Age
When William T. Vollmann (in the book, The Atlas) mentioned the lover removing his lady's blouse and holding it outside the train in the rain and she, with inverted nipples, like raspberries, laughing, the writer heard Fauré's Cantique de Jean Racine by the New College, Oxford Choir as recorded on the CD Agnus Dei and he listened to the passing cars on the freeway and noticed the sunlight coming in the bay windows and how his mother had aged and that his father's death 27 years ago was seen as a freak accident of physiological elements going haywire. It was his mother's frailty, which finally seemed to be correlating to something that might be valid as he watched her hold her side when she walked in the black outfit in summer or called to him from across the street as if she'd been saved. He realized the shortness of time. He paid no attention to it otherwise. He had lost his hair or realized his dreams began to disappear when he first noticed that there were varying degrees of intelligence and his ideas and poems were not the masterpieces he had read and loved. He was left with the fear that everything he meant was like an old man's blathering and the cup was half-empty. He reasoned that he was lucky simply to hear the cars and to realize this was life's meaning and that perhaps he would never love again.
Molokai Alii
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At 12:30 PM,
Glenn and I are partially under a
Terminal's green ceiling, on the tarmac
Against a prone concrete
Column.
Aluminum and cloth
Tots repose, like appareled
Robots knapsacks for our
Clothes.
Horizoning solar in an albinist
Manner permeates auburn
Mannequins.
In the periphery, these censuring locals, openmouthed,
Appall our
Prevailing.
Within moments
The elses
Those I have never
Met
Dismount mobile metal
Boxes, with respectable hellos and clinging between
Hands is anxious sweat.
To the scale, we carry bag
Brooms,
"What's its weight?"
Desperate for
Word on the
Heaviest.
Planting packs in tin foil
Wings, while shifting to and fro, is the pilot's
Head.
Culminating, edge-wise in the
Wind, the plane evokes a galvanizing
Reliance. Below, a gray
Urn
Or navy ship nudges an oil-painted
Sea.
Molokai is a
Pancake, green with a
Cliff long around its red-dirt
Line.
Landing twists, discomposes and preserves on asphalt
Shores.
The overcast sky weeps on cosmetic
Cases. Waiting for bags, pidgin
Dialect complains to a
Pilot: "Wait!"
At One Alii
Beach, radiant rain glides above inhabitants
Ejaculating iron
Crescents clear stage onto
Rods. Meanwhile, there is a
Conference basement of a
Palm. In what direction, to
Set camp?
Lisa and I are at the
Fence. Introspective. Horseshoe comes closer, both
Eyes at us, discerning with a
Voice -
"You may play if you like."
The green
Bottle in his
Hand. The man is shirtless, nut brown, with breast-black
Moss on his
Chest, and
Nipples bare
Purple.
Daring declension,
Lisa sparkles delicately,
"Encampment."
"Please return, if
You like."
L'allegro, I am.
Shouldering cement down again on the other
Side of this dead calm
Pond and to a distance where
Horseshoes clang gingerly.
I cut coconut. Scooping and resilient
Tissue touches our lips.
Meanwhile, the
Party impels to the
Beach and tepees leap under a hale-koa
Tree.
We make our kitchen on a
Table beach-close, about twenty-five
Yards from the aspired
Canopies, fronting a barbecue
Pit. Above the
Grill, aquamarine is
Still by the draining
Tide. Pronged lava and a decomposed
Shore form the vista.
Decided against the initial
Landing, walking on a
Beach, passing a stagnant
Pond of grass and algae, and on the other
Side is the poignant
Tranquility of a glassy
Cove and stones at the
Waterline. Here is the reverential
Setting as I learn. Refined
Radiance this fixation meets
Beauty in people, beauty in place.
Leaving canvases behind in
Boots, stroking leg-wise toward an encompassing
Trough of silvery
Blue, I hear the "snap, crackle, and pop" of a porous
Bottom cry as the
Current pulls the
Water, or hermit
Crabs breathe. Either way,
Majesty burps with
Indifference.
Fish pond
Remains jut away and back.
Footpads, black crush delicate coral
Holes. Running, I get my
Camera and in excitement of this perfect
Place
I point
Capturing the interlocking
Texture and color while emotion entrancing
Lines leave.
Man altered not,
Rocks by the ocean's
Gathering arrange in seasonal
Plans. Objects fall perfectly
In-squared. Catching them easily, are my barbarous
Tools and unnoticing, peaceful
Reflections and beach emptiness
Ignore.
Mother nature's inanimates not knowing
Me, here I
Ripe.
Kissing toward a
Rock innocently, like childhood
Whispers my thank yous form. In acceptance of wishes to
Cherish
Visions like this, I love earth
Women -
Musky.
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Scott joins me on this
Lake of rock and goo,
We, of similar hearts, equally
Pulled. The art within
Sounds and we consider: hearing clamorous
Hermits poke arms in
Pictures. Like night
Crickets
Animals compel cadence in falling
Sunlight. Making last focus, click, the
Sun ducks behind a swamp
Hedge, fluorescent green in intertwined
Brush - water-filled and cactus
Webs. Crushing for the
Perfect
Scene while
Spiders climb into my
Galoshes. Bent, tapped and the shutter
Closes.
Sea turns back, where
I stand amid prolific notions. Nothing is aware of my
Purring
Heart over-taking the primordial
Sullenness. I hear
Friends fix dinner, while
I partake of earth's endearing
Edifications. Soul foods lay in ancient
Rock. I feel cool air and comfortably remember locals
Without blame. Wanting to lay down in gravel smooth
Mire and listen to minute
Voices still: resistantly
I think of mud. I hear physical and spiritual
Persona quake in bliss, notwithstanding everyone but
Me for dinner by a sea.
Tableside, oil-covered
Hands skewer
Vegetables:
Eggplant, tomatoes, onions, mushrooms and Indian-
Seasoned
Chicken lay on an open
Grill, smoking. Kiawe
Tobacco sizzles. My
Face, with fogging glasses stares into
Steam. Nosing scent, burning hens and herbage oil-
Dressed, among my first-time friends, I deem this
Heaven. Bread and moist
Fowl; wine in "blackberry," "green olive" and "currant"
Sublimity washes over
Tongues. Romano
Cheese I sprinkle atop shish
Kebobs; such are the
Specks in potatoes-brown
Salad.
After dinner, in
Darkness, I blast into a Halloween
Mattress, competition orange. While, lantern-lit
Faces, shadows in the fuming
Distance purl
Laughter my way; jokes,
I do not understand disappear.
Strolling bathroom-bound, as land
Crickets
Scrape, and
Frogs
Jump across my
Path. And feeling like
Calluses, are these
Rocks in the
Dark.
I bathroom
Hunt in centipede-thought.
Undressed in a square
Room, heads spray translucence. I am
Frozen-standing, in algin
Embitterment and anxiety with
Stars on my eyelids -
Fireflies.
Privation is thermal, encasing. Gripping
Sounds, and fearing the
Future, where
Misery has no
Pleasures. This is
Inclemency.
At spate-end, I see scintillating
Beams on twinkling
Sand. Crossing beaches are silhouetting hands. While
Legs-long
Shadows pass through palms, and tolerating lint
Ground, or weeds in a
Hump by a flatulent
Pool, I dash to
Tents as
Flashlights dim.