Textures, Gestures

Textures, gestures

into the time lapse

haze of morning,

the spontaneous eruptions

of clouds forming within

what appears static and glass

reflecting the easiest passage

around obstruction.

A break in the rocks ,instruction,

swift action

to balance the rigidity

of thoughts

disguised as wisdom.

Sinking somewhere

unconscious

beneath the surface,

the river stones

smooth as tear drops,

far flung and sinking

deep within an archipelago of

birds singing.

Flecks of light like candles,

shadows and their cave mouths commingling,

each motion creates words

reinforced by moonlight

even after the flames of meaning die.

Textures, gestures,

the eyes in a painting.

Faces in the falls,

rock walls,

the profiles of angels in miniature,

ascending

from cracks and fissures

like the first idle thoughts

that spread

from Le’ahi to Koko head,

lighting

the first spark defiant rim

that holds all the dark within

a cloud fabric’s

somber poem.

Underscoring the bedding,

thresholds in the wedding,

dawn and dark,

a consummation in time.

It comes to penetrate the mind’s

El Greco sky.

Bridging storm clouds

with white shrouds of calm

in the perfectly

swirling turbulence that

contrast unites

in the overtures of this day

in what endures of this night

along the edges of impermanence.

you become aware of it

only as it changes again.

What is Completed?

The interpretation of art,

like a rebirth of thought.

Each new piece regenerates

all that came before it.

It venerates the ancestor

of no definitive answer,

instead coloring and giving birth

to an infinite texture.

Contours you’ll resume

by tracing this womb throughout.

It begins by lightly brushing the surface,

as graceful as a lizard’s limbs

over the coarse skin of tree bark.

The canvass stretched taut,

silent and thin as a moth’s wings

deafening when you’re listening

to a certain frequency of rain,

it resonates like a train of thought,

seismic as a teardrop in a pool,

radiating in myriad directions.

Each stroke is an impression,

passing over the surface like an apparition,

tuned into the unseen,

its lingering reception recalling

all those things that stay with you.

Each step is an embryo

for new material to come through

the subconscious,

no longer dormant

but with a slow flow

as if emerging from a volcano,

the vaporous past absorbed into the current,

transformed from within,

to be reborn as new land

calling into question

as you perceive from the edge

“What is ever fully completed?”

Collective Memory Cryptic Topography

Allowing light to penetrate this cryptic topography.

The sun accentuates its elliptic identity

from above, a translucent jade

ensconced the loss and uncompromising decay

like the texture of a masquerade

cloaked in symbols to unnerve

the jungle’s passion play.

All the secrets were concealed

footprints and past evidence sealed

behind a cordoned clearing

irreparable sin

all manner of excess and fascination

expresses itself in backwater reflections.

Dark waters seized in the stream bed

where weeks of rain and flood merge

limb and blood

vine wound bone rock

hair strewn skin

all coarsing within the accepting earth.

The canopy takes another breath

initiating a rebirth

from what rooted us to death,

a banyon tightened noose

and sometimes they are never cut loose

but you imagine it and are held in thrall,

left to heed compulsion’s call,

to fill a page torn from the mystery

like leaves from a tree in pendulous pause

without a soul to witness

the collaborating forest

while tongues of mist

whisper of its myths

on distant peaks.

When silence speaks,

it’s through the wind

an invocation,

buoyant and blanketing

the sharpest contours

softening in the rain and cloud shadow

able to penetrate passages narrow,

cautious by approach,

a barely audible voice

from the minaret of choice

lost in circles under a darkened dome

you come to the remains of a forgotten home

just beyond the crossroads,

 a ruin from antiquity

to leave offerings of wisdom

on the altars of the collective memory.

 

Loose Bindings

At the end of the line

the last bus dies hard into the distance.

Unkempt pencil shaded features

obscured by smoke,

ushered in by taillights that

soon broke an impenetrable border

of silence in the cricket’s song.

Before you the way is paved,

languid and long,

through a tunnel of trees.

Perspectives like these never seem to end.

Drawn around an infamous horseshoe bend,

blacker than black would render,

so you surrender within.

What preserves these yarns?

Fragile webs spun years before,

now barely glistening.

Left as landmarks

and if you were listening

to the warnings, you’d find them

camoflaged to the texture of a whisper,

cathedraled in a prayer of mourning,

like a memento or an offering

to those that are suspended under the invasive ceiling

of your mind’s canopy.

Darkness, when the mind is hung up in the penultimate hour.

You linger there alone by lamplight,

in an exile’s outpost,

the writer makes his choice of word

akin to a wolf whose voice unheard

calls to an invisible host.

It’s the last grip before you nod off,

the final drip of moonlight

lost in the reams

condemned to the pages

drowning in someone else’s dreams.

Loose are these bindings,

like the last gasp of night,

horrible you’re finding,

when Dawn is struggling into sight.

Time covers all trace

in the deepening enigma of this place.

With a momentous wrestling with roots

you’ve had these moments of disappearance,

adhering to solitude,

where nothing is completed.

Belief is loose ground under the obscured ridgeline.

The half-formed picture of the Pali,

where words won’t go easily

to describe its beauty,

trace trail wounds in a slow procession.

The magma of your impression

will manipulate the land,

that trembles where you stand

before ultimately going over.