Things change over the years. We grow up and away from childhood and any abuse endured therein. If we’re lucky, we one day come to realize that we now live in a different timeline, one where those traumas are but dreamlike memories only half recalled.
timelines
The ephemerality of life and self has been a subject of personal reflection for as long as I can remember. This has given rise to the occasional abstract poem, such as this one.
Dis-integration
Wrote this while sitting in a Starbucks in the Portland area. A woman sat across from me with her infant child, and I found myself moved by the way she interacted with him—and reflective of the disparity between that infant’s experience and my own.
The Mother
A friend of mine died suddenly on the 12th. I talk a little about him and how we came to meet in “On a Life Left Unfinished”, another poem I wrote in his memory.
Unfenced
in memory of Del Warren Livingston (1944—2005)
close your eyes my friend and listen
hear the sound of beating hooves
your spirit-brothers come to take you home
they have heard the call of your stallion heart
wild neighs that pawed against your chest
and now they come to see you home
yes they have heard you realms away
known you as their own throughout the years
lifting their heads at the sound of your distant soul
your stallion blood has pounded long
confined within a human cage
at last you have broken free
do you feel the wind flash across your mane
can you sense the creased mountains in your nostrils
the power that ripples beneath your hide
close your eyes and dream my friend
no longer can the old pains trouble you
go now and join the waiting herd
graze where waters wind through wooded vales
gallop where the grasses stretch and gleam
nicker in morning mists among your kind
fill your lungs with fenceless air and leap
when you open your eyes and blink away the sleep
you will be home again at last… and free
The night; the wilderness; a stream. Here silence takes on new meaning, and it includes a movement of sound. Here stillness absorbs new significance, and it involves touch and motion.
Halflight
Publication History:
The Alchemy Post (web-based) — November 2005
Dreams can irrupt into waking life. Sometimes waking life feels like a dream. Reality is subjective, and its significance even more so. An irruption is the polar opposite of an eruption. As selves, our egos are forever erupting into our environment, influencing everything from landscapes to the behaviors of others. But we are like bubbles drifting through a larger, heavier fluid. Once in awhile our bubble weakens and lets something in from that fluid unconscious that challenges our sense of reality—this is an irruption.
irruption
all in a moment
reality peels back and reveals
the unknown…
snowflakes fall to the sky
boulders drift through a canopy
rustling leaves as puffy white clouds
leave craters where they fall to earth
snap to
eyes open
reach for balance…
walls breathe in darkness
linens screech at silence
ceramic tiles gnaw the legs
of your trembling bed
grip the sandpaper blankets
fingernails splintering
shut tight your eyes…
cold coils around your wrist
fibers burrow into the skin
as something parts the covers
by your recoiling feet
spring from bed
stumble to light
shatter the darkness…
nothing but familiarity
the rumpled sheets
an unvacuumed carpet
a flickering heartbeat
Wherever I live, I always seem to find a place of prayer somewhere away from town. When I lived in San Jose, this was south of the city and up in the eastern mountains far down a long windy road. Out there in the wilderness, when you throw your voice to the stars, perhaps god hears—perhaps the angels do. But, beyond a doubt those creatures hidden away or wandering through the underbrush hear.
Silhouette
a new road
like so many before
an unstriped snake
convulsing across the mountains
each bend a heave
each rise a toss
where starless overcast crushes
asphalt into shadows
stopped in a dusty turnout
boot-steps scuffle and pace
hidden hands claw the hidden sky
driven far from the city
deep among shapeless trees
grasping and gasping for solace
here prayers cannot be hidden
they are pulled from the throat
ripped from the lungs
torn from the belly
swallowed whole
by subtle unseen sounds
dry leaves crunch
twigs pop and snap
movement scuttles and skitters
stirred by a torment
sucked from human lips
by the wind
in the double-darkness
a prayer halts
buried in beats of blood
as a presence nears
yet makes no noise
rustling only the senses
the prayer turns
throws a cone of light
searching through the oaks
and steps away reveals
in the outline of a wolf
two hollow orbs of light
Publication History:
The Alchemy Post (web-based) — November 2005
During my teenage years, I was a hardcore fan of the Robotech Saga. My teen years were trying times for me, in just about every possible way. My life was under the control of the Los Angeles Juvenile Courts, and I was locked up and subjected to endless involuntary chemical abuse like a lab rat. I was robbed of my potential through this process, and by the time I ran away as a 15 year old, I would have to spend the rest of my life reconstructing what I could of my damaged mind.
This poem depicts the role the Robotech Saga played in influencing me to take a stand against this abuse, which I did by running away and facing an entirely different, yet more controllable, set of dangers. Protoculture is the substance everyone was after in the series, and which was used to power the hyper-transformative “robotechnology”.
Protoculture
mysterious and eternal
you shot me among the stars
folded my mind across the unknown
and for the first time
i felt the stainless grip
of chains and shackles
and i began to tear my flesh
bruise my bones
crazed with a wordless desire
snapping chains against their mounts
pain now only a reminder
freedom or death
imagination was reborn
behind my glaze
my soul transformed over and over
a veritech dodging heavy fire
a guardian swooping the foe
a battloid launching wild salvos
somehow i sensed a resonant power
a massive generator of hope
giant invaders sought to capture or destroy
deep in my battle-scarred fortress
and ripping free of my blood-caked bonds
i reeled and stood my ground
Within my mind there has always been the nagging notion that maybe we are not actually what we think ourselves to be. That all of our experiences are manifest, projected, from powerful minds that reach out into the void of space to touch one another and interact. I talk of stars, the stars that pepper the night, the endless billions of stars.
Starscape
Publication History:
Tales of the Talisman — September 2006
We are stardust, the stuff of stars. So everything we experience is star stuff. Our feelings, our hopes, our dreams, our pains, our losses, our deepest sorrows—All stardust. Even infections and malignant growths are the stuff of stars. Everything is rolled up in the same karmic stream of coming and going.
Stardust
The meaning of our existence here on this little ball of blue, green, and brown has been shaped by the birth and death of ancient suns. As we author our brief existence, etched on the papyrus of our world’s surface, we borrow from long established texts—The text of suns long ago extinguished; the text of nebulae rippled in darkness; the text of dust and gas thrown through the void by the blinding glare of a newborn gaze on the cosmos. This is the intertext of our existence, and one day, countless ages from now, some new world adrift in the darkness will spawn sentience, and somewhere therein we will be, silently lending shape to its nascent subtexts.
The Intertext
Publication History:
The Alchemy Post (web-based) — November 2005
