contemporary poetry

Being illuminated in one act

The dark enters the scene (left)
to crush the last day
into trim of twilight.

You sit sensing the wall
watching your mind
being sponge
absorbing gainsboro
from the wall’s last
paleness.

You must be struggling

the ocean the sea a shelter
in some mountain.

There is a crackling
in the woods,
a decision to move.

The wind
not an object of pain
travels through the pines.

Needles trembling
thin creatures
not afraid
but as a web of wave
through which
you already
in awe.

The wall reemerges
(mistlike entrance)
to become a window.

Drawn
ashore by the emotion.

Drinking the ocean,
thoroughly
drop by drop
until
the mind craves its break.

You look up.

Enter moon (right)
conscious of its own silence.

The moon
casts its light
an echo bare
washing your chest.

Your deepest response
allows a pause
first to savor
and then smile.

You close your eyes.

Curtain.

groundless

2018_existential_poetry

Something dwells hungry
by the moonlight,
that measure now
vulnerable as clod
of experience,
recognizable by all,
below naturally
impermanent stride.

How did one
of these commonplace
collide with gravity,
clung magnetized
like heaviest descendant,
literally,
descending to stillness,
something so neatly
tucked in by white,
almost aluminum light.

Who hurries
to lift dear thing
so organized like organ
that means to sleep
sturdy like breath
woven to stone,
dance married
to mineral.

What energy travels
rough as arrow
through fluid eye
to catch the body
of the thing,
radiating borrowed sun
from borrowed sun.

It is hungry
but to consume
some ailment,
some human angst,
that lingers primarily
as longing,
until contact is made,
suddenly,
with the surprise.

Something,
not yet named,
remains motionless
meditating below
the slanting moonlight
that cannot keep
its curtain of glow
still.

Someone
roams like dust
ringing around
the room.

The moon
is half sharp
with light,
half naked
alike the rest
of the night.

entwine

entwine_poem_pablo_saborio

Light
defended
its destiny
by falling
featherlike
on my
hand.

The black
coat observes
how this hand
rivulets into
the floorboard’s
fissures
like water
thirsty of rest.

The floor
wakes
as flower
opening its meat
of wood
unleashing scent
birthed to rye
the air with its
good body of bread.

The wind
feeds
the trees
with salted
ferment
as it fattens
the leaves
for incursions
into clouds.

The eye
rains its
weave
almost waves
of mist
are visible
in the sky’s hair.

The hand
returns remade
to rake
the light

and bundle
its path
into
this knot
of cosmos.

golden

The message
enters the room
without a body.

Pure cave
round as
echo
undulating with
transparency.

The air is crust
hanging from the walls
see that fruit ripe
tremendously heavy
about to fall,

the light
makes a moat
just around the edges
to leave an island
of shadow
in its center.

The message
thicker than voice
makes viscous flow
of experience

as it leaves
through amaranthine
twilight-pregnant
window.

The message
golden collides
with the gold
of the streetlamp.

Some leaves are
curved still
by the curb
as night enters
as a sort of sound
muffled but total.

The ear eager
lends its arm
like a root
to the column
of the message.

The hearer
sees only sound
the world’s substance
seeping like syrup
into this music.

The listener’s body
dances first as fire
then as air
finally as
hum.

The message
and the body
meet.

The body
and the sound.

The music
and the veins.

The room
now filled with water
drowns the message.

The body
nothing but song
remains as
world.

passenger

passenger_poem_pablo_Saborio

You have
a fountain.

Pure sound
gushing out
the smallest
silence
imaginable.

Your eyes
trickle slowly
down
the slope
of words.

One chord,
then a pause.

You sail
alongside
the stream
of sounds.

The heaving
of meaning.

This piece
of sound
has already
crossed
the bridge.

It is now
sweat
on your
brow.

It is now
salt
on your
tongue.

It is now
again
silence

leaving a taste
of earth
in your mouth.

the language we taught each other.

the_language_we_taught_each_other_poem

Carefully we took
the language
we taught
each other.

We lifted
with those young fingers
the dense dough
of color
while we spoke
of the seasons.

We pressed that language
hard against the wall
while we ran
smearing the wind
with the transparency
of possibility.

We sat crossed-legged
answering the questions
that seemed to enter the room
like sharp rays of light
through the blinds.

We became clever surgeons
dissecting nearby words
into transcendental aspects of flesh,
kings, heroines, shamans, aliens.

We were eager to purify
the picture that played
in our minds.

We noticed the pause
between the plane
of each word & world.

We served as interface
for the dots of time
to swirl inside
our domain.

We grew right next
to language
older and heavy
with immeasurable
detail.

We saw it coming
this elegance of
ending whatever
has been spoken.

Carefully we carried language
as a glorious deceased body
into the space
our ancestors said
to be sacred.

monkeyhood

Monkeyhood

I am observing the world

whose very act of existing

has made us claim

that it is the only world to exist.

I am observing

the shadows of the sun

when suddenly the monkey

appears again, opening

that window

below my language.

It picks up all my words

and chews them, only to spit

them out while producing

a grotesque sound of pleasure.

I’ve seen this monkey many times,

he comes from the world within

that is populated by innumerable monkeys.

They all seek the only thing

they claim is real: monkeyhood.

Monkeyhood is hidden

deep in their jungle,

it can be eaten, soft caramel-like

substance that it is.

But only a few monkeys are able

to reach this sacred core.

The monkeys that visit me

are those that for whatever reason

have stopped seeking monkeyhood.

They would rather appear

unannounced in this world,

to taste a few fragments of illusion –

as I believe they once called it.

I sit watching the shadows of the sun,

here below the clouds while I describe

the indistinct quality of being alive.

Beyond Language

The Poetry of Pablo Saborío