Dante in Paradiso

there are no threads

2011-05-11T05:40:00.001-07:00

i left the echo

in my heart

hidden but

apparent to all

i wept secretly

held some in

while others

watched

i knew i was lost

but no one else

did i forgot

that i was just

a man reviewed

by innocence

had left the verges

to the unknown

at night when

the others slept

i would move there

and sin again

feeling but god

deep to deep

listening to me

in the cold

the wall felt cool

as i pressed my cheek

against its edge

and prayed

2010-08-09T13:58:00.001-07:00

I listened

I listened and the air was colder now

Intent on its own process

If the spirit flees

Ye shall be free indeed

I was semi clad, naked in clothes

And i had never felt more skinless

Like happenstance to the lonely

Fate had renovated me

I cocked my head and listened

There was the sound of an uneasy static

Wordless and without melody

I thought of sleep

passage

2010-06-09T12:49:00.001-07:00

i turned and the passage was narrower than i remembered

and its length deterred me, for it was longer than i could see

the end, as ends go it was not an end but the appearance of such

and i was aware of walking and nothing else except the clip of a man

against his will walking into an unknown, and it was indefinite and i

remembered that the words i had just spoken were spokes that remain

and still the clipping tones of an echoing and a manic spirit that swarmed

and stunned and walked alongside, plaguing us with mimicking and with

the anthems of mime, surrounding the walking and the walker

with words and themes and dots and trills and then words again

on this was level plateau and the moon did not intersect here

instead lost to its darkness the moon lamented the tottering pace

until the end could not be seen for a second time, instead the waking,

moving, stumbling past becoming the trying, coasting, leading surprise

that surrounded the onward christian lament, foraging forward in sullen

steps that solicit just the other step of the same man in the same passage

2010-05-22T12:40:00.001-07:00

the knife

before he understood the knife

became a keepsake in the dark

brandished like a holy cross

it was as if flesh and blood

became flood and tempest

and the eyes would not

they could not stem the guilt

its pour upon him like a mantle

stubborn and fraught with the dark

we do not see until we see

he thought and could not look

and silently he pleaded

for an end to his own morality

to end like this is to die a fool

he longed to turn the light on

to supersede today by godly decree

to anticipate and to follow through

and so he began to pray again

confluence

2010-02-07T08:03:00.001-08:00

i fell into the warmth

under like a lullaby

head sinking

under into blueness

beneath i sank

until i was lost

was under no longer

for under was now this

held my breath, under

it was held for me

it reminded me

of plath underwater

wanting a baptism

i wandered under

if the waters

would seep into me

warm and full descend

to my demons

underneath

and exorcise them

i longed for that

prayed and fell deep asunder

gasping for breath

was it worth a death

under stood

rain

2010-02-06T13:49:00.001-08:00

i listless to the rain

and fell there down

and in the all quiet

naked and soothed

a man remembered

a cool wing and aftertaste

a renegade space

a flight, then plummeting

a cataract

after love is this

after this is love

in a movement

2009-11-04T08:45:00.001-08:00

in a movement

is a gradation

the slipping shade

of a day interloping

reading an angle

from yet another

angle, detaching sides

from other desires

until sides become ribs

and these wings and

these metaphysical wombs

and sudden is rapture

more than application

it is the eve, the oeuvre

a manoeuvre of kindred

from light to darker

in a movement

here solace is captured

and god is silenced

for this is god

For the moment

2009-10-28T14:52:00.001-07:00

for the moment

i look at a tree

in a darkened night

it fails to impress me

for it will not stand still

i am swept aside

by momentum

and resist the same

it looms over me

most of it unseen

it is tenebrae

its gloom intolerable

i squint as if it's a cloud

not the shekinah kind

the shapy kind that worms

its way across the heavenlies

caressing the tundra

with vision

suddenly i see a man

he waits in the tree

zacchaeus, i say

i am alone now

2009-10-18T12:04:00.001-07:00

i am alone now

with the sounds

their odd voices

coloratura

the earth is tired

beneath me

it is stilled

and as silent

as its core

i realise i have not wept

for a few weeks

dismayed, am i

human still

i listen now

for other sounds

beyond the now

the now is stifling

too needy for now

i hesitate to dream

alone except for words

and they say nothing

subtle

2009-10-11T15:32:00.001-07:00

how subtle the tender

ministrations of love

like kisses in minutiae

their everpresence

like a god, god

defining blueness

in a prelude

an afternoon of faun

2009-10-03T14:09:00.001-07:00

all is night-quiet

and i am alone

no truly alone

no cats or creatures

no breathing to hear of

no talk nor ambience

just a man, on a bed

i feel so bruised

so cataclysmic

i don't know where

i go, going gone

and search for words

and phantoms, gods

to know how, why

to live

i am torn by empty pasts

and ransacked by marauding christians

armies have raped me

malevolence has seen me

i am sure that i am as tender

as i was nestling a baby

but now the world is expected

of me, from me, forms me

and i am unkept of soul

and in wildernesses of my own making

all is quiet and i am alone

no truly alone

Night

2009-07-30T11:36:00.001-07:00

night

some say night is merely the inverse

of a day that has turned and become the sun

some say night is black and ness and more

the wellspring of denial and evil profit

some say night is merely day but darker

and close their eye to dream until day is lighter

some say night is menacing and interrupting

without words, spokeless, simultaneity

I say night is never mind,

the land of missions and plagues and tempest torn

from the mouth, the hands,

the crevices of god

night is now

and tomorrow

and surreal revelation

night is never to know,

dark consummation

crimson

2009-07-18T10:50:00.001-07:00

an elegy spoken

became a bird

who flew to hell

its mouth held cries

its wings icarus

it knelt at hades feet

wings flailing while

hades held his heart

colder now and gazed

away into the cobalt

underworld inured

finally a word was spoke

an final one denied

till now

to life this crimson life

in erebus crushed

Near

2009-07-10T01:37:00.001-07:00

i could hear the television in the background

my feet felt cold against the floor

i was staring into semi-space

and the light was grey-green

and rapidly becoming greyer

my eyes felt detached

like leaf fronds falling away

i gazed at the window

and it became an abstraction

the traffic was a liquid sound

and rose and fell like a machine breathing

i felt vapid and translucent

morose and introspective

and wondered whether to write or live

i was conscious of feelings changing

with each thought and touch

surely i was not only sense

i wondered where my soul got to

a few moments ago

2009-06-28T15:56:00.001-07:00

i bent over the boxes

straddled the life

i had before

these inanimates

seemed blasé

remarkably still

and brimming over

i was determined to

seduce them into talk

i pored through letters

diaries and sermons

of old, their cheap

and papery feel

was all but a smudge

and the margins

of a land i used to travel in

i wept and bent

and then wept again

for this fruitless artisan

was alive and unaccounted for

at times memory

is an old letter

discarded

Frond

2009-06-21T13:38:00.001-07:00

I held this innocence

with all semblance

of fragile creation

touching was like

touching an end

to life, for life

is none but this

I held but could not

contain this tumult

how can one

contain the sea

Again

2009-06-14T08:07:00.001-07:00

i broke once from you

i slid and fell then

while you watched

there were no others there

it was a semblance of privacy

but helplessness is never private

i stayed there, wondering if you'd go

but you kept looking, in surprise

at the aftermath

i winced, head down

unable to see your eyes

unwilling to, wanting to see a look

one i'd seen before, long ago

i felt nonplussed, the floor cold

almost inhabitable, dust to dust

my body began to ache and burn

insisting on relief,

before i arose

i fell again

2009-06-07T10:20:00.001-07:00

Gravel

I step onto the grey

Feet already searching

Linger and devolve

I feel I have not understood

Not lost but walking

Again listless to the crunch

This morning I listened

To Pärt, tabula rasa

An empty beginning

formless and void,

darkness ,

the surface of the deep

I move in a line

It is not a straight one

I hear voices way away

Soon I will see them

And I will not be me

Listless to the crunch

2009-06-04T02:46:00.001-07:00

Whether

Bent in metamorphose

I held the desk like a casket

Mood, sombre

While in my stomach

A whirring knot

Stirred unselfconsciously

Any movement slight

Unbearably stilted

I felt the idea flow

Fraught within

The desperate acquisition

Of context, of frame

A moment of poem

A cry of clarity

A but

instead I bent

passioantely

in the abyss

2009-06-03T23:19:00.001-07:00

Whether

Bent in metamorphose

I held the desk like a casket

Mood, sombre

While in my stomach

A whirring knot

Stirred unselfconsciously

Any movement slight

Unbearably stilted

I felt the idea flow

Fraught within

The desperate acquisition

Of context, a poem

A moment of clarity

A scream

But instead I clutched

And bent longingly

At the abyss

Murmur

2009-06-03T09:17:00.001-07:00

I murmur

As if it was enough

The sounds dwindling

Into some inner

Netherworld

The silence now

Like an inert sonnet

Restless and seeking love

Betrays us

It seems to break

As if words were solid

As if we were

I cannot take back

The murmur

Rorschach deconstructed

2009-05-16T13:34:00.000-07:00

Blood to blot and

Blot to besotted blood

We lodge then

An even interval

Uneven too

A mode of art

To art

A summary contemplation

Sideline to sideways

This even landscape

Uneven plight

Is as black as ink

As sin’s ink

Hieroglyphs for words

Impenetrable

Immunity

To narrative

As lingering as language

Upon a newborn

Babel to Babylon

So is it to feel

The random ink

Upon held holiness

Like residue from a birth

A birth interview

Something that moves

To depict

But never explain

Like a memory wound

Like grace in a shadow

chiaroscuro

2009-04-23T03:25:00.001-07:00

whenever the day enjoins

the darkness come

it is hoping for a night

blue-dark and clear

of enlightened skies

of stars that deny their

obvious portents

to hide in fallen skies

before the naïve worlds

those of cosmos and creature

before they dismiss their own

like unconscious mores

before we wished for orbits

and sounds of the other side

before all this

we sin and wait

for the darkness

hidden in the hues

of light and shade

that are hidden in us

when the day

orders the darkness

when it comes

this one hopes for one

of night of blue-darkness

and clear of the enlightened skies

clear of the stars

which refuse their manifestations

clear with the skin

with the skies fallen

hidden before naïve worlds

naive as those from the world

naïve as a creature before

it draws aside before they wish

for the orbits and sounds

of the other side

they await the darkness

which is dissimulated

without the colours of the light

without the shade

hidden within us

Flesh

2009-04-23T03:24:00.000-07:00

I opened a window today

I never closed

And held it open

To breathe the wind

My hands they touched

A mirror’s mirror

Peering and posing in skin

Flesh to flesh

A greeting of sorts

To regard me again

I held a window open

I never closed

checkmate

2009-04-15T04:29:00.000-07:00

i own a broken chess set

the pieces sit there still

as if nothing were wrong

but the bishop is broken

his head bereft of head

they mourn this loss

with silent stares

all unable to look at him

and he unable at all

the pieces on the other side

regard him as their own

those who stand alongside

will not take a bow

he rests headless on the blocks

his head aside, askance, off to the side

whether he is what he once was

or whether he is not,
no one can assume

for when you move the headless one

he moved despite the gloss

if one were to look closely

at his dismembered self

you would see that his ache

is more than just without

a crack leans all the way

between his burrowed self

from one end of his red red core

to the deepest part that glows

until the beginning of the next match

he pretends he is the same

that he has a head, that he has no scream

running through this ordered game

the others move when moved

and are removed when removed

but if one isn’t careful

he will one day be stilled

when his bish is severed from his op

My heart is silent

2009-04-08T14:19:00.000-07:00

I watched the lights move

Their silence, distance

They moved away

Unwilling to draw near

In fractions I grow cold

It harms me

And will not let go

I am the sum

Of other people’s hurts

I wake sometimes

Unable to dream

Unforgiving

as the moonlight

but mostly

I inhabit sad places

The melancholy

Is hard to bear

For it holds me

And will not let me go

I will myself to go on

Angry at the closest

And murmur bloody words

To god and man

I am as brittle

As a human

And wary as

An animal

People bleed around me

Shedding their life

Like jesus

Unwittingly dying

For no-one

Inhabiting the inner

And the outer

I waste away like

a dante vision

parading the truths

of a hell

of my making

I cannot scream

Or yell

Or claim the blood of others

For my heart is silent

Meagre

2009-02-19T11:50:00.000-08:00

Until the last light

Had become lost

The darkness had hidden

Now intuition became

The pathway

And darkness slid

Silently into light

Like a random thought

A furtive whisper

in this meagre light

The dark began to soothe

The host without retribution

Forward

2009-02-18T14:42:00.000-08:00

He pressed deeper

The stone firm

In rougher hands

He held himself

Within its shadow

Darkness of his own

Making force into fate

Each moment was an attempt

To derive life from death

He looked up towards

The summit his aim

Delayed by the gods

He could never retreat

Never demand end

Instead he waited for beginning

Bent beneath his own mortality

He became a man pushing

A stone upon a hill

Broken crown defining

Every sign

Understated

2009-02-15T09:49:00.001-08:00

we deem today

is but for life

and will it but for this

life is not but for life

it is for understated

we die for love

its core and fire

is thunder and its light

life is not but for life

it is for understated

we dream of god

and demi too

after life we woo

life is not but for life

it is for understated

we cry, we mourn

we recreate

as if the moon

were always ours

life is not but for life

it is for understated

we wake for sake

of man and god

and never think of next

life is not but for life

it is for understated

we whirl and dance

until the text

the rest of life is over

life is not but for life

it is for understated

we die and swim

beneath a flood

until dante’s lair

Anne Baring on Jung

2009-02-15T09:21:00.000-08:00

The visionary has to translate the images and words of an unseen, archetypal world into the language and understanding of his time. His conscious mind, struggling to contain the overwhelming power and numinosity of the experience, will interpret it according to the level of his own understanding and the needs of the age in which he or she lives.

And remember i

2009-02-14T15:19:00.001-08:00

And remember i, that i courageous

One willing to hold this script so tied

Bound self face to face with Glory, glory beyond

Exclaimed an oh to grace unending, in this oh a means of setting

The Light Eternal sight upon

Remember light that saw i and consumed

Within deep unconscious, saw further

Deeper than down saw i love abound in one,

One whose words are sown

One whose matter and chaos and all

Unitary operation fused within, one

Know what i hold in tongues is this one pure light