I’m cross legged at the only outdoor table open on the east side
of Manoa road cafe.
There are three other tables here,
& on either side of me
sit men and women with Safeway trolleys
loaded to capacity with all their belongings.
this act is an act of listening,
not of saying. Articulation
in the sense that I am a headless disjointed creature;
shifting around and moving an elbow here and there
hearing it shiver and re-joint.
Observe
creation flows hot and salty like sea-lava.
I can hear my soul;
and it’s not boring
and it’s not short.
My hair grows longer in these moments.
Flowing, like Ariel, and
I fear the muteness.
I fear what the legs might bring.
I am the human bird.
Weightless
flightless—
songs of discord mingle sweetly
peace and passion seeping lightly
I tuck my head against fern shoulders
and mock the honeydew.
Salty tears;
salty sweat.
So much life
flows around me
more than I could gift to the holy forest floor–
“I am here,” I whisper
and stack stone on stone. They reply:
it’s not us you try to convince.
Below me dangles mossy river, tangling
rising reeds and stone clothed stone I could slip
but grooves are cut in these stones
in shapes of circles.
It is in the emptiness that I am wide and
endless–
There I was, sitting cross-legged on that big stone in the middle of the creek.
The mountains were celebrating or something, cause the water barely lapped halfway up the stone; if I straightened my legs out they wouldn’t touch water at all. It was high summer, too, it being the southern hemisphere–ever felt a day this warm in January? Not me.
The trees lining the rocky stream were full to bursting with greens and yellows and pinks, and the pine trees backing them up looking velvet. Made me want to jump in the shallow water and towel off with a pine branch.
My feet were falling asleep, but I couldn’t leave just yet.
No complaint
just art.
Languidly as day might
linger, the tavern muse with
slight delay; touched awake
by unstaid starlight, the egg-dropped banks of buildings
balloon from village scene.
Bakers lean out burgundy house blinds
waving cast iron shapes and
wheels of cheese. All who go will
wander; branches on streams
lazy-catch the algae reeds.
It will be okay–
It has always been okay.
Vonnegut got it right,
like really right, like
Bokonon himself I, too
am enchanted by the mystery
of coming ashore naked on an unfamiliar island.
Enticed to life by these
sandy toes, sand that’s slid
down my salty knees, peppering
abundance of purple tulips
knowing nothing, I see we are endless–
Resolved to see just how far
man might go.
Before the world began, I bit my tongue in three places
Before the world began, the blood beaded down my chin, a hot air balloon upside down
Before the world began, electric hedgehogs blew hot air in my face
Before the world began, I dipped a quill in the blood of my mouth and wrote you a poem.
The rooms throughout my life have always been wallpapered with maps; road maps, trail maps, world maps, street maps. Free ones, vintage ones, handmade ones.
There are heaps of us with that intrinsic fascination with maps, the calm and grounding comfort feeling they provide. Much like stepping into an overstuffed used bookstore.
Here, they both whisper, here are countless ideas for you. Take a look.
As we left,
we murmured our lives away.
The ceremonious cork against
the bobbing she-queen, Queen of the Nile
we stood taller and eager
for the red shores of
Africa. Ours were lives
of bubbles; great wads of the stuff
tacky and sweet, stretched taunt
they could take us places
we thought.
After we left,
we saw it wasn’t a matter of up
we were bound.
I don’t get a say in these sorts of things.
We begin together, of course,
but quickly am
I kicked off the page ; dismissed
for being, quote–distracting and
unneeded–I stand to the side
my lips in a pout, and watch
sullenly, in heavy squints
the ragged flow of the pen on the page.
It feels funny to be wearing a rain coat :
the beckoning dawn counts my steps
as I walk, stiff in the hips from a restless
night, empty in places, shuffling along dark streets
opened by a cloudy moon and the distant bellow
of early ships coming in to port. It’s funny because
it’s raining–little kisses from clouds
cast patchy against the moon, this morning shaped
into an extended tear drop; a droplet
elongated against a pane of glass, dripped at the edges
and curled by gravity– it’s raining, and here I am
wearing a rain coat, on my way for a swim.
It’s as if I didn’t want to get wet
from something less holy than the salty unkissed
sea.
