FROM HERE TO THERE

Go through the wall
when you get back

a dust pours
over your hands 

your soul was once substantial
oscillating in the mud face

you wear dry
through fanned air.

Between dignity and intimacy
you can now inhabit

the long countryside
under construction, 

ribbed passage 

through bulwarks,

and the clanging bell
of darkened light.

THE COMPLETE PRESENCE

The complete presence

of almost nothing

- the person vanished -

stirs a memory, embodies

name, voice, and gesture,

forgets the face.

Unawares, others trust -

only I am

watching this familiar

relatedness turn duplicitous,

the man seeming

equal to no

more of distance

than umbilical measure,

is, will be, has been

uncoupled - finessing

recall from indistinct

imaginings. His silence

breaks the trance

of speech, will

cracks, forcing acts

to hope for

incoherence or movement

toward vital, joyous

enterprise. The car

pulls out, heads

for the horizon's

linear necessity,

scraping past perspective's

diminishment. Clouds flatten 

feeling, the storm

moves in, and an entrance-

way door closes

prematurely.  Skittish

with indifference?  Bowed

beyond boomerangs,

the here comes back, 

returns to life 

from what he had thought

to put

behind.  Others.  

Estrangement.

for THE HUDDLED

This never happened,

that things are as they are

because we changed

out of jumpsuits.

 

Dancers, staged to question, 

improvised.

What more instrumental

than the body?

 

One person's expressions

become an ensemble’s

disclosure through abandon

meant of form.

 

We dreamt of scattered presence

re-assembled 

and offered to the self 

(of the audience)

 

Original emotion, 

shaped by attention

and instantly focused  

here, where we are, as we are seen

 

      *

Bowls sang

for the huddled 

flawed 

on the floor, 

uncoiling heat's 

prodding impetus

 

Sky, as always cold

Each silver breath

a struggle

for memories

etched, then 

let go,

 

separating

into limbs

and airy 

trunks of bodies

widening

proportion,

 

a wanton 

flurry of leaps

no taking eyes 

off movement, 

lifts by

grace of 

simple lines 

their crescendo 

of voices

thrown into a skin

across the mirrored 

sphere aflame

 

      *

 

You touch your feet

with your breath,

ranging with intent

in prophetic space

knowing the cue 

to put up a hand.

 

There are no lights,

but lit by wristbands

and polished nails 

upturned faces beam

 

in moon masks

until the shoulders droop

the back relaxes

and the arms flare

 

elbowing as wings

bank a spiral rise

and fall while hips pivot 

into twice-born throes

 

    *

  

Love lengthened

For sweetness

A season’s snow

Pouring into the river

Fields, roads,

Again flooding.

A twig of brain glows,

fizzles, into honeycomb.

Spinning at far remove

we each take our part

feeding from the palm

of death’s many hands.

 

        

                                - for Michael Chorney

FAMILY PORTRAIT

Pop songs, on a radio,

scratched at the darkness

Doors shut and opened

throughout the house

Your parents were snoring

but nothing was trustworthy

Chance had left you

to wall and ceiling angles

that converged, like feelings,

foreshortening corners.

In a dream you ventured out

to the unfamiliar woods,

prowled trees

adorned with scalps,

and withered as the dead 

snapped back,

stinging across the face.

Scurry, dampness,

and torch light

halted the warrior's yell.

No telling how

frightened or captive

the family would look

in the kitchen, in the morning

THE MIRACLE

We came upon
and entered
chance w/creation,

participating
in an unfolding
of events

that went on

earlier

without us.

Fire was the event 

that turned my desire.

*

Either and Or

set up the choice.

To take a breath
before I needed one

or flash out
of my appearance.

The sun always got dizzy
from its fear of heights.

HEALING DAY

A white owl with red eyes

lands the sky

We twist around, go for

the open garden’s edge

drawn to the sounding river

because the back

is a flowing river

rising to silt

the danger darkness

has dropped over us

     *

The lover, the friend,

and the stranger

each will betray you

the lover for passion,

which is beyond reproach,

the friend for gain,

which will not last,

the stranger for evil,

which has no recompense

With each you must go

willingly, permit all wounds

to bear touch, lose

the directions, and scar

threading sinuous

complexities

     *

The brightening light

we wade in

obliterates distress

powerful

as a mountain,

dispersing agile winds

moving the owl onto

the last landing branch

as its wing tears 

the feathers now stitched

to the taxidermist's

skeleton

WHEN THE POEM MOVES ON

The starting point is at the bottom

you reach using words, their tilted

sounds and false count, for support.

Surefooted, laconic, and culpable,

your work moves past embellishment

girding image with mendicant emotion.

Constructing loss by left to right ascent

fixes a watch for wear

inverting the sky, feeding its empty bowl.

Something was happening off the ground.

This is the poetic leap,

finished with meaning, and there is nothing

     

about it to point at.  The poet goes back

to the articulated house.  Its brick

chimney draws smoke above a gable roof.

HERONS

Spaced along the shore 

like chess pieces in an end game,

stalking, patient, still

feelings sorted, thoughts 

not meant to arise 

and feed off memories.

An egret moves suddenly,

stabs at a fish in the water,

swallows it whole.

Then what you desire

(and you are always in pursuit)

folds into difference

needs recalled as pleasure. 

You brought rod and reel.

Always, the scout of wind,

water’s white caps. 

Past lives float upside down

in the lake swells,

and just beneath the surface,

anger glinting like a silver lure. 

The sky fathers traffic,

twigs carried in beaks,

a landing dance 

of plumes and clapper. 

The knowing self points out

a female heron, lining 

the woven nest 

awaiting ritual, high 

in a tall tree's chill

and the rookery's noise.

The place will be defended.

You go away. 

.

SHAPE-SHIFTER

                       who changes ways

                                     n

                                     o

                                     s

                                     t

                                     i

                        p h y s i c a

                                       

                                                            by melancholy  healed

                                                                         

                                                 in the half life of a star,

           

                        must hold desire fast                        well past

                                                            amorous tradesmen

                                                           pocketing  diagnosis

           

         *

           much/might

           make/mulch

clumsily pronounced                        peeves

                                                                        are no end

                                    against is with

         *

            the breath of an animal

                                                imagination    a long winter 

opening for light

          *

to recognize as mine                                    ideas so foreign

                        as to seem some other’s

                                    and what assent I gave

            I now retract

SCAFFOLDING

The top of a building climbs 

to the bottom of the sky,

lifting its dream bones off the city pavement.

Clouds patrol coffins closed 

to the failing afternoon sun 

and the cotton candy vendors wail

across the traffic and pushcarts.  

Workmen are taking down scaffolding

and untying the blue tarp enclosure

that billows, like a sail before a wind dies out.

Onlookers point to the building,

its reflective glass, which alters perception, 

entrapping shards of straightforward light

bundled for flight.

STRAGGLERS

The roughened barrier of skin stops the cold

and the blood continues to drip

through scant sums of flesh, numb thought

the frozen earth begrudges air.

Use has exhausted the abandoned plains.

We trudge across their pillowed sheen

like the remnant of a scattered army

struggling with diminished strength

The embrace of ice forestalls us.  

The sky runs its factory of heat

at such great remove only a trickle escapes

to warm the garnets set in our chests.

These are the tiny transmitters of feeling

our bodies herded to recover.

The breath you can see is a thin blanket

for the seed-bearing sleep of form.

CACTUS

The desert has kept its promise of peace

to the son who accepts the havoc

his presence brings to hostile ground:  

wind-scattered rubbish, metal scrap,

rusted and twisted beguiling shapes,

and the off road vehicle trails

across heat-cracked gullies of creosote

and boulders spewed by infrequent storm.

The place he comes to isn’t named

for divine encounters, and he wrestles

not with angels but with less remote

forefathers, who vie with him for the red

flower atop the cactus barrel.

They claim resilient ornament

to justify the pain they bring to others.

The son hears his father pronounce him worthless

knowing that the grandfather listens

and confirms the judgment;

the evidence runs through him, failure

to go it on his own and make with little parts

a semblance of the greater whole

and he within its emptiness.  On the night 

his silenced mother tossed her mind in

with the screech and howl of dark distances,

she made her final argument

in his defense, entreating

an inscrutable issuance of old suitors

and fresh rivals that flapped for her.

On the clothesline stretched outside her home,

ghosts way back in her inoperable brain

threatened and cajoled, and like her husband, 

were most severe when feeling

came before them stammering, and the cold

chill of stars feathered fright, speaking strangely.

THE REAL THING

So much of what we do

could be done differently

and more to our liking.

This makes us angry,

and we argue.  Then one 

has the fortune

to notice feeling,

the real thing,

had been growing all the while.

(Color is now deftly handled.)

And sometimes what we feel

as real is not.

Weren’t we excited

by what we thought true

(we flashed with excitement)

and chagrined to discover

new feelings still grew?

(A continent, almost,

had come into view.)

No longer would we like

what once we had liked

(Who finds truth “unchanging?")

and we puckishly explored

our changing minds.   

(Their spaciousness seemed lush.) 

Really, what was true,

and we agreed,

was always otherwise. 

(We wanted to be honest.)

Circumstances intervened.

We were helpless to act,

made to settle, where we were,

and do what we had done.

THE TOAST

You see blood on the keyhole

at the side entrance to a person

within whom you live

Doubt turns you away

and gives the body's stigmata

time to heal

A gaunt face calls you back

the weighted chest lets you in

the party is going strong

suffering is out in the open

More and more you leave

words for those who can use them

On tiptoe you sneak past

the big room

- a stop that would elate you -

and climb the back stairs, 

dropping your coat with the others

Below, the doors to the big room's

balcony open over a spilling lawn

Someone has raised a glass

in your honor

You see into shadows

past the lit necessity

of sweating trees

where your restlessness labors

Your hand moves slightly,

an involuntary salute with intention

to make good on escape

WINDOWS

The sky is a rain of ash

mind a passing traffic.

The apartment’s humming hasn’t stopped.
When the windows are left open,

our feelings can get out

and let themselves back in.

We might name the most familiar
but cannot say which ones

others will have stifled.
The view stacks rooftops,

like patio chairs, past brick
facades, and in a close by building

we take innocent movement
for a signaler’s intent.

He passes through rooms with open shades,

retrieving words

that mean for us to touch.

The needs we conceive

seek expression:

responsibilities, like fish,

and happiness,

the simple hydrogen of light.

What we don’t want

gets started as a mattress.

There just isn’t room

for bending excitement back

or moving apart.  Our skins,

pale from remorse, 

glow, and the dry air

leaves us short of breath.

CYCLOPS

The busy eye, by God intended

as a third for every mother,

a help for safekguarding children,

by chance mislaid, alone

upon a wombless monster’s brow,

whose measured gaze falls short

of targeted heavens

and the wavering horizon’s

unmerciful confinement.

Accident confounds design.

The artist has a vision,

then a child.  No end of love

will finish both aright, no reach

of heart engage detachment.

GLENCOLUMBCILLE

Waves resound at the edge

            of sky and ocean’s

                        great expanse

braced for the dark gather of clouds

            pressing from south

                        of where he stands,

 as if at watch, on the treeless bog

           

            The person

                        who is his own ancestor

imagines voyaging

            from the known to the unknown

                        through a storm shroud,

            muscling hope out of promise

                        Rain puddles splatter

his loss of sight, sounds coming forward 

            like revelers

up narrow streets, past the house

                        close to the road

             Strange visages

that make momentary shapes

                         familiar

the way a mirrored gaze

at a wash basin

            will sometimes stare past

                       the cliff's premonition

He could leave

                        the sheep

            grazed hillside,

the white sand beach,

            and the sweet burning peat

            walk back
through the tiny village

                          past the general store

until patches of blue 

                        push open the sky 

            and a rainbow arches up

                        lightening the rain

A person finds himself

            in both departure

                        and return

where the sea is a fallen down ladder
                       

TREED

The man who has climbed a tree

waits in the branches with clouds

for time to come back

and pick up its minutes

The meeting won’t start

    without him

and he’ll keep his distance

through the swarming snow

    *

In the house, looking out

     at winter's storm,

others have confirmed

the plausible

You imagine things

as they truly are,

embarrassing and harsh

You are white linen,

a tattered moon patch

on a black tree limb

FIRST EMOTIONS

She puts birds to sleep

in the trees at night

so her travels

will not be disturbed

She always returns

with promised gifts

in the earliest light

eluding the hand

You reach

into a child’s dream

for the egg that breaks

its colored shell 

take wing, free  

among lilac blossoms

swallowing wind

for the rain's song