poetry notes from an exile

2005-10-31T21:39:00.000-05:00

Dead weight

death is sniffing around here.
he is nosing in
under doorways,
treading hallways
leaving his stamp
on the day
like a pock mark.

Invisible, odourless --
he waits, simply, tracing
shadows
in time
so the mind
baulks.

Hours pass
and days
in furtive disregard

And a room with four walls
is a room
with four walls
and all the lines
lead to rage.

2001

2005-10-08T14:56:00.000-04:00

This moment

Change is violence.

Yet nothing stays the same, not from one second to the next.

Is life, then, an immutable process of losing, or of gaining?

We breathe in, and we breathe out, and this is the only constant in our lives -- until it’s not.

This moment is perfect; this moment of perfection thrums through my veins in a song of defiance, exaltation, worship; this moment carries me to the next, where I am already longing for the future. And mourning the past.

Every moment I am grieving.

Every moment is a gift.

2005-09-22T21:30:00.000-04:00

Untitled 3

Pardon friend
I weary this trail
searching
for angels and burdens

anxious and beholden, yet
I will rest awhile
and watch

for the stormlight.

Awaiting silence
in the vibrating air

-- a slow
exhalation,
thrumming exaltation --

and running, then

haring

through the punched in dark,
as the sky, finally
crashes in.

2005-09-21T22:27:00.000-04:00

Binary

blood and bone and her, my nova

stem the flower, the only melody
green and sweet and perfectly divine,
within and without

You are mine.

I freeze the moment, and move
beneath her
I burn inside, and burn, over and over, and ever
I turn
and sigh in the night: hold on, hold on, hold me
-- she holds me with her voice
in a web, like fine gauze
my belly aches like the cherry tree, she speaks to me,
breathe
and breathe in, and burn, and burn for me
and so I do

I yearn for her
and ache
and whisper:
sing to me only, wash over me, cleanse me

return to me only
stay with me

stay.

2005-09-19T09:29:00.000-04:00

Untitled 2

Strangers are lovers
met
in some other lifetime.

And how we feel naked
and vulnerable,
newborns, our whole lives --
yet ancient in our bones
and in our dreams.

And how
down here
and held, by the sky
I am overjoyed with this small, cramped
life
most of the time.

2005-09-14T21:30:00.000-04:00

Untitled

When I am

desolate
so
like so, say:
When the eyes
are dimmed
finally
and time
in cool
and ultimate disregard
figures
the contours of a life,
so will I
I will
swell
and dissolve
and dissolve
and be
absolved

by sweet nature.

Sweet nature and cruel time
cruel nature
and sweet time
that I may
in the blink

of an eye
of a god

live and love and be

and be gone.