temper, temper, tempest

 Temper, temper, hold yourself

 

    Your heart

    It quivers

 

The soft, downy fur 

of a calf, bare

against the wet 

& hidden damp 

of late night

Spring,

Storm receding

        or rolling in

 

Caught between 

one thing 

with two names

Cryptic Calisthenics

Every morning during the mid-morning coffee rush I watch from behind the espresso machine as the elderly Asian woman glides out laps of University Square.

Wiry hair pinned beneath translucent green visor saluting the sky, tan foundation all thickened and cracked - past serious students and prosaic professors she hustles, tongue-pink jumpsuit whistling like sneakers sliding through piles of dry leaves, arms and wrists tossed and flicked lazily up and out in some vague gesture of a cryptic calisthenics obscure in origin.

Around she goes. And around again. Every morning.

Each time she passes she turns her head to the cafe. We make eye contact, me from behind my coffee machine, her from beneath her visor. We study one another.

She always matches my gaze, eyes as bright as sunrise. Over the heads of scholars thronging, frowning, nodding, pondering. I grin. And she grins back.

This is how I come to suspect we have both lost touch with reality. Clearly, we are happy.

Open sesame

I lived inside a box in my mind
And somehow I found a door

When I opened it up, I realised
There was never a box at all

The Dying Dream

Last night I dreamed I died and watched on as my soul trickled out from my body as a caravan of effervescent orange symbols into a void of pressing black.

The symbols comprised many languages; alive and dead, ancient and modern, verbal, mathematical, syntactical, gibberish -- they were memories of my soul, echoes of its various incarnations, and they quivered with excitement to be returning to their home.

In the void, an object became apparent. Spherical, enormous, a tightly wound star throbbing with densely packed syntax, countless strands of symbols weaving in and out from across the void, all snaking back to this place to be re-woven, re-merged, and re-made.

There was no fear. Why would there be? There was no dualism. To consider terror was to confuse where you were. This coming back was as effortless as breathing. 

As I drew nearer, a shape arose from the sea of symbols - a dragon, clumsy and oafish, splashing about happily in the ocean of words like dolphins leaping before the bow of a boat.

The sphere itself was vibrantly alive with a consciousness beyond any label I might give it. This dragon was like a sock-puppet made purely for its own amusement.

As it splashed about, bits of orange stuff broke off and floated out into the void.

Ah, I thought. That's how life is formed.

How clumsy! How frivolous! How blithely unaware of the consequences.

All love, all pain, all suffering, all grief, just the idle splish-splashes of a God in a bathtub keeping itself amused.

don't tell me let me figure it out

the kids hock and spit and raise their shirts to slap their bellies and
one has tats up his neck and a half-shaved head with hair gelled back and
they cackle laughter like rifle fire
they squawk and jostle and swagger and prowl through the city

he has flowers in a blue bouquet that look fancy-expensive

(lucky thing)

oh they're dressed nice, real fine - armani, or something - i wouldn't know

but they're hungry, that's for certain

(what do you want for when you get home? what do you imagine in wait?)

the heat feels like some sci-fi film i might yet write where the sun strips your skin from your flesh in forty seconds

it would make a good ticking-clock in the parlance of that stuff
i imagine a fictional world where a civilisation might actually pay attention to the omens

the kids spit on the street again and laugh like morons as i follow them through chinatown

i think - i just want to get around you
becomes - i just want you to not exist

Slow drift down the river time

A cast-off moment of pause
Where the doubt seeps in
like mildew
Or a cool frost up between the floorboards
the chinks in armour
the bleary-eyed sobriety
caught early-morning reaching for the wine -
O time -
And yr slow epiphanies
Writ lazily along the day-to-day
Catastrophes
and tragedies
Comedies
and farce

Managing,
we're managing okay

I am here
But my heart vanished
Long,
Long ago

Ancient Hunger

Something deep, and still, and dark, and cool;
A rock pool - opaque -
Cloaked and ringed by the outstretched boughs of a shadowy wood,
Laced by verdant green,
Smelling of wet, and age,

Trees huddled round like crones before an altar 

For unknown gods;

Here this primal well -
You find all the night's fiery glory whole upon its surface,
Glassy, ancient, voracious;
The obelisk of memory.
Nighttime critters fall a'hush as you near.
Be wary of your step;
Only the bones of those before you know how deep its hunger runs.