Synthesis

…Perhaps there are signs of alliances 
between wind, sun and stone to force 
The softness to the surface… (Yvette Christianse) 

The artist returns to the cave, starry-eyed from 
overexposure, drenched from the spray of blinding light 

Like Gaudi, she builds a cathedral for a world she will not live to see 
organic shapes rewriting the violent spires of enstoned truths 
commemorating a future unbound 

Vapors escape from the soldering iron 
as she stitches together pieces of mirror and ancient sand 
with drops of lead 
(once poison, now transformed 
for the more noble causes of reflection and refraction) 

Tired discourses crack in these fires of new creation 
While polychrome lenses align 
to filter the force of glow from beyond 

She tells us, 
the eyes must grow 
to meet the light 
As she points the way  
through windows of colored glass.

Transgression

“The gaping mouth slit heart from mind. Between the two eyes in her head, the tongueless magical eye and the loquacious rational eye, was la rajadura, the abyss that no bridge could span. Separated, they could not visit each other and each was too far away to hear what the other was saying. Silence rose like a river and could not be held back, it flooded and drowned everything.” (Gloria Anzaldúa) 

Each day we turn water into wine and back into water 
but our cycle denies at the outset the possibility of nectar 
(the soul’s wings are bound by the world’s assumptions) 

“Pick your battles,” they say. 
(they mean, “don’t pick this one”) 

They beat paths of rationalization 
into submission 
with granite walls raised on each side 
(arrival and departure sketched in stone) 

They prepare bullet points with the  
precision of trained assassins 
the shape of thoughts circumscribed  
by the casings that carry them 

Caught in the flytrap of how we’ve always done it 
the brute force of our language betrays the desperation  
of the soul’s missives of peace: interrupted 
writhing, twisting, grasping  
for release 

Daring us to lay down soft blankets for the words left out of the poem 
to make real the heavy imaginaries not yet enlivened 
to dissolve the crown of thorns 
and scatter its brilliance into prism.

Dialogue

This siege will extend until we teach our enemies 
paradigms of our Jahili poetry… (Mahmoud Darwish) 

Imagine the discourse 
as a wine-dark sea 
seething with storms that ensnare  
the future in the whirl   

The sea’s deep cerulean hue has not yet been invented 
but we sense its pull 
so we comb through the froth and churn for new words  
to bring our blue to life 

The Sirens sing us toward the seduction of old resentments   
while Charybdis vomits fragments of men and their feral doubts 
Poseidon raises waves of obstinance, stonewalling our compassion 
and Zeus burns scars of light across the fragile skin of truce  

All taunt the audacity of those who dare to attempt the crossing. 

These guardians of old-world habits and antiquated grievances 
revel in ancient entrapment 
(much later, it will be the orcas,  
passing their own judgment on the vagaries of hubris) 

We run aground 
gasping for release from the assaults of gray water 
parched from the salt of history polluting our drink 

Sometimes the passage hurts more than it should 
but persistence yields a landed sunrise  
new angles of light exposing shades of sapphire  
when seen from the other side. 

Conflict

“...the mile ago it takes to stop the train…” (Ed Roberson) 

Tonight’s light 
(born from the flames of manufactured firestorms)  
forces the stars to resign their posts 

the blood of millennia still spills forth, its progeny lapping 
at the beaches of Troy  
at the riverbanks of ancient promises 
at the coastlines of dead seas and retaliatory instincts 

rough, cavernous tongues: tied  
(and thrashing) 
in barbed wire and the spoils of hollow dialectics 

The sun gazes down upon the squabbles, sighs, 
and recedes into the maudlin consolation 
of leaden clouds 

This discourse yields a power absolute-- 
too heavy for peace, too taut for grace.

Risk

The words left out of the poem, they are frightened. (Yiannis Ritsos) 

A turmeric moon rises above the arctic horizon 
speeding through its low-hanging arc 
frosting and brightening as it climbs 

I settle into calming promises of hearth 
wrapped in the weighted blanket of the known world 
late harvest wine seeping through my ambition 

Outside, black river currents run below the ice 
starmelt drips from the sky  
and the firefox beckons 
her emerald tail a trail through the heavens 

A discourse of light awaits 
but the sharp shock of winter’s slippery veil 
looms, a deterrent to illumination 

A dilemma posed: 
to remain ensconced  
or  
to traverse the delta’s brittle crystalline crust 
and enter a wilderness of words not yet uttered.

The House We Once Lived In

…they were raised to believe they could only trust words. words were a place to stand… [1]
…the trap of reason binds us in the net of time… [2]
…by the reach of your hybris, shall your house be known…[3]

A foreclosure sign went up today outside the τόπος κοινός;
the words couldn’t pay the rent.

in the final pass-through before departure 
syntax wept
laden with memories on the precipice of dissolution 

a lone rhetorical trope buried 
in a backyard paint-can-time-capsule

that stain under the sink 
where the emergency stash of grammar leaked through 
its container

the nail hole on the wall in the bedroom 
larger than it should be and not enough time 
to fill it in the haste of departure 
(the frame that hung up the sentence 
was too heavy) 

a faded, half-finished landscape drawing on the wall
where punctuation had tried her hand 
at curating a museum exhibition in the staircase;
thwarted, mid-vision, she blustered and pouted all evening
(already so sure of her artistic worth)

she used sharpie
and the acrid scent of incipient structure lingered 
for centuries 

this house of spent phrases and broken syllogisms 
will be on the market tomorrow;
a τόπος uncommon breaches the perimeter 
in the arcane hours before dawn opens her doors
feeling grasping easing gasping 
towards an occupancy of spirit.

***

Quotations:
[1] Alexis Pauline Gumbs, M Archive: After The End Of The World
[2] M. NourbeSe Philip, Zong!
[3] Sylvie Kandé, The Neverending Quest for the Other Shore

The Jellyfish

The jellyfish is feeling especially electric today.

Threads of voltaic grace have been threatening
to break off from her center,
diluting her gossamer rage and
pulsing her exposed to the vagaries 
of the waterworld passing through her.

The fact that the jellyfish has different metaphors
should give pause

should rankle the hegemony of the upright ground-bound body 
(the one that has to work so hard to swim or fly
the one that can’t decide if the future we see up ahead 
is really behind)

should awaken epistemologies of atmosphere
(that don’t rely on one foot in front of the other
that don’t need the arc of time to sweat out our discrete lives 
in droplets)

and yet we carry on wandering the flat earth 
as though we know it
unable to reckon with its demanding roundness

we are thirsty but afraid 
to let free the water
(for fear of losing it to the horizon’s edge)

so we cup our hands and dip them into a puddle of mirage
to drink the desert-soured juice of our myths.

***

The Color Of Water

Iridescent hues claim the arc of the wave right before it crests
into light
the sun and my eye and my anchored stance create these colors
together

at the moment of tumble, a wall of mirrors appears
the taut wave at point of collapse 
refracting the light into me

(or is it a ruse
to keep me from looking through her?)

the spectrum assimilates, spilling into a churn of surf
offspring of the undulating liquid abyss

a foam-white carpet of air 
(the white that contains multitudes)
reaches beyond the boundary of shore

tomorrow, more gently, the lapsed blue
(is it the same as your blue?)
settles into sandy bay containers
drops of a maybe-the-same ocean
but tempered now, in glass silence

the angles of iridescence lost in transfiguration
(having sloughed off their sharp tint and violent beginnings)
crystalline shadows still lodged in the space between my eyes
and the sun

***

El Fénix

Entre el incendio y las cenizas
hay un solo momento en que el fénix debe decidir
si quiere vivir otra vez
si quiere empezar al ilimitado principio la próxima iteración 

En este momento
la crisálida que viene
habita en fragmentación
en lágrimas negras que caen de ojos que todavía no existen 

Estas gotas oscuras, lluvia del alma inconclusa aún infinita
transportan todas las posibilidades de ser
encajada y encerrada
al borde del abismo

En la frontera
el aliento de vida 
queda suspendido en suspiro cautivo 
y el fénix baila fuera del ritmo
considerando las opciones 
de permanecer o de morirse en final 

Al igual que en momentitos de nuestros propios renacimientos
la decisión de emerger
viene con llanto resbaladizo y viscoso
y nos presentamos mojados, demasiado agotados 
al crudo principio nuevo

Los mitos nos esperan allí 
enloquecidos de anticipación 
aguardando que tenemos la fuerza necesaria 
para arrastrarlos con nosotros hacia la vida

***

I Pledge Allegiance

[A poem for a precarious, incongruous, slippery holiday….]

I pledge allegiance

To the better angels of my nature, 
divided within me, around me, above me.
To the deep disruption of their binaries,
in star-spangled, kaleidoscopic jubilee.

And to a republic unbound
which does not stand; it overflows.
Dismembered states shimmer on cave walls
known only in fragments and backlit shadows.

One of many nations, 
under dark stars and blistering sunsets
in search and service of becoming
craving truth and beauty, wisdom and justice.

I pledge allegiance

To revolutions not televised
To the nine-pound hammers of ill-fated coups
To the offspring of barbarous ancestors
To bread, and roses too.

To the mischief that mollifies factions
To the buried hearts at Wounded Knee
To the tired, poor, and huddling masses
To the mystic chords of memory.

To sacred corn and purple mountains
Majesty not yet debased
To stalwart salmon running 
Legacies not yet erased. 

To the pursuit of something more than happiness
In these times that might be changing
To wrath and grapes and hard won solace
In these times that won’t stop raging. 

I pledge allegiance

To the fire next time 
To the seventh generation
To the dreams we still have
To the ramparts of creation.

***

Of Blood and Gourds

I sit, knees to chin 
contemplating my customs reentry card 
wondering whether to check the boxes that might betray 
my time among livestock and jungle shrubs.

These boxes ward against small organic stowaways 
that, if released, would recolonize the landscape.
(The irony endures.)
There is no box to check to ward against the ethereal stowaways I am harboring
stowaways of inception
that have already begun to colonize the flora of my spirit.

Maybe it’s best not to admit
this calabash gourd I’m carrying
the deepest resonator of a village gyil
was just doused with chicken blood last week
for a purification attended by baby goats and other wandering mammals, 
a purification meant to carry it all the way across the friendly skies 
and hallowed oceans 
(of a darker passage), 
a purification meant to prepare it 
for the accidental assaults 
of one who might try to use it to learn anew
how to listen. 

While the brains and the hands brokered a reluctant and troubled partnership,
the gyil burrowed hard into my humid skin.
A liminal tuning
An enjambment 
that claimed space in some of my deeper interstices. 

Akwaaba, obroni, back to the desert. 

As each buzzing whispering murmuring jangling calabash 
fills with cactus dust,
tiny ghosts of good intentions settle into the cracks. 
The hot fog of the Gold Coast 
abandons the gourds,
ascending elsewhere upon final descent.

***

Chiasmus

I take a swallow of infinity
And creep into the maze.

My memories are in heat.

They breed in the fingers
The solar plexus
The breath of symphonies
The taste of mist

The sound of sandalwood
The scent of song
The neural atlas
They brood in leaden skies.

Sometimes, they lie.

I crawl out of the void
And infinity takes a swallow of me.

***

Minarets

Sabah. (Dawn)

Wake up!
The adhan is impatient,
nudging the faithful out of another slumber
and into the brazen light of a new day. 
The dawn zephyr teases,
swirling from dome to dome,
writing calligraphy in the sky,
ghosting the margins of melodies
that hold something more than music. 

Rast. (Midday)

The tree of life climbs off of the carpet
and out of the carpet shop.
Roots snake their way through the earthy fibers,
creeping home, toward Konya,
lighting the path of pilgrimage
for mystics.
I drink apple tea
And trace the sefirot
With my fingers. 

Hicaz. (Afternoon)

Chestnuts roast on street corners,
lending a burnt, wintery contour
to the sultry summer breeze.
Holy cities and holy flight
beckon.

Segah.  (Sunset)

The late afternoon sulks, languid and slippery.
Crunchy fog seethes in the catacombs, 
while the adhan swirls through the subterranean channels 
in wisps.
The sun tips behind the bulbous ancient skyline
illuminating sebaceous straits
And fabled crossroads.

Ussak. (Last Light)

The cats of Üsküdar think they are auditioning for a sequel.
They wind their way through the benches littering the shoreline,
persistent creatures of shadow and mirth, vice and vanity.
Across the water, the Maiden’s Tower shimmers in the dying light.
The asp hides in the fruit,
waiting.

***

Wind Acknowledgement

The land acknowledgement enkindles
-for a moment- 
the soft grief and sharp cliches
of one more field, defiled.

Slippery earth, 
welcomed at last into self-actualization 
-for a moment- 
as a belated primary witness to her many grievances.

 But what of the air?

These winds have circled that earth
Defying entrapment. 
Denying debasement.
Delighting in suspended animation. 

I borrowed some of them 
-for a moment-
a catch-and-release metamorphosis.

Meanwhile,
Aeolus picked up a hitchhiking miroloi 
and scattered her about 
when he blew the winds back around again.

***