible forests,

mangrove, black river cypress.

All that is concealed eventually sees light.

All that is consumed within a vast appetite,

the regurgitated words, the message often missed,

the pools beneath falls hold the tears of the mist,

like a lament for all the passing moments.

Clouds draped shadow over the valley walls,

slowly it crawls, this spirit revealed

in shifting hue,

in subtle song,

how it quickly withdrew

but remains long after the form is gone.

Light Seeps through the Illusion

Through what I’d perceive in the sky’s mirror,

the sea was a ragged mariner

cast on the jagged rocks.

All the debris i would carry with me from the past,

the horizon could no longer forecast

or keep from floating away

from some logical ideal.

The line was a separation,

sea and sky

silky and undefined,

an impenetrable teardrop,

weightless,  impression of color

in a superstitious and darkened course.

With no compass it flows over the sides of the canvass,

like an art that is infinite in its reading,

it depends on the witness.

For all who need to wander and father words,

further imagination, the borders are reinforced

than blurred by travel.

The intuitively known is murdered in bloody sunsets,

red robed in the glow of twilight

thrown across the liquid’s edge,

like a veil from the eyes

the westernmost ledge is

illuminated.

From there it is one step

inward to perfect

or join the drowned by shipwreck.

All the blind and rudderless,

with their mangled craft lodged in the sand

like a sullen crop half buried

in the perennial mystery upon which we stand.

It is a precarious position

when a landscape of fear

offers no sanctuary from

being pulled into a perpetual wasteland.

Not many know the history

beneath a city.

Soiled reflections stare back

from clean facades of steel and glass,

vast monuments of shadow

creating the illusion

that no sweat and blood were shed

during development’s colossal intrusion.

There are moments you see it clearly

as a shaft of light whose

passage holds a thread of jewels,

a glittering sequin to the narrative

where the brightest of all, the moon

becomes a beacon in the darkest canopy

to see me through.

Back Valley

When you arrived in Manoa,

damp from the rain,

there was a mist that had lowered,

a musty incense trapped in wood.

Listening for subtle instruction,

you go inward.

Everything is moved by hidden means,

heavy winds and a light that ushers in the void.

Sunset’s hot coals singed what’s left of resistance,

when clouds leave no footprints

walking Tantalus.

The shrouded prisms,

the ghostly veils that trace the ridge line.

From here there’s a well defined

form of a crouching tiger

set in stone musculature.

Protective walls form a sanctuary,

a garden of feng shui,

a perfect symmetry

that comes from being cradled on all sides.

The pulse of a reclining dragon

is tempered by the tortoise,

keeping the Chi in harmony,

until the phoenix lifts it

brightly south to sea.

The Moon is now balanced

above the ancestor’s branches,

seeming to emerge from the burnt out tree.

it appears stranded,

like an emaciated heart, waning.

Prying tears from deep recesses,

surging into streams of thought

to lay on the surfaces of runoff,

playing its role in the letting go.

All that is fixed in marble is a mirage,

a disguise over the loss of control.

All the dead end illusions

form a platform

from which to peer at the unknown.

All the debt and uncertainty

of being alone

burns brilliantly from this vantage point

back valley

where the sky is a conflagration

of all that came before.