Featured Poet: David Keali’i
Oracle Offerings
Benedictine
Oracle Notations
Unsaid
Oracle Offerings
The shower rush of falling
awake 10 past 10 to toast.
The crack slash of pens
the muted breath
masked innocence
a mountain beneath.
These things I present to you
as palms upward.
Your claim on the moment
that would slip by were it not for
the sounds that carries you
past pressure.
In the end you must always
carry the price they to willingly
extracted:
a broken flame
a free moment fragmented…
to
the
crash.
Benedictine
When the inner sanctum meets the end
of time, where we find rest together:
amidst glistening ashes,
white feathers,
obsidian petals,
in the fall of bright silence
to the beginning of The First New Syllable,
there:
we lay down whispers
into peace.
Oracle Notations
Ten steps across the threshold:
I.
If it’s friendship, we will fall
after the last piece of carpet gives way.
II.
If it’s love,
and I can’t be certain,
let us collapse onto the couch,
place our thoughts in a tarot
spread and thank heaven we found
common footing.
III.
If we feel threatened by
the spice of each others creativity
it’s okay.
Walk away,
smell the hibiscus,
then, and only when we are ready:
return.
IV.
If it’s hatred, I’m sorry.
We are glass creatures, volcanic
in our temperament.
Perhaps we never should have
sought the sting of reflection.
V.
If we find music:
chords, harmony, melody;
open the house and
invite others in to celebrate.
Unsaid
A half-full moon,
colored scratch-rust red,
pulls the ache in once
fractured joints.
The road is sticky from
July humidity, 78 the coolest
air will get tonight.
Over the speakers
three women harmonize
drums in a language I will
never know.
One hour later
what I want to say to you
will not escape my mouth.
Will not break humid air
made worse in our presence.
What is just under the
graze of your eyes remains
entirely fragile.
What we really want
is hidden in an ache
whose color is the bruised black
that brings out the moon’s rust.
David Keali`i: His poems have appeared or forthcoming in Ashé: Journal of Experimental Spirituality; Breadcrumb Scabs; Ballard Street Poetry Jounral; Mythium Literary Journal; and ‘Ōiwi: A Native Hawaiian Journal. He works as a librarian in both an academic and public library. He resides in Worcester, Massachusetts; a city he represented as a member of its slam team at the 2009 National Poetry Slam.
