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.

Thoughts that Wander Dark (shaking hands at the end)

I know these thoughts that wander dark .

While traveling we coalesced briefly,

as strangers when neither offered shelter,

out beyond the city lights,lying in forests

almost too quiet to be pacified.

Back East, where the Atlantic is brewing storms,

darkened they would form from the subconscious,

until  breaking over Montauk,

memory grows full of the sound

of wave grain scraping pebbles,

descending, with salty skin,

smooth as seal wash,

like shipwrecks to subterranean sand,

it is never solid ground on which we stand.

A weeping, for all of us sinking.

Thoughts going abruptly dark,  drowning

like sailors with no one’s mourning to lift them,

only loosened garments , black and torn,

strewn across the sky like an aborted skin.

It takes the form of storm clouds and bellowing wind

to shake widow’s peaks and usher in

a spray of gulls, deranged and white,

with cries like a piercing reprise.

In the dunes a string of flowers endures,

while burning forests of evergreen

cast down the safety screen,

thrusting us once more into tenuous positioning.

The horror inherent in a charred landscape,

the specter of cancer haunting our mutated shapes,

we’re absorbing the next tragedy through the TV,

breathing deeply the Autumn scent of gunpowder and spotfire.

Out beyond the reflection of light on the surface of the sea,

gasoline ignites  from underneath,

so you get to know the inverse as well,

for the source of words can transform wounds to beauty,

like streaks of light that adorn the sky,

a holiday to the eye though it temporarily blinds

into forgetting that we all must one day die.

The body cannot sustain this creativity.

At it’s peak, it used these techniques

to attempt immortality.

High upon the mountain, it gains traction on the stars.

Till far below it sings odes to the river that washes out to sea.

Down the road you migrate through the mirage in a distant bend,

calling to the future like an estranged friend,

shaking the hand of what comes to meet you,

once again putting aside the folly

of aimlessly grasping at the illusion of permanence

amidst the totality of an eventual end.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Past as Parallel

In the darkness of isolation

In the void that was the mind,

it was like entering a vast mangrove

decaying under the skin of what’s left behind.

Discovering the discarded

words reverent with sweat,

rain-wet and intimate

beads coarsing over mossy limbs.

Stream swollen red runoff

from slopes in a deluge of thoughts.

Once inside, you reach for the quiet.

Lost in a riot of bramble

held in the chaos as you scramble

along parallel paths.

The air is thick with flies

forbidden fruit feast on echoes and cries

carried over from emotions

that which is all too human.

 

Quivering in a pool of your reflection,

hidden faces barely seen in shifts of light

emerging from a canopy

dense enough to hold out the sky

porous enough to bear the sublime

pit pat pattern of droplets

like unseen footsteps all around you,

trickling to accompany the past

that parallels this stunning topography. 

 

The forgetting is everywhere.

Become partner to the trees

so it won’t leave you bare.

Your roots meander

in tendril searching over the floor

with jungle longing

for something solid

amidst the rumor and folklore.

This insatiable siege

suggests the answers will be relieved

into the ink-fed precipice of words

spreading at your feet.

Going over the falls

and through narrow ravines,

down the halls of hidden trauma

into hollow caverns of forgotten dreams,

the scarred remnants of its impression

seems to inform your progression.

Going deeper by broken fingernail

darker by heavier breathing

deeper where the blood runs colder

in the currents of the largest ocean,

you won’t stay afloat much longer,

sinking beneath the surface

of a pull that is much stronger

than any resistance you could muster.

Deeper where the sun won’t shine

darker on the underbelly of the sea,

where I’ll still be scratching for the light

in the night you give me.

 

The ocean sometimes spares its knowledge

but holds a secret share

of shells to contain

that which remains vacant,

claimed by accident

gathered by the net

you set beneath the structure

of its perpetual geography.

This ship is bound for the imaginary.

Its dimensions wound in a translucency.

When the faith of its course

gets severed from any link,

it spirals down the drain

like a tiny fragment

in a giant sink.

Before vanishing,

before being lost at sea,

your vessel got tangled in the Sargasso,

scattered in the brightened debris.

It goes where the sun dies,

radiant was its last expression,

bobbing on the horizon,

its final ecstatic recession

into the night.