Ceiling Skirt Sky

Without meaning to betray you,
I have lifted your skirt
to the ceiling
and in this renewed sky
set my sun and moon and exhaled
three castles of clouds. Your pockets
will be good houses
for the gods, birds and perhaps
the occasional airplane. We cannot deny
the truth of how we are used
beyond even our absolute
imagination. With this thought,
I see you rearrange
all the carefully placed assemblies
to justify a smile--unfathomable
before in your eyes of shock,
when your head was haloed
by your glowing petticoat
backlit by the bulb. But now
you need no art to shine
beyond your impossible nudity.


by jerry gordon

Leaving Nothing More

I take your face
into my hands,
a sheet of glass as
big as the world beyond us,
and draw it softly to me,
as though I'm going
to breathe life and every stone
of history into your lips.

It is that
terrifying and photogenic.

You do not change
your expression. Your eyes
never shifting away from the way
you watch water.
But I vanish,
leaving nothing more
than this fading
trace of memory.


by jerry gordon

Vanished Before

A man walks slow enough
to breathe the luminous
smoke of calm, to let
how many hours of pain
drop the way only gravity
can take a stone.

His shirt's not nice
or tucked in well.
His pants are too
grey to be blue.

But, like all of you,
he has vanished
before my eyes and I
got to know him
as indescribable.


by jerry gordon

Outside the World

Sitting outside
the world I've built of glass,
the scores pour forth,
clicking their magic numbers
at the heavens where
the mirrors float.
We don't need
to look far for reflection;
here the water stands
still enough to know
a ripple from a rebirth.

The thing I
miss is knowing where
the outside stops extending
through into the inner. Where
space is placed in limits. There
I had to dare escape.
But here, with nothing
to say to nothing there
is no question arrising
from no what?


by jerry gordon

Farewell

After the weather clears,
the hospital walls have new color;
I've come to see you off,
mother.

We talk as you sweep coffee grounds
off the table with your hand;
amid the sounds of crickets on TV,
we're unwilling to part.

A lone shadow
walks atop a rain puddle;
someone is unlocking
a bicycle from a tree.

In the end, we'll meet again
on the phone over the ocean;
I'll be at your ear
but you'll be miles away.


by jerry gordon
after Chia Tao's Farewell to Monk Wu-K'o

. . .

Walking amidst
mountains, the ground
is marked with the 10,000
steps it takes to leave
the city; I've been here
before. How else recognize
these white herons
build the valley sky
in their passing?

A child appears pointing
from a white rock.
The sun doesn't move
from the tip of
her finger.
This is where
the new people
will come from.


by jerry gordon

Blur

I let the edge
go to grain and then
become itself as
blur,
and then where
can't I find details
to fathom
as deeply as
a mirror,
as subtle as
the whispering
song in wine?


by jerry gordon

It's Like

In
the instant it takes
us through to
the other shore
we walk within
these foot prints
as big as buddhas
and as right as
the all all needs
to be
enough
to not be too
much.

Then, it's like,
'Welcome home,
Friend, Your tea is
ready already
on the
table.'


by jerry gordon

To You As You

If it was all
a system of
knots knotted with
knotting tied
as I have lied
deep enough to make it
true all through
to you as you
springing up as
what we've waited for
from the everything,
then I would be
me
writing this with you
waiting to come
to it
without either
intent or envy.

That would be as
sweet.


by jerry gordon

Strangers

At the end
of this thread of
being
completely as
this shining
mundanity,
I smile at you
coming through the whole
eternity
up to know now
and how we can
be
together even
at this distance.

Strangers,
we pass and leave
our belongings
in each other's
pockets.


by jerry gordon

Instructions

When I die, steal my bones
and grind them between stones.
Then take the fine, white dust of me
and mix it with red mud.
Twist the clay between your hands
and shape me as a cup--
create me into something
you will raise up to your lips.


by jerry gordon

Broken and Fulfilled

I eat the flame
and make of it
word--
your name.
And like all my promises in the past
you wait
to see it broken
and fulfilled.


by jerry gordon

Fully Formed Failure

This morning,
here,
on this toilet, trying
to shit this transformation of the universe
into this transient pool of hidden water--
the fields of grain
and herds of cows
and gardens of spices
and factories of workers
that went into Yumiko's raviolis last night--
I give up
and will carry this body of the buddha
for a few more hours,
letting it culminate later
into the event of perfection I can imagine
will be similar
to this
fully formed failure.


by jerry gordon

Not a Chia Tao Poem

In the morning
we watched the migration of clouds;
the smell of your hair
from the dryer.

By night,
the shapes had escaped
their names;
at the door
you wave off
a farewell gift.

Dreaming,
the road feels
like a road.


by jerry gordon

. . .

Instead of letters
my friend leaves petals to fall
the way they do.
In the scent that's absent,
I know his mind;
their distant moon-mud garden is fragrant
quotes . . . reflections . . . echos . . . shadows.

Because he taught me how to see,
I kiss your eyes in thanks.


by jerry gordon

This Far So Far

Arriving this far
so far
from dust
so close to clean
but this mind builds the city
here
on mountain tops, of
dust the weight of hate.

Like a sparrow
I'll descend to brush the mile wide
thick deep stone,
grain by grain of dust
to dust.

At times
I feel no hurry
to get there
when I do.


by jerry gordon

Mini-Movie Mermaid

photo by: moontriangle

When the mermaid retired

she took up life on land

and worked to sow a vast field

with seeds of water she'd collected

in her distant ocean wanderings.

To make her work understood,

she invented the word,

"Rain."

images by allan o'marra

script by jerry gordon

Wax, Wings and Labyrinth

Understanding Icarus

I understand Icarus
and his flight to the sun

unbounded place and time
where reaching out

to touch gossamer and fire
becomes the singular
defiance of being
able to step beyond

blandishments and banality
defining each day

to escape beautiful and deceptive
questions of self
presentation of cultural
edifice to stand apart

unblemished and pure
in knowing


by mjsalovaara
May 30, 2004



I understand Theseus
unspooling his thread
through the maze of
Dedalus' mind. His
strongest fear getting lost
beyond the decapitated
monster at the center.

Give me my hands' full of
the violence. Place me within
the master's finest tool.
Only you could think a string--
as red as a filament of blood
from your vagina--
would save me more than memory.


by jerry gordon 6.1.4

Behind the Mountain

Look behind
the mountain--
shrine of string--
there, a white cloud
shining big enough to be
your golden car
tears to parting pieces.

You stare at me staring.

The heat of the sun
in the dream-dragon's eye,
writhe the sky
terrorist mist
like the echos of dawn geese
hold the howls of ambulances
and tangled yard-dogs.

I didn't move.
My hands are just
always open.

To see the wind,
watch the burning gate,
the flames within the tree.
Offer ashes to the corner
for the gift that is received.


by jerry gordon

A

I prefer a moon
low and yellow in a sky,
a shudder in my eye
up into a clear mid-summer's night
no light
except that mirror
of sun and mind-wind
winking behind the occasional knife
of an aluminum cloud.

The blue-gas petals
of its lonely bloom
whistle beyond the heat of season
and birdsong and
women dangling from train rings.

It's worth
lifting word
and glass to.


by jerry gordon