the poetry of you

sweet subtle asyncopation, systole/diastole,
allegro, crescendo, fortissimo, sforzando!
īamb, anapest, amphíbrakhys, dáctylus

from the backwash, the undertow speaks
it’s slow murmur at the sky,
just before we crash low,

before we’re swept in by the next gale,
hurried by the western winds,
into the slow wet earth,

kept quiet by a passing whistle,
filled with so much of each other, bursting
with all we can share, praying

for any one good reason why, dreaming,
dreaming of what might come by for a while,
to listen in on your moves and meaning,

your height and depth and scope,
your sight, your might, and right to be seen,
your light, your honesty, your good work and word

two roses!

two roses! Blooming! 

on two sides of a fence, and,

climbing, the one leans over to the other,

in sweet sleep beneath the cool Spring night, curling up toward the sky:

Read with me tonight, dream with me its story again,

of how our unseen roots forever entangle as the days pass on

and, with the sunlight's pulling, together save that memory

that saturates the air and washes over the fresh red of our naked hearts with dew

all I want

I was blinded—she

was the last thing I remember

before I picked up this pen—

the moon waxing anew

sneaks past the horizon late tonight,

and the night chill hurries me home. 

(pack these words with warmth)

I know it comes

when it comes;

goes when it goes:

I retrace my steps,

look back and she's the first,

the first I see in this sea 

of anchors, gold made looks my way

when I don't know what I want to say

but know I want to it to be said—

she was the one,

she knew just the right word

yet had let me be the one, her poet—

and audience was everything just as fair,

attentive to her every movement and look—

"a woman's heart 

should be so lost in God,

that a man has to seek him 

to find her"–by I always forget who

except that it was written on her profile

and it's truth on my heart—

and so now I sing or write 

my heart out in whys and hows

everywhere and anywhere,

over every honest face—

though I was raised to lower my gaze

by my mother, and my father said:

"the first look is ok", the second

is the devil's I thought then

and think now to make sure

the first one really counts

but there was no giving into

her eyes, I was taken
I was born where I saw,

I saw my self a glow,

I saw a miracle and a blessing walking

I saw home honest to god—

there's a famous song 

from Egypt in the 60's,

Umm Kalthoum's enta 'omri (you are my life),

and I remember hearing the song one day;

"what I saw before my eyes saw you, 
my life at loss—

they'll count that against me—how!"

and I remember it,

the moment, driving, turnpike,

southbound sun in my eyes;

"you are my life whose morning

with your light began",

and I understood how language was,

why it works so much better

than we could ever know

and why she deserved the most of me

and even if I never saw her again deserves

postmodernity would never

have it any other way,

but she wouldn't at all,

us poets, leading the way,

or having something less

poetic to say, or more—

and how could I blame her

when she always got what she said wanted

but it wasn't birth

or a rebirth or worship or worse,

it was the crash of two 

star-crossed ideologies,

but before we ever knew of the names

that tear us apart;

we were made for each other

apart from each other, each our own,

for a purpose I told her vainly;

captured my moon in her track—

in Arabic we say ash-shamsu

wal-qamar (the sun and the moon)

and there's no marker for gender here, but

modern majorities regard them in

what becomes opposite to the Spanish:

el sol y la luna; masculine, then feminine,

default mode of description, then,

essentially inadequate description—

but I was hers and she was mine

and, so unfathomably there

"to not grab at water"

she would teach me,
it doesn't work, and

I remember it, and 

everything I can to help me—

she would remind me

to pray, but didn't, I guess

until she wished it all back

I think I would remember things

too much and she would forget them,

trained to cheat off each other—

or maybe heaven was a memory

and we love to forget 

to each remind the other,

with each touch and breath

I could do anything 

in those moments;

time didn't slow around her

I did it, I wanted it all—

in her eyes and in my mind's

each time I witnessed a world

explode into time and space:

a heart beat true

the sun rising

the moon circling

the tides ebbing

stars everywhere,

everything beating its beat—

until only all of me 

is worth it, worth the wait;

trusting in what must come,

not knowing how at all but certain

to the hollow of your bones,

no matter what else may—

the pale dawn's light 

looks like rain now, maybe not;

and there are green buds of a tree

I want to know the name of

and maybe I do, maybe I can remember 

remember everything

but it won't matter,

it won't matter what I know—

it's what we say, today—

I can stare into the sun still

carried

I sought a calmer wind,

a breeze that would blow me by,

comb through my hair;

leave me to linger through 

whirling leaf-buds passing;

complete my sentences

-he can't say what he's saying-

modernity - empiricism & empires

history - text & blood

conflict - if exists is one-sided

though this has only always

been the case, been

that we are the early spring's

leaf-buds around us in the breeze

easy chasing in gracious flight

the height of the day,

only until the squall settles,

and the dirt falls

and we tremble from inside

nearest thoughts

and with every moment
I must have asked myself:
to what or to whom do I owe
my greatest attentions,
and since prehistory men
start from scratch and dirt
and add great generalizations
over great generalizations
in feeble account for all that
was done and said and done—
and so, I can talk and walk,
learned to breathe without thought,
and sing and try to dance,
and be won and win—
in fact I'm so good, guessing,
the greater portion of me
thrives in a way I can't know
and I can't look where I am
going chasing after you,
my one and only conception,
my attentive rays of thought and light,
my thrifty shares of such stock
as finds the skies so endless
over the endless seas' distant murmur—
then, in me is every raindrop,
by my eyes fall each leaf; gust pulled,
and every sound weighed
as much as needs may be,
guessing at my chances for trade,
for something new now,
now that I am all here again
where an empire (of thought) strikes back?
and a force is with(in) you?
and something shines in the vastness—
something glimmers in the
mind without question

today I finally clean, and I think,

I think and I clean and I believe

that this is really how we tell time,

by our throwing things out—

not by clocks or beats or lyric

or the sun showering us in day. 

we breathe the same, in, out,

we move the same, to, from;

bleed, blink, speak and listen,

and we think the same, too,

thank the same, drink our love

the same, always the same:

in hope and fear, passion and wear,

in style and humors, look and stare,

in being and dying, image and air;

in moments shared and loneliness,

in hugs and kisses and forgetfulness,

in kind words, gestures and wastefulness. 

I have been reading of the panegyrics,

the praise poems of my people,

those men of courts and courtesy,

and I wonder if I've thrown them out,

along with the beloved and cherished,

or if I'm sifting through metaphorical trash. 

they would always seem to begin in loss,

followed by journeys and perseverance,

and endings in victory, pride, and eternity. 

is my loss become the immortal, then,

if I am not going to turn back time,

or resurrect the dead and restore names?—

I wouldn't throw myself away and believe it

as I saw the dust in the sunlight scattering,

as I rushed over blank pages in pen. 

when suddenly everything was worthy,

and I could give the song birds voice,

or make budding April sing to me. 

I just had to clean things up a little bit, 

filter out the noise and come to it,

the advancing moment ready to bloom 

where my own thoughts scatter, too, wavelike:

leaving me in every direction at war,

making me into my only light, pacified.

only connect

"it broke at the thought of..."— well that's good but metaphors are just tools; either they break down and your stuck but a little wiser, or they resolve and you know what happens next. "i believe they're the real thing"—oh no, my love, live; things only seem to work in other ways to give us clues but how else do you breathe each time, know when to pull, relax and fall

out of oblivion

a moon has since split—

o from love of you!

he makes his friends out of love

and his love out of friends;

they teach him well

on his way, on his way

where he meets all the people,

purple praying stars of their skies,

made golden by your gaze,

and warm by your touch. 

the scrutiny of the day

with even the sound of a pin's drop,

beg from the young and daring

their closest of readings

when man was worthy, enabled;

before they fall away—

then pull them a farther way,

make them into the horizon

till their focus stretches, shifts

into greater distances,

and we can see an orbit's decay. 

in the first place

fist/fast piss/pass haha but
do you see the bigger problem:
it's having to do with
too much information.
so we need a paradigm, a map:

the problem isn't making the connections—
that's a subjective process
we'll just call indeterministically determined—
but the objective work is figuring it all out,
what connections are possible at all.

wt...f

look at this: false/farse..
a "negative" meaning made
in a liminal, transitory mode,
and a regular, normalized register:.

f(s)/l ➡️ f(s)/r

and lol is not like
what rofl isn't;
it isn't symbolic
but it is.

for every image a sound ➡️ for every sound an image.

the universes of languages

and their systemic permutations,

like around a sun—growing roots!

every derived word like a moon;

circles the wayside of its celestial destiny 

in phases. through and through

while I am here, on my own two feet,

weaving through sidewalks and asphalt,

ready to sing my own golden hue,

hurrying the cherry blossoms: bloom,

undulate in the passing breeze,

and color my sights your surest pink. 

loquacious slumber

loquacious slumber,

I have no where else to go

without you—

he is wide-eyed 

at a sun rising

in the middle of a cloudy day

for as long as it takes until

all the light pouring through the irides

soaked his desperate looks in crystalled clarity. 

Bare branches aching for their green
under the silver of a cloudy April morning,
silhouette-like; I believe in the earth,
the shadows of her meanings
and silence of her light.

I sit quiet, too,
and something seeps, flows
out like a river carving my features,
the edge of my hand,
the lines of my lips,
the furrows of my brow.

Or, burrowing-through the air,
pinches and pokes the heavens
until the torrents fall
and make mud out from the mountains we would not climb.

in word and deed

shift computational load to sound 

such that prosody varies

to intensify meaning

and intensity varies

to form arguments and argumentation

but leave the poet only rely on feeling,

as though the winds only hold the secrets to the 'trees we speak,

and they soar through the night when no one's looking,

give us our breath throughout the day 

as we're made green and browned and brown and green with them.

until the beat is through

you can't ever think 

his words true and for you,

the poet; his aims are as puny as "him"

or they are made from everywhere around you.  

so make him yourself,

like a quantum particle here and there

all at once see both where he is and going,

honor the uncertainty principle, entangle the affairs. 

then you don't say he or the moment

or even direction—the intensity unlike speed

but a branching-out with all good intentions building;

unlike height, scope; strength, hope; power, faith; value, virtue. 

because nothing is unless something

isn't, right? a matter of falsifiability at heart,

the thing in question in twain, unimaginable otherwise—

all the poetry, the conversation, the nay and the yay, in loving duty. 

(and thinking itself, a metaphor—made for itself;

what ever actually happens, beyond (the) thought. 

compare the orange to the apple, we talk about fruits; 

the words to the world, peas in a pod please and say "perhaps", reflection is the real)

what does it mean that you ask ever?
that you make a request of (your) love?
is not life and death one coin tossed through this worldly air?;
so long as we are alive our love is,
so long as we can speak it true—
but how many walk this earth with sleepy heart?
and how many soar, shining bright—
so don't you know by now the poet's trick?
if he can tuck you in himself, safe and sound,
he'll wake you, too, with blazing light.

Still I can, I can

see it so well,

The image I cannot bind

to incomplete recollection;

Someone's to blame,

the one who steals all my attentions—

Professors, confessors

of such other worldly aims,

These horizons stretch so far

until the day is through,

And the length of our stay

determines our view—

So let me be the one, out on a limb 

farthest from the bough for you. 

breadcrumbs in the wind

the poetry of every moment is in the witness of its expulsion, the explosion of every pulse— every breathing thought made as like the whirlwind about each world of us, each life, each semblance of individuality under constant yellow sun— from moon to moon to moon and every long and shining star; so we assess the latter and forget the former, are free to smile along before we hear the song, and run on and over-eager to the reason we relish and savor; draw upon immediacy all the colors of hesitation because we know the feeling and feel the meaning turn love into a loop we walk in circles— so then we undress, and redress the issue, the matter of who we are; there cannot be a system exists, justly and truly described, by the elements of which it is comprised, or devised; there is no equation or rite of passage, no one-to-ones: there is simply the collective dive, the aim, the hunt, the retrieval; and the unconscious universe we've traversed.