Broken Compass
1.
I prefer to think
I first felt the muse flutter
those immortal nights
when I was young
and even suffering seemed new.
But life is again becoming dull,
where again I find this empty shell
echoes
2.
The second time
I put my foot down,
you landed on my toes,
sliding with a push
softly on the floor.
Then I took off your golden case and had you naked,
slender in my hands.
Tomorrow I will get you replaced.
3.
Blessed to sit on this chair and notice my fingers,
Lucky to see my nails gather in dirt the time,
Privileged to be able to finish every night without pretensions about luck or divine light,
only principles I know to defend and intimations that make life worth living.
4.
I am always in love,
and maybe it’s with me,
with the shadow of pure light
I find in between
the kisses.
5.
like a bird
whose doesn’t know about time,
but still feels the pull
of earth’s magnetic heart,
I walk slowly in the sun, naked to the grass,
a child of ancient myth who let his gods
slowly die
in the blue dominions
of the half-dreamt
open sky.
6.
I’m looking for you amongst the immense, illiterate, consoling angels,
the collapse of foam and liquid sand
I’m trying to resurrect the conjunction of the mind and opposition of the stars,
that taste of transcendence in the night air
here with the budding
ablaze, intoxicated with the rushing, ambrosial tastes,
all the syncopated tremors
echoing in the unbearable
yellow hue.
7.
All I know is that the now is
the ashtray with a painting of Japanese fishes, a book, my phone
intensity and apathy, enlightenment and confusion.
8.
Looking at my hand: is this a hand?
Like the veins of magnolias under the sun and the vastness of the ocean
in the sound of a shell.
I recognize my voice now.
9.
a
vortex roar / black / shavings of mist / tense, jubilant, almost erotic
violence / the ligaments under my skin / the train suddenly halting and
reality thickening / the collective dream briefly shattered / here in
this desperately empty space with the anemic feel
10.
through the ennui of night.
I want to remember
not the photographic stillness of your beautiful smile,
but the accidental grace,
the fading gold of your hair.
11.
without ever walking in the wild and wondering why
the overcast afternoon sky is the color of a wolf’s howl,
I would muse naively
as if something in my head
weren’t black eyes with a million sparkling irises of white.
12.
wasn’t that it’s destiny,
to tread the earth?
Now I’m stranded in the space between sense and word
Dark, with penetrating eyes:
A very expressive face and a very expressive voice,
My native language,
ineffable tones,
My only word.
But I know where I come from:
the continent stretching from pole to pole—
Of oneself I sing.
13.
If these fragments are to be found,
let them be found
with a picture of a mountain behind them,
Something ethereal, something blue.
14.
I’m
doing this for beauty... the sheer joy of the wind blowing on my face
when it’s hot, how it becomes the breadth of my existence as I briefly
become aware of my body amidst all the movements of the day... how I
cease to move automatically (like an animal) and pause, making my back
straight to grasp being in the inner flexing of my thighs, the balance
of gravity on my shoulders, presence in the soul of my feet... monstrous
abstractions with wrinkles... wrinkles from laughing, creasing with
taunting, almost sarcastic pleasure... brotherhood, sisterhood, the
shadows of divinity we impart to dogs and the sweet reminder of all
things pure in the smell of bread flooding the city square at seven in
the morning when the world is awake but still not fully conscious, still
hungover with yesterday’s collapse in furious crystal dreams ...
mornings of blooming June with the taste of acidically sweet
raspberries...
15.
Listening for silence
on the underside of a leaf, cool in shadow,
I’m thinking of an invisible image:
how an angel forms every time
I quiver with light.