Reflection on Water

Recollection:

Salt on the lips

Seated, moving

Thirsty, drinking

Lacking fellow

Feeling for self

Lost in footling

Inculcation.

Present seeing:

Fire conditions

Brown bush yielding

Snow-melt trickle

Greening desert

Springing winter

Acquiesce and

Looming dryness.

Imagining:

Ice on rooftops

Downcast claw-forms

Sluicing water

Hearth warm under

Insinuates

The striving wet

Into fissures.

Presentiment:

Grasping want loosed

Dream of river

Manifesting

Earth in words packed

Mud from water

Bricks laid down for

Firm foundation.

Sweet Onion

one

Sweet onion

Glorious white beneath

Rough, rings like

Time in tree’s

Record interior.

two

Exquisite whoosh

Miniscule bursting

Integument, skin

Following, fibers

Twain, diaphanous

Beads, sweet, weeping.

three

Clouded sight amid

Cutting, reflexive

Paroxysmal traces

Jettisons centermost

Nodes, like lovers

Bound in embrace.

Taken With

Desire once took

A determinate form

Biologic, welling

In blood and mind like

Hunger and thirst for

A moment to give and give over:

Passion.

But desire took too

Long to reconcile

Ironic, welling

In blood and mind like

Righteous and bested

Champion given over, given

Nature and law.

Then desire took trying

Fighting resignation

Neurologic, willing

In blood and mind like

Husband or slave to

The mirrors of time and creation:

Knowing.

Today desire took desire for

Itself, dependent

Electric, breaking

Blood and mind like

Except or accept

Whatever inheres supplies:

Desire.

Facilitated Diffusion

This

Poem makes up

For the memory of the past

That was not lived fully

Eradicates the tie and

Gravitation of regret.

This

Poem supplants

Death for life

The wiry hand of

The reaching tree suddenly

Coming into flower.

This

Poem extends past

The reach of the invisible

Screen upkept by four eyed

Librarians chattering against

Their charge, propelling

Breath against impassible white.

This

Poem somehow a crumb

In the wind from within the wall

Without a claim to sustain no

More than a common matter of

Miraculous speech.

This

Poem is

An assemblage of string to pull

With camera eye and radio

Tongue foreclosing

Immanent ear.

On Parchment

To say the ocean

Churns

Misses something

Implies a central

Centrifugal

Origin for

The autonomous

Reflective movement –

Desert land

Locked

Arid releasing

Wet into air

Surreptitious, days

From ocean yet there

Invisible agencies

Drifting dust to slake –

Time wants water and friends and heroes

Space wants water and lovers and death

Mercantile man strings rope round the planet

Tethered to tracks where the stars’ shadows trod.

Overlooked (After "The Shining")

Take 1

The gift I was given was

All that mattered until

It was the only thing to save

My life, the only thing to afford

Me escape from

The dreary murderous

Gaze of my own gaze.

The voice no one

Could hear spoke of

All the things unsaid that

Otherwise might have been

Voices themselves.

Take 2

I was a boy and

I was a man and

I was a twin and

I was the vision of myself

Then as I played

The carpeting flipped

The long hall took me

In a circle

The squared

Elevator doors opened

Took me up to another story

Where I looked down on

My play as illusion.

Take 3

I saw the boy and

I saw the man and

I saw the twins and

I saw the vision of myself

There as I played

Percussive keys

Walls echoing

Digits echoing

Mind echoing what

The rich and poor old men

Said to me about what

There was there and then in

The vacuum of space.

Take 4

There is a family and

A boy with a man and

A mother and all

Banished epicene forms.

There is a land that is

Split by a river that

Runs in the winters when

Snow and blood warms.

Meditation

Separate

Yourself

From your desires

Feel

The cascading tickle

Surround your inmost

Acknowledge

The beckoning sparks

Dancing skyward

Realize

The rhythm only

Resembles what you wanted

Hear

The music glance

The edge of your true object

Become

The satisfaction in

The lilting words of longing

Drink

The water whirring with

The chorus’s propulsion

Let

Your thirst

Receive its mete

Look

Again and ready now

Hands contrasting hands

Describe

The gap in-between in

Soft, obliging words

Repeat

Until your only

Wish is to repeat

Aquarium

Last night I read

The smartest people don't know

If space is filled with space or with

Some substance as yet undetected and

Undescribed but they know it

Bends the fabric of reality into

Itself, between the glimmering stars.

This morning I woke

With swirling dust within

The glassy fishbowl waters when

Ether's fireflies revealed

Their glimmering revolutions and,

Lit and laughing, welcomed

Me to wakefulness.

Yin-Yang

One

These words are not

Written but collected 

From all the language

I have heard before.

These words are

Not written but collected from

All the language I have

Heard before.

These

Words are not

Written but collected from all

The language I have

Heard before.

These words are not written but

Collected from all

The language I have heard before.

Two

Before I heard

These words are not written,

The language from all collected.

The language I heard

From all are not collected

Before these written words.

All I have heard from

Before are not written,

These words I heard

But collected.

Before I collected

From these words,

I heard

All the language not written.

The Antiquarian

Will you use

What you found,

In your search for

A forgotten vessel

In a dusty shadow?

Or will you reserve it

A place in your home,

Clean and affix it,

Hold it out

For another moment

Infused with the loving

Gaze you gave it

On first sight?

Or will you fill

Your find with your life,

Give it the precious

Charge of its maker,

Receiving and pouring out

The content of contentment?