I think about meeting you

I think about meeting you 
in spring when the forsythias are in bloom
and on the twigs of trees are flowers
and the days are lovely,
the nights are cool.
It would be like we are young again
believing there may be worries 
but nothing could stop us from loving.
And then we would extend the hours
into a one long inexhaustible conversation
as though a movie.
As though a movie.

waking up with no memory

It is the entanglements after. If there are any.
Most of the time, it is best

when both know it is nothing else. But that
spur of the moment--

muscles, adrenaline, the quickening of beats
towards cosmic release

before returning to the exhaustion of bodies 
and what is it that has always been there: our

own tired places in a slow and spinning world. 
It has been a long, long time

since.
Never quite losing sobriety facing passion.

Always steady to take the long drives 
and decide at least three steps ahead, as though

still playing chess with whoever it is across.
On better days,

I think myself in transit on a lucid boat
crossing an ocean called Weather&Time.

There has got to be a return or an arrival
somehow, although at the moment

my thoughts are only as simple 
as has she thought of me today.

the space between cities

The space between cities is a body of distance
hardly translatable into a map we can pretend
able to transverse by way of roads and rails,
ports and piers cohering so-called boundaries

of what is there and here and then and now as
east and west and north and south referring to
sun and wind and seasons, the way we attempt
landmarking passages if only to remember all 

places we've been, also those never been to 
except heard by name or gestured at in story.
The space between is body of distance, tunnel
lighted dimly: memory and dream, both palpable

to skin, real enough to hear the laugh from
a mind's photograph of one's own ageless self 
in a moment everlasting. Who else is there?
an entire library of snapshots handwritten in

cursive with names, some clearer than others, 
invoked often as bridges over which one's own 
mind and body travels, loop of a map a place
only in river-spaces crossing between cities.

this morning

Is it the certainty 
of loss that keeps us
going? That certain
kind of lack

kind of incompleteness
completes us. 

For what is "fullness"
and "perfection" 
in utter satisfaction?
But unsatisfactory.

Our lives are completed
by a sense of incomplete.
Perfection 
because imperfect. 

Else, a life dormant.
A life inert. 

So continuously we sing
memories of wounds.
Old old scars 
never heals. 

Or we pause on moments
perfect like this:
early morning sun 
through curtains to 
the floor, dog beside, 
detection book on lap, 
earl grey tea like new 
beginning, local bread 
and feta, some birds. 
A love letter
written to be given
sometime in the future.

Which will be 
not very long from now. 
As I anticipate 
the news anytime, 
sending me to another
place away
from here. 

what we left behind in love

Who, what we left behind in love.
Left behind out of love. 
All reasons into one final tangible thing--
The leaving. Who truly understands it

Not even fully the one leaving, 
Feeling only that which comes first
As feeling before any knowing--
Feeling being the very first language

Of that that cannot be enclosed
Into any simple names.
Who, what we left behind in love.
Left behind out of love.

Others, as well as our own selves--
Versions of the less or more of
What we now are.

What I found

between pages of a book, a torn piece of newspaper
showing a foot on tip toe, perhaps dancing, and
nothing more; the two pages facing each other,
one telling What you need more of in your life, I think,
are some elephants, the other about finding brave.

Be favorable to bold beginnings, said Virgil
Easier said than done.  I'm still wary
from the last beginning.  Nevertheless, I've begun
a vigil: wait for the ally who believes
endings make beginnings necessary,
and who's plenty bold.  Enough not to worry

about how much to give, how much to withhold.
I held my breath and closed the book.




(after Centolella)

And, lovely, learn by going where to go

Bright early morning drizzle, a brown mug of freshly brewed local coffee, papers on desk by an open window.  Somewhere in the corner of the front yard, the planted tomatoes are sprouting.  Until the time to go to the still bustling city that tries to keep itself still, to take the morning slow...

The Waking

by Theodore Roethke

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.   

I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.   

I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?   

I hear my being dance from ear to ear.   

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you?   

God bless the Ground!   I shall walk softly there,   

And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?   

The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;   

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do   

To you and me; so take the lively air,   

And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.   

What falls away is always. And is near.   

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.   

I learn by going where I have to go.

feet

The bedsheets are fresh.

After walking the dogs
on a clear windy night,
I prop up my feet
on the couch. Tired.

The dogs fall asleep again.

Tomorrow a long list
of things to do that
do not ever run out.
Sometimes you wonder
if they really 
are as important as 
they appear to be:
the immediate world
to crumble if undone.

Suppose one day I don't

move my exhausted feet 
return phone calls 
or make presences.
See without me
wheels still turn.

why i write poetry

because i do not want to 
explain in many words 
what words cannot explain.

the many, many kinds of
this

because i am always 
at a loss in the middle 
of nuances, even though.

because a poem is always
both obscure and clear.
because when i am alone... 

white

the mornings are white.  and i try to shake off the remains from last night.  difficult when even sleep cannot make the forgetting.  when the waking is by a dream where i was calling in a makeshift

bedroom in a makeshift house.  the entire scene breezy noon, blaring bright.  the bare walls, raw plywood.  and plastered, bond paper size cut-out pictures of newspaper comic strip cartoons. the likes of peanuts. also a 1980s rock and roll star with a large nose. the pictures appeared random.  but 

possibly not, they all have clearly drawn noses.  in the dream i was showing someone the room.  and disturbed by the sight of the pictures, i called for her, i called aloud and i wake up in 

a morning white.  the curtains drawn, the room light with tempered sunlight.  i find myself in bed alone.

the sea calls

the sea calls and i wake early hearing
waters making their way to shore

the tangles in bed, the vines of sleep
they cannot keep me

i come down the stairs, out the red door
the pebbled path, the waiting sand

the sea calls and i wake early hearing
my self making its way to shore

palimpsest

Perhaps the reason why we are not meant 
to live longer than we have to is the burden 
the weight of years, in incremental memories
layering one on top of another.  

Imagine
the skin of the world seen by your mind's eye
and the thousands more associations
only you can conjure.  How at times they come

and go only when they so pleases.  Such that
in mid of something else entirely, you remember 
the minute details of her and of the scene
surrounding her.  In a vividness that could

outlast the very strength of you, finally
grown weary with all the years.







 

cape town

if you come to visit a city, do so not as a tourist.  
else there will be many things you will miss.  

the tourist is always asked to see
the many beautiful things,  

of course he is also asked to see
the beautiful only.

two skies

east, daylight is rising.  dew and drops glisten from this dawn's heavy rain.  but west, on the other window--my writing seat is in the middle---gray.  in half an hour i will call the secretary, i will keep away half the day.  i have been gone too long from many places: how we can only exist once at a time.  sun spills on the floor.  the sound of an airplane leaving or arriving: perhaps both.


















 

the ephemeral

there is constant death one undergoes every waking moment.  a death and a rebirth happening in nuances, so that one changes, ever so subtly.  noticeable only after a certain time has elapsed, a certain event has happened to mark a kind of ritual.  even though the constancy is there.  every waking moment.  or even when one sleeps, in dreams.

the self, then, is always an ephemeral state.  always in transit, in passing.  and all the thoughts it bears, and by bearing the thoughts i mean both the carrying of it and the giving birth to it, are fleeting.  formless.  weightless, except when they are forged into form.  and by forging, i mean to wield it, to wrought it into shape.  be it action, or art, or word.

the word as a vessel for the ephemeral, else, the abyss of nothingness.  or is the latter really?  sometimes, when it is late like this, the hour that is both very very late at night of now and very very early in the morning of now, i remember Plato's immaterial world.

on relative "reality"

if one holds a cup here, now, long enough, one sees how the cup dissolves into something else, how the here, the now, turns into a something a somewhere else between spaces and places and things.  a kind of non sequitur.  how do we resolve the fluid contradition that is also known as real?  perhaps the surrealists have it right:  how we live separately and simultaneously in liquid dreams and reals; two or more mirrors facing each other creating more worlds; the strangeness of being one same person and different to different persons.  

such nuances; such fine, fine thread; such attempt--no matter how inevitably futile-- to climb the height of the ladder in attempt to see the worlds.
























    

a coastal guideline

in physics and as in philosophy, through a play of a word, an axiom of relativity.  Yes.  our world, as it is, a multitude of factors, countless, varying context after context.  so that when we stand at the shore, and/or look at the horizon, what we see is an end of our world, and a beginning of another.  perhaps that is why the end signals a beginning.  and what is a horizon but a point of meeting.  a line that as much as it divides, connects, two different worlds and perhaps more.  only the sea waves an ancient witness, tides crossing, touching, one world then another.

and the shell on a daughter's hand, a trace.  how time is a world and in a world itself, folded seventy times seven into a shell on her hand, into a grain of sand, a world of worlds beneath her feet.

how we sometimes drift into existence

sometimes the ending is not the worst in the read.  
after the exhaustion of several hundred pages, 
it becomes a temporal relief.  

to close the covers of a book 
and lay the pages to rest.  

of course we know, 
the characters remain.  alive in our minds.  
they, having moved on,  residing in our lives.







                         

                             
                  
                                                             shane, 25 june 2013

what is the Golden Fleece?

The lost
The seeking
Argonaut


At the end of each day's hours, in a world's corner where we retreat  to hide at our most vulnerable time, at that most peculiar instance of only a few breath spaces long between waking and sleeping, 

We do sometimes remember.  
And see this strange world as it is: 

A large labyrinth city where we, the argonauts, seeking the fleece, have gone lost, 

Trapped in between sky high walls
working hours
job descriptions
streets, society, and survival.

Perhaps, the minotaur is no beast, no Other, 

But Us,

Who, having lived longer 
 

And longer in this maze 
have turned into 
memory-less beasts.


Where is the skein of thread?
Where is Ariadne?
Where is the Fleece?

the little dog sits among the flowers

one day in a series of long weekdays, you get a day-off.
the one day in the week you promise yourself:  i will
sit by the window and write today.  sometimes it happens.
half the time, you are needed to do or to be something else.

you are partly obsessed with trying to keep the same
semblance of order in the house, although
you concede defeat to the dust motes.  your dogs, too,
are patient with you.  and all the books that find themselves

in the unexpected places and wheres in the house: 
all of them  in the middle of being read even though
there are no bookmarks for those who'd want
to pick them up from their innumerable places.

if you visit the bookstore today, the one with a blue door,
and a chime behind the glass, 
you'd come out with a brown paper bag again.
if you decide to stop by a coffee shop, 

all of the pages will be read--if they don't have wifi.
in which case, is near impossible.  unless.
you deliberately leave your phone
and everything else except the moneybills.

and by the glass window at the cafe, 
beside a glass of water and a mug of exoticized coffee,
you watch someone else's little dog
sit among the flowers

this beautiful day at peace.  
and you begin leafing through a page.