A poem from the larger collection, An Autumn for Kora Mao.
September 16, 2017
Lake Chad Café, Seattle’s Central District, with Charles Green and Jim O’Halloran
Yes, this brain’s a tide of bonds,
infinite handshakes graceful in stillness.
Imagine the image of us as one gasp.
Imagination as one long grasp.
Grabbing single birds by independent wings.
Much time toppling a stack of fruit,
hearing the piping retort of action
and a jump and a jargon played.
Take that lotus smote of magic,
take this set of rampant lilies.
The crossroads of gentle and gentry,
the full cycle of the uprooted center.
Centrism upon freshness is sweet.
There’s a funk in the street.
Who’s here for it? Who’s here?
Me near, me there? You? You?
Chutes and ladders and roots
and the inevitability of severing.
Staying together while we all sever.
It’s that last line of the amelioration.
It’s the world on fire and people dancing.
Edge of the lips and optimism as angry.
Violence at the edge of the world before
the tipping motion to a crown,
singular cavity to hold us all,
and I keep thinking out loud
and that old slap on the back,
talk to self is a mouth
and an engulfing of hair
in this smoky yet aerial landscape.
Remembering vistas and veritas
and the mangled attitudes of the road,
and the killed don’t stay for long,
the gore acknowledged then passed, gone.
It’s the eruption of blinking
through the consolidated memory
rapidly piecing together a rearing,
rapidly becoming the peering.
It’s stupidly present,
changing the way you look at it all.
Before the challenge of a yawn,
and the rapture of a release,
we get the presence we deserve.
And it blinks like opened pores.
Shaped like a scythely mind.
It’s stupidly present, it’s genuine,
this genocide, an ultra-alert,
like the posture of a brilliant violet,
which assumes the form of tea,
and balances our forms of stone.
And then we get wettened,
and our stone skins darken
and smell like sweet rain fallen.
What stays is what rises.
The lungs and heart and future
accelerating and rallied.
The Cuban sits with his back to the wall,
a grin showing this music hasn’t stopped.