Actually, Helios Drives the Earth?

The sun

at light-end

is weary

to me: yet

just as

the stars

do not exist

when she does

she does not

rest

when she

does not

exist:

her dreams

are only

my dreams:

she sleeps

and wakes

only in

my eyes.


     (completed 5/13)

In Winter the Light is Different

     It's funny
how winter air is
heavy in all directions;
I feel drawn down to
a pinprick
of light through black fabric,

head down as if
my breath could
give back my heartbeat
as it condenses into crystals
around me.

     Bears and trees
hold no such arrogance,
autumn-flutter monarchs
understand: In Winter
the sun shines for the sky,
not for us, and Earth
herself has turned
along secret axes,

and we stand still,
wrapped in fire,
still believing she
was given to us
like a bride.

        (completed 5/6)

I/i

i am not
my face, i am
somewhere behind

the I, pulling levers;
once my face was
a living thing:

now it is clay,
and i am smaller,
now,

within myself:
on the outside
I grow,

inside i shrink - 
yet there is nothing
in-between.

     (completed 5/4)

Penicillin Introduces Itself to Bacteria as Tyler Durden

     Some time ago

          - I don't remember

          when -

               I had a

          dream in which I

          found myself

     on the other

side of a five-hundred-year

gap. My family is there to greet me.

There is

a great tree

          woven branches

          in a half-dome

canopy, park and amphitheater

all at once,

     organic edifice:

               dragonflies

hum like murals low over

dewy carpet-grass

     soft as wool-blend,

     air-conditioning cool

          and soft -

          tall buildings,

     many rooms.

Glass-gleam light suggests rainbows

on meticulous interior design.

My parents show me around

               like a tourist;

it is

outside

     that interests me.

Red walls, glass-pane fountains,

white walls, minimalist bedspread:

          the city

(whichso formed of neuron-light dream-paper origami was all the world the rest just scenery like a painted backdrop)

          encased

in a terrific glass dome,

outside: an endless desert, flat,

     hideous as the

space between galaxies; now

          the dream is

                    just a memory

               of a memory -

yet

          I still catch myself

               marveling

     at how far we will run

     from utopia

             (completed 5/3/16)

3 shorter poems

Recover

          ---1---

I see my reflection in the facets of a great gemstone, struck through with light rosy-pink as an unfurling galaxy. The image is compounded, like leaves, mirror-faces that - no, they don’t change the world, rather, shift the world around them: I see many things, I mean, the same thing many ways: many sides, that I had not seen before, and I see my face as if I myself were not one, but many --

Let me try to explain:

          ---2---

I used to have one face;

it melted and morphed

     and watched itself always in

          disappointment, shame

     at who I was, echoing

     before and ahead of me -

a chamber of mirrors, twisting

          mazelike.  I didn’t

     know, no

          I didn’t know

     what I didn’t know;

I had only one face,

          and I saw birds on a tree

          in bleak winter as if

     holding place for the leaves,

like chairs stacked upside-down on

round tables under gleaming sunset

     and I was screaming inside

          as if I weren’t a part of them

          too: how could they

               and I exist

     simultaneously, in a world

they built for themselves?

          So I ran

     like the tears I couldn’t shed:

          don’t tell, they can’t know

          I’m weak. The face I hide

          consumes itself; how could

               another see it, really see it,

     and still smile?  I ran

a thousand miles as if I could

shed myself, escape myself but

          I only found new depths; I found myself

               drowning.  I ran

     to a place I thought no one could

          see me, but - and this is the horror

                    of my mirror-prison -

               I could see them

     and their thoughts took my face,

the face of a ghost I couldn’t forgive:

          I had come to hate

     the people who loved me

just for seeing me; there was

     a trigger-lust twitch

     like banging on infinity:

          a perfect realization

     of a hideous thing.

          My past bent

     towards my future; the

                    circle closed, and

     something inside shattered, and then

          ---3---

     I woke anew, slowly, without even

realizing, like leaves budding on a tree

in spring, the birds beginning to sing.

          A gentle strength welled up within in

     such stark contrast to the oceans

I had built for myself and

gratefulness, bitter-strong and tantalizing

     as dark chocolate rippled in me: I found

          peace in busy places, I grew

     for the sake of growth, and slowly,

ever slowly, I

               exploded into rivers and

forests, great trees and tiny living things

     and saw dimensions unfold around me

          and fed myself from the humming earth,

from time-old sunlight and flower-fresh wind

     and I saw -

                         I saw -

myself, truly, beyond my labyrinth,

     I saw a million faces shear

          around me; candle-light

          in crystal, and I loved

     and loathed and feared,

dancing, laughing, all of me:

          I accepted

     that I was all of those things, and that

     I had not one face, but many, as

leaves on a tree, present and content,

     singing in the wind:

I see myself in the mirror-sharp faces

of a beautiful gemstone, glowing radiant

     with the light of love and life

          and I breathe

          deep as oceans,

               I stand

     steady as a mountain,

          and I walk forward,

               no longer afraid.

           (completed 4/22/16 during an intensive therapy program)

The View Out the Window Would Make an Interesting Photograph

On weekdays I take the yellow-line train

past river-shore groves of trees,

an exposed nerve of nature;

as the cityscape opens and narrows

I look for things I haven't seen before

- I wonder, sometimes, if this is

an act of creation: ultimately

I see only nerve-impulses,

not light.

I don't know how to separate

the internal elements, the scale of them;

is a leaf a tree? Is asphalt

separate from asphalt? On the page

you can see where one word ends

and the next begins, it is the

ideas, smoke-like, that mingle:

Sometimes I am human.

The larger world has an external,

I alone have an inside. But sometimes,

chattering along over the water

like demigods, I am something

less, and the world is all one thing;

reality is the light through film

in a projector, each frame

a perfect universe where

everything is as important

as every other thing.

          (completed 5/2/16)

- on moving from the Rio Grande to the Willamette

I feel I don’t sometimes

understand

why the wind blows, and

 - I mean I

understand

the why, the how,

but for what purpose, and

even the system as a whole

spanning continents and decades

like the gaze of a colossus

escapes me;

a cottonwood tuft in the air,

those springtime snowflakes.

Yesterday I looked at a

tree whose name I didn’t know

and it loomed vast

 - not in size, but in detail,

sharp as glass daggers in sunlight

and I didn’t

understand,

though I wanted to,

how one could live in such

imperfect contentment, the grace

of only those who never think

to question it: now

among the iron-black and

rust-spackle I

stand under

a sickly-pale blue sky

fighting for space among

high-rises (or am I drowning,

looking down at a celeste ocean?)

and the breeze tastes of

machine-breath, of

tongue-in-tailpipe wet dreams;

I see a wisp of cotton in the air,

twelve hundred miles from home.

          (completed 4/20/16)

I Used to Visit my Grandparents in the Summer

     I don’t know if I

remember my family as they were

or see them through nostalgic fog;

  

     I remember sap-sticky hands,

vertigo highs of conifers sprung

from needle-carpets, fireflies in twilight

as if the earth herself were dreaming.

Grass-green, pine-green, swimming-pool-blue,

scared-ecstatic feet hammering lightly

through root-knobbed grass; in my mind

my foot comes down on a wasp –

did that once happen to me,

to anyone?  No matter;

dreams were more real then

than I am today, and

  

     the smell of pine needles

is an old saw

and planks of wood

decaying, returning to moss

and fungi under a tree now a stranger:

we wanted a tree-house,

to hide away our immortal youth,

but it’s not important; turns out

the memory is immortal enough. 

          (complete 4/19/16)