Overnight in a Strange Place
I take years to fall asleep Once in sleep the ages pass Until a dream of death awakens me.
I am far from my surroundings Though they close me in. I am the misplaced renegade Seeking mercy from sin.
Here is the stranger in this world Who yearns for the secret Shrine. Paths wind within As the Friend shines.
-- CS Cholas 15 July 1993, Fort Collins, Colorado
The Reflection
He had (every) reason to be angry
And yet no reason at all;
Betrayed by love, by friends,
By superiors, yet
Befriended by the poor and lowly
Of the town.
Told to take a Hard look at himself,
He went to a nearby pond
Stared at his face in the subtle ripples
The distorted bending of his features,
‘til he threw not a pebble,
But a sizeable rock in the middle
Of his watery reflection and watched
His face explode into numberless bits
Of light, color, and shadows on the surface.
It felt good to see his own form eventually
Come back together on the pond,
Gently wavering, slowly simmering
Into a clearer picture of who he was.
C. S. Cholas, undated
REMEMBRANCE
Passport to freedom, remembrance of Him.
Left in my desk under documents for men,
I, laden with baggage of anguish and rage,
Scramble to the corridor to the Curer's Store.
The burdens will not fit through the door.
I sit delirious among shrapnel, low jargon,
Bits of gossip and bungled memories--
My treasured bygones--these wounds
That make me feel human and alone.
Like a sleuth, I search through the mounds
Layered in the desk: the self-portrait with a twisted lip,
Chipped fetishes of adolescent adventures,
Lost chess pieces, fragments of fragrant letters,
Records of unpaid debts, the envelope that contains
Foreign stamps and a beaded necklace.
Under this I see the book of mystery
With cover worn and pages stained,
That conceals the elusive key.
Humbled and abashed,
I slowly turn the page
and find His Remembrance.
By the Sea of
Galilee
Father, son, and daughter
Sit by water; the Sea of Galilee.
She strains her father's string of thought
With talk of agorot.
His last shekel,
The son still wants to heckle.
Palms by the sea
Calm the sight with tranquility
As shadows cross the Golan heights.
For mere morsels
They show off for
Tourists who gladly give them more.
C.S. Cholas, March 17, 1996
Swimming in Streams of (Un)Consciousness
"Don't be dead or asleep or awake.
Don't be anything.
What you most want,
What you travel around wishing to find,
Lose yourself as lovers lose themselves,
And you'll be that." – Attar
We follow words
down daydreams’ rivers
Laud the scope of
their meaning
Yet remain aliens
banned from their realms.
We track their
sounds
Laughing at our
insignificance.
Our persistent
howls, unchaste and crude,
Echo through the
halls of their castles
Of winding
clauses, verbs of dance,
Nouns of steel,
pauses with commas,
The Landlord tends
to pots of speech yet to be spoken.
By chance,
outsiders that we are, we beg
The Landlord, if
we can, to borrow a dipper and sip
A few words to
lure Undines* to change water into life.
-
C. S. Cholas, Sept 20, 2020 Arizona
*Undines: Elemental
beings associated with water, first named in the alchemical writings of
Paracelsus. Spirits of the water world
Death in Grenada
--
from a street corner in
Castries, St. Lucia, Oct. 20, 1983
Today everything stopped.
The ground thumped
followed by a hard knot
on every street corner.
for news of blood
unsettled confusion,
uncertain downfall
a touch
of every command being tested.
Man creates vacuums in paradise.
He divides all the trees
into splinters
and lets the fruit rot.
And death filled Grenada,
red scare,
on the day we remembered
the Birth of the Primal Point
in rarefied air
in prayer for the living
and for the dead.
-- C.S. Cholas
