WHEN I THINK OF HER

Bell of listless evenings I wait

For her, of the quiet motions

That settle back into the countryside 

Of peace, & of forgiveness

The wheel gyring in the air

I hear the cicadas call at sunset,

Search for a place of repose 

Walking quickly with a hope

Of better days, to remember

A past self, & to realize I am

The same, in quiet longings 

Evenings that stretch in the

Sun, this life in all its complexities 

I long for freedom, for a lang-

uage that breathes my pain,

In the hours fringed with lilac

I’m attracted to her in the
Springtime of youth, the fullness
Of her words, & her smile

Today the streets are wet

With rain, the cycles

That call from the depths,

& the trees that line

Our paths, I must step

Forth in these trials

That push & pull, for it is freedom

I desire, the lakeside a

Quiet lull in the linnet

Air

DOES SHE REMEMBER THE AUTUMN

The day spreads before me, the rose of her sex.

& we move through these stages of metamorphosis

in a present, all-inclusive of past, & future.  & see

the people pass by in the city, the stream that lifts

before us in the hours that call in the night.  I had

seen the woman child move through the air,

a sprite, & wished to give her every freedom. 

The chill air of autumn.  The red, & purple leaves

that dance.

It was the sting of trials we had moved through, in the amber

light, beginnings of some faint music that leads us

through the fires.  I watched the flame in her eyes

dance to some invisible rhythm, &

kept wondering when they would say yes, when

they would accept the Son, as he was reborn

to us in our age.  & it was then I realized,

looking at the people, this wasn’t it.  This was

not the way to live.  & so, I waited for the

slow acceptance of her limbs, the trail of silk

that slipped almost soundlessly

through the air.  Waiting for the affirmation of all that was sublime

in life, instead of some incessant denial.  &

please, do not think that I have forgotten, or

that I do not know.  Still there was that question,

if she had remembered, though in her eyes

it was certain she had loved you.  Looking

at the people, I found they had no

poetry in them, but the woman child was alive

with a light, & her elastic limbs

dance in

the darkened light.  I begin again, my

lungs healthy, & clear.  I inhale the

fresh clean air a moment.  In realization

that I wanted to live.  It had been

bad blood all the while, yet why these

continual frictions, when you yourself were

so carefree?  Was it that

our people had forsaken God, as they

had forsaken the Son long ago?  I still   

question, in the daylight hours, while

my mind is clear.  & I see without occlusion,

the way things truly are.     

ON THE MOONLIGHT-NAGARA

        for Ayako Shimura

I see a dim lucence skimming along the fringe

of the train-car, jostled along in

half dream, the passengers huddle

in enclosed-spaces encased

by time’s passage, seeking some distances

that spread before horizons, we slip  

beneath seats to find

some respite

from the world’s nightmare, as a shadowy mask

drops like a stone, I see those dark-

featured nymphs who’d lean into

grey-futures, the tide rising in sub-

merged-stations, where fish swim in windows, & on department store

walls I read Seibu, the internal-malls,

& a severe Korean carries 

his fan by the exit, perhaps he will move on     

the train was entering night, where

blue-phantoms fed on memories

of transience, & our thought drifted with the miles

on the fabrics of eternity,

the filament that slipped between

gaps of fragmentary thoughts

floating in the hours that swelled as

the sea’s breathing, serene in

evenings lit by gas-jets, lining

the filmy membranes of our minds, & to come back

into it, the dust of light’s residue

on our fingers, & the slow-drip

of the hours, when patience

was nearly forgotten, & gradually   

replaced by a dumb-

endurance

that wells from some unknown

place, in the corner I see three dark-haired-girls

unsteady in the car’s shifting,

& time winds-down as one of which

arranges the straps of her

sick-mask across

her pony-tail, in the shape

of an X, as flashes of light glaze    

the windows, like distant

fireworks, in the inaka,

on the last day of summer

SEQUENCE AFTER CATULLUS

& now I work loose the fetters’

clink, in mollusk-time of diminu-

tive observance, to distend into

latent-pools, & to know one’s

own well of distillation, or to sense

another’s crux, at having erred

in a vicious-circle…  Slow dissemi-

nation through psychic drive, &

to lift oneself from the salt-fires,

the greenish flames that line the

cypress, in our memory of dark

pulsing.  So tenebrous lakes float

in the cache you’ve saved with 

her patience, & blips dating from

before your orphic-mind, sem-

antic-drift, I see snake through

catacombs in elemental-engines. 

So she had urged you to ener-

gize your life-journeys, her mere

presence enough to raise the

lax-phantoms that fed on nil &

shadow…  Press then the swo

llen cusp, the rake-soldier,

who folds his paper fringed in

lilac & ash, a bleed of wax

columns, O light & sound whist-

ling in the distances of time… 

A brief expansiveness of halls

that sink, in the bogs of desti-

tution.  Lift from the waters 

that drip from your feet, &

clasp the glass-fountain that

shifts from its stasis.  I see

her now in commodious

caverns, & a quiet-buzz at

the jingling of her

words…  

WE SPOKE THE SAME LANGUAGE

Suddenly cognizant of the

silence that surrounds,

& the echoes of her voice, after she had left
the room.  Saying little things to her at which she would react  

perhaps later on, in subtle ways, allowing me a window
into her world.  Those slow Sundays spooling from the mist, the grey-silences,

& the erroneous world brought to a halt by our love,
that spoke so intimate between us
interlocutors.  Always a question that begs
consent, or to push

the borders that lie between us. 

& the malleability of language that seemed to

suggest some deeper-intimacies, in time-distant, in tomorrows we may never reach.

Feeling our way as if by intuition, the intimations that lead us through

corridors that quivered with glints, & shadows the

shape of leaves, in a situation the

world had not fully accepted, in a trust that had forgiven

what society had not.

We the actors amidst law that bound us to a higher order,

cards bursting from our grasps-of-wax, & a word

balanced on the fringe, those midway-points at which we intersect.

Slow-sequences into which we may find a foothold in our own chance-circumstance.

The subtle pains we caused each other

in our uncertainty, or perhaps an unspoken-forgiveness

in the tone of her voice,

the mirth welcomed into hands

that hummed with sadness, a cognizance that the

world had not-yet-realized, our love which was perhaps older

than we ourselves, & younger than the world

that worked to womb us in its silence.  A quiet-lull that slipped from shadows.

The silken-dream from which we had awoke.  I spoke to her

almost in a whisper, & her eyes widened with a hope that night  

had brought before us, a choice we ushered    

into life, knowing full well

there was no need for speech.  

FINDING THE WORDS

In a slow uncertain spiraling away, the day closes

into itself, & the fragrance of orange-blossoms

lifts from her skin as she skims against his sleeve in secret-empathies

time had linked them together       

a subtle warmth from his hands, & she

knowing full well that they were children of the future

& that today was coming to a close

so the city-lights filtered down

& in her silent-knowledge, she would glance at

him, as if with a question

& he too, patient as the times

required…

Long hours in the café waiting for that moment

slow-trials in glass-halls, & then at last the separation

already having taken place   

when love had vanished, as dragonflies 

against-the-waves, & we remained, with our own intimate-language

in which we’d act within-the-world, she hadn’t

graduated yet, it seemed 

but he, waiting for her always     

though never quite sure of how late         

it really was…

Autumn-lifts again, but the people

had forgotten the seasons, & it seemed at last his

estrangement was to fade

with the pulse-of-love, that welled

within him, at a glimpse of her dark-features, remembering the last

days in the city, the overhang, where people

filtered past, but he had never grown

accustomed to the others

who appeared to him as lost

in a sea-of-delusion, & yet, it was then he came

upon a quietude that sunk into

his bones…    

EVENING FACE

The clink of cut-glass disturbs
a silence I held by the tip of a 

string, & beads of distillation

form at the fringes we had

captured in a prismic-cage, I’m  

led through corridors darken-

ed with a flicker
                          of intimation... 

Yes, we had taken part in that

vast remembrance, spanning

over the course of some immeas-

urable gap, flashing in a pulse

of light across waves…  Evening   

spins, I see coins drop in dusk,
& my life, a show of absurdism
at last-light...  Green of moss,

glaze of daydreams fading in the

evening...  Time ellipses, a  

lengthening road spirals from

the stones.  & so we take in

the astringent air...
                            I see sparks

burst on the pavement, & im-

merse myself in churning-waves,

the silences we found behind

our lives...  I think of all that

had transpired, the cityscape 

flashing, as I return to myself...