on a tide of time

I’m so conscious of the evanescence of experience, so conscious of the fact that everything we do, everybody we know, is carried along on a tide of time and will disappear, that I have a strong sense of wanting to pin experience down before it disappears.

Frank Auerbach

nothing can be pinned down, though~

and the whitest of orchids

no matter how  - and the whitest of orchids is ashen cloud against my glow -
no matter how warm, how bright, how pure -
i have failed. one always fails. i have asked, just once, just this time, for a different law: that i might be allowed to cross the bridge. that the radiance of what i am, the entire constellation of what is called, i suppose, "myself", could reach you at the other end, fill you like a beam of light. you, shattered with recognition, my orchid thrusting its roots into you, growing out of your mouth. the only possible path for what is, and cannot be any other way.

no. the truth of a person cannot be lifted, as one would lift a piece of luggage before a hasty departure, cannot be transferred and placed into another, to grow there, quietly, like a seed. one flower, and only one, carried within, inscribed into itself, from the beginning. the truth of the seed cannot be broken, cannot be warped into anything else. yet no matter how i hurry to reach your arms, the one who looks at me from there, invented by you, grins back, her face an ugly, pitiful mask.

there is nothing more treacherous than bridges. they give one hope, one ardently takes one step after another only to find oneself, at some point, suspended above the abyss and the other waving welcome, just one more step and i will catch you, i will hold you, beloved, unaware that the defilement is already at work, in each word, in each gesture, that the fall into time has already begun.

shadows of things are not things

shadows of things are not things.

these silvery buds of smooth delight
that i gently brush against my skin:
they are called, you know, neko-yanagi
in japanese, a language which, by drawing things
instead of pinning down their shadows,
keeps both the cat and the willow alive.

the cat is the key, then.
balancing on the rope
tightly wrapped around my ankles,
its fur aglow, all loveliness.
it reminds me of a cat
i once saw in vilnius.
it is still crossing the street, even now,
while you brush the image away,
with, i think, what could be called a smile:

photographs of things are not things.












the rose, oh the once flawless rose
lies there now, beheaded.
it is just one of those metaphors,
you think yet again, refusing to see
the thin red line widening upon my neck,
throwing no shadow, as it were.











..