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.

The Wind at the end

There was a wind

that begins with suspicion

and by the end

turns a whole valley black .

It passes through the realm of sleep

whispering through

the grasses of a past

that couldn’t be kept underneath.

Like a subtle stirring

in the sea before

the approaching

hurricane turns

the peace and sanctity

to waves of heat

breathing deeply through the trees.

Before there was fire there was fear

and it seared itself into consciousness,

it was insatiable, inescapable.

Dry tinder cracks the hills

and exposed cinder

scratched an inferno

from the billowing smoke

blackening the skies.

It reached the fear lines

on the edges of community,

a vestige of safety

if there was only time.

This wind that sets the blaze,

that uncaged the phoenix

to fly unobstructed

torching everything in its wake.

Tongues of fire

speak through a riot of color,

exploding from under

the once coastal quiet

that becomes unnaturally vacant.

In a swarth of red dirt and anger

that grasps and spreads like a fever,

confusion reigned

and in the calamity

comes the realization that all is gone

as if wiped from memory.

We’re caught in cycles

of endless media scrutiny,

a cacophony of lies where

the opportunistic, disguised as relief,

know the future is malleable and undefined.

Once the dust settles

and the millions of eyes

now fixed on the wildfire

inevitably look away,

the pressure is applied.

2.

I’m wrested awake

as the wind grows in intensity.

The kakea of Manoa,

born out of craters,

let loose from fissures

and overflowing borders.

It runs through the chimes

making curtains into tides,

great gusts of violence

pressed against the silence

prying all sound not held in place.

The scattering of leaves joins

the vagrant scraping of pavement.

Like a deranged rainbow

that flashed across the valley,

this arc diving into the sea,

only to come back around relentlessly.

I wasn’t aware

that this shared wind between islands

carried death on its other end.

Its howling a hallmark

of the recent insomnia,

where the jarring of sirens

brought luminous reflections

to the kitchen windows

like a colorful portal

into the collective pain,

a historic pattern of

old wounds opening

a sleepless suspicion

that it will take everything in the end.

This wind is no longer

in the hands of those

who were born here,

who know the scent as

it runs through the grasses

like an incense in the sacred places.

Now there is only mourning

and burnt out endings,

everything swept into the aftermath

of questionable decisions.

Is there disaster capital

in the passage of wind that

erases everything ?

From where will come the revision?

The old banyan, deeply rooted ,

smolders in ash at its base,

yet still shows glimmers of life,

still holds tightly a community’s dreams.

In the deep reaches of its branches,

in the gentle sway

and rhythmic dances

with the trades the

leaves are no longer blackened

you imagine

once the waking nightmare ends

no longer shriveled by death

and the fate of this place

can be determined again by

those within the reach

of her familiar breath.

It is this wind

that will pick everything up again.

The stream is dry where the past drowns

The stream is dry where the past drowns.

From the banks of the periphery

you see the evidence of drought,

sunken souls singing out

from the hollows and the bellows,

from what once bubbled and rolled

into an expanding perception.

From these narrow glimpses

and desperate attempts at control,

the waters flowed, drunk enough to know

the inner workings of letting go.

The fading lines,

there is no one place where this is told.

The valley’s scarred relief

replayed

through sensory expressions

and psychic impressions.

Stepping outside of time

to get a sense of it going by,

marking our places with

what has slipped away.

Beneath darkened leaves

dormant streams rise to a boil.

Dragging with them the bloody soil,

the dislodged once royal stronghold

falling into a mud slide of being sold.

With every year the past drowns a little more.

You’ll see the disappearing crown land,

the desperate hands

clutching the old ways

to hold off and to withstand

the flood tide of change.

Journeying out the way we came,

access diverted, mauka streams defiled,

land tied in military wire.

Under the glass of sprouting cities,

the high rises higher

until far from sight and mind,

the wai ola slips into disorder .

Without its source , the illusion of pure water

crawling over its course

becomes scraped knees on dry beds,

divorced, torn to shreds.

Knowing not which way is up or down,

we find new ways to drown.

In the annals of progress,

under monuments of ownership ,

crushed beneath metal gates

private signs and moral claims,

The crooked lines are what remains.

Upon this land the insatiable hands

have stamped their imprints.

Their words

certify the abuse,

meandering in circles of misuse,

in lies and lonely streams

that flow through

like a tightened noose

of shadow and loose stone.

Making a Painting of Memory

To process the unavoidable

in the best spirit possible,

in light of all that cannot be

so easily let go.

Childhood landmarks

for so long enclosed and tended,

like a terraced garden

in the yard that grows smaller

as you grow older

and the outside world leans closer and closer.

The oak trees that stood watch and held hawks,

were helplessly felled by the years to come.

Will there be any left to land

when houses pass hands

and open space becomes a commodity?

Progress fails to mention the casualties

of feathers and roots beneath tire marks

when expansion becomes Walmarts

on the outskirts of bulldozer scars.

What will become of our own shangri-la?

In my mind undisturbed,

the backdrop of table and rock stack

forms the rough hewn first layer of the terrace,

preserved there in this parallel existence,

weighted against the swirling impermanence

that moves in like a storm.

In years to come who will sit on the porch

just to smell the rain,

relieved that the parched earth will drink again?

Will subsequent visits find the inevitable weeds and overgrown grass

where dahlias once passed summers between the fences?

Will they still enclose all of the references

when obscured by ivy and choked with vine?

All the memories like scattered leaves

that the wind interweaves with the present,

gather at the base of the hill in a sodden pile

with no one to reconcile.

There remains some vivid colors.

My grandfather in his red sweater

that matches his glass of wine,

sitting beneath caps,

with hands folded permanently at that table in time.

Where are the kids of the neighborhood,

who made strongholds of foundations

and built forts by the old pine?

Who climbed fences with ease,

knowing every inch of these quarters.

They probably have their own sons and daughters,

strung out on screens,

did they sacrifice their sense of adventure

to growing older in the American dream?

I listen for the voices of kids playing outside.

Will there be any left to call in by streetlight?

Any dog racing up the hill first freed from the leash?

Whatever light is left can only emphasize

the emptiness of dead end streets,

shadows filling in the contours of rooms

where once paintings lined walls

to distinguish the decades,

extinguished as darkness falls.

I can still hear the sound of our footsteps on the creaking stair,

the cacophony of our lives behind the walls of Evelyn,

where our voices and movements have settled in

like a barely audible whisper beneath the passage of time.

I can still make a painting of memory

to temper my mind

into distinguishing all these changes

from what will endure.

The Essence knew no Boundary

The essence knew no boundary

over great tracts of wilderness,

in the abrupt descent into the sea.

Through uninterrupted spaces,

the spirit is as evident

as the grass it passes through.

Akin to a last breath expanding outwards,

seeking a landing,

somewhere to rest its laurel leaves

with lines of light

that guide through the night,

like the lanterns of Santa Marta,

all the runaway stars

that slip through the sky to the playa,

a culmination of sparks from a dual bonfire.

Passing between flames,

we were no longer the same but altered forever.

Candles capture our image

while smoke lifts us ascendant,

etched in the moon’s white visage,

we’re stark black and in tatters,

crisscrossing footprints, overlapping shadows.

Love and loss lean on each other

until they become one in the same

mournful song of nocturnal birds taking wing,

soon settling into everything;

a scent, a fabric,

the fragments in nature that form a picture

outside of any frame, it’s nothing we can name,

that which knows no boundary.

Entrenched in the heart,

the feeling swells into a soaring crescendo,

breaking chains of attachment, Bowie’s “Heroes”

communicating directly with something immaterial.

If the spirit was a wind,

it would be as wild and wayward as these trades,

ragged from journeys, seaborne and saved.

We would get a sense of it through its impact on the waves,

in the patterns in the sand it creates.

Relating to spirit it stands

seedless yet rooted,

following the oldest  of forms,

connecting practitioners with those who passed

a half a century before.

There is a subtle stirring in these movements,

a newer manifestation of an ancient art

which is once again a communication.

 

In the next chapter, after everyone goes home,

we’ll tend to the alters.

The ash of insense and dead petals will be swept.

The salvaged portrait polished

until we find time for reflection.

The gaze in the photograph

attaches a steady line to our own memory,

like a charcoal tracing over the spaces between meaning,

in a search that is never wavering,

we can come to an understanding

that between death and life

some things endure.

 

For Uncle Joe McCauley

I think of you often

 

 

 

 

 

 

Red Petals of Remembrance

When a bead of rain

within the outstretched palm of a fragile flower

becomes infused with light,

it is a butterfly being plucked away by the wind.

As it begins its climb, you observe its significance,

like a ray in the sky beaming directly

towards that sublime height.

Like a ring in the eclipse,

you’re transfixed on the other side

needing certain eyes to perceive

what it briefly reveals of shadow.

The ocean, like a vast blanket of patience,

receives our red petals of remembrance,

grasping for words, let loose and

inching forwards with radiant acceptance

in the swirling chaos of everyone’s remorse.

As you push towards the void that peers

through a transparent film of tears,

you can see within

all of the sorrow and reverberation.

This raw material evaporates

like a mist from a wave that hits you head on,

like a train from out of nowhere

pulling you from the comfort of your own

and into the sudden intrusion

of unkempt and uncontrolled emotion.

Grasping for empathy in the recesses the past processes.

Red flame, like a blade that cuts through regret

at what you could not change,

seared into an embrace of impermanence,

slow dance between the living and what is pending.

Witness the last breath,

like the receding of the ocean’s edge,

that uneven line of lengthening tide pulled tight,

until the pale face of the horizon’s sky

settles into the grey of night.

A peaceful process, this loss of light

in the turbulent spaces of holding on.

The beeping of machines

shifts to swarths of green beneath majestic peaks,

prompting a transformation in those of us there to witness

the simplicity of workers turning dirt,

different machines now laying him in the earth,

a reunion of sorts

beginning with white cranes

who come to usher his spirit away.

 

 

In Memory of Ka Yick Yu

7/25/40- 12/2/17

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tsunami, what may have been

In light of imagining what may have been,
tsunami anxiety reveals a place to be more water than land,
flimsy and wafer thin
mole hill made into a mountain,
we may elevate but are we ever truly safe?
Our precious lives on thin strings,
lines of parked cars unraveling like beads
into a sea that comes to strip all to necessity.
It recedes in whitewash,
building on the horizon like a layer of static,
a distant transmission becomes a warning,
a gargantuan trick of the eye
and you have to look twice,
lulled by disbelief,
nature’s brief revelation to the damned.
It now doubles forward
with the force of a cataclysm.
The sound of sirens and countless alarms
scatters the mob at shoreline charmed,
freezing the clocks,
when reasoning stops, there is only survival.

Before the buildings and bridges fell,
doomsayers would yell out
“Get to higher ground!”
Animals growing restless in their cages
bird silence punctuates the ages
between the impending pause
and the tightening claws
that clamp down and than recede,
baiting the breadth of the sea
to come forward again, but so quickly!

If there was something you could grab hold of
when that muddy bullforce of machine debris
and blood topples all in its path,
sweeping the land free in one gasp,
it laps at the foot of fallen mountains
before returning again
over the scene of the crime so to speak,
that no man’s land
that leaves only street signs like bent bristles,
telephone poles and lines
crucified and adrift against concrete barges,
the swirling wood of toppled garages
merging into one mangled shape.
Who escapes that hulking mass
of steel and glass city
folding in on itself like a fault line rift?
Everything slips into that darkening plain,
each interval more acute,
the leveling destruction, the degree of pain
and in the eternity of time it takes between waves,
what remains is the realization,
that it has just begun.

Bloated bodies bob up
to float spread eagle
like horrible rafts
through the gutted aftermath,
tied in tourniquets of earth,
channeled like a capillary burst,
inside to out, everything is reversed
and when that terrible day wanes
and the ugly liquid drains
what you’ll see resembles massacres on a battle plain
and like the smoldering of trash-heaped dumps
on the edges of humanity,
people will come to comb the debris for loved ones,
to pull a familiar face
from the disfigured disappearing act,
the double feature of disaster and aftermath
merging in an amorphous mass.
making a mockery of innocence, exposing our helplessness,
we felt it quiver
those comfortable strings that hold it together,
revealed as so flimsy
in the light of this tragedy,
how in an instant it can all be ripped away,
swallowed by the crack that reveals this reality
was underneath it all along.

Red Rock

I can remember the scent of seaweed,

of sand and slick rock

walking the curve of the wall

as the ocean nears high tide

and lashes white foam at your feet.

Eyes are trained on every wet step

bearing witness to tide pools

that disappear into the oncoming waves

like adolescence into the outlying graves of time.

At this edge, this place covered over

by mollusc and graffiti,

the sea wall to Red Rock

holds one image that I have never forgotten.

It endures seasons,

beginnings and endings,

the birth of nephews and nieces,

to bookend multiple weddings

and the death of a friend.

There were four of us that night,

singing and banging on a makeshift drum.

It always claimed a tiny corner in the long ago

but not so any longer as I round the corner

ever so cautiously…

stepping onto Red Rock;

silent, meditative,

with only a solitary gull

perched on the salt stained hull of frozen waves.

I think of Matt Robinson and try to write something

but it is too cold to grip a pen for long.

So, I just think of him here,

when he was alive,

where he once sat and sang “Whiskey Bar”

into the night and to the far off beacon light

beyond the Point,  where all souls go.

As the waves came in surging

we answered with our own voices emerging

from out of the din of useless instruction.

We were still in high school,

the four of us;

myself, Jeff, DiLiberti and Matt.

Myriad lives and paths ahead,

maybe surreptitiously sipping the red

smuggled wine that helped fill our lungs,

warm us against the cold
and help us forget time

as we sang over the waves

at the curve of our world.

It never warned us of the future,

that perhaps we’d never again have this moment together.

It wasn’t Lynn, Swampscott nor Boston

but somewhere in between

the doors of white coastline mansions

and derelict shacks by the tracks,

the edges of twilight

and distant skyscrapers all stacked

in watchful waiting,

baiting each of us to scatter from our roots

out west in the coming years of pursuit

of dreams and something beyond these well worn walls.

I think of Matt Robinson now,

like I was not able to out there.

His passing, once an idea,

now becomes tangible in this physical space.

He was a kid from the neighborhood,

St. Pius, Lynn English,the same age,

his life once parallel now deceased.

I try not to think of him riddled with the disease

that has already claimed too many

but rather think of him singing that night with me

as Red Rock levitated into memory and lore.

Matt, I remember walking with you once before

on those back roads behind Essex Farms,

near my house and yours.

You mentioned you wanted to travel

and that the next time I go to keep you in mind.

We both did some traveling

but never got to take that trip together.

I forgot about that talk

and we ended up an ocean apart.

San Diego, Honolulu,

where now do you journey to?

I look for you here at Red Rock,

hear your voice in the wind singing

“Show me the way to the next whiskey bar”

and though there were those who were a lot closer

and probably kept in touch,

“I tell you we must die”

I’d like to leave an offering for you here at Red Rock

but all I can conjure up is a snowball in a gloved fist.

To shout out your name and hurl it as far as I can

into the sea and mist.

Out where you’ll melt back into the greater whole

and from the abyss

become a wave

to roll back over Red Rock for all eternity,

over me, Jeff and DiLiberti,

until we each in our own way

join you out there in the waves.

Dancing in the Aftermath

Darkness

Witnessed beneath the passing of storms

is an intermingling of forms

in a collective mourning.

It is like a mist that would slowly lift,

forming arms to embrace these transitory gifts.

Fear not for loss of visibility,

the mountain that is closed in by cloud

will be clear again before long.

As clear as the sound of the river,

as real as a chill’s shiver at higher elevation,

where the shrouded ridges of last light

backdrop the blank expectations

etched in the countryside.

In this expanse we trespass,

red eyed and sleepless.

Moonlight moves its restless

and illuminated stream

along the ground like silvery fingers,

gesticulating palm shadows

prowling like iguanas through the brush,

all is darkened and mysterious

when witnessed in the torch light upon leaves,

from our circles of heat,

dancing until morning to retreat

somewhere distant.

We keep the loss a continent away

and though never far from us,

some will stray,

while the hours drift

into thinking of them less,

drinking from pools that appear bottomless,

 the moon would still hover

to illuminate the cracks

of the future’s chewed through mask.

How it seeks to cover with forgetful revelry

all that distinguishes one night from another,

another night without a husband, a son or a brother.

 

From beyond the wind joins us

in dancing through the fallen leaves

and through trees made to bend over

lost loved ones as if to weep

and we leave our own notes

soaked with rain,

words of empathy,

for no mother

should feel the kind of pain

that comes from losing a son.

When he was gone,

the moon held everyone,

bound by the light

that sees the sea to its end,

to horizons perched

and appearing to teeter

over the horror

that we sometimes sail too close to

and this very wind that we hold fast to

pushes us through

a perilously slow process

of gathering our breath,

until strong enough to reverse the tide,

to release those who died,

blowing that cold wind

back into darkness again.

Only a Beginning

Into the Abyss

The sense of loss

pushes in upon the edge of thought

altering the fate of lines,

the rings in a mandala’s design.

How many deaths do we endure

on the way to the center?

How many breaths restore

a sense of balance

for a mind spinning in circles?

Unmoored introspection

glancing out or looking within

whatever the predilection

that distorted image at the end of the portal

completes our reflection.

Thoughts, impressionable words torn from books,

lifted from venerable drawers in the earth,

bloodied, soiled, pulled from the root,

hung on the walls

like a bouquet of moss

drained of all hope,

memories, frail flowers

gone up in smoke.

 

The loss of a child invokes the deepest sympathy

but a choice of words cannot encompass its totality.

They cannot net, comfort nor comprehend

for no one will experience an end in the same way.

Words out of scope to its scale

varied is the infinite it will veil

in those living to one day embrace

a fragmentary trace of its meaning.

Words won’t be there to buffer the shockwaves

they cannot fill the emptiness

of standing over their graves

no word can capture the feeling

of glass wounds from a shattered ceiling

that transparant canopy of innocence

falling in shards

safety’s a house of cards

once sturdy as stone

now crumbling into sand

washing into the unknown.

 

Loss brings with it a sense of permenance.

No purpose to positively identify

what’s in passing.

Recurring states of arrival and departure

where endings become beginnings.

Between them we’ll suffer our goodbyes

tested by all we’ll leave behind

longing for one firm memory of cohesion

to secure as an anchor

in this turbulent harbor.

 

The shadow of loss creeps up behind

to follow at your heel.

Dodge the knowledge if you must

but inevitably it will reveal,

while it overtakes you,

 a mark on your life’s canvass

 a subtle residue in the lines

of your most guarded expressions.

The scent of loss in the clothes of closure

for the mother of the disappeared

only will cry when she’s alone.

Carefully tending to what she can control

planting a garden over the now gaping hole.

Scratch the surface to see the scars

the aftermath of fire, the runaway cars,

the silence of a vacant road

her baby discarded and unclothed.

Carefully examine her eyes

to find sharp inquiries

into all the questions “why?’

Why me indeed

dropped in deep pools of sorrow

deep pools from heavy rain

to gaze into her pain

and find your reflection.

She’s a precious flower of deception

facing sunsets, appearing strong

but frozen this flower

enduring the greying winter long

accepting change

as another season falls away

pictures fade and family portraits crack

enduring love fills the space

holding up what it lacks.

Holding on for so long

without letting go,

all the pain dissolves into itself

from the night she received the news

by word of mouth

that the light in her life

has suddenly blown out.

A once sound haven

now full of decay

 a harsh wind stirred up the surface

carrying the precious particles away

like a sudden impact

in the loose sea floor sand

everything swirling in the current

being carried further and further from land.

 

The setting sun meets the sea

giving up its deep

the sorrow from all the rivers we’ll weep.

Thoughts travelling through the tunnel into the abyss at night

reaching nothing but a terrifying insight

that the longer we live, the more we’ve lost.

We can hold a currency of words

but what does loss cost?

In terms of sadness?

Grief prayed into a cross?

Those left in the dark

long for the sun to come up again

to know somehow as they are bending

 upon the edge of night

that it isn’t an ending

but only a beginning.