“Though I go to him constantly

on the paths of dreams,

never resting my feet,

in the real world

it doesn’t equal a single glance.”

— ONO NO KOMACHI

… And what is left of us is passed.

There is little to do but negotiate grim options,

The dull utility of mere existence.

O To never awaken;

Away to a nunnery in the clouds

Cloistered in dream committed sleep,

Where you still may stir.

I hear voices:

Heart stragglers venting,

Pillow Words tumbling.

Brief utterances spoken as memory’s voice,

The voice of the absent you.

My median mouth,

My channeling tongue,

Owned saboteurs betraying the passion.

I end as I must, deep in my own language

Sounding simply as myself. An imitation cannot

Hold your sacred evocation.

Dreams are a dull second to first person fire.

I wake just at the threshold of sensation…

Wallow in the meager residue of you.

Can little dead places sustain life?

There is no substitute for love, for you.

Shut my eyes. Shut my world.

Inside the Mask

Whispers inside the mask

Resonate like cathedral bells,

Full-bodied, rounded,

Iron-throated bongs

Vibrating the visceral strands.

Deafness is required to fool

The unnamed plots there,

Devised and thickened deep

Within the well where murmurs

And shouts all sound the same.

The same old same-old,

The tell tale face that rings a bell

In the pupil’s cracked lens.

Wolf! Wolf! Go tell it on the mountain

But never inside the mask.

The web is known before you weave it.

Experience hears but hardly believes

That anxious audience of one, and a

Haughty pose struck for the mirror’s

Sake feels much like cheating at solitaire.

Truth can be hard to swallow,

But one can acquire a taste for its

Sometimes gritty finish, or so I

Whisper to myself when no one

Is listening inside the mask.

<<< l >>>

SENTINEL POETRY (ONLINE) #31, JUNE 2005. ISSN 1479-425X