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Oh lucid, tangible dream … until last night, I’d forgotten what it was like to fly.  —  Literophanes

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disorder

in dry soil

if only a parable

fixed in four days

 ~

but over time

drought affronts me

screaming like wanton child

yelling for me to listen

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the more I hear

the deeper I dig

into the red soil of my psyche

to hide

 ~

but I fail to hide in dust

it only accentuates

my malnourished form

my imbalance

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so I can only climb

to the highest point

of my consciousness

and force my young self to listen

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listen

to the wind

to the silence

to the wisdom of droughts

 ~

of age telling me

to seek order in the present

and of rain that returns

only when I’m ready

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About the Poem: In 1914, Carl Jung began his entries in what would become Primus Novus: The Red Book – cited as one of the most important contributions to the study of psychology. This poem pays a simple homage to the 100-year anniversary of the inception of Jung’s introspective journal.

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we meet again each summer

always under the hottest sun

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each reencounter brings reminders:

smells of chocolate frosting from a cake on a picnic table,

squishy balloons filled with water,

colored plates and napkins where bees hovered

playing in the center of the universe for a day

when the sun shone highest

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and each thereafter incrementally less bright

though a little more centered

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each celebration now flutters in a late afternoon breeze

a breeze that relieves me from a humid youth

under lengthening shadows

it resuscitates the flame of a lone candle

reflecting not the passing years

but the next one anew

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in heightened instants

like the realization that the earth is moving

I see words

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not in my head

but in the air

on the ground

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whereas words emit images for most

images emit words for me

a sort of moving graffiti

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busy floats around an impatient driver

linear abuts a business building

lonely whirs past a BMW on the freeway

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summer attaches itself to leaves of a eucalyptus

caution drops from birds perched on light posts

momentary sits atop my breakfast

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though I saw words for as long as I can remember

I thought others could read the air like me

but no one else could see what I could

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there were words I didn’t know at the time

like commitment – there it hovered on a park bench

I thought others saw it too, but they couldn’t

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reading in school was laborious at best

twice the words jumped from pages

and no one who asked understood my meaning

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now most are logical associations

but there are other relationships that some would find strange

opaquely paired words and things

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mandamus with books of good fiction

butterscotch with playgrounds

pareidolia with churches

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I only see them at the right time

like fireflies, they flash but then are gone

only alive in synesthesia

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yet when I recall those objects and places and times

the words are absent from my memory

leaving only an afterglow

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though I escape the graffiti in my mind’s tunnels and shadows

I look in a mirror and words are everywhere

and I am always graffiti

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Never drink from a fountain at a dog park.  –   Literophanes

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returning to a vaguely familiar place
the smell of time resides in still air
though walls appear unmoved
the irregular space within is much smaller now
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each room lodged between two times
then and now; chipped layers of paint overlapping
revealing more than memories
within shifting walls
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cupboards
window panes
floors and doors
all worn as I touch the past
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my hand over an invisible chair
seeing a lamp not there
hearing the creak just above the living room
illusory substitutes for reality
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the vent in the floor
intake for dust of the past
keeps its stores in solitude
until the dead of eternal winter
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I depart again knowing no satisfaction
what was once home is only a shell
of lives no longer there
my once resolute faith now lingers in the intake
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more than the absence of then is now
the sense of a fleeting touch
of when
and of my somewhere
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days and rain; contemplating mild;

grasses underneath; decomposing brown;

sentiments in curbside streams; carrying discarded salty;

footsteps on pavement; seeing all uncovered;

tree buds; pushing optimistic;

geese overhead; bringing northern;

new ideas; promising days of longer;

fragments together; blending syntactical;

thought; thawing emerging;

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booms and sirens

calling a sleepy town to rise

the children are already awake

everyone else doesn’t mind the alarm

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the parade is today

the sun rises brighter

the wind blows lighter, warmer

because summer stops to rest

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the boy moves with an excitement

his parents wish he had for school

peeking through the screen door at other kids

popping with guns and snaps and caps

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he fears he’ll miss the parade

having to wait for everyone else

but rather than upset the morning plan

he paces quietly on the porch steps

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watching the oblivious

a cautious squirrel ascending a tree trunk

a robin bobbing in the grass

a busy anthill on a sidewalk crack

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after breakfast his father moves in the garage

his worried mother prepares her tote

bikes, sandwiches, blankets, ready

for the pilgrimage

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the boy listens for the go

among early blow horns

early firecrackers

early hissing of sparklers

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children, parents, grandparents

they fill the sidewalks

cars funnel down to the lakefront

no one rushes today except the children

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fathers and mothers reminisce

they’ve safely been there before

staking out a good curbside view

of recycled images of youth

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grandparents settle into lawn chairs

they too have been there before

many times more

having lost count of their good fortunes

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as the fire engines approach

the boy imagines his future

mother and father observe their present

grandparents preserve their past

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as the parade thief displays its subjects:

marching band, drill team, rotary float,

politician, veteran, sauerkraut queen,

it seduces the boy

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when the ritual is complete

and the tide reverses into remembrances

in the streets along the lakefront

mothers search for lost children

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while the parade thief steals the boy away

through summer

through the seasons

and beyond boyhood

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self-preservation is a memory game

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it is neither enough to remain content

nor to assuage change

survival requires action

supported by past experience

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i reassess my past

so my memories impart change

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i can’t capture the past

as it really happened

destabilized

it can only be contextualized

with new meaning and new intent

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i recall memories

not as they were

but as i think they were

in relation to a present purpose

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and in a present context

memory is held within a bias

of continuous knowledge

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so the same memory

a thousand days ago and now

yields two different results

tinted by experience

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the present is a continual re-contextualization

of every past action

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the unstable nature of my memory

turns every passing moment fictional

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it isn’t enough to acknowledge my fictional self

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the art of survival

is to exploit it

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just before sleep I hear the sound

of a foghorn in the distance

at a mid-octave pitch to mimic a mother’s song

the tone echoes in blue fog and winter ice

searching for a captive listener off-shore

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I dream the cold night air

where I see myself under a streetlight

where my breath carries into the vapors

until the foghorn catches it

and I breathe again into the damp air

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a sound

a breath

a sound

a breath

a kindred back-and-forth

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our conversation continues

enrapt in a thick fog of voices that lifts only at daybreak

when words reverberate into the waking distance

until clear skies render my breath transparent

and sunrise forces the foghorn into silence

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