'georgia' - (december 2008)

I went to the shoreline
and planted my foot in the sea
waiting to witness
how my toes would turn to roots
in the salt water
and my outstretched hand
would blur into a canopy

but the breakers on rock-shores-
the rounding of pebbles and stones-
spoke to me
like a whisper of bark
falling from arbutus trees
saying I have no place
among the land-makers
among their rock-breaking waves

but roots deepen, ensnare
and the rustle of feet
across new-minted sand
says that the waves
are just as untested,
unwelcome,
here on the shoreline
the in-between land
of their advances, retreats

in my ebb from the shore
back to the land-ocean
the sea laughs
at my notions of equivalence
as I retreat to the line
of less adventurous pines
the greedy waves suck away
at all hints of my passage
desperate
in keeping their no-man's-land
while
the crack of rock-sand
keeps us both at bay

'ontophony' - (january 2009)

When I first heard you
you moaned
in a great quiet,
and your tremors floated,
flung distant, free,
on the wings of sparrows
awakening with the dawn.

When we first came to speak
I laughed
at the ease of your words
sliding through my nerves,
coursing down through bone
and blood,
flying down, bursting through skin
burying themselves
in the cackling of keys
or the low chuckle
of pen across paper.

When you first moved
I swayed
my arms spread wide on the wind
splayed
against the push of your breath
I stiffened
and twisted
yearning to feel your force
and bend my bow
to drink deep your current
and travel far on your song.

But my arms
fragile sticks
were useless to tame your wind
and broke, useless
your voice a distant drum
carrying an echo of sound
miles across the ocean
but no longer could I respond
to your rhythm-
my head, sunk,
confounded,
released the memory of your shadow
to the whisper of water
hissing under the keel.

But the currents,
clueless, careless
gravid with possibility
looked alive
with the stumbling fire
of my clumsy land-bound lips
shot through with saline,
and were at once
known
and unknowable
ancient as my newborn heart,
and all at once
in a great fire
were a chorus
poised on the edge of a melody.

The plying of waves
shot patterns
and rhythm
tesselations!
whispers of tone!
and your voice,
audibly unheard,
singing in its
great quiet
music-
the tune of my being.

'imperceptibility of fear' - (june 2008)

you jump,
fly
and a scattering of shadow
breaks a line
into a tangent
falling under your feet
we collapse together into the sky

and I am
unascertainable,
a thought
buried
behind eyes of uncertainty

you recoil
to the imperceptible
the unknown

but
you know me-
a machine
toiling at alien tasks
impossibly unknowable-

you know me-
a giant
lumbering down shadowy roads
watching dimensions collapse to lines-

fearful
that we have a uniform task
you jump.
and we,
impossibly alien together,
watch the breaking of lines
into shadows
unknown
falling under our feet

'block' (december 2008)

when I try to commit you to lines
and a series of images
your nature is revealed to me-
unnatural.

the attempt at bringing you
into the focus
of phrase, rhyme, verse and foot
defies my terms
and you are left unbound

how I dream of claiming you
breaking your shape
down into words
the verses purging you
into a form reconcilable
with its formation
a paradox
perfectly fitting in its imperfection

'immeasure for measure' (november 2008)

you can tell that we're weighted
differently
and that the tip-points
of the scale
shift
as we dance back and forth
brushing along its beam

what happens when we fall together?
pulled into a mutual well
a pit of gravity
deepening

when the balance shifts
we can collapse together
into orbit

so beautiful it is to decay into each other
the winding down
of an imbalanced balance-act -
a tilting of the scales
to knock away our parity.
two equal to one.

'original syntax' (september 2008)

when I fell, I crashed hard
through layers of verbiage
and contortions of phrases
until I landed on the ground
formed

moulded, a form shapes
through the assumption of utterances
locked in ancient unfolding repetition
until a new permutation is called on
to unfold

my legacy was told in the falling
from the universal
down to the rude necessity of happening
the tipping over the edge spawns
the original syntax
that seals untold tellings
from the catharsis of losing namelessness

Adam would be proud
every last subatom named
and the space in between
left void, excised of meaningful emptiness

'fiant verba' (september 2008)

ultimately, you are best
left undescribed
by my ancient philologue tongue:

a collision of sounds
shapes the colour of texture
and a smell wakening senses
to the tangible tastes
of lightwaves

I can feel you on my mind.
a blistering undefined
potential
freedom

I dare not suppose these secrets to myself
and reduce the confusion of inputs
to the bleakly two dimensional-
the things others have said before

something new
altogether unanticipated
eradicating in its presense
the old order of syntax

your allure, ancestral
a call heard over the aeons
always testing.
a call for a response

so how do I treat you?
as a wound left open
to be filled with the clumsiness
of centuries of stumbling phrases?

an aphasia
the lack of the right striking point
as I hammer out your shape in my mind

I have no way to tell of you
your patterns unknown to a lexicon
mired in a past that never knew
your name

I have nothing to say of you-
not for beauty, wit or heart
for you are a new thing
unknown
but

my mouth will open
and the dust of millions
will shake from my voice,
attempting.
fiant verba