Month: March 2019

Our Silences

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For S

“The moment exists only in silence…” – Søren Kierkegaard

I like our silences,
        those shared moments
transcending the hungry gaze,
that float into
a simple but absolute attention.

I like it when we're quiet
        because then, when
our eyes meet & I see you seeing me,
I can believe
        in the existence
        of what you see.

Your silence is still & speaks to me
like star-light speaks of intense heat:
defined by perspective & proximity,
        a secret
revealing in concealment,
traversing immense distance
to bring colour,
                warmth
                    & life.

In silence, as in soil,
slow roots grow strong,
& the dilation of every second
        endures beyond
the depraved authority of time; we
cease to be a complex pattern
woven from
          a fabric of neurons
& electrostatic dreaming,          
to become

something more,
something I am only sure exists when
we twist together between & beneath
        each other,
sharing our body heat,
giving the prayer of our attention &
seeing beyond the iris reflection,
to where it lays waiting

        in the silence.

* Attention and Will – Simone Weil

Lost Futures

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For S

Today gave me a vision
of what could have been; I saw
between all the mistakes
I’ve made,
there in your home where
you & your children live:

an echo of
hauntology;
the lost future that could have been
if only

life had treated us differently,
if only

we’d received

what we really wanted.

King Panic

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With so many questions lacking answers
& too many others
lacking comfort,
as days slip past us
faster & faster:

once again King Panic* wins.

Thin layer of foil beneath the skin**,
& as if in a dream
wind contributes to the scene:

the rain hard & wild against the window,
& the Sun fleeing the grey sky
as tired eyes
shrink from the fading light.

Sullen shudders of self-awareness &
the contemplation
of desperate measures.

Sensing this, the
tachhyonic voltage between us
prompts you to ask:

“What’s wrong?”
& though
I fail to convey it to you
through speech,
language is not all that we need
for us both to believe
that the other understands:

the calm of your hand against my neck
slowly
returns me,
& the questions no longer matter:

without an answer
there can be no question to begin with.

* Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams – Sylvia Plath
** Leaving the Atocha Station – Ben Lerner

The Days Flow Away…

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The days flow away & through me;
body submerged completely
in the river,
                where the light bends
& quivers
bringing with it
                a vision,
a form of seeing
beyond deceiving perception,
                & choosing
not just appearance,
                but essence:

                the nothingness
which only seems to have being.

                & as such
is not so much a nothingness
as the presence of an absence:

that which lives in me is only a dream.

The tragedy lies only in what I
cannot describe:

the rest is a beautiful,
        hideous
                mess.

The rest
                
            is life.

The Self

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“We possess nothing in this world […] except the power to say ‘I’.
That is what we have to give to God – in other words, to destroy.
There is absolutely no free act which it is given us to accomplish
– only the destruction of the ‘I’.” – Simone Weil

Our concrete existence
must suffer; though it gives pleasure
the flesh decays,
the mind feels pain
           & must endure
thoughts that crawl like worms through the dirt
        of the mind,

to where the “I” resides
rejecting transience,
    insisting
on a permanence
that could only become
an affliction without hope
    of redemption.
       
Everything of value,
    without exception,
doesn’t derive from the “I” but arrives
outside,
    as a gift
            in the form of
                        pure & perfect attention.

The “I” knows it cannot live alone, but
it relents
to temptation & attempts
to see you suffer,

which is really only a hand trying to cover
a mouth that wants to ask:

        “Why don’t you forsake me?”

So
to destroy the “I” we must release it;
allowing
        the evanescence
            of instinct
to detach itself & so accept death
        as a gentle friend,
wanting only to welcome us
at the end that comes to catch us
        as we fall.

We should destroy the “I”
so that we can leave behind deception,
& search for something different
despite the desperation.