intellectual properties

embedded

i have been along this path countless times
a well-studied microcosm
known so well, for so long
i remember the road used to bend differently,
before they changed it,
or that there didn’t use to be a fence
or where there used to be a tree
-a single tree; a single, silent stationary life, forever remembered-
until that morning the storm took it down
or where the sun comes through in afternoons
or how much different it all looks through the summer fog

like an old country woman who has never been farther from her birth place than she can walk or ride a horse
this is the world i’ve known

this path, this commute
these comforting memories of trees
this is what i might miss more than anything

.::.

i feel really young and naive.

a holding pattern too tight

i don’t have to create any intricate similes or metaphors to explain this

the pain in my right arm, this constant, chronic pain from my ear down the right side of my body, into my fingertips and hip socket

is most literally

from a tension held so long, a finger cocked, waiting to pull the trigger.

QOTD

only one koan matters
you

~Ikkyu

look mom no hands

today is almost t-shirt weather, except that the air off the pacific is cold.

do you ever have those moments where you see yourself, unexpectedly, from 20 feet away, like watching a few split seconds of scene from the movie of your actual life?

do you ever feel unsafe with yourself? do you look up sometimes and realize how vulnerable you are? through either the reality of mortal life, or because you’ve lead yourself into a specific situation that is maybe not ok?

people are on guard here, a strange distrust in the fact that we are all only human. it should be safe to be outside in broad daylight on a sunny afternoon. but it’s not. we’re not safe from each other if we are not safe from ourselves.

as i say this i ride down city streets with no hands, my fingers laced behind my back.

Two English Poems – Borges

I

The useless dawn finds me in a deserted street-
corner; I have outlived the night.
Nights are proud waves; darkblue topheavy waves
laden with all the hues of deep spoil, laden with
things unlikely and desirable.
Nights have a habit of mysterious gifts and refusals,
of things half given away, half withheld,
of joys with a dark hemisphere. Nights act
that way, I tell you.
The surge, that night, left me the customary shreds
and odd ends: some hated friends to chat
with, music for dreams, and the smoking of
bitter ashes. The things my hungry heart
has no use for.
The big wave brought you.
Words, any words, your laughter; and you so lazily
and incessantly beautiful. We talked and you
have forgotten the words.
The shattering dawn finds me in a deserted street
of my city.
Your profile turned away, the sounds that go to
make your name, the lilt of your laughter:
these are the illustrious toys you have left me.
I turn them over in the dawn, I lose them, I find
them; I tell them to the few stray dogs and
to the few stray stars of the dawn.
Your dark rich life …
I must get at you, somehow; I put away those
illustrious toys you have left me, I want your
hidden look, your real smile — that lonely,
mocking smile your cool mirror knows.

II

What can I hold you with?
I offer you lean streets, desperate sunsets, the
moon of the jagged suburbs.
I offer you the bitterness of a man who has looked
long and long at the lonely moon.
I offer you my ancestors, my dead men, the ghosts
that living men have honoured in bronze:
my father’s father killed in the frontier of
Buenos Aires, two bullets through his lungs,
bearded and dead, wrapped by his soldiers in
the hide of a cow; my mother’s grandfather
–just twentyfour– heading a charge of
three hundred men in Peru, now ghosts on
vanished horses.
I offer you whatever insight my books may hold,
whatever manliness or humour my life.
I offer you the loyalty of a man who has never
been loyal.
I offer you that kernel of myself that I have saved,
somehow –the central heart that deals not
in words, traffics not with dreams, and is
untouched by time, by joy, by adversities.
I offer you the memory of a yellow rose seen at
sunset, years before you were born.
I offer you explanations of yourself, theories about
yourself, authentic and surprising news of
yourself.
I can give you my loneliness, my darkness, the
hunger of my heart; I am trying to bribe you
with uncertainty, with danger, with defeat.

- Jorge Luis Borges (1934)

spherical

the cold fog blocked the city and the sun this morning

a down blanket hovering overhead

creating another world – softer, slower,

muffled and enveloped inside its own visibility

a sphere of birds and slight wind through trees,

the light diffused and traffic just faintly on the other side

there’s right and there’s wrong and somewhere in between there’s life

Out beyond ideas of wrong and right,
there is a field. I will meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about
language, ideas, even the phrase each other
doesn’t make any sense.

.::.rumi

the language of words

not every emptiness is meant to be filled

(i hope i got that right, Eve LadyApples)

last night i stood shivering with a small group on the edges of the san francisco bay. first, we looked west from the industrial edge of the oakland shipyards, and then, looking east from yerba buena island, the bright lights of the new bay bridge illuminated us and the water like a permanent full moon. we listened as brave poetic souls got up and shared their previously unsharable words under a broken sky.

it was right.

.::.

(the next time transportedsf announces a literary roving literary salon, you shouldn’t miss it.)

it holds the light in

black silk (so much better than a scratchy sweater)
+
black tea (pu-erh as dark as espresso)
+
black sabbath (remixed)

= to keep warm on a wintery morning

sorting through the sordid

sorted
sordid

working through

all of the things

hidden in the darkness,

under the pillows.

i can’t confess

all of the times i lay awake….

keep these feelings like secrets

wait for the moment to unwrap

wait.

no matter how hollow or cold

the yearning

the time always comes.