Chasm choir

The way a stone is tossed into a dark well

to find water, a level, to hear it hit

bottom.

There was no other way

than by placing our whole body weight

upon the suspension bridge-

between slats, between selves

could we feel it have hold

We could stare into the infinite 

and never know the safest way 

to move atop such vast darkness

By one step,

one stone, 

one question, one more word

about trust, what lies

below 

reveals it self 

in sound but out of sight,

Finally

landing is only the end 

of falling. 

Painting by Gerhard Munthe, 'At the Well' c. 1886 in Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Post: Meridian

What happens at night
to the air?
What is this
chemical cocktail
we absorb through osmosis,
take in-minus the photons
that cause thoughts to
sink
so heavily
and their intentions
stand so tall?

In this darkness,
we witness,
the end of days
and feel time
reeling
felt more forcibly by
the ever-changing set of
constellations that arise
in our latitude, or even-more
so by the
nocturnal notions as in
phases of the moon making
destinations
always
revolve around us.

By blending into
these dim hues,
our blue veins
resemble the Empyrean skies or the
dirty paint water in a glass jar,
wherein, all
blends, naturally
together to visit the heart.
This is all right.
It is only a subtle shift
in tone and pressure.
The blood always finds its
dew point.

These feelings will all
evaporate
with the sun-
rise.


Painting by Edwin Henry Landseer, 'A scene from A Midsummer Night's Dream' c. 1848-1851 in  [Public domain].

nightmarish

I have come to believe
All poets
must be subjected
to living with an infestation
of cockroaches.

An introduction
or deep reading of Dante
and Dracula has much to teach
about finding ones way
through the dark.

I play my hand
on the Book of Change
with my three lucky pennies;
one, because of Honest Abe,
2, because they contain copper
and lastly, mostly,
they are worth no cash value.

There is a Canto
that smolders into charcoal,
I am drawn to
the source.

The house is bigger,
emptier.
I guess the walls speak
now only in echoes 

and embers.

Some of us will make it out

alive.

Painting by Petrus van Schendel [Public domain].

The storm has come to pass

We didn't have any pictures, she told me.
My mother said the only thing we had from him
was the toy chest he made that we kept inside my closet,
the one I used to climb in.

I'd hide in the darkness, inside the closet, inside the chest-
and I tried to believe, maybe it was all about him.

My mother has many pictures from when I was little
of my step-father's rock-and-roll band. He played guitar.
And in those old photos, there in the middle of the bass drum,
where the pillow for practice goes,
you see there is a little curled up body,

unmistakably my own.
Even long after I've long outgrown these small spaces,
I can remember feeling this heartbeat
like my own-

And I recognized, it was not about him either.
There were pictures.
She lied-plain and simply-I found-
I liked to hide
myself too.

And I can still distinctly recall feeling the floods
of darkness and thunder washing over me,
but there were no pictures of this I could find.

My mother would remind me,
not of myself.

Blonde and radiant, back then
she was more like the sun,
and likewise, one learns
too much exposure can lead to cancer.

It is the smell of rain that takes me back, the storm
that delivers these dank reminiscences,
dropping memory all over me
wet and vivid, here and now.

And under this heavily cloaked night, the sky hangs
starless and preoccupied with pushing clouds around,
building up pressure and waving flags,
whereby I cannot help but find that I share
a stark resemblance
to thin air.




Photo By Adolf Zika (Adolf Zika´s archive) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons.

Quicksand in the hourglass

Turned overnight into the shadow,
an ominous space easily overlooked-

devoid of light in this dire dilemma
of grasping at grains, starlit seeds of time,

accepting these days that display
traces of altered spin-
and small places
for sin.

Take out the woven-store the sheer.
Year after year, resort
the bookshelves
by ilk
and most pointed dagger,

Titles,
those names mean nothing
-Placeholders-
arm your selves
about the fire and ice, in these
extremities, inside and isolated,
the glass steams up,
the walls smolder around the skins,

and the colder they get,
the deeper they sink
into the thickest of thoughts.

Tucked in this virtuous blackness,
the rest had no peace,

and the sand moved slowly
towards what could only be hours.



Painting by Sebastiano Ricci, c. 1706 in [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

4:14 (am James)

The darkness amplifies
any tiny tears in the thick screen
It is only i
that stirs the silence,
shuffle and peck.

A chime moves to hear itself,
setting a key
for Saint Ana to use today.

Behind the black, wind which is not,
the freeway tunnel blows and gasps,
cats eyes and downshifts, wind it is not
drops in the back, picks up strings.

The cats purr follows the rhythm
of his breath, reviving vigor on exhale.

The fountain trickles for effect
gurgling fools gold in the desert garden.

The birds all still abed in boughs,
have yet to set the tone.

The stars sparkle and wink wearily
in bursts that were sent
long away and far ago,

For this day-
whose silence
sounds
promising.

“Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while then vanishes away.” -James 4:14

1st Image of painting By Wilmer Dewing, Before Sunrise c. 1895 (http://elle-belle10.livejournal.com/1795371.html) [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Cat Sunrise Image By edited by Mary Mapes Dodge [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons, c. 1884.

Lamp of love

My Sun: Embrace me light of day,

Your golden hallowed rays

kiss my skin with freckles

Your eternal optimism

is what we need, every day.

Steelier than others

the nights frost still stabs

You relieve the stars

from their grand spectacle.

I can feel your pulse

when I am held under you

It is reassuring, like a baby's

breath, in a mirror.

Leave me a smile

before you set

your sights

on another day

for healing a shot in the dark.

Image By Menke Dave, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons. Snow geese at sunrise.

From Wails to the Shuddering Sea

When I wonder

do we first think

we Are

welcome to the world?

From the abyss

of a watery womb

we hear

outside

of Us

we know

when words fail

we wail

upon arrival

into blinding light

from maternal night

Immobile and trapped

in our scaly shells

worn by the tides

we call Time

we wither

from glass to grain

too small to complain

anymore

utter

nonsense

We forget

Shards and slices

pieces of Us

that cut to the race

humanity

drops of sea

expire We

at the finish line

of memory

shuddering 

blindly

in our final victory

drowned 

in revelry.

Image By Koga Harue, Koga Harue, 1929 (died in 1933) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.