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... 

REUNION WITH A FRIEND (IN SEOUL)

           for Leif Karlen

We entered the food tent that evening

upon my arrival…  I remember oily-plates

warming us from the late autumn chill,
or a fire somewhere, & the embers' pulse   

like fireflies in summer, when you felt

sick & went inside, & the sizzling meat,
the healthy-buzz of a couple chatting at a booth  

nearby.  Our soju came in green bottles

& the shot glasses (translucent as jellyfish
in moonlight) felt slippery in our hands,
the cool singe of alcohol jogging our brains
& this unexpected-situation, it was almost
odd not to question, this uncanny feeling
of familiarity, & a friend you had met elsewhere,

so distant it seemed now, & to find your-

self here, in the dim-evening lit by lamps

when the atmosphere almost oozed, &

the world distilled into an occasion I never

guessed would become a memory, until

evoked some instance later on, as if not

by my own volition.  I watched the dog-star

flicker, muted through the roof, & wra-
pped lettuce-leaves around slabs of
grilled-bacon.  The air redolent of garlic

& my friend focused on his soju, or what swam   

in his mind, as I let work within me

the hum of liquid-experience.  So much
we'd left unsaid, & yet a lambent ache
in the heart, at that moment of rest,

when all your life had raced by, it alm-
ost hurt to think, that life didn’t
need to be a battle…

EVENING IN TIME-LAPSE

Life came to him in vague discoloration

& as a bit cutting into stone, the

words are etched, in his mind the faint-resonances

of a time perhaps in some sense gone

& yet to establish themselves in an 

Awakening of the past, a distillation

of the places he had dragged himself from

& the sheer pain of incisive-loss, in

grey moments of spiritualized-nihilism

The campus in deep-autumns hid from

those selves reluctant to emerge

& time driven in, like an adamantium-bit, the singe

lingering in a moment past, & the

momentum that breeds in us a
new disillusion, elliptic petals drift from         

the mind’s vague-awareness, as if
to foretell of what we had least sur-

mised, the vines winding through stairwells

That lift from a fulcrum of sand, capt-

ured in a prism's refraction, the

night opens into unexpected rains    

flashing in time-lapse, & yet the tortures seem  

to lie dormant, as if waiting for

she who will speak of our unease

IN RESPONSIBILITIES OF FREEDOM

Yesterday I stood silent on the platform, waiting for chaos…   

The fires along the roadside shivered in the distance

that swam in a breath of inflection…

I watched her undress

in front of the mirror, & above, I whom she had astonished, a throb of existence

glistened with the dark-gates of freedom, the reeling masts

swollen with winds that slipped from the south.  & we  

in the famine of our times suddenly reminded of the ospreys haunting

the glass.  I watched a stranger with a pistol

pacing along the strand…

Yesterday I sprawled on the pavilion & conversed with the Gods...

The sunset splashed in the eyes of a dog lying in the

street, & the sad slow whimper of the end of an era, somehow reminiscent  

of its pain.  I saw night-birds hover above the temple,

there were a few last remnants, we thought…   

& a broken cycle lying in the gutter

where luminous fish fed on the livers

of ghosts.  I set forth… 

& stood where the sun teetered briefly on the edge, a woman in pink    

stole into an abandoned shrine.  I saw the flash of her coat trailing 

in a moment that slipped by in blaze of leaves, a blast of heat in the heart of winter… 

Three or four of us now, the sun sailing on deep horizons

of glass, the drip of light spilling over the sequence of my past…   

& the cask of musk-melons

at the station…  

Fish fed on the fragments of our memory, the nocturnal

kind, that hid-deep in the valleys of migrations     

the abysses of pain, & those hours of torture they made us endure

without quite knowing why, nor did we

ask, as some giant peered in with

an enormous eye, & we spoke in whispers

to those who would listen…

Yesterday I rose where the light dripped into

the distance, there was a deep pain in the act of waking, the dark sun

swam in the sadness of having lived, at the immense

weight that bore down on our lives, in a place    

that was vaguely familiar…  

INTIMATIONS OF A DEEP AUTUMN

Here in the quiet

& calm of a tremulous-afternoon. 

I have the acute sensation of pain, glass

Hallways, layering in a moment that dips beneath

The luminous surface, seeming almost

To respond to the presence pooled in those deep autumn

Reds, the lake mirrored in a moment’s breath

As silence, sense bursts from its fetters, a moment

Nearly running to catch up.  & once more I see

Her face, its faint translucence skimming from a place

Of absolute-truth, a pulse I’ve known that exists

In the creak of a stair, or a motion

Bleeding into stillness.  She drew a map

Encapsulating each luminary channel, each striation of her

Life, & those moments, as if remembered

For the first time, experiences she was yet to become  

Cognizant of until memory evoked the presence

Of some faint-illumination.  The days cooler

Now, the leaves turning the color of dried

Blood.  Here in the quiet & calm of a tremulous afternoon. 

I search for gateways, & those membranes

Of light, flaking away in a dream that’s

Not yet over.

THE TRANSLUCENCE OF THOUGHT

His brain was lazy at times, waking into

the mid-afternoon…  Was it the world

then, that had gone awry?  His life,

his mindset shifting in time, the subtle

changes that illumine those mid-points

of understanding...  & always the will

to act magnanimous in all things.  Yet it was

she who understood, she who refrained

ever from immediate-response, & still       

a part of her enmeshed in his psyche…

The everyday goings-on, & even those

intimate whispers.  & he, so often overlooked...     

Written-off, or misunderstood, asked          

if she had been his siren all the while,

the subtleties of her metamorphosis, 

in each swell of presence…  Yet some-

thing there, always recognizable as her, an imprint

in the flux of waking-life.  & she, even

appearing to him in dreams, or the days 

that awaken...  & still that open-eye

dazzled by the phosphorescence of far cities...   

Was it just that he was not-yet born?  

His voice unrecognized in the world

of set-possibilities, & she, always to lift          

the box with him in silent-reassurance. 

The autumn drifts by like a cloud, & he comes

at last to embrace his alienation, a state

not self-imposed, but a place we often                    

find ourselves, either alone, or with a
sole-observer…  Was it a bird, or a glint 

in distant elms?  His life, a séance,          

layers with the seasons, & he finds him-

self alive to the migrations of desire…

FINDING A CIRCLE IN EXILE

We who descend now from

high-mountains…  Snaking through

dark-grasses that would graze

our minds, find no fault with

liquid-symbol, but those who speak oblivious

to what they mean, as prisms   

once had juxtaposed the motions

that we come to see.  Bottled

up in the histories of she who deigns

to speak, but in act adheres to

some ancient code.  Our minds

reside in mountain-pools, or exist

elsewhere, slipping as fish into

channels of thought, a glyph

etched upon the layers of some

god’s brain…  & here, is patience in her
gaze, that leans off into cisterns
spread against the gossamer       

moon.  I venture past the eastern

gate, where I return (at last)   

a stranger.  Perhaps we’d never

truly known each other, or the people   

had failed to recognize who I

had become.  Her thought teeters

there in a realm before-words

until she speaks, & the dusk  

spirals from her in the silences

to which they had both returned…

She finds elusive the shrine   

littered with a few-plums    

& her mask falls to the earth

a stone…          

SEASONS LAYER UPON SILENCE

Bitter, the tea leaves floating in the distance.

I think I hear you, but I don’t hear you…

said a woman’s voice, & the dark-showers, the muted-light

that quivered, liquid-stations, waiting for

hours it seemed, & for what purpose?  There

was something refused-to-change…

I observe the blossoms, a distant-drift
in winds I nearly confuse for snow,

the motions lift in reiterations.  It got hit…   

said a man’s voice, & I, here in the

midst…  The faded greys of the station

& the deep-red of a police-box.  The autumn

hung there listless as the last-leaves

clinging to a branch.  & then they shot me with the invisible-dart...   

It seemed almost to make sense, thinking

back on our history, the fragments

of speech-swirling in distant-elms, ever

that tinge of having done this before, & yet here
is something new: a girl sees

me looking, bands up her hair, w/

eyes-bright, the soft-light of the café

cascades in lucid-streams
she loosens & tosses to one side...  

A slouchy-sweater dangles over her tank-top

& a sweet-silent communic-

ation takes place.  Her eyes-smile

& the past distills into a

moment’s breath…  Right here,

I said, but had she heard

me?  Right now…

SHE SWIMS IN NEBULAS OF THOUGHT

November came & went like a frail

glint of nothing, strange the days skip

by like stones, when a fleck of light
left pools in the corner.  A bit of gold
drips from the window (still ajar) & she
is lost in the laundry w/ nothing to do…
The wise once had-Gathered along the
shore, the timelessness in each moment,

asleep as the grains of wheat that lift

shimmering in the moon that traps   

a rabbit.  The earth, a blundering goon

lurches from the wheels of a rickshaw,

or sinks in the snow I’d once forgot… 

She swims in nebulas of Thought, the ebb

& flow of each closed-circuit opens to

a light gathered there, at the cusp of pres-

ence.  Days cavernous (as time itself) seem

but silver threads that slip from my

hand, in the distance.  I leave this place,

a stranger in the surf, churning out quest-

ions that sizzle, in a cell of gossamer  

cloud some local-god had set aflame...  

Behind, I watch the blue move in spirals

she finds in gyrations, before our minds

arise.  Predating the concept of time,

or semblance, yet a kernel of Possibility… 

She now dips under, as currents siphon

through (her fingers) & she understands. 

The migrations ever supporting us, the

entropies that threaten our dusks, a deep

fiend lacking any true-will, but the tend-

ency for harm, was nothing but a wisp

of flame, a stone drowning in the Ocean…  

WHEN BOOKSTORES STILL EXISTED

Vaporous doorways

in which I'm never to set  

foot again 

Nestled-back in sub-songs of renunciation

I shook the insects from me as I descended from altars of fear

shone flashlights of plasma into caverns that

dripped with pearl    

Flashes of dream crossed over & spun  

like mirrors, those dusky-streets lining the Naniwa arcades

hours of agony spent in towering-bookstores

where history flapped in the wind

as flags    

Seeing her there at the corner, I'd almost

introduced myself, the loquacious-pearls that spilled from halls-of-jade

I hid in my heart the only thing I truly meant to say

Who was it walked in silence on those

byways of liquidation

Limbs drifting on the dark-side of mountains   

mercury, it was mercury that weighed

us down with the sound-of-silence, in expectation

of nothing yet known      

Clouds that lift from her eyes as she

enters the bookstore, cautiously so as not to wake the sleepers

who astound themselves with star-infested

halls  

As they slip from trials-of-slumber, into a chrysalis    

of silks that burst from faint-reflections

in the Naniwa arcades
I asked her name, & she said
it was
remembrance      

THE ARTIFICER OF PRESENCE

Here in the fire-shallows, the night rolls on, I seek oblivion... 

The message that she left me, the flames

that slip like water through the cracks.  I seem

to remember.  & follow the birds in thought

as they drift against the clouds, watch them line

along the wires.  This silence I find alone,

the last few remnants of the

blue…   

Painter of flame, artificer of presence.  

Who is it watches over us, without so much

as a will to intervene?  We seek

the silences they took away, lay awake

in the twilit hours, that scratch at our

restless-brains.  Who is it will greet us with a silent  

eye, without the slightest

word?   

A leaf skims along the surface, & the birds

float in air, turn upon a breathless

wind, & we (the sages) left to conjure

amidst cloud, a consciousness, almost denied by those   

vapors of negation.  Will they have us

stay in place?  I see no reason

why I should not aspire, an eagle 

still rising from a lie                     

that seeks (so mindlessly)

to harm…    

We the voices of longevity, who seem

always to begin, again a life is   

flashing in the rain, the distant-call

drowned out by some rasp of flame, that never

was a face we recognized.

After years resigned to silence,

at last the creature

speaks… 

BEYOND THE CONFINES OF TIME

Vacillating between two polarities, the poet rediscovers himself through language.  Comes upon the cornerstones of that which unites us with the ancient womb, the pale light that rustles inside the voice of a distant-cipher.  Windblown hair faded as the

sun that sinks beneath clouds.  I come to the pearl locus, a vagrant with a coral mind, who slips from murkiness of being into the clarity of thought lost in its own devices.  The autumn rests upon a word, a leaf spinning through time I relocate in each-motion that removes us from who we think we are.  Is it our lot in life to frequent the clouded halls left behind by those adepts who work their language beyond the confines of time? 

Is the sun that yet pools in distant-heat a specter who devours our dream?  A knack for survival leads us from the temple, where we discover keystones of tension, energize the lives that no longer smolder with hope.  Plasma distends into glass estuaries.   

LIFE, MEMORY, A TONE-POEM

The groan of a chair beneath

him in the afternoon, & those

roses of light that whisper to

him (often in silence) in solitude

that drips from-somewhere

behind you…  Waiting in Kyoto

station for no-one in particular…

The faint-bitterness of coffee

swirls in his brain, & the subtle

neurosis of-being-nowhere at

once (or at least without any

fixed-destination).  Volumes piled

on his desk of texts that lit his

mind in evenings.  So often, while

reading Adorno, his life appeared

before him in pockets-of-mem-

ory, flashes-of-instances he had

once forgotten, only to return   

as filmy-ghosts that usher him

into his bright accommodations. 

A life nourished by the plastic

image, in which past & present

(even future?) swell & fuse into

almost an itch, a slight-tingle that

rings in distances of autumns…   

The air cool, & the lonesome

walks through Ikebukuro-streets.    

Yes, you had been a teacher… 

Ever that soft-light-spills on your

fingers, from a couple-of-bulbs

gone out in the ceiling lamp. 

Life (curiously) a tone-poem, that

flows in silent-whispers.  & his

sole-window seen from the kit-

chen, into which he may view

the world-theater, where peo-

ple pass by, as if in recognition

of a life that remains-obscure.

THERE WAS A CALMNESS IN THE PINES

I saw the shrine flicker in the distance like a ghost

the motor’s intonation floating through

air like glass, or white-horsemen who approach in heat-haze  

& the fear came back

a stone-upon-the-water

(I saw birds

trailing into silence)

& the white-figures swept past desolations          

as blue-shadows played upon-the-screen, enigmas    

I knew it then & often reminisce

the red-siphons that pulse in dark-rooms

the summer-rains that burned

my eyes like tears, I saw the egrets

lift from

waters-of-stillness, where leaves flutter

in winds that singed-your
skin, & the beginnings of something-criptic                          

I was on the floor when the eagles tore
the carcass from our hope, swept downstream in those currents

that siphon sand from your soles 

thirteen years, & the mystics disappear        

I saw the shrine-quiver in light-that-filters-down   

the sirens winding through courtyards          

I bore the

sigil of an incision

that erased a single-word                           

who was it that insists without-a-face

(I saw birds-dissolve-in-cypress) 

who was it that refused to ever change

THE RIDE BACK IN REMEMBRANCE

Driving through thick-blankets

of mist, the light cut into darkness

like a scythe.  We were beginning

to get a sense of it, we thought…

& every now & then a liquid-sign

would slip in our peripheral vis-

ion.  I had to keep on talking so  

as to prevent her from nodding-off

at each sector, drifting along the

endless stretch of highway, the

music a warble-of-birdsong, & each

syllable a sound that sunk into our

consciousness.  Had the mist begun to  

let up some?  On our left we saw

the ocean swell like a woman’s

pale-stomach, & our past vanished

into the waves that rose with each

breath of inflection…  I saw a Japanese

house along-the-water, a little wind-

chime hung from slate-shingles

in distances I’d seen flash past...   

It could have been the absinthe, she

said, but the lights that swoon in

pockets-of-illusion slip into halls of silence. 

She was focused on the road, & I

wound a string of filament around

her thigh, at which she smiled,

seemed not to mind.  Gradually

the sea tapered off into rivulets. 

I watched its strands winding through

the darkness-like-a-snake, before

trailing off into the city.  Night       

balanced on the cusp a moment,

then plunged into a ghost-abyss…