The Image I've Always Been (Rap/Spoken Word)

Actually,
I breath fire through my mastery.
Has to be
more to me
than what other's see -
than what I believe.

Frantically,
I go along with new hyotheses,
create mind scapes to counter these
memories,
building like brick on scafolding
until plunge breaks restless ease
and easy beliefs.

Breathlessly,
I live out submersed reality,
swimming above tyranny
of past, future needs.
I got a grip on water litling
like the image of always been.

A Hole in Heaven

Self-help is a joke.

What we have are strings

that align our wishes with what we do

and don't do. How long can we keep

the tension? Escape from histories stored

in the contours of your pupil, cling to the monolith

of your imagined power. No contentness

in action.

You hold on to yourself as if you were alive.

You give away yourself as if you were dead.

Stand away from what you have been told,

learned, given. Step back and you dissolve

with what has been counted: past, present, future.

What oneness do you hear there?

When you are

nothing, mystery becomes

your being.

Don't tell anyone

who you are.

They can never understand.

They want

to be something. 

Origin

The irrational file cabinet
of memory shakes
when I meditate
on an undefined truth.
Labels search
for a meaning,
a reference that is existence.
It could have been still
with knowing. But desires cling
to words, a scent, sounds of rushing
that clamor in the dark of attainment.

You

A word about to be spoken
ends in its weight
as a drifting river
to a space that drops
its shadow, or as a pendant
that swings in the listener's eyes,
alive with want and disbelief.

Before the poem is written,
there is a stillness of winter branches
like a runner leaping over a hurdle,
when the obstacle and you don't matter.
When the feet touch the dirt, you know
yourself as your history and images awaken
in contact of where gravity delivered
you through the illusion of motion.
Like a child you were unaware of the points
of infinity that split your presence in divits,
where the assumption of wholeness separated
from its believing, and lowerd its glare of ignorance

You have been here as long as you.
Don't worry about moving.
There will be a time when the guide of a clock
is set to its opposite. It will be only time
until there will be no beginning. Go back
and you will forget who you are. And when
you are born, try to remember what was before.

Telling Stories

If I had a brother, I would name him.
Combing his hair would feel like giving,
though his reflection couldn't be seen in the mirror.
Relishing in our disagreements, I would want to talk
less to people. On a public bus, we would sit together
and speak nonsense - not those dialogues that want
to be important. I would tell him about a stone
I saw in Idaho that was perfectly yellow.
He would tell me how he got caught in a blackberry bush
while walking on beach train tracks.
We would open our eyes wide
and never remember our names.

Our Persistence of Waking

Our Persistence of Waking

Sleep is a dream,
believing we can find solace
in surrendering our persistence
of waking, though our eyes never close
in the dark of our memory
and desire for a different name.

When we rise
we are the same 
as the illusion of yesterday -
sitting in the chair
where we always contemplate
the air of morning.

If I Could Not Speak

If I Could Not Speak

If I could not speak,
I would hear my garden
stall in its hum of insects
and the wind giving a voice
to rhododendron leaves.

How my breath would scathe
the inner corridors of my lungs and throat,
and the new air
mixing with what it was seconds earlier.

The thoughts that plead
for manifestation when silence
is like a shadow
under a sun-lit window.

And then I would call
the names that are lost in speech
from the recesses of my memory,
hearing each one as a story.

I would grow tired
of meaning, losing my sense
of knowing - walking
out in the garden singing
without a sound.

I Heard a Conversation

I Heard a Conversation

I heard a conversation in a language
I couldn't understand, circling in it sounds
like spices being stirred in tea,
its aroma fixating my memory on scenes
I haven't seen, as if a dream had been speaking
to me in a low-lit room, the voice rustling
the speckled, ebony cloth above.

I could have been a stranger
to the infallible words
spoken to a mother, but I know
my ignorance too well
to be fooled by meaning.

At Last

At Last

I have children
waiting in you.
This time, when the cherry blossoms
fall, we meditate like a name
remembering its sound.

We wake up for a day
without a list,
walking the streets for a piece
of our face that can't be
seen in mirrors.

One moment, you are born
with memories
lighter than wind,
and a future
as frail as blossoms.

When It Happens (rough draft)

When It Happens

The wind arises
when we don't think.

Our memories are shards
of glass, overcome
by meadow's dew,
the petals' fragrance
suspended over our reflection.

What I could be
is more than enough.
I am standing over
watches that have worked
out of time.

I have lost the moment -
I am everywhere.

A Day at Sand Point

A Day at Sand Point

I was born with a red traffic light
set outside the hospital window.
Ambling the crosswalk
was a lanky high-runger with curly hair,
his mustache itching from an unknown cause.
A small brigade of crows
had latched on to electric wires,
where the frigid morning wind tossed
their unassuming, straw-like limbs.

I had no time to be in blankets.
From another life, a hole had been blown
in my heart - the doctor's requested that I stay
with their knife and operation lights
until I forgot the hand of my mother.

Thoughts

Thoughts

Sometimes they are ringing
incisions, when to listen to them
you believe you have spoken.

They could be crooked-mouthed birds
singing without melody, hanging from a tree
far away, strained from your dispassion.

Maybe clotted rodents by the door
whose fear prevents the will
of their feet to intervene our silent joys.

Or rushes that split the wind
though the air continues like colors
mixed by its opposite tone.

But before they have penetrated us
and we believe their stories,
they are flits in a still air

ruled by an unnamable fixture
that was once named by our birth
and bound to what we were to become.