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Silhouette

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

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Starscape

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

This poem has been published in my book an inkling hope: select poems, available in Kindle and paperback formats. Out of consideration for those who have purchased a copy, I have removed it from this post and online viewing in general.

Publication History:

Tales of the Talisman — September 2006

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The Intertext

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

This poem has been published in my book an inkling hope: select poems, available in Kindle and paperback formats. Out of consideration for those who have purchased a copy, I have removed it from this post and online viewing in general. However, the above player can still be used to listen to it.

Publication History:

The Alchemy Post (web-based) — November 2005

Posted on by EAT

Stardrift

Written for Mahmud Kianush, a poet from Iran who used a couple of my ghazals in part of a BBC radio series covering the history and evolution of the Persian ghazal. It was a 12 or 13 part series, broadcast in Persian, and my ghazals were included toward the end as examples of how the ghazal form had found its way into other cultures and languages.

Having my work with the ghazal recognized by an Iranian scholar in this manner meant a lot to me. Thus was I moved to write and dedicate this ghazal to him. Most of the imagery is derived from his book of poems, Of Birds and Men, published in 2004 by The Rockingham Press.

Stardrift

This poem has been published in my book an inkling hope: select poems, available in Kindle and paperback formats. Out of consideration for those who have purchased a copy, I have removed it from this post and online viewing in general.

Publication History:

Art Arena (web-based) — July 2005

The Ghazal Page (web-based) — April 2006

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Hush

Residential homes and psych wards aren’t always the best place for a child, no matter how out of control he or she may seem. No, many of these places, with the Nurse Ratchets that work there, are little more than psychiatric death camps.

Hush

i remember silence
 walls made of glass
   mattresses of chain-linked steel
 even dreams were impenetrable
cemented in concrete

you dared tell me
 this is all i would ever know
   poison in my veins
 mold across my eyes
brittle cracked nostrils

one day strapped to a bed-frame
 i saw when i closed my eyes
   that you weren’t so formidable
 your skin fell off in ribbons
and you choked bubbling blood

years passed
 but i learned to quell your violence
   to relish the scent of tea leaves
 as i sit with the world
your silence only half remembered

Publication History:

The Awakenings Review — Summer 2007

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ocean song

This was written to demonstrate to an acquaintance how a strong poem could be written that closely emulates the style and approach of another strong poem, using entirely different subject matter. The poem this is modeled after is “desert song,” also a tanka.

ocean song

This poem has been published in my book an inkling hope: select poems, available in Kindle and paperback formats. Out of consideration for those who have purchased a copy, I have removed it from this post and online viewing in general.

Publication History:

The Alchemy Post (web-based) — November 2005

Posted on by EAT

Legacy

After listening to an Amerindian read his stuff at a poetry reading here in Portland, I pretty much knew what the subject matter of my next poem would be. His “poetry” turned out to be an angry prosaic tirade against white people, and it went on and on and on.

I, being mostly a mix of white, didn’t feel it applied to me, because I wasn’t the one who caused so much injury to his ancestors. As I listened, I found myself reflecting on the fact that pretty much anyone raised on American soil is a Native American. Looking at it animistically, I realized that we grow up immersed in the ghosts of Amerindian ancestry, as well as a growing mix of other ancestries.

This strain of thought led me to reflect further: The food we eat, the water we drink, everything. Barring imports, it all ultimately comes from the ground we live on. So we are quite literally made of—manifest from—the bodies and psyches of our Native American ancestors, regardless of race. How could we escape it? They are as much our ancestors at this point as they are the ancestors of the Amerindians, because we—white, black, red, or yellow—are re-manifest from the very same atoms and psychic engrams.

This would have to cause some degree of spiritual ambivalence, at best. And so my 5th hybridanelle poem.

Legacy

an essence rises from the land into our spirits
    a touch like the raven’s down dispersed on a maiden flight
        that permeates our souls with an otherworldly memory

            in one ear seethes resentment deep and bitter
        reflections of a suffering long endured
    and in the other burns remorse as sour

this land is an amalgam of disembodied psyches
    its rivers and rocks infused with their enigmatic drift
        an essence rises from the land into our spirits

            as one hand grips a wound too deep to bear
        the other twists a blade that lightly glimmers
    reflections of a suffering long endured

we drink of water filled with transcendental engrams
    a sense emerges in all who share in its natural course
        that permeates our souls with an otherworldly memory

            as one arm holds a steady hand for moments
        and all the warriors freeze in sober pause
    the other twists a blade that lightly glimmers

like sea-mist on the wind our minds are touched by phantoms
    immersed in their love and hate—a plight we cannot escape
        an essence rises from the land into our spirits

            one eye sees arrows pierce men to their rest
        another watches bullets drop their targets
    and all the warriors freeze in sober pause

the waking world is brim with long forgotten relics
    their shapes reduced to the dust we breathe from the fragrant air
        that permeates our souls with an otherworldly memory

            one hero’s war-lance slaughters human objects
        the rage that sent it warm upon the blood
    another watches bullets drop their targets

all ancestries are fused in our subconscious insights
    we dream their atrocities—their advances and retreats
        an essence rises from the land into our spirits
            that permeates our souls with an otherworldly memory

                each side is long remembered in our veins
            in one ear seethes resentment deep and bitter
        the rage that sent it warm upon the blood
    and in the other burns remorse as sour

Publication History:

Blackmail Press (web-based) — Spring 2006

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Fusion

This, my 4th hybridanelle poem, was written for someone I never got to meet, the ex-husband of my first wife. He committed suicide not long after she divorced him. His ash remains are buried at the base of a young sequoia on his father-in-law’s property in Northwest Oregon.

Fusion

This poem has been published in my book an inkling hope: select poems, available in Kindle and paperback formats. Out of consideration for those who have purchased a copy, I have removed it from this post and online viewing in general.

Publication History:

Pacific Review — Fall 2006

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Inhumation

This poem, my 2nd hybridanelle, reflects on what it was like for me to be “inhumed” at the Camarillo State Hospital between 13 and 14. There I spent a year on the children’s unit, a locked ward with cinder block walls and heavily grated windows.

The title is meant to convey the sense of being killed in spirit, mind, and soul as well as the sense of being entombed (inhumed), alive only physically. I also wanted it to hint at the sense of being dehumanized (inhume—inhuman—dehumanize—inhumation), though this is not a denotive definition for the word. The scheme of indentation is meant to mimic the way a column of bricks is organized in a cinder block wall.

Inhumation

locked wards cower in the distant gloom;
grated windows pattern all my dreams;
heavy haze distorts my heavy mood.

        my eyes are weary of watching faded lights;
        i wait throughout the dismal night to hear
        the call of a rooster just beyond my sight.

                silence is an ever-present drone;
                tempered springs betray my slightest move;
                grated windows pattern all my dreams.

these cinderblocks enfold my spirit in lime;
interred in tomblike walls of concrete halls,
my eyes are weary of watching faded lights.

        thoughts amid this broken darkness brood;
        restless motions lurk within the shade;
        tempered springs betray my slightest move.

                this is the crypt where my rotting soul is set,
                thus laid to rest beyond that twilight hail,
                the call of a rooster just beyond my sight.

time is fractured into mental shards,
strewn against the darkness of my view;
restless motions lurk within the shade.

        and the images betray my heart with lies
        that flash against my mind as crumbled hopes;
        my eyes are weary of watching faded lights.

                here i watch them phase in empty hues,
                omens of a future laid in brick
                strewn against the darkness of my view.

this lucid static is comfort of a sort
that’s lost with every sunrise when i hear
the call of a rooster just beyond my sight.

        black within the slowly rising brume,
        locked wards cower in the distant gloom,
        omens of a future laid in brick;
        heavy haze distorts my heavy mood.

                i dread the sound that will end another night,
                a sound that seals my fate within this hell—
                my eyes are weary of watching faded lights—
                the call of a rooster just beyond my sight.

Publication History:

The Awakenings Review — Summer 2007

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A Christmas Poem

I spent Christmas Eve alone this year. A month ago I was direct witness to a tragic, ringing loss that had eerie parallels to my own father’s suicide when I was ten. This makes it difficult not to feel pensive, reflective, and melancholy.

A Christmas Poem

This poem has been published in my book an inkling hope: select poems, available in Kindle and paperback formats. Out of consideration for those who have purchased a copy, I have removed it from this post and online viewing in general.

Publication History:

The Awakenings Review — Summer 2007

Posted on by EAT

In the Shade of Suicide

This poem, my 17th villanelle, reflects on the conditions and spiritual aftermath of my father’s suicide. I wasn’t there. My parents separated and divorced by the time I was born, and though I lived variously with both of them, at ten years old, when my father ended his life, I was living with my mother 260 miles away.

Sometimes, as the years went on, I’d try to imagine the circumstances of his death—What he felt, saw, heard, and pondered. What crushed him? Was it truly just his alcoholism? Who knows. But it did end in the dark of the Monterey County Jail drunk tank, an old building used for the purpose since the days of the old west.

In adulthood I’ve visited the jail, just to see it. And I could swear I sensed his presence there, all unheeding—Lost in the abysmal trap of its own self-pity and sorrow.

In the Shade of Suicide

steel bars seal the concrete cell
dim lighting casts a haze on everything
suffocating hope until the pulse is still

here unheard there sobs a secret weeping soul
the air is weighed beyond all comforting
steel bars seal the concrete cell

some can sense a lost control
regrets cascade and crush in heavy throng
suffocating hope until the pulse is still

year by passing year brief glances rise and fall
a faded figure sometimes seen to hang
steel bars seal the concrete cell

wrenched within their drunken pall
detainees wake to hear a gasping lung
suffocating hope until the pulse is still

violence born of sorrow echoes through the hall
the final act of him who kicked and swung
steel bars seal the concrete cell
suffocating hope until the pulse is still

Publication History:

The Awakenings Review — Summer 2007