Inundated

Inundated

seas outside,
who requests this moat, tonight?

Once a house, a boat

soaring on an inland sea.

In undated lands, we

flow over, overflow

low mountains, clouds, drifting

below the flood, below

gold-leafed mud, shining

tiny cities, water-whelmed;

rising, the ocean breathes

salty dreams alkaline,

brine bitter as wine clams

over hearts tonight

locked behind window, pains

bleed over the sill, puddle

in your eyes, faltering

hands fumble, still

desperately distinct.

all your answers lie

in my heart tonight.

Where you are in always

time, there is, love

never sleeps, ever

dreams.

Sometimes

Who am I? Sometimes

While magnolia tides shimmer with the smiles of the sea

A scimitar moon sings with the power of wheat;

tiny boats like snowdrops through the ocean drift

cupped in the mighty waves

the sky's eyes breathe fire and my heart's kindling -

jaguar of my spirit stirs 

and leaps

into the running water seams of these twilight weaves

whose wolf howls and owls hoot thrice

wherefore art thou now, oh brother, oh love?

quick, before too long

locking dried petals into a walnut box

redolent of east autumn sunrise

and dizzying honeyed saffron

treasure of memories, gift to the lady of waters

this burden is heavier floating free

Today was Walt Whitman and Pablo Neruda day. I admit a fascination and love for Pablo Neruda, and an indifference towards Walt Whitman. Oh, Whitman definitely possesses a turn of phrase and a knack for vital, almost blood-thirsty writing that lacks in my own. But somehow he manages to make poetry long-winded, almost tedious. There is something impatient in the reading, or too patient in the writing. Maybe I read too nearly to Pablo Neruda, whose writing inspired me greatly.

Some lines I wrote down as I read them:

cold flower heads are raining over my heart

ay, love is a journey through waters and stars, through suffocating air, sharp tempests of grain

carnal apple, woman filled, burning moon, dark smell of seaweed, crush of mud and light

full of the voltage of the sea's movements

...to that form that love carved in the guitar

so that the waves can complete themselves in the sky

It seems like every poem is charged with their own "voltage" like the sea's motions.  Again I wish that I could read the original works and understand the nuance of his language. I understand enough Spanish to know that I know too little. 

It's been a day of distance, of separation. I can't remember if I've ever suffered a headache, but what I sometimes experience is strange nauseating "distance vision". Everything, from the pen in my hand to the doorknob only paces away or the book I hold in my hand, everything appears as though it were far, far away, well beyond reach.  That's what today has felt like, as though seeing things, I could not interact with them. Difficult days (S: looking at you), unusual environment, unsolvable problems, confusing imagery, brokenness of people, losing - I can't seem to win, or even compete in the game, sometimes. None of these are my problems, and I can't seem to help with them. It is a devastating separation. This is such a day (when the chinks in my legerdemain make clear the smoke and mirror).

What do I do on such days? I've no solutions. Sometimes, I write until the pages bleed through and, closing my eyes, I wait until my blindness dissipates. Sometimes, I stare at my hands and wonder if they are mine, or if that changes things. Sometimes, I wish. Sometimes I win anyway.

Closes and Opens

A spectre haunts my frailty, a ghost I've forged of devilry. With dreams, awake, entwined, cold as listless lies and lives, phantom echoes of ancient angers arrive and cruelly wave as passersby, then smile. The fellowship's shattered, into ashes thick in black winds. Every cat's tail of nine slicing through my mind leaves paw prints of crimson mysteries behind.  Nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals / the power of your intense fragility. Lovely letters, in the dark night storms of survival, when I've jettisoned my soul, and dreams die derelict on ocean's floor, while others simply shipwrecked float as flotsam food for fishes - can you hand me the rope? You are waiting for another, my bathybic apparition, no matter, dear. Watch me flounder here. Salty eyes flood unnoticed in the sea, married to my maritime eventuality. This is a sodden and sorrowful swan song, as your look lingers across another open ocean, not mine, with spring sky eyes and stolen time. There's love in those eyes, not for me, not for me. And it anchors deep within my veins.

There's gold in grey days and silver in the skies. The sunny rays are forsythia smiles and the trees marigold denials of icy chains. The purple gates of dawn blossom wide, and an old locomotive thunders across the heavens, leaving billowing trails in cumulus piles.  What if a much of a which of a wind. Here is the rain awaited by leaves with all their trees and by forests with all their mountains. People stopping and listening - when the sea's overhead and below, where to go?
Where the sea meets the moon-blanch'd sand
Listen, as the finches flit and sing, the newts wiggle beneath the drops of rain which plunk against the lake-drum. Pay close mind to the vessel cutting gently through the loose-leafed wine of this intoxicating inland sea, above which the hooting owl with offset eyes swoops into the underbrush with frightening speed, and the goats clopping up the hillside stones bah and bleat away this autumn squall. Nothing so beautiful as sunlight and rain tricking light into rainbows across the lake and between the trees. There's love here, quite as strong as the infinite, beating brisk and bright.





"Do you believe in dichotomy?"
"I do, and I don't."


somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands
~ ee cummings