Poetry
I believe in the silence between pages of poetry – a space within which the words may reverberate to their soul’s content, living out their potentiality without the lines of text.
I believe in meaninglessness, where reading between the lines is a futile exercise, and all you really need to know is simply what was said.
I believe in leaving my boundaries undefined, but filling the space within them by my voice.
I believe in the strength of music to bring the truth to mind – though I refuse to define the truth.
I believe in the constancy of emotion and the interstices of logic – my heart never leaves me floundering, though my mind often will.
I believe in the moment.
so this is some of my more recent stuff - not among the best, but i figure part of why i keep things up here is to get editorial comments, so why only put up pieces that are close to finished (a poem is never truly finished though...)
here goes...
Continuum
dust dry shocking the moment as if the flash of panic would wipe clean an already blank slate I have tried to fill my life with words in some vain attempt to compile meaning into a whole I would maintain and strive to sustain but the snapshots of people thoughts and complexities boil down to nothing more than that drowned in the rampage of skin across the page I won’t sleep at night for fear the tears will break the surface seeping through my skin and draining away the illusion of control I have so carefully crafted there are visions of knives and so scared to close my eyes I hold them open and revel in the ache moments like these the instants of self-dramatized panic and pain where my throat swells to choke off breath I am left with naught but words and motion the symmetry of scars and ink ripped across this page in fearful handwriting let me escape or at least the illusion thereof let me pretend to fly and the terror of the moment may slowly pass me by so that I may reenter the lull of self-absorbed solitude and the masochism masked behind each smile cross the moment and breath deeply rip me open in the moment so I won’t have to do it myself and move on
Impressions
every word, slipping through my hands
like drops of effervescent water,
refusing to be captured
on the confines of paper,
the only medium I have:
Seated next to you on the grass
letting the rain slide down my shoulders;
tension twisting my fists
into knots as convoluted as my mind;
questioning what you would have from me
if I could give it.
And if I could not?
Familiar-looking fingerprints stamped on my own arms,
the impressions of desires
combating better sense.
Conscious of your warmth,
and my cold,
and the brand of your touch
across my sandpaper skin,
allowing it to abrade your fingers
for no reason I could ascertain,
even when I demanded
what you saw behind my eyes,
because I could not feel it myself.
Electrified boundaries of past experience,
the only truth at hand.
Maybe it’s harder to see the scars behind all the tan lines;
because you asked more than you realized
but offered more than I could understand.
I still don’t know how you fell inside
or what you saw beneath my skin -
as somehow fear deferred to trust.
And then I let your lips meet mine,
and law escaped to lust.
Ignited
passion of flame -
like fire,
undirected:
raging across this Savannah of substance
a silent roar of speed
and the brief blast of a searing blaze
while fingers of red-orange heat
stretch for the sky
to interlock with the constellations
what is the true difference
between fire and stars?
give me Prometheus
and leave Helios his place in the air
red frenzy extinguishes cool temperance
fuel bursts to embers
blink and the dissipation
of a component from this world
eludes sight -
so much ardor
driven forward by momentum
heedlessly disregarding obstructions
and guided only by
the significance of perception.
but where does this consummation lead?
sear past me
and I breathe a brief hot flame
and go on
emblems of an idiosyncratic youth:
ink looped across motion –
an essentially charismatic
manifestation of self-destruction;
as if we like the aura of strength
matched to subliminal weakness
that somehow pierces the typical
inscrutability of our species.
but can we really claim that
scars measure the moment?
I will easily admit to falling prey to such a pride,
parading my disfigured bare skin
as if it were a wound received
in some patriotic war –
a mark of strength and a form
of self-definition. I drink
your gazes through my flawed skin,
and bask in the artificial warmth
created thereby
a suggestion of absence
movements eroding behind,
our unplanned dance
this: some grace of inconsistency,
and lack of will -
we float on reactions and silence.
these footless winds
smooth the swirl of motion
into light
and i am defined by
the spaces you don't fill.
this ontogeny of a prayer -
O Terpischore -
no need to see the way before us
simply fill the spaces
between my words.
ice sculpture
(the distance of time and space)
alter the shape of your skin beneath my hands -
and grow cold under that memorized thunderstorm,
then gain the translucence of ice in a long past sunset
(prismatic loss of definition)
and you melt beside me.
cold water slides across
this heat I press against you
(try not to let go)
drip off my skin into
the interstices of the floorboards.
first - I lose your smile to a overpassionate kiss
then your rough strong hands melt down my hips.
I grip your shoulder and fingerprints appear -
and the final color of your eyes
succumbs to my heated gaze
(let me hold harder as you
slip away)
and if I make myself let go?
a parody of you remains.
wasted smile and empty eyes -
you don’t see that you are gone
so you can’t understand why it is
that I miss you.
moment modern primitive
ink indelible scarred
to skin; tattooed
tempo: drunken bumblebeebuzz/
wasp’s sting wired –
sing the moment
motion under outer
layers – drinking deeply
blood and ache;
sake, forsake forgotten
motions moments stinging –
sinking oceans strength.
washed of waves:
flung off grit
ground and suckling
sandpaper/rough edge
raw rebuilt of silt
tissue edged in
violence. silent skin
now scarred, forsaken,
staked, and taken
for emotion then –
obsession assessed. disproven –
unmoving and unintelligible,
some moment indelible/
indivisible or visible –
bled and born
unbroken.
All I am
whiteout spilled across a page;
unimportant images
brushed from the tangles of my mind,
distilled through my fingers
to lay lifeless against the paper
my eyes are no more than this,
ink running off on your fingers
when you brush across them
to see what’s hiding behind these words.
what would you say if you knew
this is all I am?
abstractions
conscious temperance
cooling heavy glances lukewarm
sinking into the difference
between black and blue
that flare up
into passionate skin
so don’t try to explain to me
subtle shadings of desire,
while your heat is purple
mine is candle-flame orange
and you can’t say what that means.
subtlety of form and meaning
abstracted into blocks of joy
and the milder stripes of acceptance
thoughts pressure the insides of my eyes -
a careful variation of grays and yellows
temperance
now flooded away by
a wash of color
Inspiration?
inspiration
cycles,
passes from finger to finger
and neuron to neuron
in no conceivable pattern.
hybrid creativity
bred between pen and paper
and born of the letters on this page
die in the spaces between
my fingertips and the keyboard
and the distance
between your eyes and mine.
afterglow
apple flavored breathing
complimenting cinnamon skin
under the splintered whispers of passion
rhythmed heartbeats
caress my lips
and your soft smile
cradles my thoughts into silence
such tracery of sensation
delicate on our skin
more conscious of the places we are not touching
than those we are
faded minutes of such times go by
marking faint impressions on me
and a desire for always more
within/without
moments like these
and i am astounded by the size –
the size of moments like these,
i am astounded.
put me in the scene
the scenery
within me
is full
where do i stand
without the size?
the size of the scenery
fills the moment
