The sand falls softly through the glass
And golden shadows tremble...
Beyond the reach of fingers bright
A figure crouches, nimble,

But even if straightened arms should reach
And willful legs press forward,
The shaded eyes could find no space,
For frigid chains encircled.

Into the room someone must come,
The minutes sift away,
While breath of she in moonlit chamber
Escapes the same as they

Who pace the distance marked between
With busy furrowed brows,
Deciding fates of many
From minds of barren ground

That have not scope to represent
The thoughts of those born different,
To feel in phantom sense
The pains of others in the crowd

Who share the crowded length of rope
That spans our woven fates
And brushes all together
In a turning, changing place.

With night air shallow in her chest,
Silken toes search out the sill
That leads from window to window,
Away from metal barring wood,

And slips from capture to clandestine
With gently whispered prayer.
She flies down narrow stone hallways to another rigid door,
deep beneath the cast of light or air or heaven’s lore.

With waning strength of courage,
The heavy bolt is moved,
And through the narrow gap achieved
Unlikely light drifts forth

As to the eyes that rise to meet
Her roughly beating heart
And unlikely arms that reach their span
To catch her as she runs

Into the stony jaws
Of the crushing hate of man
That tears apart the lives below
To feed hunger above—

A hunger based on fear and power
That leaves no room for love
Of those beyond one’s own stone chest
Incapable of human rest,

Unfamiliar with the ache invoked
By fading melodic chord
Or hope that others in the world
Might meet the forgiveness they need—

Yes, the moment her tears fell upon his breast
In compassion that crossed their plans,
She fell afoul of these sharp teeth
And tempted reprimand

From the fates of this world
That seem to favor an everlasting strife:
The strain of the gentle against greed
That has stained the pages black.

His fingers brushing back her hair
In disbelief of golden firelight
That turned of a moment from menace to mercy
At only her appearance

Enraged them further, those fates or vanities
That ordered other roles for such as these
Of different mind and mold
In the midst of a war so many years foretold.

Even as the rumble grew, deep in heaven’s chest,
Alike to feet of heavy men in binding metal vest,
Her frightened hands worked desperately at rigid metal bonds
that held him as payment owed against their prideful laws.

To have him near after so much risked and feel his eyes upon her,
To reach without imagining and place fingertips to warmth—
To know her presence in only moments
Might become witness to fury and loss...

Her hands twisted and slipped against the chains;
Although she had no key, she knew
The mechanism was brittle
When struck firmly and logically.

With touch of grace, his arms fell free,
And soon his feet to follow,
But as she worked against the last
The fabric of luck wore thin—

The door she had left scraped wider still
Beneath broad, commanding hand
And eyes of those who judge and carve
Measured the guilt of the scene.

But even from the inward hungers
An outward heat may rise,
And he who sets the world to order for his own benefit
Can lift another in consequence of interests turned within.

Just so with the much offended heart that sheltered in chilling mail
And ordered others from the room so he might not disclose
The seeming human warmth of desire
That burned him, charring black,

To see her turn away in irrational attempt
To shelter one pre-condemned by forces far greater than him.
The way he turned her in his arms as though meant to protect,
Though the ordained roles were inverse, scraped irritation across anger’s wreck.

In the hesitation of his thought she had the time to wonder
In her mistaken, seeking heart if he might yet regard her.
Raising fragile arm to speak, she reached across the distance,
But sooner than the motion met, he ensnared her hand and wrenched

Her from the hold of hope and warmth to spill upon the floor,
Thrown back behind him as he moved in mechanical advance
As though the shape of her raised palm had shaded his heart’s complaints
And freed him from such mean distraction to act on a simpler plane.

The end was easy to trace out, he marked the other’s fatigue
From days of rigid harsh restraint and proof of heaven’s absence
When he must have known what many have known when left in pain alone.
For how many has there been no help as the pages of history turned?

In that regard he felt no shame for teaching others truths;
His move to bury privileged steel was then only conclusion
To the revelation of the savage garden he offered as he rose,
confirming self and strength as the eyes of his stable world.

The other lunged to side, but his mind was yet unfocused,
Looking long across the room where little bones had fallen,
Which may be why the straight, steeled man was able to unfoot him
With sharp restraint of iron-cast chain that wrenched him to the gravel.

The tongues of light leapt forward from the burning hearth
And played upon his fallen form as though to claim their part,
While unhurried stride brought blade up to end the thankless chore,
But even as metal fell, the light seemed to roar

In one great fearsome arc as slight hands swung the torch
That was the only savior they could reach within the dark
And brought it down across the helm of hungry, pushing fates
That so often take for granted their power in this place.

The metal then that struck the floor was not of weapon’s form
But of the man that held the blade, of steel in steel encased.
She had not strength to keep the beam from falling also aside,
And flame to tinder leapt as she to her lover’s side.

Breaking free the last restraint and holding close for balance,
He led her to the door beyond as eager sparks crawled after
Into the hall far below all that men would take for living,
Climbing rough-hewn narrow steps to break out into the morning

Still dark as all the souls of those who turn the other way
While men of power claim their rights, or so they say,
Under starless frozen skies that could not bear to lighten day
While two lost figures stumbled on without prayer of true escape.

For at the threshold they burst forth upon an inner garden
Where five young men of honor and intent reposed from golden orders
That removed from them all real account and gave them certain laws,
No need for thought or human heart, just duty soon rewarded.

Though shocked to see a woman there,
They had no misconception,
To rescue her from foreign foe
Was sure to be their direction.

Though he stepped forth in front of her,
And odd her fingers lingered
Upon the arm that shielded her
As though afraid to lose

The feeling of those moments few before he lunged away
To meet the men with makeshift staff, a rod torn from a trellis,
Keeping her safe behind him until the numbers grew,
And striding from the alley, a ghost of righteous hate

Stepped forth unannounced to bind her possessively,
His hand tight upon her throat, arching her back against him,
While the other turned in late response, abandoning his defense
To lose the ground he hard had held and witness his mistake.

Although his feet could not prevent the first few desperate steps,
He read the sorrow in her eyes and stopped before he had taken
The stride that would put him in their grasp,
The defeat that would repeat his capture.

Turning hard upon his heel he made a third direction
And leapt upon the low near wall
To mount the roof beyond with eyes drawn back,
As oft before, to her now distant form

As though he could with darkened brow cast himself there beside
In only flowing spectral shade to keep their minds drawn near
Though he knew without the need for words she did not want him here
If turning back would cost the life she had thrown her place to save.

The last she saw was that dark glance before he moved beyond
Into the unwoken space of dawn that she would never see
For knowing he would not return was darkness enough for she
Who had not found eyes she could meet with honesty until he

Crashed his way across her path one unspoken eve
When she had slipped beyond the gate
To wander among the trees, alone, an aberration
To the short paused war surrounding

That led her here in foolish thoughts of accompanying her intended,
But left her without purpose in a game of brazen postures
Until the day she froze before him,
Caught without guard or warning.

He was likewise held in perfect stillness of complete uncertainty,
Reading carefully how to react to a creature such as she,
But when a stray shot rang out from somewhere in the fortress,
She flinched in renewed dread and thrashed further into the forest

Afraid of being caught perhaps even more than he
And bearing the misfortune of knowing why a shot broke free,
The unavoidable memory of captive men dragged beyond the bailey,
Their voices ragged with exposure as they cried out desperately.

She had not run yet far enough, she heard the next report,
And desperation of her own sent her feet through thorn and dirt
Until she missed her hapless step and upward rushed the brambles,
Except his arms that caught her there just shy of stem and tangle.

She had not strength to twist away nor will to go on running;
He lifted her slowly to her feet then gently withdrew his hands,
But she could not tear her gaze from his, the quietness of his presence
Sent some strange instinct through her fingers

Which rose to trace his cheek, which bore a scar that roughened skin
In contrast to gentle features now arranged in intent confusion
But gave no sense of threat or plot that often she had seen
Behind the eyes of other faces arranged to win influence.

He slowly held his hand before him, offering his palm
To lead her from the dense surroundings back to where she perhaps belonged.
She met his hand with hand of hers and wondered at the touch,
Following how he moved his feet without crushing the forest brush.

Although the steps led back to where she so despaired to be,
His hand around hers filled her with a sense of solidarity—
A gentleness she had not found proof of for far too long a time,
A thoughtfulness that filled her breast with hope of humanity.

Just within the forest fringe she tugged him to a stop,
Keeping still her hand in his as he hesitated from the walk.
She felt her desperation not far off from the edges,
But sought to memorize him before leaving this sheltered spot.

She wondered that she should feel afraid,
That he should seek to take her
In trade for those of his own land that presence of her kind had cost,
But the sorrow that traced the lines of his face gave way to no distortion—

It was sorrow of an honest cast that pain had not construed
Into the guilt of violence so many others wore.
His face as he gazed on her withheld some unspoken wonder,
That she returned his stare so openly and held him without fear,

Without the narrow stance of caution even the wild held.
She seemed a creature all of trust, too soft to hide among men,
And bearing reason no apology for the company she arrived in.
He wondered if she did not belong more to the woods than fortress walls.

A blink erased the fallen time and once again she stood, bound,
Taking her last sight of him as the soldier turned her around
To send her slipping to the dust with one resounding blow
As he noted that it was his job to guard her virtue so

And wrenching her up by the arm strode off toward the bower
Where she began the lonely night, shut behind a wooden door
Bound around with iron, though her station bound her more.
He set her hard upon the bed, two hands upon her shoulders,

And reminded her he was her future as a promise could ensure.
As such, it would do her measureless good to learn to mind him well
And defer her needless concerns to his good countenance
As he would come to show her when dusk again should fall.

The door again was fastened tight as clouds began to pale
Beyond the narrow window, a substitute for light
Obscured by monotonous clouds, as smooth as an undisturbed sea
Implying calm as calm as the mind that rested within she,

For she had no doubt what he meant to do
And no doubt that she would be
No longer breathing in this room
When he returned to use the key.

Her thoughts replaced the gray-toned world
With the memory of gentle hands, that lifted her,
Without cause to care, and proved there can exist
Kindness among the crowd of roughened fists that tear

The lives of others to shreds to reach a moving goal,
An idea of costly progress that costs the winner a soul
Before death comes to lay him on that same unbroken plane
Where all who breathe return one day despite their ranging claims.

It did not matter then exactly when one should take their place
Among the figures strewn together below the lowering clouds
As angels drifted above them to offer final shroud
And disperse tiresome memories that kept the mind uneasy

So all would fall to rest and forget their separate needs.
The memory of kindness proven was all she wished to take
As her feet again traced the edge of that high stone window case
The pale slip around her tracing her form in the morning breeze

As though to take last familiarity before parting release.
She wondered if there may yet be those gentle, seeking arms
Somewhere far beneath the trees reaching for memory of her.
And then to end the tease of thought, she took the fateful step

Beyond the strength of masonry into the frigid air
Falling like a hunting bird to slice the pond below
And falling falling even still as the water past her flowed
Filling sight and sound with rushing that soothed and slowed.

It first visited me many years ago,
When I was only a girl.
I didn’t know then what it meant,
Or by what name to call it.

It made me feel as though all the world
Were distant from my thoughts.
Alone in my room where I would turn
I dove in to the feeling of loss.

As though I were waiting for someone far,
As though I’d forgotten my purpose,
I’d sit on the bed, apart from the world,
And wait to understand what I’d crossed.

I offered some names, to see if they fit:
Loneliness, memory, abstraction—
But nothing I said disturbed that distraction
That kept me alone and apart.

It comes to me now,
Some twenty years later—
Now and often between.

It still takes me away from the moment,
All that I’ve heard and seen.
As though gazing across the pages,
My eyes connect with selves that have been—

Looking from the past forward to now,
In questioning misapprehension,
Unable to find a reason to feel
That either time could matter

But watching it surely pass by.

We didn’t yet know ourselves,
How could we have known each other
At that young age with empty minds
And no reason to look beyond?

The world we knew was all we had,
A bright and narrow valley,
Where change was but a fiction
And the seasons never turned.

Or, never had that we yet knew
And so was bold our faith,
Our patience fixed on the hands of clocks
That swung the same slow day.

To run and meet in that shaded street
Was the sum of my ambition,
To fill quick hours with stories and flowers
Before the night could come,

And then away to forget our own threads
And write them anew tomorrow,
Toward dinner plates and familiar shapes
That kept this sky aloft—

The sky of that unchanging day
When we were unmade forms,
Tied close in our simplicity,
Without wonder that else should come.

I’ve heard it said reading is like traveling,
But I disagree.
Traveling lightens and enlivens
With immediacy,
While reading, when you lift your head,
Returns you only hollowly
To a life as yet undeveloped,
Pale in contrast.

Pray for the day
you prefer your own life
to the stories that were
everything to you.

A promise made,
Gentle words forgotten,
I remember you as you were:

Silent determination
In a softly reaching hand
That lifts me from loneliness—

Determination to be for me
What none were for you,
To be the strength in my belief
That people can be true.

Even after falling hard
And scarring this pale heart,
I long for you, I bleed for you
To remember who you are

Not the knives that time had wrought
But who you longed to be
In those quiet, lonely nights
When you secretly gazed at me.

I walk in shadows
To find deeper dark
In hopes one might reach out

To shape the arms
that held me before
And let me find the rest

That I once knew
When I was with you
Alone, our own broken peace.

For every year
That leaves me colder,
Though I fight to play my part,

The time I was sure of you
Burns, the only fire in my heart,

A light often trampled,
Dampened by fallen leaves,

But holding its own steady mark:

Warmth remembered more than felt,

Immortal through memory’s glass.

Choosing an author to read
Is choosing whose arms
To rest in—

Whose eyes to define
The rules of the world
You will sleep in,

What shape to expect
From hearts and surroundings
Of new minds encountered.

For each line traces purpose
And purpose a person
To define the framework of reason

requires, a god of ideas—
Setting sense the harsher world
Has not.

And when life is over,
we fall to seed
until the day we can live again.
‘But, when?’ cried the petal, ‘When?
And how can we set aside
the fear until then?’

The illusion of conformity,
the lifestyle wars,
the lie that your lifestyle will last—
even the traditions you cling to are not to you
what they were to those who made them.

We cannot find the lock
on the door of the history house
and cannot claim to know
what passions and pains our own forerunners felt,
having left those emotions at the roadside
and chosen to chronicle the pulses of power
and nationhood over those of personal strife.

Like dust in the wind,
like the clock unwound,
your sense of time
has no bearing on the passage of it.

Change is the texture
of the morning sun on your face,
so why not open your hand
and appreciate the sensation—

absorb from it the value of the feelings we share,
the humanity that sends us all running
in search of a reason, in search of a prayer,
in search of each other, just not knowing where
the feelings connect us beyond our trivial affairs.

What are we gonna do now~?

Everyone says they just want what’s best—
for freedom, for hope, for development and progress—
just support the one who yells it out best.
But what do we mean
when we say words like that?
We never do manage to say where they go—
the people you mean? Oh honey no, the money!

You know, that’s what travels most.
Beyond borders and visas, no need for a check,
it’s money they send and money they get.
“The people!” they cry, “we must make them safe—
for freedom and hope and more commercial space!”

So generously our companies fund
development, factories, and don’t forget guns!
It’s all out of care, we act on principle,
to rescue from fear those dollars we hold so very dear.
For companies, they tell me, are people too!
So don’t forget we owe them their due.

People or profits—the question is skewed,
for profits are people if you take the Friedman view.
Free markets for growth, free markets for progress,
free markets free men from the need for the docket.
Freedom and principle, oh I heard you clear,
but my question remains:
is it freedom for people or money you hold dear?
Jara, Walsh, Letelier, and more,
did these men die on freedom’s door?
Or did misdefined freedom cost their countries more?

Watch out what you’re funding, my countrymen proud,
for the cost of our neglect will not go unfound.
I believe your compassion still can grow,
but wake up now and make it boldly known
before hands moved by greed redefine what it means
to face the world from the American scene.

"Get off the streets!!"

Spheres of life
We gaze back through
As one might lift a concave lens,
Casting images in an outward spiral
That reach farther than they should—

From the shard of glass between your fingers
The colors of another world,
Of a time when you were happy
That could not have existed
Without casting aside the world before it,
The other lenses in your pocket.

The shaft of light that filters here
Is only wide enough for one
And to cast these pearly memory stones
The active part of that place and time
Must be consecrated as finished and done—
The cost of new experience
the loss of a previous one,
Life’s exclusive velvet table
With rules for every hand
Where time attached to one bright chip
Can not engage another.

Treat them gently,
Or draw what you see
With feverish intensity;
One harsh clash by will or miss
And all the glass will shatter down
To shuffled colors on the floor,
Senseless even when adored.

Watching eyes
Beg explanation
Where none exists.

The pride
Of silence
Refuses to dissolve.

Reasons
That never had root
Are imagined in place.

I had a very fragmentary dream...

There was a winding river-type fountain at the front of one building, but the flow of water through it was only a trickle. Having spent a little time around the place, I knew I really liked the structure, and I wanted to help set it to rights—to do whatever I could to raise the water. The shape of it was such that there were two ends on opposite sides inside the building, where the track dove in a curve from along the floor, up a plexiglass slot of several feet, then straight down through the floor in the same plexi structure, towards the more natural origins of wherever the water was fed from. Connecting these two distant points was the body of the fountain, winding through the origin rooms, through pockets in the walls to other rooms, and finally across the exterior front of the building.

I was attracted to the concept of it, just disappointed that it apparently didn’t really work. I walked up to the people who were in front of the building and asked them to tell me where I should dig to fix the water. They didn’t really have any response, so I decided to go take a look at each end. I walked to the one on the right first, but it was so structured and enclosed there was no way for me to affect it. I moved on to the left side, but this too was identical to the right. I peered as far down the vertical drop as I could, but it looked as though the space below became a natural cliff face, with the water traveling ‘naturally’ on its track upward. I began to think the flow was just limited by these delivering plexiglass boxes, which were after all very narrow—wide but flat—compared to the open-air parts of the fountain. What filled them to full capacity was perhaps just not enough for the other segments, but the structure being particular and connected unconventionally just so, there was no remedy.

I sat off to the side of the room by a broad glass window, disappointed, and was quickly approached by a slight man with tousled brown hair. I had the notion, quietly added to the scene, that this place was a university, and after a long time of inactivity, I was here because I was trying to take a few classes. It was a very comforting structure to return to, with its predictable demands and personalities. In any case, this man approaching me in so casual a way was, for that reason, not so remarkable. I was seated on the floor, and he came and perched beside, having not been far from there before I entered. He could tell I was disheartened, and reached out directly to touch my arm. Uncertain and not wanting to be rude or strange, I didn’t react, keeping a mask of accepting calm. We spoke some, but I can’t remember the words.... I leaned my head back against the warmth of the glass, receiving the afternoon sun, and closed my eyes for a moment. He sat quietly beside, engaged in his own tasks, but staying near.

It reminds me of Moody Library’s lobby maybe, in retrospect. People would pass by who recognized him and say a few words as they went. I hid behind closed eyes for much of it, though I listened. At one point, someone came whom I knew, and gave me some short news that started a few quiet tears in my eyes, though I can’t remember what it was about. Without word or pause, the man beside me placed a tissue in my hand near my face, and continued on with his own affairs, showing sympathy without overt attention in a way that suited me perfectly. My thoughts toward him warmed greatly for this. But, some hours after the start, it was clear class sessions were changing, and I too had to move on.

I shifted and stretched deliberately, looking over to him to say thank you for the company, how kind he was, and that I had to go. He rose automatically beside me, asking “really?” now with full familiarity. I did like him, but also there was no question about my separating myself from this scene—I had come to this place with someone, and I fully intended to return to that person. We had gone separate ways with different tasks, but the connection between us was without question, even if I had felt distant for some time now. It was time to return, and I was full ready. So, I told the person beside me now that, yes, I definitely had to go. But, in playfulness, he wrapped his arms around me from behind and pretended he would go wherever I did. I laughed a little, uncomfortable now and conscious of the public eyes around the room, and pretended to scrape him off along the nearby wall. He didn’t let go. I was wishing that other person would pass by to change the social footing, or, struck with a sudden uncertainty, at least hoping when I did evade this one I could find the other at all. I wasn’t sure where they'd gone; I only vaguely expected to find them on the higher floors of the long building.

Maybe that person and I are like the fountain. What we have between us is not, to the usual observer, nearly enough. And yet, being distant, individual people as we are, accustomed to being alone, it is as much as our personal souls can handle. The result is highly imperfect...but then so is all of life.

I am made of time
and thought and hunger.
If I could douse the third,
The first two would grow stronger.

Wanderers and fools. The fabric of my people.
Those who leave their homes
for something they can’t describe.
Following a sense—a glow of footsteps set
In places they knew not before that feel of something more.

Spirits of a like, they say, seek out the same retreat,
And by virtue of their instincts alike inevitably meet.
But if we’ve spirits enduring time
Then we’ve traveled here before—
No reason to think the ones we seek
We haven’t journeyed with before.

Perhaps we parted knowingly
On those before known shores
And whispered “luck” in bracing tones
To face the world alone.

For experience, that human angle,
We leapt back into the flow
To think and weep, reflect and sleep,
To seek for something more.

That’s our flaw, you may well know,
To ache for further meaning:
To pass the time we have here now
With our gaze up past the ceiling

Of the circles in which our lives are set;
It’s also our greatest virtue,
Insofar as Aristotle’s definitions can be kept:
That trait intrinsic to the mind as humanity defined.

What matters then, in such a place,
What values must we keep?
Some think survival its own end,
Others pay it little heed.

They focus on less profitable things:
What matter if we lose?
To live with heart embracing others
Seems to them full worth the cost.

Wanderers and fools they are,
For truth they leave their homes,
And give away what comfort lends
Without concern for what is owned.

Though concern they have, well and plenty,
For shattering the ice
That builds up on the restive mind
And seeing through the shards

To shake off convention’s morphine
And question life’s regard
For thought and work, identity,
what compels the social yard—

Because they were once told it’s so
Is not for them enough
To justify the differences, assumptions, and disregard
That places some on pedestals and leaves others breathing hard.

A question in itself, they say,
Is rebellion in true form,
And to question thought of your own cast
Takes work more oft ignored.

But if it’s so that all we have
Is simply passing time,
Before this turning garden casts us
To some more distant clime,

Then what role would you choose to be,
Connected or self-absorbed?
History books cast war as fate,
But the growing mind must wonder:

Is inevitability really to blame
Or the wants of men knowingly sundered?
The values of before return,
And honesty must ask,

Is it justice that the merchants seek
Or profit from destruction’s path?
Can rights be bombed into the world
Or is that just a mask

For string-pullers in lofty seats
Who count our interests last?
Wanderers and fools, they never mind the odds;
They want the truth regardless and will pay with what they are.

If war is just a pastime,
Chosen by those with greed,
These wanderers will seek the voices of the ones left in need;
The fools will stand for hours to demand transparency

And so the battle continues,
An uneven drama felt by the ages,
A matter of schismic values
Tumbling down across the pages.

It’s taken lives and love and loss;
It’s given current aplenty
To the rivers of humanity
That take so long to cross.

To find your feet in this swift flow
Is your one birth-given job,
To recognize what matters
And be more than you were taught

To see our universal breath
And realize the thought
That trivial identities as divisions
Are naught, but near-sighted distractions,

Dishonest to our worth:
With centuries’ unspoken names
How can one be more than earth?
To give way to self-importance would lend only to celestial mirth.

Make peace with being who you are,
And find it not demotion.
Accepting ordinary life gives room for yet another notion:
That everyone holds some importance, none to be dismissed.

Anyone can turn the wheel
On life’s unfolding pattern,
And were you born a different time
You’d find how little it matters

What you think of your influence
Compared to what you’re given,
So grace demands we open our hands
And share what chance has riven.

Wanderers and fools, they always have a corner
In life’s unchanging threads.
To be one is a privilege
I’d not regret to have.

Tell me now, or ask yourself:
Are you in this life because you chose to be?
Or is this just where you fell?

Did you come to this town
with a reason you couldn’t ignore
Or was it where someone else’s cause dropped you before?

When you think of tomorrow,
Is it what’s already been set?
Or did you measure your life and decide what’s direct,

What’s tied to the heart of what you want to be.
If you don’t ask today - not what others expect
But what you in your hours value -

You’ll never touch anything
Beyond plastic security:
Never realize the rough-hewn world

Is lying at your feet.
But only for a moment,
Breath doesn’t last

Fall back on passive thinking, (and)
The timing’s gone past.
And life, that chance to be, is dust you can’t grasp.
.
It’s not an ideal; it’s today, and it’s gone.
What’re you going to do about it?
What *matters*??

Imagine... a leaf, in community on its branch. By connection with the living bark, it knows all that its brothers sense, and all it feels is known. To live is their unspoken challenge, pressing into the space of this material world in geometric, patterned shapes, generating a little more will to reach a little further and sense a little more of life’s interaction. To cease would be to return—from shape into impulse, the will to live, uncloaked from cell and atom.

Then, one day of thousands alike, the push of the wind lifts the branch in tensile motion, and the leaf’s veins break, grown brittle in time. It falls without moment, but its death was sooner still: as soon as those material threads were severed, it lost its thousand senses—those feelings of its brothers. It lost also its purpose in sharing its own sense. On the ground, alone, it faces life without cause.

Having taken form for a goal now erased, it is left to exist without connection to its source of meaning. Still, it may feel. Slowly, it may curl and crumble. What impulses it sends none may hear. Those who could are fallen and far, and perhaps, have forgotten.

When at last it is ground to dust, individualism gained will again be community in loss.

-

There you go, tree. I have written your story.

Too soon awakened,
and daylight rushes thought,
So what was once as light as foam
dissolves into naught

Nothing seemed perfect,
So I settled on doing just that,
And I’ve been happier ever since.

Seagull seagull in the pond,
What has brought you
To this place?

Did you fly for nights on end,
Wondering where the sea
Would begin?

Are you seeking some new role,
Grown tired of docks
And unanchored space?

Perhaps you thought
yourself estranged,
Unlike the coastal birds.

Like someone seeking Something more,
You turned your back
on the seafaring race

And flew across the charted land
For some other
Unknown place.

And landing here,
In the garden pond,
Paused for but a minute

To consider how to
Journey on and what
Life might hold within it.

If I could find
A simple way
To love all things
That are touched by day,

To admire those
Unwritten thoughts
That dance at night
And whisper when found,

Then in a breathing,
Reckless leap
I’d follow after
He who speaks

Such wondrous words
And lovely lines
And gives to life
That embracing shine.

I’d shiver to behold
Such magic fingertips
That touch unfamiliar shades
And turn them to divine

Pages illuminated all in gold,
A captured heart,
Beyond the popularity sold
For mere convenience and control.

So much more the power
Of lighting bright
The fire of interest and care
Than spite

For what is unfamiliar
And bold to our senses
Simply by virtue of being new,
Something from a distant land

That grew in soil we never tread
And soaked up ideas
From other sources,
Water cool but reflecting strange discourses,

Colors filtered through different clouds,
Pale reflection, vivid crowds,
Full of life that—could it be?—
Is alike to that in you and me

But wears some other jaunty clothes
That startle us from our calm repose
And often as not set us on our toes,
With anxious disposition.

Lost time, that spent in needless fear
Of things that come from other spheres.
Instead let me find the key
That opens each next corridor

Until I’ve managed to build a love
For every corner of humanity’s halls,
The home we share with ages past,
With hope and pain, and life lived fast.

If you can take my hand and lead
Me just one step on this broad street,
I’ll trust the warmth of your embrace
And start by loving you.

Then as we share the sights we’ve seen
We’ll come to widen our belief
And reach out easily to others still
Who need a brighter song,

Loving all the days we have,
The nights that are soon gone,
And as we come nearer the close
We may as yet discover

That the best of life we ever knew
Was confiding in each other.

Don’t—!
Don’t speak a word
Outside the rounds
We usually fall through

Don’t let yourself
Realize
The hours have grown few—

Put your steps
In time with mine,
Let’s wonder at the stars

And talk of life and love and risk
And things that are not ours

And overlook that day by day
Time has taken the hours away

For as they left, they left behind
A space that friendship filled

Memories that folded themselves
From the paper we tread upon

And wrote in tiny, scrawled hand script
Letters only we can read

That rise from the pages of our maps
When we wander back that way

And give the places two-fold depth
When we retrace our steps

A new world before our eyes—
An old one in our living breath

For the things we did together
Creased the maps we carried on

And directed the tumble of our lives
As we stumbled forward on

Turning us round certain corners
By instinct innumerably built

From things we did and said
When we were young and still

Hand in hand beneath the trees,
Beneath those chilly stars

Thinking only of the songs we loved
And the dreams they’d begun.

It’s this same old nonsense
I want to remember as our last—
No talk of change and parting
And commemorating things gone past

For that would steal away the chance
To have five minutes more
Of us together in this falling world
Just as we were before.

So blink away the facts of time,
Ignore its heavy power,
Steal back from it the moments few
To be we and us and ours.

They belong to you and me,
And time cannot have them.

The door snaps shut,
The trees fall in,
I’m reaching out
For you again.

The moment that
My warmth meets yours,
The fear they stoke
Misses a chord—

The road may twist
Far out of sight
Through stifling fog
And moonless night

But a glance at you
As we drive on
Confirms you’re here,
Where I belong,

And nothing else
Can break the pulse
Of healthy human certainty
Kindled by minds alike to this degree.

The forest is not empty then,
When you who also do believe
In open palms and honest eyes
Count the minutes of concurrent life,

A blessing more than
Could be achieved
By any act of self-sympathy:
The bracing breath of calm solidarity.

Swift turn left, the pillow crushes
below your fitful move,
your eyes search the darkness,
restless, for something in the room.

You listen close for that small sound
that might reveal the step,
you wait in silence wondering
if time has ended yet.

Below you, at your feet,
the wall bears a simple drawing:
the shape of night and music
in peace without motion or purpose.

As breath moves ever on,
and life demands its substance,
you place yourself within that frame
and think back to moments shared

when you were full of hope and light,
on far and distant shores
surrounded by the scarlet glow
of soft solidarity.

Without a word, you feel yourself
accepting all that is;
those moments now remembered
have prepared you for all of this:

for meeting without argument
whatever now may come,
for holding with a smile
the reciprocal to the joy

as only fair repayment
for the wave that you felt then,
when everything within the world
was beautiful and calm

when every footstep that you took
had led you to the place
where you were surely meant to be,
below those pearly stars

and nothing more
could you bear to ask
from the balance of
all the world

There’s a moment irresistible
when you find yourself alone,
to imagine those within your life
as you would have them be.

Not for perfect, self-made wants,
but for finding soulful closure
on conflicts of the past
that will never be revisited.

When honesty demands you cast
aside imagination’s skew
you run your fingers over
the rough wall now facing you:

it must have been there all along,
but you managed not to see;
to touch it now scrapes your hands
as you search to find an edge.

But, edge it hasn’t, nor visible top,
and as time presses in from behind,
you realize if you need room to breathe
you’ll have to turn another way

Else be compressed against this wall
by the shrinking of belief
as others pass you by
and light fades to frigid neutrals.

There are not arms to hold you here,
are not and never were,
to imagine other than what is
will not help you solve the problem:

it will not make this gravel side
into comfort or protection—
it will not produce from the other side
a heart unnatural to the substance.

By crushing here in determination
you do not harm the wall.
You scrape your skin and bruise your knees;
it will be your own fault

if you do not make the choice
to change now that you have seen
the object you mistook for love
is hard, and cold, and stained.

So turn away, take a breath,
mop up your weary limbs;
do for yourself what that other won’t
and release expectation grown thin.

There will be other roads to walk,
and other companions to meet
who carry their own scrapes and scruffs,
who have grown to understand

you cannot replace the hearts of others
with wishful kind improvement—
you must learn to see them as they are
and see yourself back through them.

-

There’s a fundamental lack of understanding that goes along with finding yourself against that wall. Even when you know rationally that there is a person who doesn’t care—who, if they knew a particular action would hurt you, would take it specifically so—you still find that instinct urges you to explain, to expect understanding and consideration, before thought has caught up to remind you it’s useless. The feelings have not yet on the level of belief accepted what the mind knows, whether the reason is simple habit (from hoping so long for better from that person) or more real incomprehension.

Listening with the rapt attention of a sermon
to the voices of wandering souls
trapped in the repeating refrain
of cheap melodies more often ignored.

Searching in those fragile lines
for some truth the author knew
before it was packaged
and buried in the sale

Of day-to-day life
that we take for necessity
even as it hardens our brittle bones
from empty motion,

leaving the messy beating hearts we had
to wither in wordless frustration
at the contrast of what should be
and what we know continues.

Still, the slow melody of a harp
can still the rushing breath
and ease the tightened fist
of a soundless, searching heart
with no solution to the troubles.

My feeling these days is...

Somebody help,
I’m stranded in the US.
It’s been a year since I’ve been alone.
A year since I’ve even been able to think of traveling.
A year since I could begin to hear myself creatively think.
A year since my own life was placed on the shelf.
A year since I left Korea.

Like many these days,
I’ve regressed.
I’ve never been so afraid
To think of leaving again.
To think of finding my own stability.
To think of living alone.

But still I will do it.
When the time comes.

I don’t think I want anything,
Anything at all.
It is easier without.
But to live,
I will have to find a place where I do.

Oh for a way to rest.

Knowing what you’re capable of losing is a strength. But, it’s the kind of strength that hardens.

Waking up late.
Drinking coffee like it will save my life.
Sleeping like the dead with no will left to stir.

It’s not quite right; before sleep is the only time will does rise, but then in shades already bound to the certainty I haven’t time or strength to pursue it.

Do you know why they always tell you to stop and smell the flowers?
It is because flowers are nothing to do with you—
Because they neither cost nor lend;
They are outside of your world of hopes and disappointments.
And so, when the season comes when you have lost,
When the ones you did not think to question
Have become the ones who left,
The flowers still will hold their place
In separate confidence
And represent that good persists
Without pause at your temporal night.

There is an ache that resonates
In the breast that has known life—
The will to be where you are not,
The echo of pulse partly forgot...

Still, there is a danger identified
In dreaming long and vivid
Then going out on eager feet
To meet the content presented

As though the realization,
The taste that dashes hope,
Might yet replace that ideal form
With texture less than found before

And leave you not with triumph
But disappointment hollow and sore.
That danger I suppose is real,
The risk of hope bestowed,

But other outcomes too may follow
When feet are placed on stone
To chase after an idea held,
To move from pallid pace

To some more desperate footfall
That comes before the storm
That washes away from dreams
The colors unfaithfully worn

And leaves behind only what was true,
The honest shape beneath
Defined by more than your own will,
By others’ matching pressure

That lets you know your place is real
By matching even resistance
That moves you both ever ahead
Even as it redefines you.

And, if the dream you chose to hold
In carefully sheltering palms
Was placed upon some worthy sight,
Then overcome the danger

And find that what is left behind
When clouds have fled and faded,
Sweeping away the dream itself
And leaving you again untethered,

While once again immaterial,
Has only taken its name and traded,
No longer far ahead but undiscoverable within:
It belongs to you and those you knew

In matching, even weight
Becoming now a memory that you may lift and take
As you seek to find your next direction,
A stone for experience sake.

Midnight streets,
Empty seats
On a winding bus
With no destination.

Looking for meaning
In the next new town

Hoping to find something
You’ve never found—

Something you felt
Just for a moment
From a story
you hardly remember

I’ve turned away from
The light in my life,
Distracted by distant stars.

He’s carried it someplace far away
And I have left him behind.

The two, in motion,
Are blessed to meet
But swiftly again retreat

To darker paths, cooled by night,
Where the heart feels untethered.

To be content
Is to forget need
And with need the wants,

But as soon as the eye has blinked away
The memory of time content,

You find yourself
alone again
And thinking back to him:

The one who holds the light aloft
And fills the night with music.

It draws me to the pillow soft
With claws that gently cradle thought
And when my eyes have closed on life
Begins another melody.

I long for sleep as though I had
Left there some lover unrecalled
And only in blind paralysis
May steal another glance.

When darkness falls, in dark I stay
And elsewise slips the day away
So candles held may never burn
And the mind forever wander.

As to that tiny flame unlit
My soul for meaning searches
But lacking heat and air and grit
Soon stifles without purchase

And falling back from sleep awake
Must recognize the room
To understand what light it sees,
Departing reality.

And it was our movement
That made the color—
That gave the light some place to cling,
Some form to cast in fraction
As through the waves it dove,
And leave behind some ghostly trace
Of where our breath escaped
Before it broke those chilled blue depths
And all returned to slumber.

A million throes upon the sand
And voices that had whispered
To each and every merging wave
Before their time was spent—
Believing those eternal beats
Would keep their secrets safe,
In memory unpredictable
Of ceaseless reaching fates

But deep beneath those shadow shapes,
The drops that caught the light
And cast it into fleeting forms
That matched our moving flight,
There were not souls to hear our words
Nor lovers to remember
The history we entrusted there
And soon forgot ourselves

So none remembered what had passed
Or that there ever were
Lashes closed beneath the moon
That prayed for something more—
That cast out to the space of night
As though there were in waiting
Some purpose that was more than life,
Someone out there to meet,
Some hope yet left to gaze up to
Or seek within the hush.

It comes to me in this moment,
I don’t know why,
That one of the times I was happiest
Was walking slow at night

Hand fast on the handle of my bag,
Feet sore but sure on the path that led back
To the dorm I had left, not one week before,
To travel abroad though I had hardly crossed the door

Of that new place to live,
The room small and pale,
The winding back alleys
i would come to know so well.

The wheels of my case were noisy,
Rough on rough ground,
And I shied from catching the eyes
Of unknown neighbors around.

Yet, easing into my own presence there
As I realized my risks were placed behind me,
With decisions required decided and retired,
I turned my face skyward and welcomed the night.

The path was yet long for tired feet
But the street quiet, the shops closed and neat;
The darkness felt only soft and sweet
As would coax from the most reticent a melody

To complete the balance of all things,
The stillness that reached deep within
And witnessed a world where trust would lend
To those who journeyed and returned here

A sense of home, though hardly known:
Instinctive meeting of shapes congruent,
A confidence separate from all foundation,
Born of faith and solidarity with strangers

Whose downcast eyes reveal nothing of the will
That nonetheless carried them past the till
To the place of like movement, by like sources moved—
Wordless sympathy immediately known

Impossible to build from word or stone
Or long years spent together or alone.

Known in a moment, lost with the fade
Of misty blue light that softened the stage
Where passions collided when drawn by the promise,
The absolute investment of hope that was honest.

On that quiet midnight street,
The heat of those thoughts ran far and fleet,
But the scratch of pavement rough and real
Assured me that there was more to feel—

That this place, that held such vital breath,
Would last beyond the morning rush
And offer more, more days to touch
If I would stay and make them mine:

A choice just then within my reach,
So onward push my weary feet
And certain rest the restless heart
Of life lived well and full.

The other day, I found myself thinking of it from the perspective that, maybe, it came too easy the first time. And, the moment I thought it, I could see it spread before me—the shape of this time to come, as a path back, to where I’ve been before but forgot how to love. To a place I needed to re-learn to be able to see again. To bring new life to it by virtue of the very path itself, that would make me a different person in a different place just by taking the long way round. I still love that place. I still love those people. I am still on my way toward the heart of them.

The way I miss my apartment is like a restlessness in my bones.

When I think of it, I feel that I’ve given away something I would never have been able to get on my own—something allowed me only by the help, the trouble of others. In that way, it was more precious than I had a right to lose.

The way I miss reaching up to grab hold of the bus and swing myself into place on the tall front seat in one sure movement is enough to carry my feet forward toward whatever street I see, though there will be nothing there to meet me.

That time, in effortless motion, headed toward some sure place with the reason already decided was when I felt confident enough to think of things beyond myself. To take the energy of life that moved around me without need for my involvement and use it to stray down more creative intuition. Until I would be interrupted by a destination that would become part of the lyric.

The way I miss the absolution of being drowned in that soft pearl light, with cool blue pouring over to set us all at rest as his voice fades away...is like when you dream and forget how to breathe.

You wake confused and a little afraid, not trusting if you’ve really found yourself in safety again or are still waiting for memory to reveal the most awful part, the lost reason you gave up breath.

Even if I forget the way, I will walk until my shoes wear through to find the road that leads back to you.

All love is true
I heard him say
From upon a stumbling horse

But as he fell
The daylight turned
And the dreams I knew
Belonged to someone else.

A pair of bright eyes in a crowd...
What does it mean to stare?
I’m a little in love with you, but you won’t always be there.

Still I would give you all my trust
If you reach your hand to me
And whisper that you feel it too,
This instinct of belief.

I’d rather have
one moment true
Than a lifetime of careful proof;

Commitment of another kind
Is where I place my faith:
I do not need fine rings and things,
A house all locked and safe,

Just hold back nothing
Of your heart
And let your soul escape

To meet with mine in honesty
And take what time relates
To us in this unstable world—
A breath before we change.

I’ll think of you
From someplace far
And remember you with care

For all my life, this moment true
I’ll hold in gentlest palms:
A story of life, lived with love,
To carry through night into dawn.

A man with a cat wanders the town;
Sunflower oil has dampened the ground.
Because of the oil
the whole town may spoil,
But what’s to be done
when reality can’t be found?

The cat tips his hat as he leaves on the trolley;
But with furpaws and whiskers he can’t be trustworthy.
The man who sees
Falls to his knees,
Then in consternation and conviction
runs to the river crying of dereliction.

Meanwhile on the other side of town
The egalitarian elite of fine formed exclusion
are breaking bread and rioting in choreographed confusion.
A candle, an icon and right indignation,
One more displaced soul joins the asylum of the nation.

But what’s to be done when the feedback of the senses
Contradicts what reasonable folk set up as defenses?
“Are you normal?” They ask, with fine seeming concern,
“Just answer me honestly and you can choose your own turn:
To stay or to leave, why freedom is yours.
But really, what sense in this story outpoured?

Can’t you hear for yourself the unreason and passion
That led you to these impractical actions?
A cat and a trolley, good sir desist,
Such fancy simply cannot exist.
And what’s that you said about the oil?
Yes, true a man died, but that’s nothing related.
A devil, consultant, professor and madman? With sight of the future? Do get him sedated.”

Was it true what he said, those things disbelieved,
Or was his head a bit loose from his Tolstoy shirtsleeves?
Is it madness to be maddened by impossible deeds,
Or is the only sensible response to take leave
Of one’s senses when faced with the knowledge
Of this world’s less wholesome college?

It was said long ago, when injustice prevails,
The just man has no place but the jail.
Perhaps then too when the world is in thrall,
The man of right heart to the asylum must fall.
For what’s to be done when the stories reported
Simply don’t match society’s courses?

The cat doesn’t mind, you can think what you may
He’ll have a shot of vodka and then on his way.
Likewise the consultant is not here to please:
True his exposé reveals man’s disease,
But it is of heart and not head he seeks complicity.

So watch out who you meet, what you choose to believe,
For letting them tell you what’s true can lead
To a schism of thought with no known reprieve.
Keep your head on your shoulders, If that you can manage,
And look for compassion from those on your road
To help ease the burden of life’s disadvantage.

Men are mortal, they say... sometimes suddenly so.

Imperfectly bound,
in this our mortal coil.
We yearn for the edge,
knowing all has been lost…

lost to time and tide
and tired eyes
that could not bear to see
the stumbling path we tread,

the hands we reached for
that withdrew, unawares,
as through the empty space we fell,
a tear for lost humanity.

We know not why, or where, or how,
just that we are, here for now—
with breath that shivers through us
and holds the strength to act

if we knew but some just cause,
some cold idea of truth,
that shone through space as dark as night
to lead us out of our youth—

our bright eyed dreams of purpose
or fiery throws of fear,
both alike in uncertainty
and both leaving us year by year.

Imperfectly bound,
we feel our own rough edges
and know there should be more,
but have not sense to see the way

to guide our ships to shore
and reach the rest we dearly need,
the place where all is still,
where questions do not linger
and we have no need to know.

A shock to the heart
As your hand slipped from mine,
A chill deeply felt
More of physics than mind.

This beating, this desperate
Ache from within—
Why does it feel
More like living than an end?

As though it were not
The sorrow of parting
But that first gasping breath
Of life long disregarded?

As though shocked into motion
My heart now constricts,
To leave you, to cleave to you—
Nothing else forces this

Senseless muscle to reach
Beyond its cage,
To beat as though it
Would break for salvation;

Nothing but these
Two diametric causes
Can snag that fine string
That twines between ribs

And restart the thing
With a painful yearning
That confuses and awakes,
That would drive me to you

Or away toward my grave.
A sense too vital, too demanding by far,
To turn back to practical
Tasks of the hour.

To live in this heat, this feverish cold,
I know not how to breathe
Unless you tighten your hold.
To forget the feeling, regress to the old,

If hearts are capable of life untold,
Of existing in stillness
Without deafening pulse,
It’s not a trick I’ve ever been sold
Or have a mind to endure.

One footstep away,
The light glows rosy;
Another forward,
The faults are forgot—

Leave your lover,
You’ll know in an instant
The tone of past moments
Was heaven unthought.

I have often loved places
While others loved people.