I’m happy to have a poem published in the Spring 2020 issue of West Trade Review.
Furthermore, I’ve been invited to kick off their 2020 Reading Series by reading my poem ‘Ordinary Wings’.
poems
Two poems in DASH Literary Journal
Very pleased to have two poems “A Light to get Lost” and “Word as Object” published in the 12th edition of DASH.
amount of unknown
A colossal amount
of unknown
slides down
the pearl
barely visible
of the sky.
A naked
cloud
I shivered
the cold wind
arranged as moss
invisibly padding
my arms
the car races
its lights inhaled
by the horizon.
My meaning
depends
on the weather
low lying thoughts
heavy with mist
or diaphanous silence
for intelligence
to connect the bird’s speech
with the stone’s stare.
How sharp
must the world
the geese in arrow
become
the last sun
cutting deep my eye
blinding with wetness
the world
inside my tear.
My story
insufficient
melts back
into buddha
tonight it’s night
more like star
fleeing
as long stream
of light.
sermon of blah
The rain poured
a glass of wine
through my lips,
solid chunks of sky
hitting relentlessly
the thin slice of dome,
my head dizzy
reciting the do-re-mi-
cascade of water
breaking into bullets
and merging then
back into puddle.
This started earlier tonight,
white stone sheets,
dense air cool by November,
darkness so natural to thought
that my eyes were shut,
whatever observes
what the eyes exclude,
silently observing
my complicity
with melancholy itself.
So the sermon of blah,
almighty course of opinion,
eternal genesis of monologue,
running never away from me,
but through me.
At this point
anything can happen,
repeat repeat,
or the moon’s light
rising as smoke
into the hair that is your,
to the night I speak,
body’s cosmos.
The rain dwindling,
at this point,
the ache can be melody –
cool whiteness of breath
entering the sore river
of the night,
this time my body of thought,
the house with the wonderful
arch to welcome pain inside.
Do I have hope?
That is,
to some degree,
the question
that draws this poem.
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.
delicate delusions
Man
climbs
the scaffold
leaving the arc
of his head pressed
against the blue horizon.
The world pulls calmly his hairs
until clouds are wet winds of white distance.
The hand organizing, playing the music of meaning
in strong steps, structures of size, rooms the shape of moons.
The man sleeps with the night tightly wrapped around his naked arch.
The street was pixelated with the yellows, crimsons and cadmiums
of thin leaves that clung like things leaving their mother’s veins.
The mouth took in the morning and the air snoozed a minute
before it rose, a wisp of paper infinitely exiting the world.
The day held its edge lightly above the lake
where swans wrote delicate delusions
on the waters’ smoke; the clouds
glitched, errors on the screen
once the eye caught serpent
moves on the silk that was
almost as blue as the sky,
the lake, the eye
all being
one.
passenger
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.
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.
the signs
Perhaps slow age
was ignoring
the signs.
The signs
that came
very quietly
to dismember
the rhythm.
At first
they were pockets,
diaphanous moments
where magic appeared
to gently comb
the rye fields.
They became
more obvious
when light evolved
into heat
that could burn
memory
and bestow
endless ripple.
Somehow
at some stage
the stage
dissolved
leaving the plot
unhinged and atomized
like motes
without purpose
in the air.
At some point
every point
was connected
and any thing
could cause
everything.
The mind
became a boat
a vessel pushed
by the pull
that the tides
tied to the ideas
of time.
Then it sunk
but nothing died
the wave continued
busy with bubble
and burst.
Nothing but songs
instead of signs
were heard
the ear was as good
as any door
facing the journey.
What if you already carved the entire universe
You carve your bone
you carve the row of toes
you carve the thickness of your hair
you trace the sphere of your eye
you carve the curve of the flow
You open the space for light to grow
you polish the air that swells with sound
you carve the ear that apprehends error and crime
you carve the place and the scene
you carve the men and women
that carved the ground of the past
You carve the song and the curtain
that draped your childhood
you carve the tiniest details
you stare at your carvings
you stare at shade and form
You grow like a branch
you carved that branch
you have carved the root
you have carved the earth
you have carved the light
that shines upon us all
You are the carving
you are the branch
you are the growth
you are the leaves that shiver
in the cold wide wind
You have carved the thoughts of this
you have carved the innocence of unknowing
you have carved the knowledge that you carve
you have carved this memory
you have carved this ignorance
you have carved the light
that reveals your creation
you have carved the flame
that burns the infinite
your light has carved my face
your light has made this journey
your eyes are cosmos
your eyes are tight against
my own light.
Beyond Language 
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