just another phase

expansive -

a wall without a room -
a serving for thirst,
takes the shape of
a glass,
the glass itself
trickles down my arm;
silk across my skin,
then gone.
pooling and soaking in
about my feet to re-emerge
on the moon's nether side.
no longer a satellite.
a ball of stone,
it's central planet, that
gravity's pull,
long dead.
its light, replete but
its loyalty
sustained.

hope without optimism

this river, quite far from the ocean,
still flows to the ocean,
becomes the tide that will carry
your ship home -
to me.

this river water,
touching my bathing body,
collapsing my breath to pull
it away as my lungs hold beneath
its surface.
its skin, my skin.

this very water
will comprise the singular wave
that will bring the fore
of your vessel to shore.

that point where wood
and steel first touch land,
that press, a kiss -
your metal against my earth.

you will not be lost.

i dream

no compass, no guiding star, no
host, no haunt or guardian,
no father, no,
no whispered
instruction …
only my newly severed thoughts …

a guilt I can't phrase or source;
I am not a blank slate -
men have never tended towards
generating objects or patterns
of much value for my life.

dream #1

I dream an old, red velvet
theatre -
huge felines bound off the screen.
I run sickly slow -
my legs in amnesia
just shy of paralysis.

a pion (panther-lion) overtakes me - '
I fall
over and over,
landing always jaw first.
the impact,
a glass needle shower …

I cannot use my broken mouth.

I cannot ask
for help.

dream #2

a pillar, an
edifice, something very simple
with human vanity or remorse at its
underpinning - fairly well out of sight
but if you can feel, you can feel
it there with room to grow with
room to spare adjoining rooms in memory -
what trembling, toothy lock across
two places in time might be wiggled
just so, to gain access to old
dreams?

?

why do we remember
when we remember
what we remember

it's not up to us
is it -

I dream
a sparse structure
with no share of glamour for its
low buildings.

the morning I visit, its grounds
are quiet - a man in calm
work sweeping - a feckless older woman at a front desk
grudgingly tells me the price
of admittance - I don't recall
what it was, only that I feared it was not
worth it -
even as I paid.


I am the only guest.
my footsteps make no noise, though
I feel they should
and wish they did.

silence knocking against
silence

then the chatter
of 2 staff members
echo from … somewhere

and
one voice
singing ...

moving closer

I find her,
she sits in a corner with a hymnal,
ignoring me until I take out a camera
to capture the image of some object
which struck me as important,
trapped in dust just beneath
a plastic screen.

"is not allowed."

"i'm sorry?"

"you cannot snapshot. it is forbidden
what is for memory must be from
memory - no interference - the circle
does not include
you, and you cannot find your way free
from it."

she points, flaps her hand, whole and open
and erasing - fixes me with a stare.

I don't understand but of course,
understand - her tone colorless
acid, reductive - immediately changing back,
she picks up the verse left off.

sweet resumption - her disconnect is absolute from the
cramped room,
spatially unlike anything inside me.

I turn my back and
then back again to ask more from the singer,
but of course
she is gone
and so too
my camera.

lines i found in an old notebook:

a notebook that just sits there
on an old desk
- things get scrawled there
between tasks
like a net across some
far sky hung
to catch then let go
unharmed,
winged things - lovely, odd and/or
creepy:

a slow descent into trust -
more intimate, more ambiguous than
faith. it won't be put to words and
all those clashing versions
… something underneath.


your face, to hold the sun in
high planes and angles,slanting down
to blue shadow.
a sureness in its intuition
like the sureness
of the ground where twilight falls
past itself.

a heat blurred horizon -
objects go indistinct then
vanish while my vision
holds on
~ maybe I can still see
a pinpoint form -
maybe breath,
however slight,
is not fully gone.

black and slick

it is not late enough and soon
will be too early
- a black door at the end of
a corridor -
we try to leave it closed but
it is a door after all, so
it ever suggests itself.

the shadows of bees on the grass,
the roar of private sorrow
rising from every single one,
from everyone, so loud'we
cannot hear.

mobius ribbons of moving blood patterned in
a place that is described as
inside me - but it is all so committed
to so much other than "me."


grey more surely grey,
wood more surely wood,
light as light as
light can be, and
you and me
more tender, embarrassing,
fierce ... storm hailing
sorcery from the mundane,
rearing up to crush me back,
scrape me from the flat and pack me
into a box more surely box.
a push without pause,
a dense field of feeling,
ruined by interpretation -

music dies ...
the diamond forsakes
predetermined grooves and erupts
in a scratch straight line screech.


the groan of heat swollen trunks
holding high a failing afternoon
- my heart clasps itself for comfort
and squeezes.