all poets welcome!

HOW TO BECOME A CONTRIBUTOR:

Just send an email with "join san juan poets" in the subject line to terriclark@centurylink.net

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Wednesday, December 31, 2008

invisible ice

the wind visits from the artic north
and i cannot believe how much invisible ice
it holds in its mouth
meanwhile this hero's roof rattles
under the strain of having a piss pot
a pager and telephone to protect
under one wide brimmed hat
my beard scatters its grey fingers
that are left awry in a gesture of the wind's
anarchy
i incubate my ashes
it is december and everything feigns death
in a riot of hidden whispers
listen to what i have to say it seems to say
in an undertone of chorused urgency
but the straw hat over my wife's left breast
lifts its lid and i see
her completely naked for first time
since she was born
even the bed sounds like cobblestones baking
in an oven of yeasty haste that fills
the sky with an odor of whipped saliva
blue in the distance
where the sun cannot warm the stones of its moon
neptune is predictibly unpredictable
i get a snow shovel and spit at myself
missing by a barn's square yardage
while breakfast is being devoured by the connoisseurs
of bacon drippings and french fried yams
that levitate over their plates
it is the wind again
it is invisible with silver muscles

Saturday, December 27, 2008

the heist of the century

The bank robbery was planned assiduously
it was the greatest heist of the century
perhaps in all of history
since the sacking of Rome
our emperor was bewitched
but he did what the thieves demanded
the victims had given their money away
years ago anyway
so now they were empty handed
and didn't even realize they had been had
all went according to plan
the banks got away
and didn't care who went mad
as the economy tanked
rumor has it
they are laughing all the way
to their banks

Tuesday, December 23, 2008

a few breaths

i woke up when the phone rang
announcing that the owners manual was here
but where here is is a mystery
a cloud settles on a leaf
in a snow storm
hungry blue dogs roam in the tune
of the first wind passing through
an aeolian harp
the pink sperm stands up in an egg
and is scorched brown in a xerosere
you get three breaths
and you can't hold any one of them
for more than a few minutes

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

pocket

all of my pockets are clones
of an original pocket
that was manufactured in a sweat shop
factory
in order to hold more
of the same

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

green backs

anything for more money
she said
and it spread like fire
in a paper factory
where the workers made minimum wages
which made her rich
after awhile all she could see were green backs
not a trace of a face left in her memory
she piddled and frittered and shammed everyone because
everyone resembled a dead president
who had just taken the oath of office
with a knot of promises for a necktie
and today's special... the menu announced...
but all she heard was a cough
from the coffers
and a distant jingle
and spiked heels clomping on marble floors
under a five thousand dollar suit
she felt fine
she felt sexy
she was pushing open the doors of the courtroom
and she knew she was going to win

Sunday, December 7, 2008

memory's memory

a memory has many memories
attending every remembrance
even the one that forgets
to remember
is a memory of a memory
a forgotten memory
a memory that forgets itself is
the shadow of a memory that
wears your face
a mask masking the time
and place where the ocean breeze
fluttered the hanging green and white
awnings
and the smell of salt in the air
and the blue light reflected in a dazzling
moment that had no memory
but the times before it
without its scent and feelings
its touch its taste and slow burn cooled
by the green waves of the atlantic
and the small foot prints in the wet sand by the edge
of the sea tracking
the hard run from the chasing waves
and the popcorn vendor on the boardwalk
and being lost in the crowds and finding
the shells that no longer litter the bare beaches
all that is lost now from that moment among
days when the future weighed immeasurably more
and the youthful muscles were made to carry it
back and forth into the future that was being filled
with memory’s memories of work and play
is now a memory's forgotten memory
in a shadowland we call today

Wednesday, December 3, 2008

one wife is not enough

koala~sized in the fog covered valley i made my way from tree to tree
unclinging as i clung
one arm behind holding on
the other outstretched groping in the mist
for the next hand~sized branch
hold your fire gently in your mouth
i heard through the upholstered air
muffled in a muzzle my bullets shivered
then a sign appeared in heaven
to make me smile
one wife is not enough
hubbub to complain about in such a witnessless whiteness
so i stopped dead
the earth smoked
the trees gave up and went away
the roads crumbled from the program notes
despite an auspicious triple conjucntion
with a lag time of
3 or 4 months

Monday, December 1, 2008

imagination

imagination is a wall
that moves
i ran into it headlong
years ago
it trims all the bushes
it makes governmental
decisions and
paints the days with colors
from paint factories
today
i completely forgot myself
and walked straight into the conference
room
but i didn't know anybody there

colloquy

there must be a way
without this ambitious colloquy
with a god that doesn't exist
with a purpose that is a chameleon of changing
intentions
without these predictable outcomes
for every action
there must be a way
to live like the horses in the field across the road
who do not stop dead in their tracks
to watch the sun sink below the horizon
who do not collect orange and purple sunrises
there must be a way
to be
without lying my way out of myself
a helping hand that understands itself without my signature
one step behind the next
without directions or expectations
or a memory that distorts every footfall with recollected fears
without laying claim to the road
or the labor and its suffering dissolving
into nothing
i am tired of my insomnias
and my disappointments with competing appetites
i am tired of eating
i am tired of fighting
i am tired of creating what has already been created
and marketed countless times
i am tired of falling down
and tired of getting up in the dark
there must be a way to live
beyond the chemistry and physiology
of this unknowable alchemy
these transformations into transformations
without the promise of turning into gold
there must be a way to live in a house
without being owned by the household
without being callous apathetic or bought
and sold
there must be a way
but there isn’t
so i stand under a black tree in the black starless predawn
darkness
and talk with my forked tongue to the invisible lightning
that doesn’t exist until it does

Thursday, November 27, 2008

without me

there are distances without space
between

and a memory can defeat miles
between places seperated
by space
that uttered mutter
of illusion
that precisely that
that confusion
moving through a face
this solid step
that wheel on the pavement
the rumble of mortal solitude
in place
of space
and its silence
that grows its thin skin through language
as it barks around our trunks
i stand beneath a tree without a name
and wonder how to define
you i say i
whom i have seen

without me

Monday, November 24, 2008

this house

no animals are allowed in this house
except for pets
i stood in the yard and looked up
at the big dipper
the same stars i saw when i was a child
i am childless
or else my children are strangers
i do not travel
i go to the city
i share a bed with a woman
but we do not touch
i work for money
that is insufficient to pay for my rent
and my food and clothing
so i beg borrow and steal
every chance i get
i use credit
which depresses my spirit
i owe more than i will ever repay
i have a degree that is worthless
i make art that is never seen
or sold
i have no hope for anything i haven't
already lost
i bring plants indoors
and forget to water them
i have dreams and visions
of the future which is blank
i have friends who are not friends
i love my lover for all the wrong reasons
the weather is strange we no longer
have four seasons
i feel hypnotized and polarized
disprized and super~sized
in a culture of liars i live my lies
just like all the others
i am finally ready to die
in this house that is not my house

Saturday, November 22, 2008

#1973  20081122

Hurrying across the road
In front of the headlights
A covey of
    alder leaves
Tumbles in the gust;
Safe and sound
in the culvert.

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

wish

balancing on a fir branch hanging over the parkinglot
half moon tilted bowl
filled to the brim with liquid gold

i wish you were here to see it!

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

insomnia

the voice in the down spout at three am old familiar you speaking imperceptible secrets all the mumbles in the world's rubble crying in hysterical whispers buried beneath an inch of water i understand only a few moments in a life that dreams it is passing itself without touching but is audible behind the beating drums my hair and my hands betrayed you my bad breath my thoughts running riot in the rain my skin flakes off my scalp holding a splitting headache together foot in a vice a shoe in a soul none of it laying lazily on a tounge used over the hour paged and alarmed rehearsed by now all at once always it is all of sudden and it speaks in a downpour and drizzles through the gray sun there is talk of a gun a son of a son once more once it is begun the pile at the footprint the stint of rash regaling before the night quits and the whistles scream i cannot sleep i cannot dream

Friday, November 7, 2008

to approximate meaning

despite doubt
a token
at best
not a niche worth defending
or a reason
for being written
a no~show
a wedding's refugee
a landscape that looks undeveloped
from the asphalt road
but ironically the No Trespassing signs
give it away
an utter lack furthermore no music neither
paragraphs that try
to end dead
serious
and solemn
witness this
insanity that died in poverty
at 4 he met with and spoke to
god
one of them anyway
in a vision of delusion
raptured over
with piffle

Monday, October 27, 2008

fields of gold

her horses are grazing in the sparkle of routine routines
as if there were no tomorrow no torque in the engine of time just a fine
sprinkle of piano and harmonium tinkling on the still warm air
that could easily slip forward or backward but stalls in neutral eternity
leaves fall from the branches but never hit the ground
her autumnal thighs mount another winter
but her eyes see starlight cascading into the snow
falling upwards
the blue snow
and the brown fields
that continue to riot
in fields of gold


for terri clark

Monday, October 20, 2008

a nice guy

you look like a nice guy
in a hospital
in a swat team stand~off with common sense
people go to work everyday to get spanked
i don't know who that is
who posseses them
what ruse
what devil
what fine alright
what come on
that won't shut up
i have no clue as to who was who or why what happened to any of them happened...
surrounded by today
there is no big if
its no deal
a whisp of smoke
a wind blown day

Monday, October 13, 2008

#1949    20080912

Walking back
      Single file
      on our
      Respective
      Carkeek Park
      trails
Shovels, hoes, rakes, loppers
      and tarps in hand
Merging into one
combined line;
"Hi Ho! Hi Ho!"
      We're done pulling
      Ivy so we can
      go . . .
(Home after a "day of caring"
to take a shower.)

Thursday, October 9, 2008

i really don't care

its some kind of smut
the punching bag baby
has long since disappeared
and the puppet master is swinging
from a rope over mama's old ceramic stove...
the inanity of it all is all too obvious
and is not to be obviated by obscenities...
a slow tremor rumbles through my dreams
which are regulated to death on the micro level
but completely unregulated on the macro…
i am full of captious bull shit:
those bucketheads are late to the party again…
i smile and grunt but still it stings my puny sense of pride…
i need a personal bail~out for all this interpersonal falderal
like a sore throat in summer time…
like a being stitched together with pieces of dead things or
a charm with a bent for the inscrutable daemonic in the heart
of irony…
we discuss desserts
for infantilized ninety year olds...
i really don't care and it ain't that i am apathetic...
i let my mind explode silently
and observe the fireworks...
to walk off unencumbered into the night...
*
collaboration with jim eaise

Monday, October 6, 2008

autumn

cousin my cousin
with your flowers and the great blue herons
on the edge of the flood
i don't know how hard it is for you
to grow old there
or how hollow the final show
in the city is going to be
or how satisfying the meal and wine before the fire
but the fair is only one vanity shop
in the city of stars
and the moon flowers
and the companion cats
and the smell of earth holding you
up above its dark resevoirs
but i have made a special place
in my solitude for you cousin
as you sail through the skies
in planes
i have built a raft with your letters
their finely executed script
and your picture cards are my private
gallery of all that made art art
for me and gladdened my heart
i have made a place for you in a heart
shaped boat
and i am going the way of all hearts
without a paddle goal or destination
and i will continue speaking to you
in my solitude
in the dead of night
the night filled with echoes
and the sound of water
and the rustling of yellow and red leaves
falling
*
for christine will

Saturday, October 4, 2008

in Punktilla’s time

strange emanations your lordship during the reign of Punktilla

before that the stars contained all objects wandering the bright halls
before then the bright halls piece lives back from the Plank time
fore toward the edge of lightbillions
where your worship confers on his progeny
his bloodline and falcon wizardry

young son in the castle.....cloudfaced sire
and the lye in the dough is you knowing
and the syrup is not knowing

serve up the feast on the noonday lake
never think of yours truly without hearing it ripple

it’s your lake
though it’s situated in a minefield
but you can breath under water
in the bright halls

hillrise

fair folding hills
in rutilant edges of cloud
egg-tacked to the bottom of the sky

majuscule meme stark
in the mirror-painted expanseless track
the remembered thing becomes blunter

here stands the pilfered proto-plazmoan
beholding two realities
heaven-shackled

Magnus Quintus Overubergow
but also the fuckage of all free grace
playing bocce

on the rubber grass
perceive the gift of design
in the shattered-most

even within the shattered air
hanging in a reflection
eyes look and try taking

the remembered thing
now and ever shattered within
the tissues of the blood

risen and met up
fair-clouded and pleat-burnished
the eggy hills

Monday, September 29, 2008

to begin again

i want to begin again
to start over
from a place of unknowing
i often see how far outside
of my body
my head is
and my heart is not
on speaking terms
with my head
but it says:
you will soon bring joy
to someone new in your life
you will have many friends when
you need them
but at no other time
pleasures await you
near the seashore
you will never need to worry
about a steady income
all good fortunes
form a sudden tomorrow
snowblind mountains and skeleton fish
in the ghostly river
lost and found in the spilled milk
of the sudden sunset
and the elastic light
the breathtaking breath taking breath
after breath

Saturday, September 27, 2008

Forgetfulness

away with mind
on clouds of forgetfulness!
how satisfying it is
to be here now
under a watchful moon
how ever miraculous the days
as purposeless as ever
but with this difference
where purposelessness was doom
and lack
is now a river
where once grew must
and should and ought
is now is and be and now
where fears' brambles and vines
once sought a host
wildflowers now bloom
undisturbed

oh light and air
you wondrous meaningless things!
to me and us you give yourselves
completely
with no end no gain
in mind
from celestial heights
to lowliest earth
you the masters
the teachers of love!

unprepared

I was unprepared
to stand in this garden
to bask
in the forgotten warmth
of unveiled sun

your miracle
is love's eternal spring
which heeds
neither mind
nor season

stubborness & tenderness

lunatic wine
sadness
stubborness and tenderness
together forever
in a silence
from seed to planet
to star
the moonless night
a sprig of dust
spiced with a spike of salt

Sunday, September 21, 2008

ephemera

goldfish belly up
wrap it in newspaper now
and throw it away

Saturday, September 20, 2008

#1952        20080919

Oozing over
      each thin cloud
Sweet honey sun
Drips down to Earth and
Rolls behind the hill;
Good night sun.

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

i thought of you once

the windows are broken
the doors are down
but the room lives on
*
through our love
i have found meaning
in my life
that did not exist before
as more than a hope
if not a promise
*
we create these perfect moments together
something between us is completed
like an equation
an algorithm
a proof
as simple and as difficult
as hugging the only person
you could ever love
*
in my eyes you are perfect
even your doubts
your hesitations
your absences
provide and sustain
my certainty
*
my only secret from you
is the pain of our partings
i smile encouragement
and hold you in my heart
empty handed
and still i hold on
*
i thought of you
once
in everyway imaginable
one day i will walk out
into the world alone
and never return
but as a black bird
who speaks to you in another
tongue
from the other side of life
filled with my longing
for you
that not even death
could stifle
*

for terri clark

Wednesday, August 6, 2008

caesarian

i had a caesarian section during my therapy session
she pulled the child out of my womb drowning in blood
what kind of man are you?
she asks me
as i wipe the blood from its eyes
and recognize myself
with the same look vacillating between stunned dread
and spontaneous joy
*
for suzann

Tuesday, July 29, 2008

corpse

inoffensive corpse
fire of sand infinitesimal city
explosion of daylight in the eyeless swimmer
through the earth's clay
you ceremony of memory
our human light burning humid human words
for a basket of subterranean abandonment
you journeyer...who sings and grows
the names of flowers in silence
our bones begin to speak for themselves without
rest
the body~tomb breaks open its rotten seed pod
surrounded by loneliness no longer
goodbye goodbye my love
of darkness and terror
goodbye my love of doubt
storms of nameless obligations
we are islands
out to sea
century by century
with our constant fervor
stone apple black earth oilstorm
goodbye my love of love and the rarified air
above

Thursday, July 17, 2008

three by D

bone nest

birthing the tranquil dream it may dawn
the best way to proceed is with this rote
disinterested elan

that everyone can adapt
to their own salvation

a well cooked meal only smart monkeys
can do on a regular
rotation and at the same

time spit oil and polish the bowl
give your attention to the man in the nook
you may someday rue the path you took

come to me
and I’ll backfill the hole

look upon the products of consciousness
sparks chipped and spitting in the bone nest


________________________________________

standing wave

a stylite on a standing wave
measuring a seaworn arc of amber
dealt rain when starlight vanished in a skull

nature in a straw wisp blows
poison up a blue neck
this was old mayday

the bone flutes came out
and everybody flat on mother
photos and digital fumes and vegetable diesel

young in a decade chariot
a hoplite shits a tin slat skirt
at a man in a lantern winkie puts out

a switch of scorched wicker
whiles the streak wind-devil
cutting sand

waiting for a dwarf to
appear on the parapet
announcing his arrival

shroud and sigher over wire
tempt you to give over
to a higher power


___________________________________________

insects in freefall

ground cover under the climbing fusion fruit
covering ground over pearls in aqua caves
send e-mails to any hidden camera shy
leaves falling from books in a laundry chute

eternal round of life and retort in a quark minute
the barbed spike and water green rose’s palm
mothering square feet of decay
breathing on the face of everything in it

around the world zephyr harmattan and sirocco fly
in local time little bugs in the biome
pruning the wave that curls space and crashes
the horizon and seeps upward through the sky

then the insects sing of a legendary carapace
retaining the memory of their fall from grace

Wednesday, July 2, 2008

tomorrow

tomorrow tomorrow... my mindless narcotic
i plunge tragically into your plutonomy
as long as god is pecuniary
the love of lucre is my sordid desire
it plumps the luckpenny and replaces a toadstone locket
around my neck
all moisture must be removed during mummification
until a thin cake or wafer remains to erase the elastic
identity
it is the story of time
it is a new language:
word~wax
adding a luster to muscle with a bashful waggle
12 surds per second keep your voice down
upcasts yowl
without recourse
so large
so perfectly white
it was abandoned immediately by the many
but guarded jealously by the few with plenty

Thursday, June 26, 2008

Swallowing The Moon

I swallow the night air and the sea,
white logs on the beach and waves
like breath, after-waves an exhale
I swallow the the moon above,
moonlit clouds, these continents
spread before us

Even the jumble of driftwood,
bleached bones of the shore,
exude a power to restore
order and breath,
life to the feelings of death
an antidote to the poison of violence
I regurgitate now upon the shore
to the sky, to the moon
feel embraced in return

we've become the landscape
here among the drift logs
something eternal in the temporal
death an impossible inevitability
a long-off promise
washed out to sea
lost among the grains of sand
or held ransom by the moon


- written in response to the movie
The Incredible Hulk

Monday, June 23, 2008

in the land of tee vee

last night i remembered another movie that i didn't watch
it was about sentimental killers
who loved their children good food and the church
but who trusted no one and called it wisdom
i wrote about it in an abandoned castle
one that had hummingbirds at empty windows
and a breeze that swept the bare porches with sunshine
how much money could be made once the money started flowing?
this question was both the first and last lines
framing law enforcement squads who appeared in the middle of the night
like rocknroll like small town america
every terrorist had 2 faces
and machines that erased everything from people's lives
how much evil went into that masterpiece?
women and children learned from their mistakes...
the nations learned nothing and lost their souls in the bloodbaths
and i saw the cold war heat up as soon as it was cold
it was a civil war again
it was a story
it was a story we have all heard before
we were ten years old
and we were all wrong again
the evil turned into goodness
the straw turned into gold
and the supermarkets gave all the food away for free~
once again
it was a typical night in the land of tee vee....

Saturday, June 21, 2008

1929          20080621

Determining the radius to the fire
Factoring in wind direction
     and the allowable variance for comfort
2*R*pi/normal human width
     - area of wind direction =
Seating capacity.
R = stick length for bratwurst.
pie(fruit in season) = Yum(My pie-hole);
Summer Solstice calculations at South Beach.

-KenC

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Beween Silence and Thought

(a stream of consciousness poem)

She squeezes between silence
and her own thoughts
I am outside
looking in
somewhere beyond words
is where our hearts meet
bone by bone
muscle by muscle
and you there in your raincoat
drenched in higher thought
the night
has blown me away
with a single kiss
but not without taking note
of you

Tuesday, June 3, 2008

hunger

Out of necessity
and poverty and under
pain of excommunication
some ethiopian monks fast
for 200 days each year...
I have learned to fast
for 30 days
and I will starve myself to death
in disneyland
before I kiss anyone's ass
again

Thursday, May 29, 2008

Dawn

... and then
realization dawns
and just like that
you are no longer dreaming
and all your cares and concerns
assemble themselves
into tiny colored packages
which open like blossoms
without your asking
- a garden of daily cares
ready for picking...

and suddenly i saw

and suddenly i saw
polka dots
broken open by exhaustion
lost in time and fashion
slipping through one or another hand
making a racket of clapping
in the empty air
our language sleeps
next to life itself
in my song
i saw a single kiss
standing between us
maybe i love the deep silence
of solitude best
that labyrinth in the moon's forehead
that echoes in the earth
not just one
flower
wave fire in the air or
liquor
devoured by victory
but fidelity you blood red rose
of when and how
tropical bouquet of
drenched beasts with
weapons of rain and aromatic incence
wearing an aura of terrible nonsense

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

in case

i feel she is holding~on to me in case
everything else fails….

Sunday, May 25, 2008

Finally getting around to seeing the San Juan Poets site

And resurrecting my old dabbling at blogging back in 2002, which I had completely forgotten about, in the flotsom generated while getting there. Found a couple of poems amongst my commute diary entries too -- BTW I always use the partial bypass now.
http://epoetus.blogspot.com/ -- Still like the name too :-)

Here is the most recent entry from my journal that I like:

#1907 20080509
Coming back,
      after being gone for two minutes,
      to a tangled mess
      of sheep
Harnessed to the
      fence;
Silly sheep twister.

Sunday, May 18, 2008

from: confessions of an adult fetus

It is one thing to look at an image of a human fetus and to see an unfinished creature... on its way to becoming human.... It is another thing entirely to see adults as unfinished, premature, half evolved....

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

everything

imagine everything forgotten:
velvet amnesia
cognitive chocolate
benevolent myopia

Thursday, May 1, 2008

May 8th - poets gathering - San Juan

(from Susan Wingate via email)
Hello all you poets and poetic writers!

We're meeting again and isn't that wonderful. Bring poetry - yours, someone else's or both! We're happy to have all you new folks who showed interest at the last Poetry Evening at the Library. If you see that someone has been left off the list that you think would enjoy our meetings, please let them know by passing this email along.

Details:
Place - George Smith's home (see driving directions below)
Date - May 8, 2008, Thursday
Time - 5:30 p.m.

Easy directions. Drive 2 miles out Beaverton Valley Road from the Library. Right turn on Barnswallow Way, which is opposite Old School House Road. Pass the first house, pass the double wide with the big shed, come over the crest of the hill and up to 326 - house with red metal roof and I'll try to have the porch lights on.

Wednesday, April 30, 2008

gathering dust

all my gestures were gathering dust
there is no need to be lonely
i told my shadow folded over
the silent piano

Sunday, April 27, 2008

Slip Fault

only here in this slip of time
where yesterday slips
against today
do I feel the relentless burning linger
where bliss
laid its hot wet kiss
on the frigid shoulder
of my deepest loneliness

it's only here
in this slip of time
where ordinary shrinks
in the shadow of extraordinary
that my life appears desolate

only in this gap
between what is
what was
and what might be
do I feel exposed
and naked
and small
as small as a human ant
in the cosmos of a billion unknowable
billions
a billion unknowable heartaches grinding
their way across a billion unknowable
ecstasies
a billion promises of love sliding against
the rough surface of my fears
and this fear, the greatest of all
of my single
solitary
and utter meaninglessness
without other
- without you

(March 2008)

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

breathing air

you drove away today as it is always today as today always was
but will not always be as you found out today
my friend
i know that knife in the heart
that dull pain that announces the end of everything
and it seems insane to watch all that struggling
that held a life together
evaporate in pain that is unthinkable unspeakable
and absolute
there is one thing now we know and we know it from
different lives on breaths that hold up our different eyes
in the air
it is a wind within
that kills itself
a wind without motion
a wave that breaks but nothing
nothing at all
because all nothing
happens
while you enter into
absence
by letting go
of what is completely
present
to be present to
disappear into the past
i know my friend
that we don't know what anything
means in that moment
this
we share as long as we
are breathing air
*
for je

Monday, April 21, 2008

eye of the needle

tonight i will not light the light on the corner by the alleyway
for you
when you fly here after work on your high horses
your horses with wings
who have been unstabled
since making friends
with me
no light tonight
no candles no incense no eye of the needle
opening as wide as the sky
for the miracle
time passes
space yawns
and i pick up the phone which has become mute and sullen
in this silence
i can't hear clearly in such a hurry
my hands hurt and dislike me when i fiddle with whatever
object i can reach and finger
it takes me awhile
to remember
my manners
and to fold my hands across my self
and breathe
i sit here quietly for hours as in a bus depot
or an airport
with nothing to do until it is time to leave
*
adm 4/08

Cupping Water

here again is lonely sunset

and that familiar emptiness growing

even as the light itself diminishes.

like touching hands through a screen door

reluctant departure

yawning gap

between desire and

"the way things are"


how I feel each time you slip

from the passenger seat

into the cool arms of night.

cold metal and glass suddenly

a wall between me and you,

and your brisk steps away from me -

the last look over your shoulder

before you disappear behind the corner.


some kind of ship that sinks nightly

drowning the tiny clutching hands

of my attachments,

spilling their contents into the sea

of darkening night.

longing and desire set adrift -

flotsam in the currents of passing time


another day has slipped like water

through my fingers

and I have nothing to show

for the air and water and

sunlight consumed.

nothing but these aging hairs

upon my head imperceptibly

marking time

and this calendar inside

I cannot read.


what will I do with the sunlight

if given again tomorrow?


when will I be infinitely aware

that every moment, each exhaled breath,

is sunset?

and every next moment,

each new rising of my chest,

an un-promised sunrise?


when will I unflinchingly see

that time passes at the speed of light.

and yet, any moment cupped

like precious water in my hands,

holds infinitely still?


TC – March 30, 2008