Doors in the Dead Cities

in between the river and the roads
day or night, you can see sparkles
ocean slowly pulsing into tidal river
transfusion for diseased city, and
in between the movies and the ads
sparkles invade your mind
split seconds of nothingness
splinters of dead air and dead cold
whispers of a million words on bookshelves
a billion chords on compact discs
a billion beating locust wings
desert roads in the mind, green blurs
on mountain horizon: trees, fields,
steaming volcanic lakes, whales and herons,
landscapes internal forever
and lost at the moment you die?
at the moment you die, 
lost forever?

you find portals beacuse you need to:
the museum behind the fake technicolour castle
with the prayer wheels and jade knives
scraps of ancient bibles and screeds
where they play chants through hidden speakers
between the glowing display cases
and between floors you count the few pale stores
stuck in the haze of winter and old cloud
between shops and between hours
you find a space you recognize
where a monk sits who died 2000 years ago
his shaved head bowed before a newer moon
still pool beneath willow bridge, sandals
placed carefully beside shawl, pen, ink
he knows something that you know

between pulses that tell us were are alive
between instants of stimulus and response
between droplets of this endless rain
words, notes, snow, kisses
flashes of something familiar from long ago
between work days and sofa evenings
in between years of shifting identities
frozen windscreen wipers sweeping
centuries off eyesight of lifetimes
strobe flashes and advertising lasers
glitters caught on river water and
apartment block window fronts
cranes dancing in winter wind
like weather poles and wind chimes
beside glass-still pool of mind
in a pure instant between instants
you are bowed down before a memory
that you do not know is a memory

as if in a dream, there are those
who try to remind us
in between meals and games and
in between all the sparkles
rituals built into the chaos
of sitting before a wooden tray for tea
of kneeling before icons and cruciforms
of sitting with this master
the master of still pools and dead blossoms
the master of dead screens and dying rivers
the master in between the moments
of attention to this or that lifetime
intersecting universes, colliding realities
the master we find in the place where we are
the master who is a memory
that you do not know is a memory

like cats' eyes peeping out from the dark
in between our madness, our fits
of distraction, racing uphill,
looking out over frozen ochre city, 
wide harbour, lumpen island and white boats
and sunlight thin and red and distant
in between making love among the trees,
underneath fallen roots, luminous
emerald moss, tiny sprinkled mushrooms
in between desperate hours of stillness
heart pounding as nothing happens,
guts wrenching as nothing is transformed
into other forms of nothing
and all the forms of the mind,
demonic, angelic, ridiculous and tender
pour into this moment as a billion sparkles
and leave you as empty as an hourglass,
timed out and clear, in between epochs,
waiting for the hand of the master

between images of yourself
caught on windows, mirrors, pupils
an old, tired theme of searching
so sad and desperate, surrendered
and yet the one last desperate hope
is that in between these ghosts
and false gods, false selves and wraiths,
you might glimpse the doorway -
to the frozen land through the back of the wardrobe
to the unreal city below the lake's bottom
to the magical land on the other side of the mirror
to the master waiting patiently outside time
as if enclosed in a pale moon heaven
or one single perfect work of art
between years of confusion and loss
this is your dream of crystal
held carefully in cold and numbing fingers

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