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…