paper embers

[idohara]

"...that I myself forgot how I kept you, when you were keeping yourself for someone else."

— just another unsent letter and a rainy day

[idohara]

Sometimes a sigh is all that is there to it. I believe it is a poem in itself.

[idohara]

(I'm now shaking hands

with the strangers

I shall never get acquainted.)

— Before Dinner

[idohara]

(...to the shade of the cinnamon tree while hiding, away from the sight of Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin, 24th of July 1969)

"Before then I let their perceiving pass without intervention to their palms tilting down to scorched oracle bones until their trifling spoils hinted them of the age of this rock I have passed the times in eons of powdery silence. Still they say persistence and revered pestles and rice cakes about the mistake yonder the Rising Sun.

They have not changed a bit since they were last visited. Still they huddle against the cold vibrating to static current though softly they snore in the comfort of their warrens. Crafted descendant upon descendant they have retained their hues to speak: ears pressed low and backwards is red yet tails in the same manner white. Of these gradients have come about painting chefs d'oeuvres as worthy of crepuscules did I note that they are most active by dawn and dusk? I should. My the previous millenia must have been harsh towards them for they have developed themselves to survey in spheres yet sleep with their eyes open how fragile they are when they attempt to act as if not hurt when their entrails are in pain. They have come a long way climbing the chain but have not lost the feeling of being preyed sadly even by their own kind. Still they hop and twist in the air when happy and that is more conspicuous than the former, questions unneeded.

With the order things are now I can foresee that the image shall endure as constellations are. It is true they have come to grow in the form of what they saw far from these silver canyons mayhap the cure mayhap the grass apologies for I cannot seem to remember. But is it not too much to say that tangency it was when the tongue which came up with a word to describe them was the one their redeemer spoke when he used to ask for some clothes before offering himself to the fire? Will a dialogue matter? Should I present myself to them now?"

— The Rabbits

[idohara]

"The age-old languor might have had its roots

planted deep under the rug."

— Theory on the Origin of the Asthenia

[idohara]

Being yours is an uncharted

pond. Finding it and then getting

lost into it. You are the bubbles

escaping from me as I sink,

and I can see the sun's halo

unmoving in the fabric of the noon.

[idohara]

"They know how deep the mire was.

They know about the prescriptions

for the caprice of his knees.

They know when is his daughter

was supposed to start in daycare.

They even know the reason

that his wife died during childbirth."

— The Receipts that kept Them

[idohara]

"She is in the salt spray.

She is in the coast chatter incessant,

and blue silhouettes unmoving,

taut in the Pacific breeze

that her lungs knew by birth."

— seaborne

[idohara]

"I've deprived myself of warmth for years;

but something,

somewhere in the walls your arms form around me,

is a place I never knew I've always yearned for,

someplace I'd never want to leave."

[idohara]

"And then the dots came.

Isolated and distanced they were

at first, skulking mercenaries

drilling into me,

camps scattered over my back.

Multiples of fifty

invasion swept like spilled ink

blotches and redness and shallow

needles. I arched."

— pale in Heisenberg

[idohara]

"And I guess, that's all that there is. When we fall, every thing seem to go a little bit more into the extreme. Either we move way too fast and we see nothing outside the window but the blur, or slow down to mere inches and we begin to notice the droplets of the morning fog. Then each subject we know worthy of an adjective starts to appear normal; or get really, really strange.

But behind all of these the mystery lies in the fact that we all still retain our perceptions—that everything is just right."

[idohara]

I.

Young eyes set before the panes

across the building and they gave her

glimpses of a lady clad in sable

fabric to the disbelieving foreheads

until she almost turned into one.

II.

She only falls asleep beyond the Hour,

where nothing good happens, as told

by naked poems and urban elegies

swept from tables that drugged her,

until her hands grew to write them, too.

III.

Black and frayed was the penmanship

scribbled on that piece of paper she keeps

like the strands that died and fell down

composing haikus and thus the word

zinc gluconate and multivitamins.

IV.

One night she told me she was in fact

a bit of tipsy—whilst I do not consider

alcohol at all times, and her reply was

"let your head whirl at times, so that you

won't feel the earthquakes shake you."

V.

Feet on pavement as if soles on grass

her silhouette flits in the night

seeking hymns of interstitial silence

to battle throes and unheard canons

recoiling between assurances and sighs.

VI.

Waking daylight—and her cave-tended

vision—freshly harvested mandrakes

in the brimming teacups of warm hugs

and care my palms attempt in justice

for her trying years of ceramic fracture.

VII.

Escape meant her dips in the void

where not a single spectrum reach her

where not a headpat touches her

scalp—I remind her too look at the

sunset—first thing when she comes back.

VIII.

Her name sits amongst the formidable

ones I know, despite her worries

of imparting unpleasant charges

between the puns we share on the line,

time over time and over time.

IX.

And when her collar bones weaken

to doubts and inquiries sickening

I shall do my best to sit on the top

of the clay brick walls of her fort

to tell her better days are always ahead.

— to a blue rose: an ode

We all have those pieces that remind us of someone, don't we? This one's pretty long, but I held back the excerpting this time in order to share this poem to you. Hope you like it as well embers :>

[idohara]

"Without the soul taking into account that specific sense which goes beyond what the body can perceive, angles meant for the immaterial and immortal, the phlogiston running in channels where Art and Ethics tiptoe, a moment becomes a scene.

It degenerates ultimately to a cold embodiment of time, existence, and chance."

— i have doubted whether the phrase to feel or not to feel is a question at all

[idohara]

"The freedom

meant for it

still exists

as forbidden poles

but for someday

I yearn strength

so that I won't

run for it

flailing my arms

to its name."

— the word 'yet' is the only ledge i have

[idohara]

"But only when we're done, tired and asleep, cradled in the sanctuary of each other's arms, that it naturally occurs deep inside of me. It will glide like the wind intruding from a window left open, an aftertaste, a silent muttering of awe when a book is closed for a minute in the midst of a tectonic scene, an echo of a word kept to remember.

"It will tell me that what we have is divine. Lambent than the fireworks we plant in each other in those muffled chaos of bodily pleasure. Profound than the slosh of phrases we gasp in stasis and epicenters of seaquakes. Fragrant than the tang of sweat we share and hyperventilate ourselves in. Somewhere in between those movements, it will tell me, something that transcends time and space, as old as the Universe itself, exists.

"And by doing so, we are only reconnecting stars long since lost—pulled apart, far across."

— stardusts coming home

[idohara]

"Fashioning them

into hemispheres of constellations

was helpless to conceal the fact

that they were fossils

of dead stars drifting

aimlessly in space.

"The ribbons

streaming down her cheeks

cannot hide either

the red shift

and the reverberation

of galaxies crawling away

could not be silenced—

giving birth to her voids.

Much of her is unknown

as an unseen

system of mass

assumes movement—

pulling threads of force

and weight

beyond her forehead."

— the universe she has become

[idohara]

My heart

was perhaps raised

to adore things clothed in mischief.

I saw beauty in the crooked hands

of lightning, and felt hugs in the crash

of waves. Dancing above the curves

of fault lines to mires of June

typhoon floodplains—I do not

seem to know why I love them.

Only one thing is certain—

and that is when the moment I first

met you—for when your plumes,

flares, and ashes came into view

I told myself,

"I'm down for disaster

for this one, too."