Monthly Archives: October 2011

somniat 9: through the alcove iii

_somniat ix (through the alcove 3)
I barely breathe
as I move through a cloud
of menthol-scented cigarette exhalation;
I can feel their lurking eyes
on the back of my head
scintillating probes that scan me
with such deep acuity
I can feel their edge
like a comb through my brain
each tooth snagging on forgotten tangles.

Off-key laughter pauses
when I’m halfway
between here and there;
I want to freeze and melt
all at once
but I know that if I do
they’ll catch me,
and they’ll ask me questions
for which I have no answers.

So I breath in
their used up smoke
and make my way,
one step in front of the other,
past them, all the way
to the men’s room door;
I grasp its rusted handle
and pull when I should have pushed;
my face flushes, hot,
and I hold my breath;
there’s a burgeoning laughter
but it dies before it starts;
somewhere elsewhere
there is a snap,
a subdued pop;
something, I don’t know what, has happened;
something has changed,
and it’s not me;
one by one they move off
toward this budding unfamiliarity
until one and all
they’re gone.

I ease up,
and finally exhale,
and this time –
at the door,
I push.

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    somniat 8: through the alcove ii

    somniat viii — throught alcove 2

    Mohawks,
    spiked waves,
    waterfalls of hair
    bleached into the darker shades
    of stormy rainbow;
    eclectic clothes
    out of tune with any season
    or any time,
    ramshackle and hodgepodge
    with black folds from which emerge
    lots of of metal, especially chains
    and crowning it all
    rough black leather
    patched here and there –
    the final touch,
    boots that chink and jostle
    and spikes that threaten:
    their flesh is all ghostly white,
    pale zombies
    with lurid painted eyes
    that animate at stale jokes
    and flat punch lines;
    they laugh
    and look over at me.

    Compunction, degradation, mortification
    or maybe it’s just collective guilt
    from some ancient and lost source;
    I don’t know,
    but either way
    I’ve got to go
    for nature calls
    and she won’t be resisted;
    this means,
    I need to go by them.

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      voices viii

      Five poems I read and liked, a line from each, usually from the top …

      Pilgrim of Life
      “When I hear people rave …”

      in-sunity
      “shadows and light reveal …”

      without artifice
      “spills out from her eyes …”

      Old Man Gutter
      “As long as I can remember he is sweeping the gutters.”

      The Clown on the Plane
      “they didn’t search him …”

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        somniat 7: through the alcove i

        somniat vii — throught alcove 1

        Between here and there
        there is exactly
        one
        infinity.

        Off from the central food court
        where the theater above exits
        there is a spacious and long alcove,
        a wide area of dust and disrepair
        where piles of ceiling,
        that leave gaping holes above,
        still lay fresh as the day they fell
        and long nailed up plywood prevents entry
        into plush, though decayed, double doors
        that once lead to a diminutive casino
        where the faux rich used to wrestle
        with erotically shaped one armed bandits.

        With the exception of the restrooms
        the entire area has been cordoned off
        with caution tape that’s been torn more than once
        and now just lays there, on the ground,
        pitying itself.

        The area is a favorite of the new crowd,
        hooligans, delinquents,
        the maladjusted and the malcontent;
        they have begun to move in
        and are gradually edging out the students
        who still bravely man the central area
        of these forgotten subterranean urban hollows;
        these new youth, who travel only in groups,
        are best left alone
        for exactly how far they’ll go
        and what exactly they’ll do
        has not yet been tested.

        So most the students
        leave the rest rooms alone,
        but with my new found freedom
        and with excruciating need
        this is where I wander to
        when waiting
        is no longer an option.

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          voices vii

          Five poems I liked, with one line from each … read them.

          Reflections
          “A pale anchorite halts …”

          Bike ride after the storm
          “I hear the rush and babble of water …”

          Ammo
          “Tears begin to fall …”

          Moonlight
          “bonfire sparks of light …”

          Last Embrace
          “And when we see each other …”

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            somniat 6: the mountain

            2011 10 12 somniat vi the mountain

            Before the first primate ever thumped his chest
            and issued a grunt to show his supremacy over the world;
            and before the first Neanderthal ever pounded out a flint knife
            and stabbed it into his quarry to show that he was the master;
            the mountain was here.

            Before the first farmer accidentally strew out
            the first seeds, only to his surprise,
            to watch them grow into something edible
            that he didn’t have chase after or rummage about for;
            before the first raiders forged their bronze swords
            and swept down on the planter
            to turn his world upside down;
            the mountain stood tall, snow peaked,
            and unperturbed.

            Before the first empire of cold steel rose
            and crumbled;
            and before the first great pyramid
            or great wall
            or majestic palace
            or cheap hotel;
            here was the mountain,
            calm, collected, composed,
            shaking off humans
            as if they were fleas.

            There was a time when man paid homage to the mountain
            and built up at its base a small town;
            the priests of the town seeing the magic in the mountain
            would climb its sheer sides
            and here and there,
            they built shrines to natural spirits
            as they would stumble upon them;
            sacred spots
            that only the sensitive could see;
            but that town was burned to the ground
            during some lost and forgotten, ill-intended war,
            and the shrines were abandoned
            to snow and to reason
            until only their foundations remained
            lost somewhere amid the evergreens.

            Then, perhaps by chance
            or not,
            industrialists, looking for a place
            where they could crisscross their tracks
            chose the nearby valley
            to build large stations
            for powerful new steam locomotives;
            and so again, the people came;
            and this time a city was born
            that over the decades eventually spilled out from its center
            until it reached all the way to the base of the mountain
            where as if to mark the moment
            a tall, contemporary hotel was built,
            and even as this hotel spiraled upward,
            a hollow twisted construction,
            below it was built a vast structure
            complete with a subway station,
            a shopping promenade,
            a cinema for moving pictures,
            and a deep subterranean food court
            for the future jet set,
            the beau monde;
            tourists and artists came
            not only from the city
            but from places farther off
            that not everyone had heard of
            so as they could stay at the hotel
            and go on pilgrimage up the mountain
            searching for the old shrines
            and hoping for an illumination
            that had been lost
            under the bright veneer
            of modern day reason.

            Yet rumors grew;
            they always do;
            and more and more people began to say
            that phantoms lurked
            down where they had dug too deep under the hotel
            and when the sun seeped behind the mountain
            the shadows grew too long, they said,
            and the trees shivered in an unnatural way
            while strange sounds could heard –
            wild, primitive calls mixed in
            with the laughter of a young girl
            both from a past now gone
            but trying to reassert itself;
            yet perhaps it was none of this
            that caused the area’s demise
            for it was the economy that finally blew
            a squelching slow motion pop
            that left even the opulent
            wanting
            and found the city slowly seeping off
            slouching away from the mountain
            which as always remained
            impassive and unimpressed.

            The subway station was closed
            in the hopes of keeping out the rift-raft;
            the hotel was put on life support via government subsidies
            and yearly fundraisers that took in less each year;
            the promenade is now manned by a skeleton crew
            and the food court is empty of business –
            only open as a curiosity
            for students who come to study
            from the nearby and underfunded university;
            more and more
            calls now come to shut down the area all together
            as youth gangs show more and more interest
            in hanging out among the faded imagery
            of the faux modern
            perhaps seeing something in it
            of themselves.

            This is where I am
            as I put one steady foot in front of the other
            and slip past eyes that carry real weights;
            laser beams that would pierce and destroy me
            should they only take aim.

            But I’m out of bounds
            among the columns and shades
            past the dripping puddle
            past the clicking of the calculators
            searching for another beat
            no more page flipping for me
            I am free
            somewhere deep
            under the mountain.

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              somniat 5: the change

              somniat v

              The change,
              the moment,
              the sudden inspiration,
              is it on the inside?

              Or a change
              in the currents –
              a subtle adjustment in the tides
              of time
              a quickening or a slowing
              that yields to me
              and shows me
              the way?

              Whatever it is
              the path is there;
              a moment when I feel so sure
              that none will see me
              that I slip up
              and out of my chair
              and go off center
              away from the tables
              and toward the formica coated columns
              where shadows snake
              under flickering fluorescents
              that threaten to give out
              at any moment.

              With my heart
              thundering in my chest
              I move;
              in fact, I float,
              thrilled
              to have actually done it;
              just one steady foot
              in front of the other,
              and one more time again
              until I am there
              almost in the shadows
              and soon to be
              behind the columns
              and unseen
              in the out beyond;
              where I’ll just be
              another ghost;
              and this one
              with glasses.

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                somniat 4: fear

                somniat iv

                I’ve got to wait
                until the way is clear
                until there’s no one near
                and no one watching,
                but they always come
                as they always go
                and the presence
                of that person
                on my right
                or on my left
                is just the thing
                that stops me
                and I’ve yet to have seen the way
                forward
                without the odium that comes
                from just being seen;
                in front of me
                or in back of me –
                who could possibly care
                where I go
                or what I do?

                But yet I know
                and I fear
                they do observe
                and they do so discern.

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                  somniat 3: numbers

                  somniat iii

                  I sit among divested souls
                  as they page through
                  other people’s dreams
                  and punch out numbers on calculators
                  forever trying to catch the rhythm
                  of water that unevenly falls
                  from a stained spot
                  on the crusty ceiling above us
                  pitter-patter into a puddle
                  some where off to the left.

                  Drip drop
                  tap tap
                  drip drop
                  tap tap
                  drippy drop drop
                  tappity tap tap
                  drip drop
                  tap cliiiick

                  I’ve got to go.

                  I’m tired of pulp
                  and untested numbers;
                  shrip, shrip, shrip.

                  In their own mind
                  they are a hero
                  in a colored panel,
                  but that reality
                  is frozen in time;
                  it’s someone else’s story
                  to blot out their own
                  and it’s shame.

                  Physical need
                  as taboo
                  leading to
                  forbidden things
                  you know nothing of.

                  I’ve got to go,
                  but as of yet,
                  I’m too afraid to stand.

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                    somniat 2: in shadows

                    somniat ii

                    Under the city, even deeper
                    than where the underground drainpipes run,
                    beneath a subway station
                    where the trains don’t come anymore
                    and where no one’s yet bothered to tell anyone
                    the place is closed,
                    go home,

                    there is a small food court
                    that once because of its depth
                    used to catch the imagination
                    of the modern and the contemporary
                    but now is a lost place
                    where those who come to sit
                    no longer remember
                    the way out.

                    Eternally dissolving ghosts
                    move about in shadows
                    blending in with
                    walls and columns of sparkling formica
                    that must have all been but the rage
                    in some forgotten decade, last century
                    before cell phones
                    and PCs that fit in your bag.

                    This is where I sit
                    in the center of this food court
                    looking out at art deco
                    hideously cheap –
                    an artificial, superficial, base and simple veneer
                    of the lowest common denominator –
                    yet over the years
                    as it has fallen into disrepair
                    and the colors have unevenly faded
                    as unwashed stains accumulate,
                    a strange thing has happened;
                    for among the dim lights
                    there is now the hint of a kind of personality
                    that only belongs to the old
                    and the decayed.

                    We are all male here,
                    flickering through comic books
                    with calculators in pockets,
                    horn-rimmed glasses,
                    plaid shirts,
                    hair slicked back
                    and pallid empty faces –
                    all of us subtly tense,
                    expectant, afraid;
                    we all hear it
                    though none us acknowledge it;
                    the laugh of a young girl
                    that freezes us in our chairs
                    terrified
                    that change might be real
                    and it just might be calling
                    to one of us.

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