flying, soaring
fields below
flowers and trees
freedom

spread open
wide
waiting for reception
withheld moments

gliding mindlessly
numbing
doubtful
the sun bellows from above

clicking and tapping
claws measuring
distance
timing not scheduled for flight

moon dancing
echoing night
shadowless wings
winter ignites

below they cry
look from there
above your head
it's everywhere

I
Go on, high ship, since now, upon the shore,
The snake has left its skin upon the floor.
Key West sank downward under massive clouds
And silvers and greens spread over the sea. The moon
Is at the mast-head and the past is dead.
Her mind will never speak to me again.
I am free. High above the mast the moon
Rides clear of her mind and the waves make a refrain
Of this: that the snake has shed its skin upon
The floor. Go on through the darkness. The waves. fly back

II
Her mind had bound me round. The palms were hot
As if I lived in ashen ground, as if
The leaves in which the wind kept up its sound
From my North of cold whistled in a sepulchral South,
Her South of pine and coral and coraline sea,
Her home, not mine, in the ever-freshened Keys,
Her days, her oceanic nights, calling
For music, for whisperings from the reefs.
How content I shall be in the North to which I sail
And to feel sure and to forget the bleaching sand ...

III
I hated the weathery yawl from which the pools
Disclosed the sea floor and the wilderness
Of waving weeds. I hated the vivid blooms
Curled over the shadowless hut, the rust and bones,
The trees likes bones and the leaves half sand, half sun.
To stand here on the deck in the dark and say
Farewell and to know that that land is forever gone
And that she will not follow in any word
Or look, nor ever again in thought, except
That I loved her once ... Farewell. Go on, high ship.

IV
My North is leafless and lies in a wintry slime
Both of men and clouds, a slime of men in crowds.
The men are moving as the water moves,
This darkened water cloven by sullen swells
Against your sides, then shoving and slithering,
The darkness shattered, turbulent with foam.
To be free again, to return to the violent mind
That is their mind, these men, and that will bind
Me round, carry me, misty deck, carry me
To the cold, go on, high ship, go on, plunge on.

Poor stone. You’ve wrapped it, hidden its serene and uncomplicated self. I can no longer feel its smoothness, its emptiness embodied in touch. You have brought it in from the beautiful silence of its solitary state and covered it around: a net, a bag, a coverlet, a coating of thread through which we can only see something of itself.

There is a consistency here: in this doing, a reflective doing as much as conscious making. You’ve moved from the mending of damaged acorns, splintered leaves, forlorn detritus gathered off the sea strand to making tiny homes, shelters, enclosures, that sometimes have no perceivable openings; so some stones are wholly netted, completely wound and threaded around so there is no escape. But some, it needs to be said, are like the lasts of the cobbler, there to provide a form to hold the stone shoe firm, in place, and around which the woven thread in your hand can ply and knit . . . and then it is sometimes cast away, this last of stone, having only provided a stone shape; so only its shape-memory persists for the viewer. And when touched - this garment, this cloak of thread is pliable, and moves with the fingers’ touch and press.

I should like to capture this stone in the process of its enclosing; what seems to be from a viewer’s stance a not wholly planned journey with the needle - around and about, in and out and under. So I imagine a stop-motion sequence of photographs, beginning with the lonely undressed stone in your hand. As time lapses we watch the intricate play of your hand, your deft fingers, that particular pinching and holding to place the thread here and here and here, the pulling through, the special holding in place while one thread knits together with another thread by going underneath and up and along, and all the time the hand turning, the fingers dancing in the hand.

Then will come moments of rest where the stone moves from the hand to a still surface. It regains its shadow - and rests. The hand moves away and we are left with the silent stone, the journey of its dressing interrupted by life’s necessities. The maker’s hand moves to other tasks; the preparation of food, the writing of notes, the tapping of virtual symbols on the mobile phone (now there’s a surface that shares with the stone a hardness and smoothness – once we held stones for comfort in the pocket – now we stroke the mobile to remind us that we’re safe in the dark street, not ever alone, connected to our thousands of followers, admirers, friends, our loved ones, and that repository of what is and where to go, and the whole world of music and photographs - of woven stones).

Let’s go back to this stop-motion. To lift the stone from its precious private place, usually alone (no other stones around), index finger and thumb come together to lift our stone from its shadow – a shadow that disappears, magically, into the surrounding light. Oh surely no more, the stone cries in its shadowless voice. No more of this twisting turning, upside downing, the sense of the stone recalling a time beyond time when in a storm-laden sea one dark winter’s night it, and countless companions, were lifted from the sea bed and rolled round, around, round, and swept, afloat in a turmoil of waves that break and break and break until finally onto the sloping beach - where the stone is left – alone, motionless – at rest - to dry in the morning sun.

Gradually the movement in her fingers becomes slower, even sporadic. She is looking at this stone with her grey-blue eyes, intently. There are pauses; moments of reflection where our stone is set down and viewed, picked up again and moved into a different light (its shadow returns momentarily, fitfully, knowing perhaps any stasis is only temporary). The camera keeps clicking; stop, a 300th of second motion, stop for a second. Already there are thousands of images collected in the camera’s silicon memory chip.

And so movement gradually becomes stillness. The light changes. The camera’s incessant stop-motion ceases. The stone is placed on a white surface for a final photo-call – a single click. Once naked; now clothed. There is no longer the possibility of return to its original stoniness. It becomes an ‘object’ to place on a surface for wonder and admiration – not the stone of course but its clothing, its covering, its embodied shape in thread, perhaps that thread soaked in mud that in itself holds a distance memory of water, even water that has moved from sea to the coastal strip, the estuary, the river’s bank.

Later, after being wrapped in tissue paper, perhaps boxed, and moved into a total darkness, the stone is brought again into the light. It finds itself placed among other stones, stones and shells, rusty objects even, and laid out variously on a pristine white surface. Its stoniness is now shadowed with words: a description, a title, its ‘found’ location, a date of finding – a date of making. That this stone, once beached, and picked from the sand, from amongst so many other stones, and thought unique and carrying potential as a last, a shoe-maker’s frame, a steady 3-dimensional surface for wrapping, now becomes something more that a solitary stone. It has been given a new life, a life of an object imbued with the thread of a maker’s curious mind; that in so threading has come to know this stone so intimately, and with so much love and care that its clothing, whilst having no pre-formed pattern, becomes something in its maker’s eyes that seems  - meaningful, poetic, ‘right’?

Through this stone-weaving with thread, this stone-covering and describing in thread, you have made a poem of the nature of stoniness. Your fingers now know this stone, and perhaps, if we can in our imagination follow that partly accidental / partly planned journey, we can read your poem – of touch, of turning, of minute viewing, of so careful observation of every millimetre of its surface. Yes, perhaps that’s it, what this is all about . . . only our stone has had its wonderful serenity and solitariness, its smoothness and surface taken from us. It will no longer lie in the pocket to comfort the hand. It will no longer lie on the desk to be a tangible remembrance of a place and time, treasured.

                                                       ------

‘And now I remember a poem, portraying a stone, a pebble placed in a child’s hand, picked up on a pebble ridge. A pebble to place in the pocket where we finger it until it becomes warm. Its shape and certain¬ty is firm and sure. It consoles us. And, as we change and decay, it remains lodged with us: *a thing that contains nothing save the mystery of life.’

I love too much; I am a river
Surging with spring that seeks the sea,
I am too generous a giver,
Love will not stoop to drink of me.

His feet will turn to desert places
Shadowless, reft of rain and dew,
Where stars stare down with sharpened faces
From heavens pitilessly blue.

And there at midnight sick with faring,
He will stoop down in his desire
To slake the thirst grown past all bearing
In stagnant water keen as fire.

SANG Solomon to Sheba,
And kissed her dusky face,
"All day long from mid-day
We have talked in the one place,
All day long from shadowless noon
We have gone round and round
In the narrow theme of love
Like a old horse in a pound.-
To Solomon sang Sheba,
Plated on his knees,
"If you had broached a matter
That might the learned please,
You had before the sun had thrown
Our shadows on the ground
Discovered that my thoughts, not it,
Are but a narrow pound.'
Said Solomon to Sheba,
And kissed her Arab eyes,
"There's not a man or woman
Born under the skies
Dare match in learning with us two,
And all day long we have found
There's not a thing but love can make
The world a narrow pound.'

My grandmother likes salami, God, and bougainvilleas
I like to think she likes tenuous pink things-
but then there’s the salami.

One day she taught her daughters to string neck-
laces from bougainvillea petals
like-ponies-in-a-junkyard

I think I chewed too much bubblegum in mass
because I picture God pink
an ethereal globe of a poppable pale pink.
And for some reason, I like to think Brother
Charles saw that too

I bet my lungs are somewhat pink:
more pink than my berry red blood
but less pink, sweet and/or hairy
than a cotton candy poodle.
I forget if they were strawberries or rasp-
berries too

There are things that are pink
but then there are things that are pink
and shadowless.
Like subterranean lungs,
God, the future, and
the smell of flamingos in the dark

The future is still pink and
somewhat fruity
like a lukewarm strawberry milkshake blushing,

or was it maybe just the taste
of my pepto-bismol stained lips.

One of those ponies was my mom

The door was shut. I looked between
  Its iron bars; and saw it lie,
  My garden, mine, beneath the sky,
Pied with all flowers bedewed and green:

From bough to bough the song-birds crossed,
  From flower to flower the moths and bees;
  With all its nests and stately trees
It had been mine, and it was lost.

A shadowless spirit kept the gate,
  Blank and unchanging like the grave.
  I peering through said: "Let me have
Some buds to cheer my outcast state."

He answered not. "Or give me, then,
  But one small twig from shrub or tree;
  And bid my home remember me
Until I come to it again."

The spirit was silent; but he took
  Mortar and stone to build a wall;
  He left no loophole great or small
Through which my straining eyes might look:

So now I sit here quite alone
  Blinded with tears; nor grieve for that,
  For naught is left worth looking at
Since my delightful land is gone.

A violet bed is budding near,
  Wherein a lark has made her nest:
  And good they are, but not the best;
And dear they are, but not so dear.

I

I, in my intricate image, stride on two levels,
Forged in man's minerals, the brassy orator
Laying my ghost in metal,
The scales of this twin world tread on the double,
My half ghost in armour hold hard in death's corridor,
To my man-iron sidle.

Beginning with doom in the bulb, the spring unravels,
Bright as her spinning-wheels, the colic season
Worked on a world of petals;
She threads off the sap and needles, blood and bubble
Casts to the pine roots, raising man like a mountain
Out of the naked entrail.

Beginning with doom in the ghost, and the springing marvels,
Image of images, my metal phantom
Forcing forth through the harebell,
My man of leaves and the bronze root, mortal, unmortal,
I, in my fusion of rose and male motion,
Create this twin miracle.

This is the fortune of manhood: the natural peril,
A steeplejack tower, bonerailed and masterless,
No death more natural;
Thus the shadowless man or ox, and the pictured devil,
In seizure of silence commit the dead nuisance.
The natural parallel.

My images stalk the trees and the slant sap's tunnel,
No tread more perilous, the green steps and spire
Mount on man's footfall,
I with the wooden insect in the tree of nettles,
In the glass bed of grapes with snail and flower,
Hearing the weather fall.

Intricate manhood of ending, the invalid rivals,
Voyaging clockwise off the symboled harbour,
Finding the water final,
On the consumptives' terrace taking their two farewells,
Sail on the level, the departing adventure,
To the sea-blown arrival.

II

They climb the country pinnacle,
Twelve winds encounter by the white host at pasture,
Corner the mounted meadows in the hill corral;
They see the squirrel stumble,
The haring snail go giddily round the flower,
A quarrel of weathers and trees in the windy spiral.

As they dive, the dust settles,
The cadaverous gravels, falls thick and steadily,
The highroad of water where the seabear and mackerel
Turn the long sea arterial
Turning a petrol face blind to the enemy
Turning the riderless dead by the channel wall.

(Death instrumental,
Splitting the long eye open, and the spiral turnkey,
Your corkscrew grave centred in navel and ******,
The neck of the nostril,
Under the mask and the ether, they making ******
The tray of knives, the antiseptic funeral;

Bring out the black patrol,
Your monstrous officers and the decaying army,
The sexton sentinel, garrisoned under thistles,
A ****-on-a-dunghill
Crowing to Lazarus the morning is vanity,
Dust be your saviour under the conjured soil.)

As they drown, the chime travels,
Sweetly the diver's bell in the steeple of spindrift
Rings out the Dead Sea scale;
And, clapped in water till the triton dangles,
Strung by the flaxen whale-****, from the hangman's raft,
Hear they the salt glass breakers and the tongues of burial.

(Turn the sea-spindle lateral,
The grooved land rotating, that the stylus of lightning
Dazzle this face of voices on the moon-turned table,
Let the wax disk babble
Shames and the damp dishonours, the relic scraping.
These are your years' recorders. The circular world stands still.)

III

They suffer the undead water where the turtle nibbles,
Come unto sea-stuck towers, at the fibre scaling,
The flight of the carnal skull
And the cell-stepped thimble;
Suffer, my topsy-turvies, that a double angel
Sprout from the stony lockers like a tree on Aran.

Be by your one ghost pierced, his pointed ferrule,
Brass and the bodiless image, on a stick of folly
Star-set at Jacob's angle,
Smoke hill and hophead's valley,
And the five-fathomed Hamlet on his father's coral
Thrusting the tom-thumb vision up the iron mile.

Suffer the slash of vision by the fin-green stubble,
Be by the ships' sea broken at the manstring anchored
The stoved bones' voyage downward
In the shipwreck of muscle;
Give over, lovers, locking, and the seawax struggle,
Love like a mist or fire through the bed of eels.

And in the pincers of the boiling circle,
The sea and instrument, nicked in the locks of time,
My great blood's iron single
In the pouring town,
I, in a wind on fire, from green Adam's cradle,
No man more magical, clawed out the crocodile.

Man was the scales, the death birds on enamel,
Tail, Nile, and snout, a saddler of the rushes,
Time in the hourless houses
Shaking the sea-hatched skull,
And, as for oils and ointments on the flying grail,
All-hollowed man wept for his white apparel.

Man was Cadaver's masker, the harnessing mantle,
Windily master of man was the rotten fathom,
My ghost in his metal neptune
Forged in man's mineral.
This was the god of beginning in the intricate seawhirl,
And my images roared and rose on heaven's hill.

riding the shadowless night
in search of his darkest day
more or less there's Hell to pay
and this is the way of The Wanderer

rocky is the path of mossless stones
and where it leads is less than known
nevertheless 'tis where he roams
and this is the way of The Wanderer

much pity there should not be
as he has visited much pain upon others
passing like a wraith through their friendly hearts
leaving nothing real or true in his wake

nothing could be so bold as a lost soul
unafraid of what is unknown
afoot the rocky path of mossless stones
all alone

and this is the way of i
i am The Wanderer

drowned the Earth suddenly.

  underneath honest light,
                                  all
   submerged. this cataract of feeling —
waters pursue beginnings. cradling them
to unknown ends, washed by the shore.
        gluttonously the night swallowed
all — parliament of birds warble no longer.
             midnight, the   Moon
claws the supple skin of organized stone
  displaced
               where all the edges bloom
forth torrid froth of dappled light which kills no less than a brief life of matchflame. tenuous spar of wind on
the unserious twilight; bulge of death
in the stream — a body haul, rafting
  in compost; stench of all topple like
resins held loose in vats. rat **** becomes
           as inviting as moulding bread;
tantric music for no instrument, hoarse
cries unbeheld —

            until the flesh no longer flounders
pressed against sleep-shaped youngness
hewn lissome in the hours of no succor,

       modeling silence in the thrill of
this enthusiastic space,
           hands scouring muddied
  obscure, atremble,
      shadowless hours fill stomachs with
the plump word of rescue yet none
  of these fingers unwished the
ingenuity of dull gods — this twilight
  nor twinight could ever grive
in forethought, striking bells to signal birds
         to arrive again so we could feast
in  silver  fish, with bare hands scaled to callouses,
    
      looking at it twice-over, this battered yolk
of whiteness, with deeds of the viridian
   now atrill in new fragile woodworks

       lurching and
         ameliorating as we all
    stutter and sing
       haunts dabbing open
  lips of small wounds that
   wish to shut quietly,   almost
every threat of gray     or pummel of
   wind startles the flyblown ornate,
  
   hurrying us back to cornerless homes
where all photographs washed away,
    very few hang
               swayed by verdure
  of the gradual throne of sea
        curving perpetually the several stars
we have ignored for a while,
     where everything quite begins
    again to enthrall with a melodic
  leitmotif of the most tender of
       instances loose
            in mouths
                 and in endless recall
                  
                                               breathless—

Let the diminished light of winter
creep through the slats of the window blind.
Let it climb rung by rung
until hunger shakes off excessive sleep.

Let early morning frosts shock
the candelabra of the blackened fig
shivering in half-light.
Let it go naked.

Let the woodpecker cling to a sham tree,
tap-tapping his message in code.
Let him take to the air, cackling
at his own folly.

Let the shadowless snake coil
in venomous dreams,
as curled roots slumber
under the rain-soaked earth.

Let winter declare its secret cargo!
Let it be spring!

when the candles of the fig burst into leaf-flame,
when the speckled woodpecker discovers a thick forest,
and the green-gold snake trails the length of her belly through long grasses.

Let our passions rise like sun on the window blinds,
when the lightness of spring is upon us.

And I answered:
To see and touch all that I forgot,
To remember the delta where
Immense waters rushed to
My memory's melodic forms.
     To remember that ***** that
     Broke my heart,
     How I loved her,
     Look at all the poems
     I wrote for her!
To feel the livid wounds
Of everyone fester about
Like domesticated bipeds,
Watch them grow entangled
Beneath a shivering sun.
        To read the crazy beautiful
        Of other people's thoughts
        And get in their heads without
        Psychological babblings
        And manipulation.
To watch the shadowless sun
Create a phantom city
In the concrete swarms,
To stretch every sense
Into the living moment.
      To catch myself from splitting,
      Or perhaps to split from myself
      And call me crazy,
      Laugh it off and cry
      When I read it again.
To embody what I miss
With these fucken cell phones
And internet opinions
With elongated voices
Lonely, their kind of
Misery loves company after all.

      Why the poem?
      Ask yourself,
      What else is there??

The darkness of night it beckons me, it taunts me in my
dreams with memories of yesterday, and thoughts
of what could have been.

The darkness of night it beckons me, around
shadowless corners it lurks. The eyes of it they
watch me they track my every move.

The darkness of night it beckons me, to follow moonlit
shadows tonight, to the tomb of the blood stained
vampire of love into the darkest time of night.

The darkness of night it beckons me, to watch as the
warm red syrup flows, as a rippled river of life
along lost roads of old.

The darkness of night it beckons me, as vampires
gather to drink. Sustenance of life is what they seek
from the river that flows tonight.

The darkness of night it beckons me, to watch as the
stories of old unite, to begin the rituals of strength and
power as their fantasies take flight.

As i climbed the shadowless mountain
her voice still ringing in my ears,
that laugh, a child's laugh, with eyes of a demon
with claws that rip and tear
the mountain was tall
its rock face steep
i slipped many times
my hands cracked and bleeding
i forced myself further up
on wards toward the sky
what is this great mountain that i climb?
i ask myself, why lust?
why do i torture myself, with her memory.
Her haunting demands,
her unquenchable taste for desire
its a fools journey
love(lust) never lasts
love (lust) will leave you broken
yet we return to love(lust)
like an old faithful dog
until i reach the top of the great mountain of love(lust)
ill keep searching
bandaging my wounds
along my path of life

Glory in music.
Shadowless light
Slicing through purposeless night.
Weak thing, and nothing,
Vapor of sound,
Dashing doubt's heights to the ground.

Glory in people.
Images worn
Mirrors of heaven when born.
Falling as flowers,
Brief joys to give,
Dying to rejuvine love.

Glory in story.
Star-points of grace
Spreading through temporal space.
Clouded as sapphire
Black-streaked with pain,
Flashing out mercy again.

Hear now the glory?
Singing sublime
Flowing through gods in their time?
Now legions drown it;
Soon all will ring:
Blazing acoustic of transfigured things.

It was a bright sunny day when I arrived here, to have that one
drink the one that would make everything in my life ok since
Natalie passed away.

One led to two and two to three as a cascade of color now ruled
the sky, but I didn’t know. I was in a dark shadowless place
sitting on a stool, and my life still ******.

One drink at a time that’s what I like to say, Get off your *** and
face the world a voice in my head kept saying, while I half slid
half fell off my stool.

I swayed my way toward the door that led to a multitude of
possibilities. The door slowly opened revealing glints and
reflections from a million city lights as a halo appeared around
each bulb through the neon haze.

Welcome to the city blasted in my ears, as the smell of diesel
made my nose twinge. I could feel my heart beating with the
rhythm of the city, as an endless procession of cars and trucks
meandered by.

The maidens of the night were out in force, providing a service
to those lost souls that strolled amongst vibrant waves of light,
intoxicating as the city expelled each breath.

I walked alone to where I do not know, absorbing the blood of the
city. Tomorrow came as yesterday faded as the voices in my
head cried one last time for you sweet Natalie. Goodbye!


© 2010 Charles Dennis


http://www.charlesdennis.netne.net

Every question pontificated upon deaf ears, ear marked in outer space drifting aimlessly to distant stars, where shadows reign in open hearts that betray our silence in milliseconds

Basic recourse, every letter of every word inscribed in memories of dreams of some joey loves dawson fantasy. the unrequited notation that every syllable betrays my own self-confidence, my duality of existence to live but not to have lived

and so it goes that every question comes with hours upon days of internal self dialogue, over analysis of every gesture, every word, hidden meanings and double speak, that I have to find such betrayal in something as little as a Solemn smile, but the question remains what does it all mean?

Short of action, long of thought, mindless wandering of distant dreams, that one day I may find, Answers, to every question that such expanded diatribes may ease the pain, and mend the wounds, so that my own existentialist facade may crack and wither to dust in the sands of time, to once and for all I may just be another speck of sand wandering aimlessly between the stars, in a shadowless beauty that is my misery, so that every question comes to conclusion with easy, understandable answers

Oh, for what was I a boy, so long ago,
Dancing freely amongst the tall tree tops.
Greedily breathing the morning dew's glow,
Mind settling down, vast daydreaming flops.

Gazing eyes upon sweets and fruits of bliss,
Sorrow has it's days and merriment be.
As bitterness eye followed for a kiss,
Delivered confusion under my tree.

Curious rovers bellow sounds of bleak,
Hell fellows chamfer happiness askew.
Mind's eye worrying a shadowless shriek,
Running humming my innocence aflew.

Events that played out like song of sorrow,
Gift to thine eye and forgotten tomorrow.

The season matters not
When you are out under a beautiful nights sky;
No moonlight to take away the darkness
The stars shining sharp and bright.
Seek my presence upon the lightest breeze.
For I am standing out under the same sky
Gazing upon the same beautiful stars.
I reach out with all the love in my heart
Hoping you will know I am here.
Wanting you to feel me close to your being.
Imagine the breeze touching your cheek
Is me, my fingers ever so lightly,
Sensuously, caressing you as it goes by.
The faintest aroma to softly spark memory.
A whisper in your ear so quiet,
None but you may hear.
For you are as out of reach to me as are the stars.
I stand under the sky and stretch out my arms
To those lights I cannot touch
And to you whom I cannot wrap them around.
So if a mist dampens your hair
It is from the tears I shed in my loneliness;
The longing I have carrying them to you.
For it seems that no matter my true feelings.
Nor the strength of my love.
I will be forced to walk a shadowless night
Of heart breaking sadness.

Dan Gray
2006

I give the kiss of death
to a fuming roll of paper,
puffing out the siphoned life,
shaping gossamers of ourselves
in the air. But the wind,
it messes us up.
The only artist it knows is itself.
It's magnum opus is the perpetual
molding of cumuli of ephemeral and temporal.

Once more, I **** a breath of solace,
and release a hint of relief.
I cast my oneiric world:
soundless, so my fears and worries will remain unspoken;
shadowless, so my courage and love won't remain hidden.
We take form once more,
but again displaced.

But the smoke will not roam across space.
It will drift to me, to choke these reveries,
and banish them through violent coughs.





Our togetherness is nothing more
than an ethereal form.
The wind, after all,
gives the kiss of death.

eclipse of the individual -
kindly, the heavens convey with rain,
and not the sun
to prove myself a shadowless existence.

Windowless, shadowless, fluorescent a room and schoolyard scent. A lecture on earth's composure rumbled on as thunder sounded when I need not know where my toes were. Terrestrial topography in the row marked 2 or 3. The hierarchy of "figured out" and inane diplomacy, but I was feeling fine. I was sitting alone and still and looking at the morning faces. I left spaces left and right so I could swallow my mind and wrap up tight in the vacuum allowed. The collided waveforms hit my selective ears. I'll see you next week. I'll see you next week. My knees are weak and I'm writing the words I don't know how to speak and writing the rhythm, the subject I so often treat poorly, write off as a cliche archetype made for the gullible, penned by the phony. Yet I can't wait. A nervous anxious wonder I can't shake, like a beautiful sun gliding over a closing wake with the wind on its back and a ship to take.

The tulip phase,
The daisy haze,
Where daffodils sway
The wind is grey—
The light so white,
Shadowless May.

I feel as if I had wasted my life my accomplishments were few and very dry
As I stand alone in this room filled with darkness
My ability to do good as always remains spark-less

My soul feeds on empty desires and hope
When I perish from earth; will my family be able to cope?
Mourn my death till resurrection?

Turn your gaze to someone who deserves your love and affection.
Of my skin women desired my complexion
Gravity itself cuts you off
But from me to you that was never my intention

Simplicity and uncertainty is surrounding the grey clouds of my mind.
Conquering different ideas but haven't come close to arrest the gift of thought.  
Constantly reminded of the Shadowless creatures I continuously fought
I give thanks to God because from his sons blood I was bought

After the sun has faded in the west
I'm suddenly touched and absorbed to ignite the flame of life
Encouraged by many to leave behind the madness and strife

Precision thinking is a must
I refuse to give up and return back into dust.

Weak I once was
Yearning the wrong I once wanted
Materialistic views I had and yes, I would flaunt them

Well, I have come this far....
I let gods word pierce both my body and soul
I'll write it on the tablets of my heart
To keep me balanced and forever hold the key to self control.  

-Marco Mondragon

Race me to the hilltop
I'd love it more than anything
any little thing
any little thing
any little thing
There there'd be buried treasure
we'll find some, if you like
I'd want nothing more.
We'd spin around
looking 'round:
trees, birds, bees and whatnot;
the sun and shadows like clockwork;
any little thing we find.
When we talk, let's not ruin
the hilltop peace.
When we talk, let's talk in short words
give each other
one-letter poems
or one-poem letters.
Then we'd talk of nothing more
and only the grass underneath
moves, waves, dances and speaks
formless, shadowless,
weightless under the black canvass of stars.
Then, again we'd run.

I.
a wide open space.
empty.
except for a lone chair.

II.
a large variety of colors.
some yellow.
some blue.
all closed.

III.
the curtains
have been closed
for a while now.
it has solemnly
seen light.

IV.
it has stories
that have never
bothered to be
discovered.

V.
it is not
the stories'
fault.

VI.
the chair
has given up
on the thought
of being accepted.

VII.
the spines of
the books
are wearing away.
not as much from
being old as to
being ignored.

VIII.
there is no electricity.
the lights burned out
a while ago,
and no one bothered
to replace them.

IX.
the floor is shadowless.
it is opening,
but enclosing.

X.
the stories are
lathered
in dust.

XI.
even though
they've been
disregarded,
the paper cuts
just as bad
when it slices
your hand.

XII.
you can hear
the sound of
retreating
footsteps,
too afraid of
what lies inside
the binding.

XIII.
I am left alone.
encased
in the wood
of the bookshelves.

does she recede into her lair of solitude and silence, or does she slip away shadowless to the soft secret of her dark cove?

or, rather, does she sink into a sweeter place, a heavier place,
lifted high with the smell of  
  deep oleander and tall curtains of swaying stalks?
    for down and down she goes,
      the descension into madness made so easy.
        down and down and down until she is
          all that place and not at all that place.
      and so until her descension halts,
    down and down and down

she'll go.

When the world fades down to this,
A pale light giving only its converse shadow
A mere marionette claiming the small gloom

How we dance when the lights let us stand alone
Shadowless we are without echo or reminder
Clear in the grip of the primacy of solitude

Illumination forces us to see ourselves, mirrored  
These darkened shapes we leave upon the wall
Growing as our days get heavy and weigh down the sun

How these long nights let our shadows
Fill up the great secrets of the world
The small corners we will never reach

And yet our hands unfold, unfold again
Claiming the absence, the empty as home
Filling the soft spots of this world with our glistening gloom

Or you, father, pointing down to a Sicilian harbour ―
its dark pincers compressing an eye-glass
of water

Or my skin, watered down by a lifetime out of your sun
yet thick and dark through our blood’s long curing
in white light

Or your silhouette, insect-strange on the black breast
of a Northumbrian hill, our kinship of shape lost
in the white flood-down
of summer

Or that sequoia glade whose green we drank: a tall glass
where dark sank as heavier spirits do, and stirred leaves
made a white effervescence
of sunlight

Or you, black and white, slumped in that wicker chair
mourning your father, steeped in a kitchen’s shadowless
fluorescence, toe-caps scuffed grey
by the glare

Or rain, elsewhere, as white horizons laddered with dark ―
rain as fault-lines slanting the light ― till, here, resolve
the first cold drops, steaming on your curved
back of earth

Mario Petrucci from *Flowers of Sulphur

Curfew dogs pay no
heed to black sheep

Darkness differentiation
derides no delegates

Church bells silence
testicular pendulums

Hands semaphore -
timeless clock towers

Shadowless alleys
cat controlled kerbs

Embers doused, ashen
Phoenix faces cindered

Light rationed through
ill fitting shutters

Charred wood remnants
wafting weightlessly

Whispering eavesdrops
cobblestone chattering

Town crier echoing in
mnemonic mutterings

A rising intonation
dies on rebound, silence.

              <>


Lockdown |ˈlɒkdaʊn|
nounN. Amer.
the confining of prisoners to their cells, typically in order to regain control during a riot. the lockdown has been in effect since October 1983.
• a state of isolation or restricted access instituted as a security
measure: the university is on lockdown and nobody has been able to leave.
                                               <>
Curfew |ˈkəːfjuː|
noun
a regulation requiring people to remain indoors between specified hours, typically at night: a dusk-to-dawn curfew | [ mass noun ] : the whole area was immediately placed under curfew.
• the hour designated as the beginning of a curfew. [ mass noun ] : to be abroad after curfew without permission was to risk punishment.
• the daily signal indicating the beginning of a curfew: they had to return before the curfew sounded.

My starless nights have transcended into your shadowless morn

My lost fireflies have transcended into your guiding stars upon the sky

My tears of dews and rain have transcended into your ocean of fulfillment and happiness

My scattered breadcrumbs of thoughts have transcended into your tome of love and life

My moments of a passing glance have transcended into your eternity of within my sight

My fear of everything have transcended into your love of all beings, earthly and otherwise

And I

My lonesome I have transcended into your ever-presence

As you hold me through every particle of my soul

I felt alive

Sharp twinges burst through my body like fireworks in the dead of the night

And finally

The blink of me transcended through time