Underwater, Still Breathing

 

 

There is an underground current

a noisy empty room

red drops hitting the oak floor

odor of damp wood

 

A stretch of breeze saturates

the morphing darkness

 

There is something simple

being whispered

something vague and sadly beautiful

 

We listen to the faint sound

of a mosquito

rising above our lovemaking

Bodies of reeds

arching with the current

 

I lift your thighs to my lips

the way a wine glass is lifted

to the deep warmth of a mouth

Your breathing swells

 

A chilled rain breaks

we float to the bottom

underwater

still breathing

trying to outlive death

Your sex in my mouth

is keeping us alive

 

When I resurface

the empty room is myself

A tipped over wine glass

bleeds across the floor

 

Yard Sale

 

 

There is a spy within me

tapped into suspicions

one eye zeroed in

round the clock

 

There is a ward

of smuggled wounds

convalescing in my notebooks

smudged so badly

that only I can decipher

the blood

 

I wake early

before family commotion starts

before the endless

mandible chatter

rips apart the silence

 

because my mind is groggy

standing before sunrise

because birds flutter

in such a manner

that my center loses grounding

 

 

My eyes are sky

pulled away from my brain

morning fog clogs my head

I am an old basement

damp and dripping

 

Maybe a yard sale is in order

to rid myself these shabby feelings

these ragged doubts

 

 

 

 

Today’s High Temperature

 

 

I threw flour into the snow

as if to say

this is white and this is white

only, one is more sickly

A yellow line crosses winter’s face

 

Fever is an atmosphere

as if to imply

the power lines are covered

with ice

heavily coated, frozen blood

diverting heat

to a small fist in the gut

 

First the ice breaks into fire

in the same way

the future breaks into war

The body’s earth fractured 

as though to move the enemy  

into the open

 

Then the mind is discolored

with bruises, voices

flushed out of graves

the heart stripped

 

In time, a clear weather front

moves in

a pale swamp of calm, breath

becomes fertile

only to say

I have given birth to spring

my mind buoyant in sleepy rain

my body in cool stillness

 

Runaway

 

In downtown Santa Cruz

a tribe of runaway youths

drift along the uniformed streets

or sit in doorways, injured pigeons

wingless and grounded

 

A few of beg while others

exist as tongue-tied bandages

on emotional wounds

They stare with the frosted glaze

of winter’s windows

on broken down homes

hopeless and filthy

 

Runaways make their way

from mornings to evenings

and back to mornings

connected to one another

like seconds to minutes

and each moment’s lost time

will never be retrieved

 

Some are provocative beggars

shouting derogatory insults

as if entitled

to a hardworking persons cash

Others accept their poverty

in silence

as if their blood is polluted with it

 

A teenage girl

in ripped, shabby clothes

sits cross-legged

head to her knees

hands over her face

dirty brown hair knotted, clumped

She exists as a dry well

 

A beaten and bruised boy

of fourteen

assorted purple scars

across his impassive face

chain smokes used butts

he picks from the sidewalks

 

The Alpha male

a gruff tattooed boy

in his mid-teens

throws dice against a wall

while speaking gibberish

to his younger crew

all the while catcalling

at women passing by

His explosive arrogance

as unapproachable as a landmine

 

and each hour these children grow older

in their derailed lives

grow older against the unspeakable

of what made them run

Psychoplastice

 

Everything never happens. Nothing

forever, uncertain, anxious wisdom,

idols, icons, Infinite Poet.

 

Every mystery is free, is distraction

is necessity. Tomorrow begins

a blank New Year.

I am ready.

I think I'm ready.

 

So many mind spurs, kicks

and blows, footsteps

of words, heels of words

toes of words. Soul. Nonsense.

Enter

 

there, full center

ah, star-ashes spawning life,

unnameable, unknowable, unwritable.

 

I repeat, everything never happens,

it is true, it is not true, Seers, Prophets

Demigods. Choose a belief,

for example, everything chooses itself.

 

Across earth, droves of unrest,

disordered, unsettled. The future’s

jammed thoughts, brazen, agitated,

defiant, full thoughts with thrust,

bounty and punishment.

Big seeds of ego.

 

There is no truth that is not corrupt   

in a psychoplastice world,

in the muddled meaning of being.

Perhaps true, perhaps not. All-in-all

it worships and moralizes

 

O slippage of truth, half-truth, false truth,

plugged into nothing.

Ah such gratifying relief. Nothing.

So unassuming … nothing.

 

 

 

Sound

The spirituality of sound
of a gong
of a loon
the impossible grieving
of morning doves 
the cracking of ice
the drone of urban streets
trucks rumbling
over wooden bridges 
a cat’s purr

There’s a need to hold sound
to feel its pulsation
to see colors of sounds 
or to hear the sun mounting
the sky or
the bloodless and wicked 
sound of lightning

Ah, the overflowing tapestry
of sounds
with their invisible force
or the unconscious sounds 
of the dead
diffused and distant
or the meandering of echoes 

the broadcast, the transmission
the longwinded sermons  
the cry of newborns 
the utterance, the announcement
a city’s cacophony, the uproar
the dissonant chord
the rhetoric of schizophrenics 
or Purple Passages of Deep Purple
psychedelic or progressive sounds

Om, a sound of guidance
the chant, the mantra, the moan 
of orgasms, the gasp, the scream
the subtleness of a whisper

Dah Helmer