Monday, July 27, 2015

the asking




let us allow
a voluptuous shift in perspective
if only for a moment
from unrepentant rebellion
into quiet enchantment
in between
the tensions of duress and release

let us summon
new directions in tousled fragments
unverifiable pieces of tender disclosures
of words still in abeyance
waiting, fragrant

let us taste
the discontinued merging
with hesitant tongue, the keykeeper
of unopened doors

let us release
the furrowed brow
bridges of our persistence

let us fill
the silence


let us

Monday, May 26, 2014

Toward synchronicity




An arch of light unravels the morning of the day, beginning aquamarine, ending golden. Somehow the dust I threaten to dissolve into is compressed by Earth’s gravity and held together by the moist vitality of inexhaustible eros, trusting in the knowledge of the body, however cruel, knowing the vital force of refuge that the morning brings, softly.

These are my fictions. A poetic crossover into philosophical theory requires a leap, a suspension of framing, something to do with courage to surrender to the chance, to recognize the beauty of each moment, of gestures, of sounds, of words floated to the surface. As a practice, a lived emergence of subjectivity into a continuum that is perhaps informed by theoretical notions, but flows out of (is situated in) the body’s gestures, a carnal motility, a carnal imperative. In writing I take the lead from the process already underway, inside, underneath, where I am knotted up in the intensity of this gestation, of words not ready to emerge yet, but forming slowly, cell by cell, vertebrae by vertebrae, bone by bone, hair and eyelashes, little bodies, swelling under the skin.

A soft inflection of a word that turns into a desiring body makes me divulge the text in seeking, a cunning deluding deluge, a brush with eternity, a blind anticipation.. No matter what we do, what event, what moment, there are always many layers, many parts participating in the orchestration of identity that evolves across thresholds, in time passing. It is never just one thing, there are multiple layers of affects, dispositions and postures, but there is a possibility of that synchronous moment when all the parts of body/time/space synchronize in temporal approach and flow for a moment, in pure duration, a moment of surrender, when the boundaries dissolve, resolve. 

The moment when, with Rilke’s Elegies in hand, I open myself up to be tasted by the world’s tongue.

A sultred space.

Friday, May 2, 2014

The Pebbled Path



Life
site specific
not a geography 
just a moment that grabs a soft heart
the heart that leaves us breathless at the ease
of life.

And the moment
summons toward the golden delight
safely shelters
from fragmentation
from shattering
along a pebbled path 
of a disappearing woman.

Where does a woman disappear to?
Would a moth that flies
about the head
dust the eyes with shadowy powder
so they cannot see
that you are not there, not here?

And this is the moment
the only one
when I can say this
precisely
waves roll over and the air 
so lusty and full
as I skip along the pebbled path to the sea.




Thursday, April 3, 2014

Necessary Departures



here
I stand in slow motion
at the fringe of a gap
between
the graceful frailty
and the delicious moment that
reminds me of you
in a gesture of another
tousled in the softness of time

now
the future still oblivious to my arrival
in a slow unhinging of memory
I meet your gaze in passing

I do not move bravely
but courage is required
for a bold traversing across the mists
veiled promontories
sudden turns
daring leaps
fierce heart

this
uncrossing of paths
is a parting gift to my history
even as I am leaving it behind

Saturday, February 22, 2014

writing: an act of philosophy


Writing is a solitary act. The text, an audience of self, an endless bending, folding back on itself, transfers experience between the writer and the written. I knead, mold myself in the process, no catharsis, only now and then a collision…writing has become a second nature, second only to the movement which comes first, that which motivates. A momentum that wounds up the loosely unraveled threads of time and space translates between the self and the text, from language to visceral action, effortlessly, naturally. A dominant forging of what was there, collecting, fermenting, breathing shapes, re-shaping, exhaling and taking in again. Not predictable, but almost certain.

It begins as a kind of swelling, slow, but urgent pulse of mounting energy. Somewhere at the core of the body, the somatic energy traverses spherically throughout a torso, a steady pulse that leads to a threshold where I surrender to the moment just ahead, the moment of not yet. The duration itself is part of the body and its movement. Both time and the body surrender the calculated intentionality to the impetus in being-ness, this-ness itself. Time takes on another texture. It softens, slows, gives up the linearity of measurable flow, carries, caresses the body, swells into the fringes of the sensate.

The immediacy, lived experience of narrative inquiry, the somatic imperative and what it brings to philosophy, cannot be found in calculating, analytical academic expository treatises, which pay more attention, the formulaic structure and particular vocabulary that is established within the academic field of philosophy. To recognize the transience of duration requires letting go of this apprehension of consciously looking toward the next moment, pre-conceiving, infantilizing the future before it has a chance to unfold in the time’s ravenous summoning.

The fullness of the lived, vital moment of touch, of contact, coincides with
the moment of surrender, the moment of release into the swelling of the
corporeal sensibility, where, Alphonso Lingis agrees, “a sensuality of life exposes itself to the elements, enjoying its exposure”.

This surrender to the summoning, this moment of contact is multidirectional, reciprocal, it is a simultaneous offering and craving, it gives and takes, it combines, unites, the moment of approach and opening up to the other who, as the self, both summons and surrenders. There are many sensibilities and tangibles that motivate the poetics of the flesh. But amidst multilayered affects, dispositions and durations, there is the possibility of that synchronous moment when all the parts of the body, time and space, coalesce and mingle in a temporal approach and flow for an instant, in pure duration. Silent language, the tongue-less ventriloquist of senses that softly distort the plotline of method.

Each moment, I am similar, but never the same.  Not layered, but loosened, bits that move apart and join back together for a brief contact, and then float asunder in a pulse of the movement that crosses the boundary of skin. The time and the writer synchronize, articulate, couple, tangle in tousled fragmentation, a fragrant, ebullient, tumid accord, a chord, an arpeggio, made of pieces, being infinity. Each moment ornates in a delightful confusion. Each moment a child of duration.

And my flesh, it is not a surface, it is meat in a bowl, a moist summoning. My pencil becomes a supple lance between my fingers and I hurl it into this moment. Something dislodges and begins to travel. Small clusters stirring. These are my thoughts clasped together by the fingerprints left in my hair.


Sunday, November 17, 2013

unbidden




words
spill out the mouth
the unbidden mists
veiled un-truths
half-verities

for one moment
I am whole
but it is not me

some other woman
echoes through the hollow openings
gaping wide between truth and trust

instead an embrace
I plunge into silent darkness
cold arms close over me
and I am stolen
pirated

time's bewitched cargo

Saturday, October 5, 2013

What If?



If I were

swallowed
      by your gaze
drenched
      by your touch
marked
      by your teeth
      ever so lightly
danced
      in the rhythm of your step
exhaled
      like the thin smoky reed
      of your breath
thrilled
      at the precipice of your voice
dangled
      by a silver string that
      slowly
            unravels
                        from your tongue

If I were

embossed
     by the imprint
     of your surrender

would I
become whole?

Sunday, September 29, 2013

breaking through a writer's block



such is the unmasking
of lapse around my heart
as if pieces were cut away
carefully, unheard of abolition

that even the most insolent of intruders
those clumsy sentences that 
throw into the manifest emptiness
roll back at me in surprised futility

such is the space that opens
divides the flesh around
the proffering silence
as if a mute votive
extinguished itself in that
gathering of stillness

until, as if hallucinated
a slow release
hesitant seizing
flash of expression
with monosyllabic strokes
of gentle labials and dislocated sibilants
something close to dazzlement
draws a first breath within

Monday, July 29, 2013

Truth and Trust


waking softly
I am filled with light
and a sudden investigation
offers a moment of precise knowing
hauntingly brief

the aching presence of time
swallows my bones
and I soften, open my heart
that painful morsel of truth

that I am not an instrument of your happiness
nor are you of mine

and I am staying
not running away
I am staying
in truth
in uncertain unleashing
of the next opening
my soul ajar
to the new, uncolored
still folded
in my pocket

a love letter you have yet to send

Wednesday, June 19, 2013

Much Ado About Everything


Let us slip in, secret-letter-like
until leg touches leg
time passes but not through us
our predictable discontinuities merge, unbidden
we hold, like a promise
a breath hardly taken
inhaled in small increments
time holds not its own duration
but all there is

and you
let me muffle your first yawn
without any further ado
I am hungry
don’t protest
it is my imperative this morning
a poetic catharsis and primal pleasure

there is no music
only murky morning light
syncopated by random fits of my breath
I am chaos
but intent
on a riotous unhinging
a bowdy defrocking
of anything resembling propriety

the moment you divine
spills me from the edges
and with much ado
we gather in a sumptuous dissolving