Doors
What would you conceal?
Or open to. Could you unfurl
your fist to daylight
and shudder loss away — one key,
one digit, one death — presuming the universe
and all its hinges available for inspection
behind yet another unlatched presence.
And this spinning disk,
how shall we step off? Every moon
sheds its coat. Listening, I turn the knob.
“Door” last appeared here in September 2017.
Palinode (platelets, sign, color)
Cloistered, it circulates and combats, feeds, heals
and defends, destroying, at times, its host, and thereby
itself. Extracted, it congeals into a dark symbol,
resembling our innermost facade. The reddened
moon, incorruptible and estranged. A bull’s eye.
I pressure it daily, measuring flow and constricting
elements. Numinous river, source of strength, the internal flood.
The internal flood summons bitterness, application
of the embodied life, rubedo. I inscribe my name in
three strokes: the upright, the downward curve, the
encompassing circle, omitting the between: as above,
so below. The color-blind more accurately perceive
texture, alleviating the effects of spectral sensitivity.
We build from within, flowing outward in unison.
Flowing outward, split asunder, I assume the neural
response. Color, as expression, as survival factor,
attractant and warning. As symbol. The ancients
buried red pigment with bones to hasten renewal.
Life energy, passion and rage. The force in bodies,
in spirit, in blood. Shade of the alchemist’s sulfur,
glowing embers, ash, the transitory energy of human desire.
This first appeared, in slightly different form, in ditch, in January 2014, and was posted here in January 2017..
In the Fifth Chamber Lies the Hour’s End
To fairly allocate irrigation resources, the Persians measured time with water,
sinking a bowl in a larger vessel and tallying the count with pebbles.
And what is time but counting, determining the number of units within a set?
The sum of beats between silences and their diminishing echoes?
Its symbol in the West grew from fig and ivy leaves, while early medical
illustrations depicted pine cone-shaped organs.
In most reptilians, the aorta receives only oxygenated blood.
Qanats pump by gravity. The hagfish’s second resides in its tail.
Recognize the empty as full. Squeezed shut, we open.
Contraction and flow, ejection, inflow, relaxation.
Emotion as electrical impulse. Murmuring valves. The color red.
The fifth chamber remains silent and undetected.
The primitive fish’s chambers are arranged sequentially, but in an S-shape.
Ancients believed arteries transported air through the body.
The Buddhist figure, too, originated in leaves, symbolizing not love
but enlightenment. The ache of failure confounds us.
“In the Fifth Chamber Lies the Hour’s End” was first posted here in May 2016.
Door
What would you conceal?
Or open to. Could you unfurl
your fist to daylight
and shudder loss away — one key,
one digit, one death — presuming the universe
and all its hinges available for inspection
behind yet another unlatched presence.
And this spinning disk,
how shall we step off? Every moon
sheds its coat. Listening, I turn the knob.
“Door” first appeared on the blog in September 2016.
Consider the hand, its breadth, its history in mathematics and limitation. 27 bones, two strokes. Distal phalanges spanning gaps. You turn and wave at the winnowed tunnel and the drops feathering the glass. The sinister endures tasks of life; right blesses power and assuages guilt. Presuming inflection, I use both hands to tally the absent. Later as we drive through the checkpoint, our way greased by fluency in the language of coin, heaven’s oblique arch recedes and I praise the passage of hours.
I praise the passage of hours measured in terms unknown to some: beyond two, many. Returning, we see streets guided by lampposts, bent trees and the uneven drizzle of sidewalk mendicants blurring through their days. A hanged man’s dessicated hand (pickled in salt and the urine of man, woman, dog and mare) forms the Hand of Glory, unlocking any portal the bearer desires opened: a direct tool of consciousness. Lacking the fat of a gibbeted felon, I cannot properly light the way.
I cannot properly light the way, but we observe facets in differing terms: the hand, lips, and mouth claim more neural innervation than the rest of the body combined, perhaps a consequence of the primacy of making and sounding. Candles smolder and yield to shadow through dancing hand stories. The wave of acknowledgment, a finger across the lips, the open hand proclaiming innocence, expressing, grasping, creating, constraining, releasing. Extinguishing.
This first appeared in Hermeneutic Chaos, Issue 11.
Door
What would you conceal?
Or open to. Could you unfurl
your fist to daylight
and shudder loss away — one key,
one digit, one death — presuming the universe
and all its hinges available for inspection
behind yet another unlatched presence.
And this spinning disk,
how shall we step off? Every moon
sheds its coat. Listening, I turn the knob.
“Door” first appeared on the blog in September 2016.
At Sunrise We Celebrate the Night’s Passage
And discuss not the darkness of crows, but the structure of phonemes
embedded in our names, the gratitude of old fences, of broken
circles and extinguished flame.
Two weeks ago he poured wine and declared himself Dog.
There are roosters, too, who cannot crow,
other speechless men, and lonely burros guarding brush piles.
What letters form silence? From what shapes do we draw this day?
Light filters through the cedars and minutes retract,
as the bull’s horns point first this way, then that, lowering themselves
through the millennia, becoming, finally, A as we know it.
With my tongue, I probe the space emptied of tooth.
Barbed wire was designed to repel, but when cut sometimes curls
and grabs, relinquishing its hold only by force or careful negotiation.
Symbols represent these distinct units of sound.
My name is two houses surrounding an eye.
Yours consists of teeth, the bull, an arm, the ox goad.
Originally published in Prime Number Magazine, one of my favorite online literary journals, in 2013, and posted here in September 2015. Cantinflas the donkey makes a cameo appearance in this poem…
Palinode (platelets, sign, color)
Cloistered, it circulates and combats, feeds, heals
and defends, destroying, at times, its host, and thereby
itself. Extracted, it congeals into a dark symbol,
resembling our innermost facade. The reddened
moon, incorruptible and estranged. A bull’s eye.
I pressure it daily, measuring flow and constricting
elements. Numinous river, source of strength, the internal flood.
The internal flood summons bitterness, application
of the embodied life, rubedo. I inscribe my name in
three strokes: the upright, the downward curve, the
encompassing circle, omitting the between: as above,
so below. The color-blind more accurately perceive
texture, alleviating the effects of spectral sensitivity.
We build from within, flowing outward in unison.
Flowing outward, split asunder, I assume the neural
response. Color, as expression, as survival factor,
attractant and warning. As symbol. The ancients
buried red pigment with bones to hasten renewal.
Life energy, passion and rage. The force in bodies,
in spirit, in blood. Shade of the alchemist’s sulfur,
glowing embers, ash, the transitory energy of human desire.
This first appeared, in slightly different form, in ditch, in January 2014.
Door
What would you conceal?
Or open to. Could you unfurl
your fist to daylight
and shudder loss away — one key,
one digit, one death — presuming the universe
and all its hinges available for inspection
behind yet another unlatched presence.
And this spinning disk,
how shall we step off? Every moon
sheds its coat. Listening, I turn the knob.
In the Fifth Chamber Lies the Hour’s End
To fairly allocate irrigation resources, the Persians measured time with water,
sinking a bowl in a larger vessel and tallying the count with pebbles.
And what is time but counting, determining the number of units within a set?
The sum of beats between silences and their diminishing echoes?
Its symbol in the West grew from fig and ivy leaves, while early medical
illustrations depicted pine cone-shaped organs.
In most reptilians, the aorta receives only oxygenated blood.
Qanats pump by gravity. The hagfish’s second resides in its tail.
Recognize the empty as full. Squeezed shut, we open.
Contraction and flow, ejection, inflow, relaxation.
Emotion as electrical impulse. Murmuring valves. The color red.
The fifth chamber remains silent and undetected.
The primitive fish’s chambers are arranged sequentially, but in an S-shape.
Ancients believed arteries transported air through the body.
The Buddhist figure, too, originated in leaves, symbolizing not love
but enlightenment. The ache of failure confounds us.
O at the Edges 