Poetry

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.

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.

What if you already carved the entire universe

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.

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.

Inside the screech of an owl

three contemporary postmodernist poems

Three poems published (buried) at The Screech Owl.

Poems titled:

  • The Postmodernist
  • Four.
  • Hardly a time for poetry.

—

THE POSTMODERNIST
exploits
the game of reason
to escape the predicament of truth,
s/he operates the machinery
of logic
only to jam it
with its self-generated contradictions.

The new literati
are not avoiding the difficulties
of meaning,
they are stirring the flame
that will one day consume
the substance of our values.

The postmodern human
does not rise above the ideology of symbolic interpretation
and gladly participates
in the confusion of verbs and vituperations
aimed against the metaphysically-drained
ambiguity of the world’s narrative.

The certainty of facts is no longer
the underlying foundation of knowledge; rather,
the elusiveness of truth
is what impels us to disclose
what lies
just beyond the grasp of language.

—

Four.

Is it ridiculous
to open the door,
and expect the world
to dissipate
like the isolation of a cloud.

Is it worth
inventing a concept
where sadness is all
puckered and arguably
thick as a shadow.

Is it futile
to attribute to movement
an arm that ends
in the grasp of decay.

Is it strange
to find in this image
manifold flames
slowly wounding the eyes. \

—

Hardly a time for poetry.

I have tried to avoid
negating the
exaggerated passions
of the poets.

There is a colossal amount of desire.
And any contradiction
of the size of the sky
is often no more than the obscured
simplicity of a pebble in your hand.

I have been sympathetic
while successfully demystifying
the emptiness that gathers in pools
inside the poetry of the modern.

Some time ago
when the edifice of silence
merged with the horizon of knowledge,
many placed the value of paradise
in the service of an absurd rage.

I suppose that the reason
we expose our insights in the light
of years is only to remember
the minute cave of their origin.

After we have transcribed
the entire system of our impulses into monuments of smoke,
we can then go on and specify
how many illegible dreams transcended
the ordinary realm of the image.

The question as to the real significance
of the rapid decay of our art
does not bother me so much now
as the hopeless need to lose oneself
in the numinous stage of the ineffable.