The Interior Anterior

I found the way inwards

and it was unbelievably easy.

First, turn the knob sideways

and randomly walk in.

Upon entering, a sign warns:

Please evade the darkness.

Inside what is essentially an amorphic amphitheater (see link),

smelling faintly of old static,

is the oodling sound of ectoplasm dripping from the ceiling.

There is a diorama of Quigons

working a wheatfield for mere pennies.

Yet this is a facade:

in the blink of a fish, the scene reorganizes itself

into an iridescent peacock closing itself inside a briefcase.

I leave feeling as if taken aboard

a poor carnival ride.

A NETTLE BRANCH ENTERS THROUGH THE WINDOW

Note: I feel this translation flows better and keeps more in the spirit of the original

A NETTLE BRANCH ENTERS THROUGH THE WINDOW by Andre Breton (translated by John Adams)

The woman with the papered pose 

The golden tench of chimneys

Whose memory is made of a multitude of small watering troughs

For ships in the distance

And who laughs like a small piece of ember embedded in the snow

And who sees herself grow and diminish at night on accordion steps

The armor of herbs, the handle of the dagger's door

She who descends from the sequins of the sphinx 

She who puts wheels on the Danube's armchair

She for whom space and time tear apart in the evening when the watchman's eye flickers like an elf

Is not the prize in the battle my dreams wage?

Brittle bird

That nature stretches on telegraph wires in trances

And that capsizes on the great lake of its many songs

She is the double heart of the lost mural

Where the grasshoppers of blood cling, dragging along my mirrored appearance, my hands of fault lines

My caterpillar eyes, my hair of black whales 

of whale bones sealed in black sparkling wax

UNE BRANCHE D'ORTIE ENTRE PAR LA FENÊTRE by Andre Breton

La femme au corps de papier peint

La tanche rouge des cheminées

Dont la mémoire est faite d'une multitude de peris abreuvoirs

 Pour les navires au loin

Et qui rit comme un peu de braise qu'on aurait enchâssée dans la neige

Et qui se voit grandir et diminuer la nuit sur des pas d'accordéon

La cuirasse des herbes la poignée de la porte des poignards

Celle qui descend des paillettes du sphinx

Celle qui met des roulettes au fauteuil du Danube

Celle pour qui l'espace et le temps se déchirent le soir quand le veilleur de son œil vacille comme un elfe

N'est pas l'enjeu du combat que se livrent mes rêves Oiseau cassant

Que la nature tend sur les fils télégraphiques des transes

 Et qui chavire sur le grand lac de nombres de son chant 

Elle est le double cœur de la muraille perdue 

A laquelle s'agrippent les sauterelles du sang 

Qui traînent mon apparence de miroir mes mains faille

Mes yeux de chenilles mes cheveux de longues baleines noires

De baleines cachetées d'une cire étincelante

Cascade

Cascade

A mountain crumbles against sky.

A small leaf gently falters.

The gray fog passes by 

like dreams in sequence,

one by one.

The brave trees, the granite walls,

The rising Sun crashing into time; 

A morning in sorrow.

Altruistic shadows that creep sideways.

The sword of summer 

penetrating daylight.

The smallest thought

held like a seed

blossoming in the hand

like light or thunder.

Future Mirrors

 

Future Mirrors 

Cool are the winter cresses

In the oblique melancholy

A white statue crumbles into chalk

There is no more news today

Some final clippings were left hanging

On an old mottled clothes line

Listen to the silent doves

A grandfather clock is a bear ripping open

Doorways into infinitum

Listen to the silent doves

A grapefruit is a world turning in the hand 

As you catch your ghost-half retreating in mirrors

A violent monsoon writes poetry on shores

As letter openers cut into midnight

Unfurling the stagnant portal

Fate is always non-negotiable

Against the great magnetic oceans

Vibrant Rain

Windows that remember our faces

They let the cool air in 

With a sense of subliminal mystery

All the unseen chatter

Settles like dwindling rain

Long is the night

Still cool and fraught with envy

As shadows crawl back into bed

Skin glistens in restless moonlight 

Fingers move slowly as if clouds across sky

The anodized streets are impressionistic 

Unapproached for fear of them disappearing

Have you ever seen freedom? 

It may only exist inside of love

Fantasy is the unknown caller

Strident but ghost-like it moves 

Straight through the ether

When the rain is over 

Sleep comes with ease

In Feathers

 In Feathers

Weightless, our names are written in sky.

Invisible, love inhabits the clouds

—an arrangement of notes played over velvet laid mountains.

As uncommon words are dreamed into playful worlds becoming eternity's more subtle plans.

Unknowingly, our lives intertwine in loops and mazes, lost in incrystal configurations.

Where does a soul silently sleep? If it can be called alone, somewhere else in memory.

The night is an infinite diamond.

And you are the chrysalis in formation.

Dressed in only naked feathers.

When the Heart Dreams

The heart dreams on silver screens 

Lost in cotton days of youth 

Marbled tides emulsify in foamy whispers

And give way to granite feet

Into unmade beds we go head first

Thoughts a little electric like children 

Chandeliers play in winds

Like piano keys 

We drift through enchanted rains

And drive through fields of heaven's stars 

Where willows whip and flowers unfurl

Underneath the gentle truth of Spring

Like a Chrysalis in Time

 When convinced of one reality, 

Such that no other reality can take place...

That soft light, oh soft light, finds itself trapped 

Languishing amongst the leaves

She has passed that last corridor

Of forlorned memory

It isn't that hard to find beauty

In the simplest of things like love and truth

Give yourself wings

Fly into a new oblivion

The world is not all contained inside one slumbered eye

Just as you thought of cerulean whispers

Love lies caught like a chrysalis in time

But always somehow returns to that warm and familiar place

You make your own infinity or let it go  

Everything can be taken for granted

—innocent hearts, 

drowned like a waterfall,

or a seed left to grow 

 into rumbling silence. 

Make way for the inevitable revolution.

In the Latest Headlines

A bull stormed into the china shop

Leaving no piece unturned.

What was it seeking?

It never really said.

Rose petals were trampled and 

Love letters never read.

The ink had barely dried. 

At least that's what was stated 

in the op-ed. 

Infinity's Glass

As ages pass,

white frosts glaze our view.

Thunder rolls in the distance

—in shadows love lingers

while hate waits, poised.

Mountains are frozen statues,

eagles grip the sky with iron jaws,

veins pulse in the neck of giants.

A great fire blazes in silence

—and now the signal to be lost in chance,

shedding fear for hope,

soaring above clouds crystal engraved,

shattering into a million shards

of infinity’s glass.

Midnight Stroll

 I stroll the ancient streets at night and feel the echoes of old footsteps

My heart is like a strange ornament of love

My mind is more magnetically aligned toward the untouchable

As precious petals of love are unfolding at midnight

The stars shine on in rivers

There is a lake filled with rich jewels

I wade surreptitiously

There is a world within a world caught in a cloud

Where reality blends with make-believe

As I open my hand a vine extends upward

Touching the stars

There is a whisper in the streets

As I reach a dead end 

A vision is revealed to my third eye

With mystical pleasures

I realize I've been kept away from my dreams too long

And now I'm following my heart to reveal the secrets of shadows

The end game of the universe is to become like a flower unfurled.

I eventually disappear lost beneath the moonlight's infamy

Tiles on Sea

It was once said that

Blue is the color of ecstacy 

My dreams are full of the lush moss of trees 

The world is seemingly frail

With every touch it grows more purple

This vortex of self-consuming entropy

This menagerie of distorted mirrors

A female visage is blowing a soft breeze by the ocean

As the morning dreams itself awake

The seasons are meant to arrive like angels

Let the curtains unfurl themselves

As cotton as the nights

Like waves resembling tiles on the sea

I was never born

 The cardinal rule of existence is found in levity.

Are you cast from spirit or

from somewhere nameless?

Love is shone down in mirrors.

The grass is full of roses

where silence understands us all.

We're looking in the card catalog for answers

which evade us.

The willows sing enchanted songs.

Each vine is a psychedelic eye

on to which visions are ineffably born.

Heaven can you tell us a story?

It never seems to snow there.

The moths are untouched,

as white light circumscribes the landscape;

they're leaning towards flight or glory.

Do not speculate on that which has yet to pass.

Do not fear heights or immovable objects.

When your time comes sit as still as possible, as if

 you were never born.

We're always thinking of somewhere else;

we're all just waterfalls.

Archetypical Moonlight

A double Helix extends downward.

I am traveling through apocryphal time

just in order to find you,

through neolithic hallways of extinction.

The golden compass points North

into the great chasms of wealth.

Its stairs are prisms repeating themselves.

The stars in the sky are eyes.

I idolize the sky endlessly.

The rhythm of the wind informs us of the weather.

We are alienated by time

as if finality were a single destination.

I evaporate into dreams.

The milk of fountains inebriates

all the white trees.

A trail of tears 

drowns our countless lives.

The question is of emancipation.

Another dream 

springs up in nature

 divided by twilight.

Essence is the secret,

said the moonlight,

the magic of seekers.

Go and find the gold

in the petal of a sunflower,

in the arm of a sun,

in the center of the womb,

in the claws of terra.

The Through Night

It is in the through night

that slowly passes through itself

like an automatic memory

where we are permitted 

freedom to glide with myth

and undergo transformation

we are ageless

we are satellites

there is no Dharma

there is no final symphony

the night is a sorcerer

casting its spell

I stroke its hair

strand by strand

its lips pressed forward

in order to be kissed

there is a green emerald

in the beak of a bird

speeding downward

into the threshold of awareness

into limitless daylight

which gives birth to a sun

faraway forests relate to

some destiny yet to be revealed

there is an eye in the clouds

drunken on disbelief

there is a simile in the shadows

which familiarizes itself with love

every book is written into the stars

and those maps and coordinates which lead to

treasures are held there too

my gentle hand caresses the night again

a large opal cracks to reveal

its ants which race up the arm endlessly

I pull from my heart a single rose

and set it on the stone

interleaved fingers give way to a fertile sky

consciousness is

the emerald dream

surrounded by garlands

its rose colored horizon is sublime

into which the night is finally engulfed

It Seems

 It Seems

In the winter, love.

In the summer, fortune.

Hearts gather in laughter.

An immense tapestry

hangs the veil.

The flowers are our diamonds.

There in honey we wait,

anxious for the undressing

of ourselves to the clouds.

A little love is grabbed onto and kept

in its secret case

with a delicate hand.

With a little love

synapses grow

and reach out to opposite lands,

hungry,

where white radiance burns.

The sun sets down on something

it seems is important.

White lily,

you are far away.

Wide oceans,

the songs I've heard.

Point of Point

 If anyone is looking for life advice, I'm afraid this is as good as it gets from me. (I found this in my notebook from a few years ago).

"Point of Point"

I embrace solitude, if for no other reason than to test time. No the stars have not fallen. I shall no cry for nature unless nature's own tears have dried. There are no factual matters that can not be addressed matter-of-factly. Drive to the end of the street. Park your car and never return. If in the coming days you doubt your sanity, marry an heiress and donate her money to charity. Conversely, you may engage in intermarital affairs with plants if you see fit. If you ask me, everything is just rumor. I used to spend my time dreaming and now I am never awake.

Never hate and never take candy from strangers. Foolish friends make the best riddles. Seldom is the sky as deep as your eyes. Seldom is the rain as quiet as a lover.

For Sky

 For Sky

The seasons shift

an angry tempest rages against a shore

open shutters permit the sound of rain

there are roses on a well-traveled sidewalk

long silk curtains

are light blue and the sky is granite gray

the air is cold and now

the seagulls have flown

we will count the miles ahead

after the storm

but nothing splendid is forgotten

as you are reinvented once again

somewhere on the wind

somewhere beyond

the mirror and the sky

invisible but forever in the heart

On the outer edge

 on the outer edge there is a beam of light shining in on the shoreline

of the mind

its corridors are lined with concrete

and obsidian veins

there is a walkway leading to surgical rooms

where they work on flowers and the lilies are singing

there is eternity in the backyard

and it is just the right time for a frost

milk honey and saliva oozes from the trees

I stand small next to them

I stand hunted in the forest

where the black doves carol

I am grateful for the summer

for the exploding sky

for the riddle of every moment

and the daylight escaping our grasp

the air more rich than caviar

the tungsten sparkle on your lips

our bodies covered in delicate moss

a mariner giving his famous speech about navigating time

the stars kissing

and the lacquered faces as if on old postcards

because history is impenetrable except for in dreams

Aujourd'hui (2014)

Every day the sun falls
lost yet another time.
Small, medium, large
the size of dreams.
We are castaways
on a stolen yacht.
Every day the journey
moves on,
every word ever spoken
as permanent as steam
rising on an ocean
sometimes as lost as a ship
sunk at the bottom.
Islands take us
to your destinations.
Fragrances, we shall always
cherish your meanings.
Come as you are.
This world is igniting
beneath our feet.
Feel its hunger and its thirst.