The life of a spark

Just beneath the skin of surface
something darker
traveled through
like a current
can only be felt
in volume.

Right outside of the visual range
a source of heat
like an explosion of light
ignited
all that could be flammable
was taken asunder.

What lurks like intuition
our own shadow seems detached,
aloof and cool to the touch.
An absence only felt
as nothing
that could be caught.


Painting by Winslow Homer (1836-190) , 'Campfire, Adirondacks', c. 1892 in Public Domain. 

The beaten path

Curses
lain across footfalls
shadowing
the marked path

Treacherous crags
protrude guilty edges
into skin
under brittle nails

The way weather exposes
the external
and tries to wash away
shine with light

Circling eternally,
erosions never cease
such as this
degradation of morality.

The darkest parts
are tethered to these heavy
steps
Taken

for fugitive
methods of moving gifts.

A body spent is
a blessing saved
for another way.
High noon

obscured only our difference
by degrees,

illusory of our self-images,
and how much distance

must be made
to be come
one with a same
destination.

Too late
to take back
steps.

Any other way
could not have been
more direct.


Photo credit: Carol Highsmith, taken 2015 in Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado, USA. 

Mirroring matter

Mirrors may make us
uncomfortable
because they are not-
omni-perspective-or
All
of view.

Things like this,
that seem to be
merely a reflective signal
may not be observed actively
holding and casting light.

Some of us,
completely visible to some others,
may be seen through and seem
somewhat scared of such spontaneous
reflections
that move like we do when we
go about
Being.

We need to be shown
how to hold ourselves
together in order
to be taken in
without seeming to fall apart
or over refract-and distort

such as you noticing yourself
between all things and still
yet unable to divide photons
by four dimensions
or separate yourself
from what is behind you.


Painting by Pierre Bonard, 'Mirror on the wash stand' c. 1908, in Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Photosynthesis

To grow in the moonlight
               whispered the purple breeze,
daunting its profundity
                in a lilac lilt,
makes for the most sensitive
skin, the thinnest rays
               wasted across barren lands.

A tiny trio of skylights
show how syllables
need less volume
when speaking in
                         moonshadows
across open floors.

Grey becomes more than shade
when the pale moon
was more than enough
to still feel
growing pains.



Artwork by Ohara Koson [Public domain].

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.

Talking myself out of any and all steadfast beliefs

And the shadows became emboldened

tossing themselves, whole bodies

against the stuccoed wall of the house

like a lunatic whose waxing drips onto

the serenade night.

Appendages out of lines, 
sinew slung haphazardly, 
do not move, it will heal.

A straightjacket all white and tight

would pacify this wicked waving,

haunting in its accidental tempo.

It was stirring.

The stale air, intent on suffocating this

common moment, tries to circulate.

Still, under such serious moonlight,

all stars let out a slit of light and with
pity.

Keep going.
Solidified, all recast and quartered

for symbiotic division of belief by
schisms and seizures.
See there,

old ways of seeing arthritic or systemic.

Unrelated to shrinking white matter,
this time indivisible from the prism
have been here again
breaking light from black wholes
made it all night once any again. 



Painting by Frits Thaulow [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Dreams casting shadows

One needn't try to demystify
precisely why the shadows lie
the way they do.
There is always an excuse.
Dare not to ask the old salt and pepper nurse
how she came to be the sole caretaker
of crows
and a single cockatoo
every morning, every single mourning,
she knows
they are there for her too.
The brown boy that is now
a milk chocolate man
still slices cold cuts and fresh white bread
at the local sandwich shop and a decade later
still says 'Hi'-
don't ask me why
the police roll by
and I am reminded, it is just a job.
Do you remember that riddle
about what is black and white-
I've read too much...
Speculation bleeds ink.
I think
I will never ask
why my dreams are now in vivid color.



Painting titled Cloud Shadows (1890) by Winslow Homer [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Penumbra

shafts of shadow shrink
silhouetted slants shut
downward dimming,
the greedy gleam absorbs
its shade overbearing obfuscation
mimicking migraines on maps...
veins strained, pupils peel back
in drumming dilation-
the ground groans
under the wait
of light.




Painting By George Elbert Burr (Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art) [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

The arche-lights of animus

You are blocking the light-
beams moon your ego in full array,
it fully eclipses the suns blaze
in plane view, blinding you
of any depth perception,
resulting in
vert-
ego.

Lights out, volume up, listen in...

Do you hear the way you sound?

A megaphone is an overkill,
where whispers in-
discernable are cumulative thunder,
a warning-
note to self-
to mute the background
static by detaching
or unplugging the
speaker.
The back feed amplifier
of the anima in us.
Shadows are holding your place
(in) apoge-e
go!


Image of painting by William Merritt Chase [Public domain or CC0], via Wikimedia Commons.