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.