I am tired of prayer portals,
gateways unlocked by trance,
the meditative magic carpet rides
to promised realms, the rituals -
it has always
been here in the soft whisperings
of evenings, writing its narrative
in everything -
the tall eucalypts
of the high country, the coastal
she oaks and grasses buffeted
by the wind, rivers and pebbled
streams, mountains, the wide
plains - and murmurs
in the soul stuff
and in every atom of me.
Mostly I am deaf to its voice
and search for my own,
a plea, a prayer, anything at all
to send a ripple across
this dark, featureless terrain
that drops off at the cliff edge
of thought and stretches beyond
the full stop at the end
of my mind.
At the end of this road, life's
If what holds one as enthralled
As this now on for it
Revivifies spirit
Then it would have been worthwhile.
The journey, notwithstanding!
Tiresomely featureless.
Or of twists, turns brought stress.
I can't imagine
my life alone.
Without having someone
I can call my own.
Curled up in my bed
with no one there.
No one to hold me
and tell me they care.
Wake in the morning
tears on my cheeks.
Realize I'm not dreaming
and pull up the sheets.
Sit at my table
conversing with air.
Knowing and hating
that no one is there.
Heart slowly breaking
I crawl back into bed.
If this is my life now,
I'd rather be dead.
Again and again,
the cycle repeats.
No one to hold me,
and share our heartbeats.
A life slowly fading,
to a featureless blur.
A love to be given
if someone was there.
"Her Mind is a Carnival of Picasso Harlequins"
Walking through the poetic frames of featureless ghosts
her fingers play like harps their ectoplasmic cages
strange symbols that clang the frivolity of vacuumed cleaned emptiness
dissolving in the invisible time wasted in the chronicles of their newfound empires
the meaning of their spectral presence swings
like canaries singing home all their honeys sweetly
it’s all bluebirds entertaining the wisdom of lovelorn owls watching on
like they are azure feathered blind mice adorned with halos,
while the carnal vultures smile winging it above them all in prayer circles predatory
“her tongue is an arena of silent conflicts”
her mind is a carnival of Picasso harlequins
balancing the trapeze, the affairs of a wild heart
scorched and stinging with fragments of cubist love collages
arriving like ashes within the flames of her phoenix stages;
some newly burnt Aphrodite.
elements closer to reality than the abstractions of geometry
CandideDiderot. ‘25
Miramichi Afternoon
The sloping shoulders of the river
tumble down rock on rock toward
the wind-riffled, slow flowing water.
Alder and grass creep down the slope
but will be ripped out once again by
the ice out floods of early spring.
The stones and haphazard boulders
are sun baked into featureless gray,
their bright minerals shrouded from view.
Land living things are more sparce here
and those present are paused by the heat.
Out on the water a dimple of a ring rise,
perhaps a salmon, more likely a trout.
A noiseless punctuation of somnolence.
The sky broke, it did not rain,
the clouds did not part,
a faded blue did not fade away,
behind that, an intimation,
a featureless back-lit gray
watched.
Eyes blinked, heads turned,
a silent cacophony plucked
at a collective deafness.
Some presumed, other's assumed,
but all knew
that the space between us, and the All,
was as fragile as the air in our lungs
or those turbulent skies
behind our eyes.
Although the sky is cloudy, we have a clear direction,
We soar through the thick clouds or cloud disruption.
When the pure white clouds spread like a carpet,
We glide over them like seagulls in flight target.
It resembles the smoke of a steamboat,
The swirling cloud is approaching about.
I realized I had entered the West border,
Gazing intently at the shape of Earth order.
Everything looks even and featureless,
The gray steppe, the mountains, the winding dunes.
The ravines carve through relentless,
Like the wrinkles of an old person on Earth’s surface.
In the distance, a settlement waves,
Did the people there see us from the graves?
“I’ll be a pilot when I grow,” the boy dreams,
With that ambition, he set his sights!
No matter how vast the land may spread,
From the sky, it's just a palm instead.
When my feet touch the ground below,
I’ll be as small as that hand in tow!
The Figure
The day ends
in a long drawn out sigh
as if done with the heat,
folding into the evening
to soothe where sunburn
has peeled back life
to a hurt.
The dry earth waits
for a few drops
of dew to fall
from trees.
Flying overhead
the dark silhouettes
of fruit bats
give a menace
to the skies,
they seem like angels
fleeing from hell.
This is the time
he emerges
from the shadows,
his course close to walls
as if trying to avoid
open ground.
Some have almost caught
a glimpse of his face
when rounding a corner,
head down, intent
to look away
and avoid a stare.
He appears featureless.
And yet all know him,
his shape filling
a familiar space
reserved for fear.
If you call out
he will never
answer but just
retreat further
into the night, deeper
into your mind.
Just Clouds
They seem just ordinary fill
for a background, a fuzzy white
or gray that doesn't grab the eye
and distract from the more deserving
stuff like trees, sweeping ocean views
and mountain lakes. Clouds lack
a clean line.
They seldom get prime billing
unless infused with anger and about
to burst, or wear the outrageous
colors of a rising or setting sun.
Many exclude them altogether
with a preference for a blue,
totally cloudless sky.
Frankly, total blue is boring to me.
Give me tufts of purest white
drifting soundlessly across
an otherwise featureless sky,
big bellied storm clouds, dark
and sagging with weight,
rumbling with thunder,
letting their load of water go.
And wrap me
in the soft, filtered light
of low, misty clouds that have learnt
how to weep, keep me safe
from the big towering giants
that grow with menace on a distant
horizon and bless me
with the unseen ones
that send down a gentle rain at night
to lull me off to sleep.
Everything seems to fit
into this morning's
vast mosaic as if each
piece has been shaped
to occupy a given place.
Even the broken sea shells
that first appeared redundant,
strewn haphazardly
along the beach
now give pause and interest
to the sands otherwise
featureless reach.
Trees occupy their allotted
space, the rotunda claims
its usual ground and clouds drift
the wide freedom of the sky.
Silence cups like an ear
to receive the days
waking sounds and in a corner
where the pier slots so neatly
into the sea, small boats bob
about in their moorings
overlooked by a hollow made
in air that seems to fit
my contours just perfectly.
One seed - just one.
Be like a blackbird that glows,
in a blind featureless night,
knowing you are
all that is, was,
and ever will be.
Be like a black cat in a dark room -
shine like that.
One thought.
A weak sunlight
backlights a featureless window,
until a reflection looks out
clearly defining a world
locked into its mind
fascinated by the things
hovering in the punishing
sky. both the wicked and winged,
or the bare and featureless. pulled
along in a conveyor belt parade,
a silent march in the stratosphere.
floating forward to the place called
Limbo.
jagged horns pop the
clouds like balloons, withering skin
grazes the twilight. the softest
sky being cut into ribbons as
if it was a present that was
meant to be ripped open all along.
those foggy phantoms following
along. reaping the seeds they
sowed when they were more than
souls.
what a wonderful gift it must be
to hover over this hollow place.
In lucid dreams.
Her silhouette appeared.
Out of deep azure.
Into fusion.
To recall the time of us.
Ethereal reverb.
Noetic divine.
Coalesced.
Her heart did with mine.
Though In better times.
At last the dream faded.
As did the time of she.
Her face now featureless.
Returning forever.
Into the azure deep.
There was a beach in Penang once,
it is there now, but for us,
only in this moment and no other.
You and I walk along a golden ray of sunset.
I think the small boarding house
has gone somewhere else.
I cannot recall its shape, its walls, and windows,
they have flown away, they roost now
like the fruit bats that hang
from those cloud forest mists laden dawns.
Yet, here you are in the palm of my hand
laughing still at a silly joke I made out of thin air.
In that moment
the whole world was an audience for us.
We did not overhear
the surf whispering to the dusk:
how all that is or ever was, returns to leave
in the same moment.
We did not see, nightfall blindfolding the sea.
That tropical Island, has moved on
to another beach, another sunset,
and now only appears to us,
as a featureless blue sky, and the sound
of distant laughter.
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