Momentum in the Surrendering

If the essence of travel

is like a bottle

on the floor of a moving bus,

it can encapsulate

a momentum in the surrendering,

how every curve in the road

repositions its

temporary home.

With the imagination as a source

and destinations unknown,

there’s a pause over a glassy surface

like the reflection of pines

from a chair on an empty pier.

See them penitent in this light,

pressed against the sky

and in crystalized moments

the breaks in the clouds

 fall back into place

on glacial lakes.

There are simple rituals of control

in a fractured life,

the boiling kettle

that begets tea

in a green leafed kitchen,

Tai Chi that steeps the internal

in a laundry beneath

the backdrop of mountains.

There is something sublime in

running of hands

over ridgelines and the curves

that follow the currents

of continuous movement.

Like the trains

who by track and tunnel

deconstruct images

that huddle beneath passion, variety.

Through these windows

the inevitable takes shape

and life gives it strength

by the knowledge of the end of the line.

A momentum in the surrendering,

the landscape’s haphazard design.

From a veil of dark,

from whatever meaning

can be divined

from memory’s spark

in a field of fog,

the commingling of shades,

journals and coffee stains,

the night blending into day.

Along these borders,

dreams and swollen rivers

a life blood is

sourced from a common ancestor,

the past is only passing through.

Adapting but never arriving,

embracing but never evading

the ever-present chaos

sewn into the stitches

of a fabric unraveling.

This rite of passage,

the unfinished fragments

of letters and old poems

from a life mostly forgotten,

is shown to have its own momentum

not in the surrendering

but in seizing the moment.

Like a Mark still Visible

Like a mark still visible

after the rain

the light in yin, the shade in yang

a moment’s reflection,

an obscure meeting,

the temporal sky

the armored sea

merging in alchemy.

Shadowplay through a pinched valley,

a quality of light

that will not last on the surface

but goes down

like a ship in a storm,

a squall and a gasp,

the drowned dead on driftwood raft

to isolated coasts abiding tides

feasting bonfires, glowing eyes,

the glinting edge of river carved lines.

Moors illuminated

cliff face that finds

lifting veils, precipitous falls,

gathering cloud stalls

on cathedral peaks, impermanent.

In the pasture the meditative calm

of watchful sheep

against wild hills unsheathed.

Wind works through the imagination,

through trees that bend,

disintegrate on piper’s notes

that find you in the end

impermanent.

Akin to smoke

off the surface of lakes

early light through the steam

of sipping dark coffee

and dream

for an hour, the writer

ponders the theme

from a corner,

a chronicle in the change

of action into thought,

each becoming the other

shadow absorbed

into the white walls of its lover.

The message of marks

destined to be erased

is the beauty

in what does not last permanently.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

From Asylum Windows

The motion pictures

are in the solitary entertainment of clouds

when the sky’s frayed mental edges

are amorphous to the days

floating away over a sea of cracked mirrors.

Your quarters are perched

like a giant bat

spreading its wings over the grounds

opening like a cavity

that the mind could not hope to cover

with anxiety, harnessed tightly to time.

Creativity, like a haphazard design

of submerged stones suggest

there is a wellspring of words to be mined.

Smooth as ivory

soft and pliant

as the soul of this enterprise,

where unseen hands

thread the scent of nocturnal flowers

through the sterile sanitarium

of sleeping senses.

The moving eyelids

molding dreams into compliance

that by morning a last sprinkle of moonlight

finds its way through the ward,

softening the last layer of night

for those who cannot shake it off with sleep.

This temporary reprieve

from the pervasive melancholy underneath

the loss of landmarks and

the inverted water sense of falling,

the sound of an ocean sucking

at all the shrinking spaces

peeling walls fit the places

that always seem to close in.

From a prominent house on the hill

there is no view

of the crumbling piers of childhood

or any of your dead peers

wheeled through underground tunnels,

the derelict images are only a mirage

in the fog of medication.

The breaks in the trees

were a temporary release

from a deeper foray into the past

where, on illuminated tracks,

memories are speeding

between leather mills

and over cast iron bridges

suggesting escape

but merely a ruse

for a one way trip

terminating at asylum station.

The darkened stairways

to the uppermost recesses of fear

neatly arranged in a natural setting,

the clinically deranged put through

harsh routines of forgetting.

All of the windows have eyes

all of the glass fragments of the sky

getting shattered beneath

the weight of reflection.

From this vantage, some see nothing

while others cling to visions

like fire escapes outside of gothic prisons.

Some are destined to fall

while others hold on to the hope

of some form of elevation

vacillating between the glass of the ground

and the effervescent clouds

that pass above without a sound.

 

 

 

 

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.

From a Train Window

Thoughts on departures and emerging trains,

the depot excitement of a bustling platform,

everyone clutching belongings

but nothing uniform

in this mad dash for the silver lining

Sunset Limited at last opening

under an art deco clock,

to carve and unlock

a new town out of morning tracks.

The lightness of leaving,

perhaps for good,

new memories to incubate

in the womb of this current

that whisks you away

through mountains that only rise

to separate you from that former self,

know there will be another platform

on which to take a stand.

 

From a train window

no victory or end is sustained for long.

It begins again within myriad turns,

inherently vulnerable, the sheer humanity

crammed into all that machinery.

Mere specks in time,

vagrant in the slow crawl

movement by design.

Pathologically it accelerates

from depots of glass

through canyons of concrete

to open spaces at last,

a distortion of distance.

Panoramic horizon lines

too gargantuan to define

the steam from your recess

reflecting the nature of impermenance.

Train windows

transient channels

the flashing panels

of faces and landscapes,

who shares your compartment

on the ride that never ends?

If ever our tracks cross,

I may never see you again.

A feeling of melancholy ties the loose ends,

lost in blurry reflections.

Shrill yells punctuate the in-between,

you’re either coming home

or being pulled away from its seams.

Trains consuming tracks

as the journey comes back around,

the distance dances,

improvising on transient canvasses,

once uniformly blank

now painted marsh grown purple heather,

better to forget what you left behind.

Wisps of black smoke uncoil

to leave no trace on this twisted line.

 

Another train brings me closer

to another thought I should let go of.

Heavy luggage in familiar compartments

burden to reveal that I have gone nowhere

but back around to the same question.

A direction without landmarks

disguised under the skies,

the fogged up vacant eyes

seeking to find a center

to a journey always within.

 

The train holds up a mirror

to confront you with choices,

how to perceive the reflection

upon the glass of these shifting questions?

Passing the unfamiliar landscape

smeared across windows of dying dreams.

Derailed in forests far from the roads,

they tread in a blur of unseen shapes

surrendering to the speed of light

over corrugated iron.

There’s no dark like the dark from a train,

as it combs the countryside

as cold as cold can go.

There’s no map for your eyes from a train window,

as the sun sets over towns like Wyanet.

Stalks go red and rusted pickups go nowhere,

in forgotten yards where their tires are swings.

Better to forget the rubber and gypsy by rail,

that way sleepy towns get momentarily injected

with locomotive speed and power directed westward.

It sets fire to their hair,

puts joy into the voices I won’t hear

over the rumble of the train.

Fields position against the horizon,

scarecrows crucified in the lava lamp sky

soon darkening in contorted sleep.

Dismayed to awake,

twisted into a pretzel shape

to realize I still have two more days.

Blink and they’re gone the way of debris,

the way strange towns recede,

the way of trackside whistles whining,

“Time is winning.”

When will it be morning over sunflowered fields?

So real, the moving landscape.

Surreil, that darkened place up ahead

that the distance is fed into.

The unknown that pushes against the side of the tracks

that break but do not diminish

the continuity of its impact.

When you think these tracks can go no further,

they usually do,

carrying you through tunnels,

through the continental divide,

until ultimately terminating

in the Antioch yards,

the place where cars go to die.

 

 

 

I

Night, Somewhere

Neon invitations lead your life

from out of the dark, a sudden glare

fascination follows these beacons

along the boulevards of night, somewhere

a faceless driver

navigates through the bright lights that impair

the vision of this sudden silhouette

wrinkling the blacktop of night, somewhere

along the Old Pali or the Natchez Trace

ominous roads built of bone and nightmare

hold close to the wild, their dark secrets

twisting through the night, somewhere

like a graceful dancer on parchment paper,

without a trace you’ll disappear

leaving us listening for gentle footsteps

from stage left in the night, somewhere

there’s a doorway, an arcade to find sanctuary,

a ray of light to acknowledge a searching stare

but none were found in hollow signs

trespassing through the night, somewhere

vagrant, with a pack dropped in blind alleys

cold stone for a pillow, a marble stair

a kind of impoverishment

draped in the night, somewhere

over rooftops you undress the moon

behind cloud fabric, its body bare

with curves for all to see and be guided

through the enchanted night, somewhere

a reflection in disturbed water

to gaze into and compare

while morning sees the same surface placid

but it is always night, somewhere.

At the Edges

After years on the road

you return to the edges.

By sea or by land

these moments of remembrance

stand wavering in the wind

blown pages that overlap

past and present phases

like contours of a map

the weather ages on the dash.

In the dark lake water,

dragonflies skim the surface

through which you peer

from a half- submerged pier

tilting into infinity.

The occasional break

in the pine morning quiet,

leaves scenes so familiar

they are like a reflection

rippled on the surface of otherwise placid

tree trunks, those sentinels of memory.

Home again but without its shackles,

he’ll continue his travels

into the night

going bat dark

above the rustling leaves

while morbid pines weep

into these quiverring pond strokes.

Eyes stroll along the dark mirror glass

catching the glimmer

of someone’s camp fire

conquering the edges of forests

and the sides of the road.

That fire tied together all those

that kept him warm.

That glimmer of

civilization,

a barely buoyant

swimmer within disintegration.

 

By morning he had disappeared,

leaving only wet dew and coals

approaching smoke that rolls off the lake

in folds that snake through

light breaks in the branches,

ghosts in motion again.

One city blending into the next

rain of realization that nothing lasts.

Dripping wires tied it all together

in elaborate passionate gasps,

fractured into tiny pieces

glittering in the glass

of a thousand parallel eyes.

Neon revolutions of stoplight symbols

known to those who initiated

complete surrender

to that which is transparant,

time, chance, whim,

cooking them together

by the side of the road.

A cutout against the wilderness,

a flickering flame under the pine wings,

riverbrook picnics

the momentum brings

long hours westward,

a straight line to nowhere was freedom.

He thought to write it this way,

in transient moments.

Everything he had to say

moves at a rapid pace

as states recede in rearview mirrors.

The open road fades into deserts,

widens into seas,

wellsprings to seize

pens and make amends,

to frame and make sense

of the curves and the bends,

predicting where this road ends.

Will edges round out

to form something solid to grasp?

Beyond the plateaus and abrupt drop-offs,

something of substance that will last?

Randy Voyant

You reek of memory

instant recall

involving the random, the exotic,

inconceivable places we passed through,

strange skeletons of what’s suggested

snail gloss on the slippery words we infested

tepid swamps of standing water.

The same scene goes stagnant,

the dream redundant.

Randy, if you leave it,

it will be here when you return,

closing in on itself.

Home, where silence is like sunlight

calling you to be free of walls,

corridor and cushion

the fall

leaves

you adrift

floating downstream

you shape-shift

but do not mix

suspended but not solid

with liquid precision a withdrawal,

it’s been a long time since I followed you

into the disintegration

that would eat through

voices and words

burrowing in the head,

penetrating reflections faced with dread,

you would disrupt my personality

and feed my future instead.

You corroded my position,

dissolved the pressures of decision,

connected rather than dissected,

the ideals I sought

refuge in action before thought

a spark in the dark

like an exaggerated drag

of a hand-rolled cigarette,

calloused, crackling, Navajo ends

you see endure

without a face attached to them.

Non-attachment guarantees no exemption from pain.

The less you speak, the more I understand,

blind and tapping over land,

that silence should not be confused with discontent

but used instead as an instrument

to remove obstacles

along this perilous course.

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.