STEREOSCOPY

She takes pleasure in listening to me,

she says, and I conspire with my silence

to confront my own pleasure,

to rob the world of it and put it away

in the safe of that memory of mine:

a little café in clearest distinction

from all its surroundings, finely atmosphered

in its tasteful integrity of time,

our holiest of places for no reason

in my imagination’s fluttering heart.

That way she can’t escape, one way or another.

Either she’s bound in my words

or she’s kept in the breath of my remembrance.

OVERCOME

How true it is, how true it is

it is so hard to grasp:

how the spheres of experience intertwine with maturing knowledge

in multiplying my feeling identities

by the inevitablenesses of understanding.

How true it is and how gigantic

in its every way,

that only flowers can bear its weight,

the flowers of simplicity and humbleness,

also the breathing of love and music.

OBSERVED IN NATURE

After the death of youth

and the alignment with time

there is not even time to remember

the countless loopholes that have comprised my castle of deception,

not even time to flirt with disaster.

And the integrity of the soul feels like an ironic coincidence,

puffed up by indifference and aftertaste,

waiting hopelessly to happen or not.

I so much wish I had an unsinkable ship

immersed in an oceanic yearning spinning along with the universe.

NIGHT SHIFT

I ate late.

Then, I had to work.

I did half of it-

I got sleepy, too early.

I lay in bed, read, couldn’t sleep,

because of my stomach,

perhaps.

It never pays to change the subject.

So I went downstairs, to shave, watch tv.

I went out, peed in the wind,

watched the night sky,

felt like a question mark,

then an exclamation point.

I ate again,

counting on the stomach pill I had taken,

the cola I would enjoy.

Another reincarnation of loneliness.

The day strikes back,

again and again,

so do the years,

like unsolved mysteries.

INVISIBILITY

A couple of months ago we were searching for a house,

and in each other we found a home for our search.

Furniture and decoration followed your lead and mine,

pushed by a trust invested with confidence.

Looking now in our mirror, I see tomorrow

as a forceful secret lying underneath your smile,

being a building block of my revelling in faith.

Your look’s invisibility resembles a projector’s light beam-

it’s reaching for some dream of fleeting moments

on a screen of anticipation and outright resourcefulness.

I AM NOT PHONEY

Full of ghosts, I besiege a city of ghosts-

a transcendental epic of timelessness in dissonant intervals.

Listening to the dying echo of our world

is plunging me into abyssal vacantness,

week after week, desolate shore after desolate shore.

Musing over your impregnable helplessness,

I’m left in love with your broken mirror

beside the extinguished fire of our hearth.

HUNG UP ON SOMEONE ELSE

How do I explain a dream?

It’s out-of-placeness and out-of-timeness,

all garnished with familiarity.

It’s frankness and eloquence,

all powered by deception.

Suppose I venture an analysis,

take it apart, break it down, decode it.

It’s still solidities colliding in midair,

and I am striving to take cover

under some conspicuous cloud of consciousness.

What if I get rid of my sense of correctness?

Then at least I travel lighter

and much more impressionable,

which the dream’s mysterious self finds intriguing enough

to lure me

with an even more unexplainable hint of lack of self.