Poetry allows one to create an astounding impression with just a few brief strokes of the (metaphorical) pen. Apart from my feeble attempts below, this section is divided into English and Spanish language sections; the Spanish poems may be without translation, so beware!

Gravity

Out from the throng he appeared, nameless,
like some poor supplicant in a concrete cathedral,
open-mouthed and shunned by all the eyes.

I wanted desperately to close the gap in
his face; it had all the familiar touchstones
of death in it, quiet and weary and

utterly resigned. There remained but one or two
paces, the slightest movement, and then the bony
grin, without an outcry from the missing tongue,

would creep out from his dusty countenance. It seemed
he was destined to sift down, reluctantly dirtying
the unswept floor. Still, I wished to hold his hand, or

whisper words of hope, some gentle prayer to
raise the dimming eyes. Yet it was not my place --
no, not my place. I wondered, 

in that wordless guilt that comes often,
who would answer for this crime? I only
sighed, my judgement blindly indicting 

Gravity; a force unyielding, universal, uncontrolled.
Indeed, we all imagine so; what sad,
too-earnest soul could bear the blame?

Even now, he does not chide; at last he is
dissolving, despite the question reaching
from his lips like a single hand outstretched.
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Meditation on a Neolithic Tomb

Great granite hands entice us to come close.
We peer inside through cracks within their heft;
amused, they let our eyes dance through their host.

Two cunning fair-skinned girls leap from a cleft.
With soft archaic lilt, they weave a net
which bears us down in bands both soft and deft

Though we resist. The maidens draw us yet
into the past, to chambers deep within;
but fear by older knowledge is offset.

The sun's thin trace illuminates the din
of ancient scrawls addressed in future tense,
ofttimes with breathless questions posed therein

To gods. The air is still and darkly dense
beneath an Eden; here, where we have lain,
for nigh five thousand years, before and hence.

A young gull cries outside the pagan fane
which warms the soul, and takes it far from fear
with wistful sea breeze on the verdant plain,

Making amends. To leave now costs us dear,
although we wished it. We know all must fall
from mortal bonds, and waste in realms austere.

Yet, truly, had we ever lived at all,
ere we had ventured into that dark place
and come out, shining, by the world enthralled?

We do not die, but rest in stony grace.
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Sunrise

we'll wake gingerly steeping in dawn
which seeming rose in fingers
we shall see it just in the way that it was meant (some say
without design though we know the truth of the matter far
better from our vantage point whence everything
seems much clearer) for intent and nature are both beautiful 
to be truthful I would not prefer any other way though perhaps
it admits of a slight change in that the sun is not distant
at least not upon our eyes
and then like every day we've fallen in the sea again
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The City

I tread upon your slow, breathing sidewalks,
searching for my way among the multitude;
I cannot see you, but I know your face.

The clarion calls of car horns draw me close.
A beat pulses up from beneath your surface;
my feet get caught in your intoxicating rhythm.

So tempting it seems to remain concealed;
hiding in this ocean of anonymity, continually
enmeshed in the silence of steel and concrete.

Faintly in the sky, the tracery of machines;
a network of pipes connects to your core;
within, a lotus brimming with nectar
drips down liquid metal vitality.

And all of us lean in towards you,
listening to the secrets falling from those
delicious asphalt lips.
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The Grandmother and Sappho

Somewhere in the central blur of continents,
above a vast lake, I have lovingly carried you
for eons, Grandmother; together without knowing,
within a lustrous seashell.

I took you down to shore, and sat nearby, in hope of
hearing wisdom from your venerated lips; even an
imitation of the source, some timely thought to tell
before the waters claimed you.

You only said how tired you had become, and the breeze
with sudden coldness came between us. I'll leave a while,
walking to caves with emerald tongues jutting,
hoping to pass within their darkness.

Yet we must not fear rebirth, so I come back. And now you sleep, or
sit with eyelids motionless and dim, dreaming perhaps the
triumphs of an independent spirit.
Then, I wished to have known you,

In some halcyon youth that, if it had been, warranted
memory. This passed, but the sun stayed fixed, 
stubbornly declaring that its thoughts, like your own,
could not be changed.

So went a stark verse at the water's edge, by one
dry as parchment, though you knew her not;
in female strength foretelling our world's ways
within her many sensuous refrains.
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This room

A door that opens with a gentle touch;
the slightest glance inside consumes the scholar,
and stuns all with the glamor of its charms.

It is a place so perfect in its craft,
if one but rests an ear against its side
the heart's thin walls would cave in with resounding.

Housing heaven's spheres in fair display,
refulgent with a candle's recollection.
The evening's spent reciting from a text

that brims of thoughts attended by their echoes
improving with the passing years, like wine; 
a one-way conversation that drifts lovingly.

Its theme may be a topic of dispute,
some holy incantation, or
a poet singing like the breath of moons.

While submerged thus in wonder,
peer upwards in awe, and see
our small inconstant stars of silent hue.

Without pause, break through ceilings, atmospheres,
to know the truth and grasp at nothingness;
rush forth to greet the heralds of infinity

and fall back, sated, assured,
enchanted by the spaces that unfold themselves;
walk bound for home, in steps which pause and slow.
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Unpoem

For each sorrow, I must write an unpoem.

Its eloquent emptiness
fills the cracks in ceilings,
spreads between the bullet holes,
envelops spaces in doorways
to which children cling;
all easily, as if its
thin fabric could cover the shivering bodies
draping them in softness and forgetting.

Yet it has no being! The viscera are absent;
it's a plastic magnolia, invertebrate, cloying,
powerless. Here is some fairy-tale to distract ghosts,
to halt the flood with a levy in the mind.

Even so, with my heart I will send it
into the breach, my insubstantial soldier,
giving the command to swallow bravely the
terrible atomic constellations, to
unmake shadows that were etched onto concrete
in the fatal milliseconds,
rushing to cure
with generous implosion --

Thus all the peaceful die.

Still, in the strange accounting
of the aftermath, there remains a soft sound:
the ceaseless murmur of what might have been.
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You, Beloved

You, beloved,
you of the many guises and the enrapturing eyes,
you whom I have never met,
grant me some token that I may know you,
or give me leave to stop,
to no longer seek out
your softer kind of madness.

I wrote always of your skin,
sometimes alabaster,
sometimes purest obsidian,
your ambivalent complexion,
your face smooth, or smile-creased,
a stream of opalescent hair,
the part of your lips just so.

I wrote of your beautiful thoughts,
of your contradicting sentiments.
(For they too were beautiful,
turbulently so,
like the drifting peaks of a midsummer storm.)

I spilled out your diamantine harmonies
with my inept fingers, caressing notes
to fill out shape, line, articulation,
yet always the melody was elsewhere,
somewhere I could not find.

I confess,
I admired, dearest, your curves,
but most of all,
your matrilineal strength,
to bear injustice and life's weight alike,
shrugging both off,
as unencumbered suddenly, your shoulders rose
and fell with gentle breathing.

I sang, too, of love's infinite expanse,
of the heart's bounty,
of an invitation.
Yet it was not enough.
The reply never came.

Was it you who walked by,
as I wrote you this poem?

I could not say.
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E-mail: vokuro@adelphia.net
Last Modified: 2005/06/27