"liminality" poems
liminality;
barely there
ask if it matters
care if you dare
believe in impossibility
mind framing liminal spaces
places of liminal mind-frames
filaments between contexts
capturing subtleties as moths
liminally reaching inwards
map of a shady threshold
twilight netherworld border
between now & everywhen
cusp of crisp discovery
intangible as of late
liminal during daylight;
stars, fireflies, lanterns
night itself being liminal
colors need brightness
shadow for textures
whispering worlds
peripheral vision
vibes and feltsense
inner underworlds
embracing hell
reversing it
Oct 20, 2013
Oct 20, 2013 at 6:19 PM UTC
there is a certain liminality to airplanes
even the ones now fixed to the ground,
all museum tours and rot held at bay,
for a while.
yearning for the strain of metal,
a voice calling out safety procedures
(don't tamper with or disable the smoke detector in the lavatory),
and someone who loves them to come back to brush
knowing hands, since gone to claws, over their instrument panels.
in the air there doesn't seem to be a good reason
for planes not to tilt,
tilt down inexorably,
till they kiss the earth again.
all crumpled aluminum and fire
and a small black box
to tell those we left on land
some of how it happened.
I can tell myself about physics and engineering,
about this being my second flight today,
and about how (if nothing else) I made it onto this plane.
the turbulence pays me no mind.
touching down, touching ground, it hesitates.
there's a ghost of movement still.
a waiting. a breath.
the rush of air and engines,
not gone so much as paused,
halted only for a moment.
I am a little afraid of flying
but I'm more afraid of moving on
moving past this moment,
all muscled grace and limbo,
a portion of earth held up in sky.
then we land and walk to baggage claim
while behind us the airplane-
the airplane holds.
Feb 1, 2015
Feb 1, 2015 at 2:36 AM UTC
~
*Imagine a box
In shadow
Of utter regalia
Iris, dressed as a waterfall
She comes scattered
Imagine an eyelid illusionist
Praying for more palettes
Enters steelbook cathedrals
To a ministry of colour
For the street outside
Cannot offer as
Interesting a hue
As those fascinating within
The pigment of her imagination
It's compelling artistry
Like oil on canvas
A slight of hand
Smoke and mirrors
Her skilled fingers
Kohl mining
For soft medley
And the new liminality
Above the spectator's eye*
~
Jun 7, 2022
Jun 7, 2022 at 1:02 PM UTC
Blinking red plasma
kaleidoscopic frame rate
"RED means insane"
"put a silver in! put two!"
The flashing
King of States
holding a minigun
"is that metal?"
"looks like bullets"
"tilt the wrist, tilt the wrist"
a glass of spiced ice
knocked over
sticky floors
"who cares!"
"where was the proximity?"
"what?"
"of rendevoux"
the liminality of spinning
"shoot him!"
Jan 13, 2017
Jan 13, 2017 at 11:15 PM UTC
in my dream last night,
you kissed me,
and i woke up this morning
with questions and
a cold
Apr 26, 2015
Apr 26, 2015 at 6:41 PM UTC
milbrightlions of December —
you come announced in multiplicity.
even the night-herald blooms through
the beams of astounded simulations.
buoyantly uttering a word
of light, stilling itself in the sky,
unasked for.
surmounting the Narra and the mangrove,
sieged to a halt in its exactitude
like the uncomplicated machination
of what makes fire simmer in a wick.
all of its brazenness hearten
in easily toppled altitudes — even our
battlements scar our unexplained
liminality we grieve at first glance.
airless are the spaces we lean on,
testing their capacities. shrills bloom
clearer. our mouths plump and glazed.
our flesh hurtle all incarnadine, all true
unlike the twining of roads lit like
faces in the marketplace —
a dynasty of brokenness.
Dec 3, 2015
Dec 3, 2015 at 6:17 AM UTC
mama warned me
about becoming attached to ghosts,
about chasing the lights that flicker behind closed eyelids,
trailing their
ruminant symbiology
down labyrinthine tunnels
till you're left, stranded
in a nowhere from where you started
and they fade
away
to nothing.
...
I keep loosing sight in the lag
that hesitant flickering pivoting between footsteps,
those pauses of breath between paragraphs
of the mold in the ceilings dictated speeches,
the decade old dust encrusted spider-webs on the coffers abandoned superstructures, intricate semantic patterns, still present, present, but encapsulating nothing.
(Educations warped my mind
into prescriptive paradigms
drugged up on science fiction
alternate attritions of future presents)
–//
One day,
the ocean promised to swallow the world,
but failed to set a date; just a vague sense of inevitability.
and everyone gets uncomfortable about the liminality,
and there's
a moment of rupturing
unveiling the blanketing
in the process of our mass comatose suicide,
That no ones sure what to do with.
And we collapse into the indecision
of what to make of this wavering present
loosing sight
between barricades of candy bars and cheeseburger pies
while the radio static sighs
'boys only want love if it's torture'
(i find it a bit optimistic)
//–
I keep becoming waylaid in the lag
the hesitant faltering between long warn down footprints
travelling down some path set out by the last
in no way definitive; but, at least, defined
by the haphazard indentations left behind
while sometimes there’s treasure in the depths that we climb
it's never the kind
that explains itself.
(But still time turns and churns and burns
while we frantically mine all the scattered urns.)
–\\
The philosophers and neuroscientists keep working to find the foundations underlying why
we think what we think, why we feel what we feel,
they peel up the carpet and peer into what's beneath, but
they just keep finding
ripped up carpet and musk.
\\–
I keep searching for home in the lag,
the tumbling bind of footfalls enshrined.
but even if there's no way out of here,
there's occasionally a whisper of camaraderie in the air
(you never escape,
no no,
but sometimes
the enclosure unfolds )
...
mama warned me
about becoming attached to ghosts,
about chasing the lights that flicker behind closed eyelids.
but here in the dark,
i'm not sure what else to follow.
May 19, 2015
May 19, 2015 at 4:27 PM UTC
yesterday I saw you.
today only your scent remains.
tomorrow, that too will vanish.
you said
the ache for home rumbles in your chest.
I tried to sooth it with words
in the absence of medicine
or a plane ticket.
when you left I moved,
became an immigrant
and I understood what it meant
to live without living.
I forgo the mall mehndi,
the astrologer on his maroon cushion,
order from the pani puri wala
a samosa and small talk -
for a moment
we breach liminality
but then I owe him thirty rupees
and I go alone,
sitting safe from summer heat
snack untouched.
I wait for the monsoon and hope
you will return for the mangoes,
perhaps then I can tell you
everything I meant to say
yesterday.
Jul 3, 2020
Jul 3, 2020 at 6:50 AM UTC
The white expanse is
Stifling in its liminality
Limitless in its containment
There is no here or where
Before or after
Just now
Just this endlessly eternal instant
Jun 3, 2022
Jun 3, 2022 at 10:21 PM UTC
you’re staring at a wrench display
in a failing sears 10 minutes before closing
and don’t recognize the reflection in the stainless steel.
you’ve been here a million times,
run your fingers along band saws a million times,
memorized the store’s playlist, learned “Love Hurts" by Nazareth
but you’re still trying to find something that connects,
something to retrace the steps to what pushed you out the door,
placed cold hands in empty pockets, made you stop
to buy cigarettes and brought you here again.
your blood pumps slower in places of transition,
only walked through to get to the mall
or back through to poorly parked cars
and you know a lot about
being used to move on
but left behind.
an employee asks if you’re alright
and you say yes
because you know they’re running out their shift
and don’t want to deal with your ****
and how could you tell them
that today, your skin feels foreign.
maybe you’ll find something in
winter coats and blackout curtains
but until then you make a home
on a display mattress
because you only live in liminal spaces.
you’re only grounded
between phases, in inbetweens.
you rely on uncertainty and in this economy,
the sears might be gone before you realize you’ll miss it.
Dec 6, 2017
Dec 6, 2017 at 4:08 AM UTC
hovis in the air
liminal criminal
on the loose
and it's no use
to peruse
this boundary
floundering
and meandering
slant rhyming
is not cool
it's actually
pretty liminal
effort? minimal
and is that so criminal?
Aug 14, 2023
Aug 14, 2023 at 6:59 AM UTC
That savoury love,
That familiar comfort, a home cooked meal.
The reliable morning texts and midday calls
My warm, rounded, sleepy belly.
That sweet love,
That longed for joyful treat, my childlike excitement
The tender kiss on my forehead
My wonderment, my gentle hope for more
That sour love,
That acrid seizure, my face contorted in shock The lingering invisible betrayal
My confused tastebuds, their longing for dissipation
That bitter love,
Those biting words, our requited animosity
The weaponising of our failings
My aggrieved mouth and her repugnant venom.
That hot love,
The picnic of your mouth by the ocean
The heated liminality before each kiss
Our frenetic and impermanent fire.
Nov 9, 2024
Nov 9, 2024 at 2:54 AM UTC
at night when you turn in bed with the lights on, it is
not exactly a garden, never a garden in the electric towers and canyons
the city never sleeps nor ceases to be, but never quite is.
it will do. for now
and at night, when things dim in low specific heat
everything begs you to do and you cannot do
a rest stop, a pause, you locked yourself out
and the fans whirr and stars turn and dim sidelong
you’re not paying rent here.
and stars whimper and beg beneath your shroud of night life
and that place, so far away outside the city, walls red with blood
and love and if you could say it that way, all the same,
you used to call it home, calling each time your mother speaks
counted each hole in the wall, remembered the rooms laid
bare and forgiven and relieved when you left,
you locked yourself out to be clean
and cast yourself into liminality
Jul 24, 2016
Jul 24, 2016 at 11:08 AM UTC
"when you cannot sleep at night,
you are in someone else's dream"
how many hours shall descend
bringing in a cavalcade
of dim twilight's press
on the soft, aqueous levitation of body?
is this liminality's gradual
hand nailing me
into flesh and stirring
me out of this oceanic crawl
when all you have ever
done was sleep me away
and tell me
of these
susurrations of soul?
i have no answer to
this solitary condition -
say, taking you by the hand
and somnambule in cosmic field
of no thought's ethereal working,
or as in playthings are freely
laughing behind whose hair
flails without a face, i wonder
which beauty holds true,
my wide wakefulness,
like the only key pursuant
to its inimitable hole.
i am infinite in someone's
thinking, who dare not
say something,
who daunts back to breathless
consoles, and springs back
dizzy with a gyro of questions,
i am all hunted answers but
where
is the votive voice
that searches me?
Sep 20, 2015
Sep 20, 2015 at 9:14 PM UTC
I am lost
in my mind
swimming in a sea of personal perception
two wrong turns and a missed stop sign
two bad moves tied to an overreaction
two eggs cracked into the void
and a radio tuned to nothing
spewing out more snow than a polar vortex
gone astray in a mental cosmos
a suburban galaxy illuminated by the yellow luminescence
streaming from the neighbor’s windows
a cast glow from a television’s screen
that passing time pales blue
Where do I go from here?
Do I take a proverbial Greyhound
a Mass Move system
1 am carry me away
Sunrise floated home at my heels
the streetlights a row of orange soldiers at attention
fighting the stars
for opacity
2 hours
each way to see your lovely face
down a shot of moonlight
drench myself in it
overlook it in favor of the harsh fluorescence
of an overhead reading lamp
miles and miles and miles and miles
3 books annotated
underlines like bicycle wheel spokes
skewed and rippled
skimming for pure emotion explored
through poetic musings of times long past,
of eating mangos in winter,
of cryptocurrency,
of best friendship lasting forever,
of an Alaskan’s cold heart,
of a San Fransisco balcony
that overlooks the best gay punk club
in a two block radius
4 eyes
worn and felt
asymmetrically weighted
tugging at my sleeve
envious of scattered sleepers
curled in knots and left at peace
left over right
right over left
pulled tight and left to fray
5 texts sent
to different loves
holding conference for validation
collecting feelings like space collects over-illumination
and they are trespassing light pollution
and I am a cosmos
Mar 2, 2018
Mar 2, 2018 at 10:19 AM UTC
I'm trapped in liminality
But rescued from fatality
I'm aware of physicality
But sheltered from reality
Aug 6, 2022
Aug 6, 2022 at 10:38 PM UTC
The splendor of magnitude gripped in a moment,
now is bursting at the seams,
the thread of steady logic unravels as
the sheets of sensation unveil the
silky boundlessness of time,
the paradox of infinite finitude, of finite infinity—
We exhale into the liminality between (un)certainties.
We find our rhythm to the music of experience
and we fall into ourselves, finding home between our ribs,
nestling into the cavity of being, we trip into each other,
fall in embrace, and rise in ecstasy of laughter.
Folding loving into aching,
Tasting euphonic resonance—
We are copper rays of light, exuberant !
flitting between the morning maple leaves,
we dance with the frolicsome tails of grass,
we hum in deep synchrony till the moon reflects our lily cheeks,
we taste the immanent stars and dive into
the phosphene galaxies behind our eyes.
The construct of measured days recedes
and there is only this brimming space to inhale
between certainties of light and dark
and we inhabit it with a bold stomp and a wild laugh.
Apr 8, 2019
Apr 8, 2019 at 8:31 PM UTC
in the moments before dawn you’ll hear whispers: haunted breaths
that scrape your neck like glass fingernails, razorblades in the liminality of time;
the music in your ears will ring like church bells and
crack like porcelain spoons in ceramic hands. the clouds will call your name,
dip it in the sea and stain it grey, and you’ll wish you could get it back
but you’ll find yourself muted, your vocal chords tangled,
knotted, and slit by stiffened swords in the arms of the enslaved. Cape Horn beckons
and we pretend not to hear. Senegal polishes her silver knife & I pretend that I am not unfaithful to Alexandro’s memory. if there’s no way
to unlock my wrists then don’t bother looking for land, just turn
my vessel around and let my eyes search for the gaze of the mountain. if there’s no way
to silence my mind then don’t bother whispering in my ears,
don’t be naive,
don’t play games with me unless you can dock the ship. when the clock turns three,
go tell Bartholomew he can take my body, it’s not mine and
I don’t want it anymore, the blood on my neck may be my blood but
it belongs to the blade, so tell him,
turn my bones into skeleton keys and Aranda will show you the way.
I’ll follow your leader if you follow me, I promise,
I promise, I promise unbroken dreams in Delano’s unbroken hands. although
my wrists are bound by plastic chains, I’ll still tell you
to watch your step because the planks beneath your feet
are echoing with the phantoms of lost crowns whether or not you can
feel the spirits in the air. you can’t see but your jeweled massacres
have bled into the suds twined around your neck,
My Dear Amasa,
I wonder what you’d say if you knew that
there will be no sunrise.
Nov 3, 2019
Nov 3, 2019 at 4:35 AM UTC