The Meteor Shower

The poet is the child of the moon,
Reflecting all the living light the sun
In graciousness will not withhold. The loon
Can hardly sing a mournful song to one
Who wishes he could say what can’t be said
To those who in the sunlight can’t be fed.

 

I watch the sky to see the stars, to see

The dust and tiny meteors now streak—

Perhaps the stars will fall, or stay for me—

In colors of the fireflies I seek

Among the trees that partly block the moon.

I cannot dance. Perhaps I’ll see her soon.

 

The prophet always speaks in complex verse,

And so the sun in metaphors speaks true

To those who have the ears. I cannot curse

My gifts. I read the sky. Night’s almost through.

Perhaps there’s nothing left for me to see,

But I suspect the sun won’t set me free.

 

The lights are flickering. The fireflies

Are seeking mates. The falling stars are seeking

No one. Warmth, love and nothingness defies

The meaning which we make, are slowly leaking

Into the world where people meet—each verse

Brings greater life. Denial brings the hearse.

 

I listen to all the blue sun has said,

Reflect it like the moon and give the gift

The sun expected me to give. It led

Me, fed me, read me so that I could lift

In flickered patterns like the fireflies

The hazy messages where deep truth lies.

Ascent and Descent, Butterfly and Moth

The butterfly, as blue as sky, ascends
Into the sun, but does not fear to melt—
The moth, in pales green, flutters, descends
From off the moon, its body soft as felt. 

 

The shadows move from bright to dusk

The shadows move in gray

This body, moving, is a husk

Between the night and day.

 

The light and darkness, day and night, only seem to clash—

The moon reflects the sunlight to a moonbow made of ash.

 

Now, listen as the moths are flying

And smell the subtle scent

That brings them to the nectar lying

With sweetest truth that’s bent.

 

The butterflies descend and drink the sweet

Sun-warmed and ripened red persimmons—smell

Them as the rot upon the ground. The feet

Can taste them where they putrefy and fell.

 

Which life will you embrace?

Or will you trace 

Another through the trees

With dappled bees?

 

The light and darkness, day and night, only seem to clash—

The moon reflects the sunlight to a moonbow made of ash.

 

A sky of mist, a somewhere in between—

A cloud with sun, the seen and the unseen.

 

And though they drink at different hours,

They both are pollinating flowers.

The moth, the butterfly both mean

The same in all their pollen showers.

 

And both will drink the dew, 

And both will drink the tears—

And both will drink the juice,

And both relieve my fears.

 

The butterfly, as blue as sky, ascends

Into the sun, but does not fear to melt—

The moth, in pales green, flutters, descends

From off the moon, its body soft as felt. 

 

The light and darkness, day and night, only seem to clash—

The moon reflects the sunlight to a moonbow made of ash.

Medieval

My body is an iron maiden, sharp
And pointed pain that pierces through my back

And legs. What? Shall I slide down this rough scarp,

Attempting to escape my body, rack

That wracks me, in the hope that other pain

Will wrestle me onto another plain? 

I wrestle in my bed with no one, throw

The blankets as I turn and writhe and groan

And turn with tight-backed movements they made slow

Until the aches and needles throw their last stone

And I am pushed into a sleepless sleep

Discomforting my night until I weep.

The pain of spirit and the pain of mind

Arose and were resolved and humbled me--

The pain of body now has joined to bind

It all. How shall I be an escapee

This time? The badlands stretch and crumble down

Beneath my feet, beneath the star-dusk gown. 

There's a brazen bull that bellows through the night

And keeps the mind awake--I fail to pray

No more--I am the prey of pain's delight

In being senseless, pointless. It will flay

Me, try to slay me, but I will not slip--

The scarp is steep--I live upon the tip.

Finding a Place

What shall we do with this young man--at ten

Much more a man than men twice, thrice his age--

Who plays a manly rock-n-roll--his pen

Has written lyrics showing manly rage

Against the dying of the light--no less

Opposes womanly pop music--he

Will build, create with focus, fearlessness,

Declares all rulers "suck"--anarchic, free.

But where shall he emerge into the man

That is his destiny? This culture will 

Declare him toxic. Focused on his plan,

Perhaps he will ignore and then fulfill.

This boy who loves his father was born for

A balance made in music, not for war. 

The Song of the Prophet

Eternity is present to the soul

That pain brings to the light. I follow fate

On which my will will freely dance. My bowl

Is filled with spirit. I will not debate

With God for what He’s given me—a voice

That speaks in only truth, in poetry

That sings. Come sing along. Come sing, rejoice

In all the complex love that makes us free.

You thirst? I pour out what has overflowed

The bowl God filled. There’s more than you can know—

Perhaps I cannot speak all that God showed,

And I am but a rhyming afterglow.

I am the moon who in the night will pour

The light out of my bowl to show the door.

At the Abyss

 I stood upon the edge of one of these

Before—they look the same, but different—

You stare, they stare, it’s you—the slightest breeze

And you could fall, it seems. I have been sent

Again, sent to stare at the abyss—bliss

Of love, bliss of death—nothing would dare tear

Me away from the source. My love for this

Was hereby made and made all that is fair.

 

But now I know where I am standing, dark

And infinite below—the things you know

Don’t bring the fear that you once had—I grew

Into this daemon-driven poet-lark,

And this new black abyss will help me grow,

Direct me to the nothing that I know. 

In Fragments Shall I Live

Your soul contains my self—I cannot die
So long as you, my children, live—

Death rises on the sunset—it’s a sigh

Of shadows every life must give.

You stare at the horizon, and you say, 

“It’s death.” I say, “Approach.” You say, “I can’t.”

Indeed, the red horizon of the day

Recedes—you run, you run, you pant,

But all horizons must recede—the sun

Descends behind it, though, for you 

Can never reach the setting dun—we’re done

One day, and we pay what’s due.

 

Your soul contains my self—each poem I 

Have written someone reads, each book

I publish, play someone has seen, reply 

In scholarship—my words a brook

Delivering my mind to others’—my songs

The music of my mind that flow

Into a delta—all my rights and wrongs,

My vanities and virtues grow

And grow with all the minds who take my words

And make new meaning out of them, and eat the curds

That form out of my milk—are for your sake. 

 

Your soul contains my self—this poem’s worth

Is measured in remembered rhythms, rhymes—

And after I am dead, they will give birth

To minds all holding mine throughout all times

That people understand these words—the sun 

Will never set—Apollo rises soon—

The earth will turn—daylight has begun

Upon another face—another noon

Will bring enlightenment—under my tree

Will others seek to flee the heat, but light

Is dancing through the leaves. I’ll never be, 

In my becoming, night, the moon in flight. 

Flight

The leaves are made of emeralds, chrysoberyl

jade stems supporting amethyst flowers

opening to opal needles hovering,

darting in and out of their tubes.

We watch, hovering on wings of air

without caring where we go,

drifting among the smoky quartz trees,

malachite weeds tickling the soles of our feet,

long leaves sliding in between our toes,

nose tickling from amber pollen

drifting, flying through the quartz air.

Our freedom comes with consequences such as these,

pollen blown from trees and weeds,

diamond serpents biting our heels without warning—

but we'll always choose our waxen wings of air,

our flight, so lifting, so brilliant— 

amour.

Damselflies

Damselflies in cyan-shining green

deftly darting though the weeds,

land on cattails’ pollen hat,

lighting yellow dust into air.

Sunlight glints transparent wings

held steady, fold-up fashion

like thin-winged butterflies

whose bodies shine in blinding blue.

The damselfly’s deft, delicate line

lifts up on cellophane wings.

It darts through the air

to find its prey.

A mosquito caught

by crunching, tearing jaws.

Blue Skies

The skies were blue.

I went to hear a band play
in the park. People were there.

They called it off for threat of rain.

The skies were blue.

 

The skies were blue.

I wanted friends to come with me, 

go for a ride in the country.

They would not come for

threat of rain, though

the skies were blue.

 

The skies were blue

when I went out

to walk in open woods.

So soon I found my clothes were wet,

from warm summer serein because 

the skies were blue.

Creative Destruction

The demon ignorance is danced into defeat

By Shiva’s lifting legs. Destruction can create

When it gives birth to knowledge, source of all the arts

And creativity. Destruction’s dance will fate

Each cycle, spiral, unity, and all the parts

That reconstruct the world in Shiva’s frantic beat. 

 

Sweet memory, the mother of the poem, song,

And science—from their father, lightning insight, flash

Of rhythms, patterns crafted, chiseled into stone,

The words we sing and print from face and curve and dash.

 Remembering is memory—the shadow zone

That we construct, for all we know is right and wrong. 

 

But when play our music, lift our legs and dance, 

And when we sing our poetry, our memory

Remembers us to greater things, to newer things,

And we, together, join our hands, refuse to flee

And, as a chorus, know the poet’s words, and sings—

Then all the world in truest knowledge will entrance.

The Age of the Poets

 The Age of the Poets is gone—

Complexity of thoughts is not the rage

Here in this sullen age—

Each person has made themselves a pawn

To merely pretentious right rage

 

The mountains are razed, but the valleys

Aren’t filled—the city’s in danger of flood—

Water and trees and mud

All blinding the eyes and filling the alleys

And mixing with heartless blue blood

 

No thoughts are cool serpents who shed

Their skin and shine here in their auburn sin—

Both-and renewing—win

Our ought in the years when we will wed

And culture will die and begin

 

The eagles now fall from the sky—

Their beaks and their fathers are oiled with prose

Fragments—the nothing shows—

The hatred of heights—no, don’t deny—

Belie that it’s love they oppose

 

The lions they want to declaw—

The artists, poets, rock-n-rollers—bright

Culture they hate and fight

To win by the force of the flaw

To bring on the night with their bite

 

The camels they want to embrace

Would spit, refuse to move—these desert beasts

Burdened to lose—the priests

Who pray and who prey upon the grace

Of hatred—on them they will feast

 

But the Age of the Poets will come—

The playing child will in the future speak

Truth that the wiser seek—

His wisdom and beauty’s not dumb—

You’re deaf—but this child is not meek.

The Pumpkin

 The pumpkin took the pirates at their word

And wrestled words to waves of the absurd.

The pompous pirates, showed to see their lies

Performed by pumpkin dared, as each denies,

To froth and faint and fester, all appalled. 

There is no name the pirates never called

The pumpkin who had used their views to see

The river boat that he could fly to be

The captain of the canal capital

So he could drain the swamp 'til he was full. 

Be Free

Why let its fingers grasp your sleeve? You’re through

The wicked forest, in the field of flowers

I planted just for you. There are no powers

Preventing you from gazing at the stars, 

To see the streaking dust, to gaze at Mars.

I’m by your side on winding mountain roads,

On winding roads beside the lakes, the nodes

Of rivers man has made, and through the trees

That hide the singing birds and mute the breeze.

I’m by your side, so calm your racing mind—

Don’t let your anxious fear kill joy and blind

You to the field of flowers, colors spread

In living, loving patterns. Don’t be dead

To all our living moments—do not fear

Our future, a horizon never near.

Beloved, please. Enjoy your life that we

Have built, our children—let your mind be free.

The Common Lies

I watch the news--I'm told the common lies

I cannot trust a thing I read online

The teacher teaches what the truth denies

And information now is indefine

The politicians lie, the newsmen lie

About the politicians and for them

And you cannot believe what they deny

They sell a glass as a true diadem

How can you know the truth on such an earth

Where truth is weeded out and lies are fed?

When everyone is speaking lies, what worth

Is there in truth?--yes, even facts are dead

The sophists and the demagogues feel shame

At their replacements who believe no fact

Or truth, but only who they get to blame

And spread that blame without a shade of tact

The liars are the last to dare defend

A dying world--when even scientists 

Prefer to promulgate the mere pretend

Of science, falsifying what exists

The only people left we could believe

Are poets who do not pretend to truth

But lie in honesty--so do not grieve,

For we predict a new world in its youth

The Path of the Poet

This awesome, awful curse

And blessing none believes

Or would believe--God's voice

And touch God's choice receives.

I'm waiting, still to blossom,

I feel I'm still a bud

And yet I've lost this mark,

No longer bleed his blood. 

An awful, painful curse

That has split me asunder

Is driving me to work

Before it puts me under.

I do not know if God

Is pushing me to live,

But surely it is true

He's pushing me to give. 

Resurrection

In death as in rebirth the soul is brought

By Hermes--up and down are made the same--

We only sell the things that can be bought--

Embrace rebirth, renewal without shame.

The double serpents must untwist to shed

Their skins--to shed their deaths to be reborn--

The serpents then rehelix and are wed--

The male and female each other adorn.

The staff bestows upon you somber sleep--

The staff bestows upon you waking life--

The lyre is lifting legs, so dig down deep

To breathe your coals to fire, to love and strife.

Then Hermes laughed, "Now dance the fractal border!

I make the land between chaos and order!"

Arithmetic Will Not Suffer

There's nothing less comforting than comfort.

Salmonella typhi will do the trick--

He's the kind of germ that'll make you sick!

Maintaining requires constant change

Staying still means falling back

Change requires maintaining and constant change

Giraffes are broken in the forest edge

In visible arrays across the savannah

Behold! An eschatology of man!

We'll surely end as mankind once began,

Evolving into something else--no plan

Can get us there--just know we will and can.

Deciding it was time to go insane,

I chose to be a poet.

Hallucination

We always feel so heavy when we're high--

We think an altered mind will make us fly.

Ending the Siege

There once was an old, wicked witch

Who with her old, warped, crooked switch

Made a castle a sponge

And then, with a lunge,

Made its moat into a mere ditch.

A Serein-Filled Today

I gotta finish what I started

I'm crafting sounds no-one has heard

I can’t leave here all heavy-hearted

And still full of these rhyming words

These words my soul has carted,

Both fly up a single bird

And I know that I know what all that I must say

Both tomorrow and a serein-filled today.

 

You ask me why do I sing?

Well, I just feel l should be singing.

You ask me what does it bring?

Well, what should songs be bringing?

You ask me is this just a fling?
Well, what should I be flinging?

But I know that I know what all that I must say

Both tomorrow and a serein-filled today.

 

Each life lays out its feathered, arrowed arc

You can never know its bend

You fill it like a sacred ark,

You fight and you defend

But in the end the meadowlark

Knows how this all will end

So, I know that I know what all that I must say

Both tomorrow and this serein-filled today

 

I gotta finish what I started

But which no-one has heard

I can’t leave here all heavy-hearted

And still full of these rhyming words

These words my soul has carted,

Both fly up a single bird

And I know that I know what all that I must say

Both tomorrow and a serein-filled today.

 

Sir!

The melted sand made clear

With cooling, dew drops dripping down,

Is full of carbon—hear

It rising through the bubbly brown

Liquid… just call it Coke.

Be Pop, commercial—do not frown 

At beauty, if it’s broke

Or bellicose or makes you drown.

 

The Teslas fill the street—

My son, he sees them all, YouTube

Had laid them at his feet—

He plays the game, he is no noob—

Electric as his brain.

The carbon-powered owner, rube,

Won’t see that all he’ll gain

Is formula when there is boob.

 

It’s fire, these modern words

That bubble up and pop the scene—

Some will curdle, curds

Of metaphors we’ve mixed, obscene

To expert, elite ears

Who get too salty, cannot glean

With carbonated tears

That on the now new art must lean. 

Look

Look at her shoes. These eyes are looking back

At you, but you don’t dare to see the gold

Warm-laced with brown. Look at her socks. You lack

And knit your brows. Your sigh is all that’s bold.

 

Look at her skirt. Your blush makes you complete,

A fool whose thoughts are blue and wandering.

Look at her blouse. Her silky skin, defeat

Your mouth you button, with clichés you’d sing.

 

You can’t imagine what you dare not see.

You just get angry—her and hers you blame —

A rabbit, you can neither stay nor flee.

You lash out—shoot and stab and maim—in shame.

 

You golden-trophied boy, you think it’s true

That all you want deserves to be for you.

Agape Eros Agon

 I wish to make a home of loving you. 

I wish to fuck you endlessly, contrast black sheets with your body.
I wish to love no one but you, a true 
Lust, a never-ending lust, fulfilled by you and your girlfriend’s
Love, as pure as apple blossoms, a snow
Of clothing strewn about my  bedroom,
Of petals whitening the spring, as pure 
As I have never been and never want to be again,
As the wind I was before. Winds blow
Skirts up over hips, hinting at life’s greatest pleasure,
Across the tundra of my past. You cure
My lust for the moment—I will need you again soon to fuck
All winters and turn them into bright spring.
I want to bring light to your covered places.
Nothing is purer than the love I bring.
Nothing is purer than my lust and my desire for your body

There's Nothing In This Pain I Feel

There’s nothing in this pain I feel

It gets me through the day

There’s nothing in this pain I feel

I’m going to go away

I want to feed the flickers flying

Sparks into the sky

I want to feed you as you’re sighing

Sighing your goodbye

 

The ship is sailing

Whales are flailing

Shooting down the stars

My strength is failing

Sirens hailing

Down the dusty cars

 

There’s nothing in this pain I feel

It gets me through the day

There’s nothing in this pain I feel

I’m going to go away

 

The grackles gather, gaze with wise eyes

Up from concrete ground

I cannot find

Within this grind

The feathers that I prize

Within the songbirds’ sounds

 

These folded flowers cannot free

The bees until the morning

Within this pain, I cannot be

But be in painful mourning

 

I want to feed the flickers flying

Sparks into the sky

I want to feed you as you’re sighing

Sighing your goodbye

 

The forest fell

The ship is built

The barnacles will drag us down

You hear the bell

That chimes your guilt

You drop your floral gown

 

Behold the gold that we have found

Depression’s pain will fall

Upon the good and bad whose ground

Absorbs each raindrop’s fall

 

Now hold my hand

And understand

We must be sailing on

We must agree to fight the sea

The land’s dissolved and gone

 

There’s nothing in this pain I feel

It gets me through the day

There’s nothing in this pain I feel

I’m going to go away

 

I want to feed the flickers flying

Sparks into the sky

I want to feed you as you’re sighing

Sighing your goodbye

 

The Death of the Muses

An empty mind, an empty God—

The Muses are deceased.

An empty art we now applaud—

There’s nothing to release

Our souls, our spirits, raise us up

With reason, passion deep

As ocean rivers—fill our cup,

The overflow we’ll reap.

 

The Muses have been flayed alive,

But you’re deaf to their screams,

Dismembered them—but we’ll revive

Into grander dreams

Than you could dare imagine. Rot

And ruin is your source—

But some of us have not forgot

The ancient future course.

 

The Muses live within the deep—

The darkest oceans crush

The artists who believe. You sleep,

Demand the world should hush.

You’re lacking even surfaces—

Your empty minds and souls—

Believing neither ought nor is,

You’re unenlightened coals. 

Vault

A step. A ripple that reverberates.

A string of bells, a blend of drips, a line

That stretches smoothly. Forms that all our fates

Have curved, have chiraled--all it will define.

Our hands have halted. Feet have formed what failed

Our minds to make. A square blank on the bank

Where ideograms grow and words have wailed

In pink-streaked rounds that slowly rose in rank.

Reflection disappears in depth--you'll drown

In voices--volumes only you can hear.

You grab, you grope, you gently jar the gown

That cooly covers with its cotton fear.

The whelks are weighing on my mottled mind

Until they tell you all you bind and find. 

Faze

You have a halo, hazy like the moon's.

You're singing lyrics lazy like the loon's

Your guitar grunges, gathers up new tunes.

I see your halo, hazy like the moon's.

You think that you can hide here in the mist--

You think that there is nothing, none you've missed.

The moon illuminates the haze--the days

Of dreams have danced us to a darker daze.

This phase, this phrase--I'm in a moon-filled faze--

I want to raise my gaze within this maze--

I want to find new fashions, form my fist--

Or, no--caress and care and craft what's kissed.

You have a halo, hazy like the moon's

That drives and dissipates all dreary noons

Whose too-bright light foreshadows all the runes

That make your halo hazy like the moon's.

Near-Sighted Love

You have to love a country from afar--

Where everything is out of focus, eyes

Inventing half of what it sees--don't mar

The visage with everything your heart denies.

The warts and moles and cancers and red boils,

The drooping eyes, the frizzy hair, the smell

Of something warm, bacterial recoils

The stomach, and you know that all's not well.

And yet, the human in you wants to hold

Her tight. And yet, the virtue in you wants

To push her far away. You'll stand alone.

And yet, there's nothing in her flaxen, gold,

Loose curls that doesn't pull. Yes, her hair haunts

Your heart--demands for justice turns to stone. 

Dream Cathedral

I wake from dreams of work--I'm weary--sleep

Won't let me rest--I lie upon the bed

And lie to all my weary ways that creep

Into the edge of consciousness I've fed.

I sit alone--I'm half-asleep--I perch

Upon the limb of R.E.M., erect

And at attention to the shadow-church

Of images awake I will select.

Bohemian success--my dreams address

Reality instead of all my aims--

My dreams betray my dreams, I must confess--

The edifice of art collapses, maims.

Cathedral of my dreams--I lay new stone--

For, for my Judas mind I must atone. 

Fire Season

In mountain firestorms the lake reflects--

While here, where heat is home, the cool collects

And washes trees down dry ravines where pools

Are parched, where fish reflect and we're made fools

By their philosophy. The heron's throat 

Is thirsting for its fish. The mountain goat

Is singed and sings its mountain-echoed bleat

Lamenting all its dead who weren't as fleet.

The earth is red, the moon is black in soot,

Tornado fires are twisting--underfoot,

The lightning strikes while northern shrikes stab mice

Upon acacia thorns. Their bones are dice

That roll beneath the burned and broken bramble.

Too dry and hot, too cool and wet--we gamble

And leave a shamble, ignorant of all

Our worth, our wealth--and we don't hear the call.

The wolves are silent--monarchs flit and fly,

Pretending that they rule. The fish reply 

With fingerprint-ridged scales that prism-days

Are when the heron hunts. Blue breaks the waves. 

My I

When I says "My body" who is this "My"?

Am I not my body? Is it my "I"?

If it is not my body, can it die?

If it is not my body, how can I

Control my body, make it move and cry?

Could this separation be a true lie?

If I say that I know that I will die,

Do I mean this, my body, or my "My"?

Do thoughts such as these make you rage or cry?

We ask such thoughts, but then only get by

On the simplest thoughts, so why even try

To ask what happens when our deaths draw nigh?

This is what makes us ask the question 'Why?"

And no matter how hard, I cannot shy

From asking what or even who am I?

I am this I who I see--I am I--

I am this body, my body's my "My"--

My eye I see I see now is my I.

When I meditate on it, I see my

I looking down at my I, and my I

Looks at my I looking at me, my I.

And all of it, my "I"s, are my body,

And, as my body, change and let me be--

And, knowing this, now I know that I'm free. 

Fairness

Why should I give you immortality

When you've repaid my love with loss and lies.

My interest in you's given me no gain.

When I'd invested in you, I'd the sense

That you had wanted me, to spend your life

With me, no matter, through all gain and cost.

An irony that my poetic art

Should find a use to lease eternity

To one creating all this darkness coined

In such a soul creating, making due

The dividend of all my poetry

That I wrote since the time that I lost you. 

You should be banished from the city, not

Be given immortality by me. What? Mercy?

I sit in black-robed judgement over you--

You have repaid my love with lies and such

Indifference. The promised blossom wilted

Despite what I invested in us two. 

Would priests dare grant that God would give

What I now give you here? No light would enter

Through rainbow windows coloring the church

You entered in. You're blind behind the veil

Of bitter blue you choose--life without gold

Sea shells, sunflowers bringing life your value. 

You left me and the only way I'm paid

Is by my constant balance on this bridge

Between my past with you and some far future

Finally free of this, my memory

Of how I felt and feel and spent on you.

For that, I grant you immortality? 

Barren Desert Cliffs

Go swing, swallows--sudden arcs up in the sky,

Away, cliffs with nests they hid from wind--They fly,

They dip, fly up, eating insects in the dry,

Barren desert cliffs.

Yes, once people lived here on these cliffs-they dwell

Among ancient ruins still. The stones that fell

From hand-fashioned places decorating well

Barren desert cliffs.

They graze barren land, the desert bighorn sheep--

They're cliff-canyon fleet, and knowingly they leap

Along ledges--desert residents, they keep

Barren desert cliffs.

When great Nebuchadnezzar's beautiful wife

Began feeling homesick, he made come to life

A great garden that transformed out of the strife

Barren desert cliffs.

Returned, condors soar above the desert places

They once winged above--they fly in ancient spaces

They once vanished from--now each dark shadow graces

Barren desert cliffs.

Now, man built his own high cliffs, and he assembles

In them numbers such that earth herself now trembles.

Transformed land is raised, and now our home resembles

Barren desert cliffs. 

Reaching Essence

The sage scholar that intimidates (or so

I've been told) so many I have met with all

I know--art and science and philosophy.

I've carved out this mask.

A small part of me, I reckon's still up in

The green hills--Kentucky where I'm still laid back,

Where jokes jump more freely, friendly from my tongue.

The South made this mask.

Can you not see I am right? I argue with

And quick-question people who I know and meet--

This love lives in me, unpleasant though it seems.

My least pleasant mask.

My brain's wired autistically--do not expect

A good memory to shop or for a name--

I can't feel the same as you--the world's intense.

My gene/brain-made mask.

My art aims for beauty--All my poetry,

And plays, novels--I transform to beauty words

Through sounds, rhythms, symbols, and in images.

Descent gave this mask. 

A dark hermit here in my library-cave.

I read, study, write, and think--alone. I make

In home-quiet spaces, decompress from life.

A need-daily mask.

I love, think of, love to spoil the ones I love--

My wife, children--I make them feel all the love

I feel--more than anyone could ever love.

Why not see this mask?

The Key to the Temple

Do you what to know how I worship?

This is how I worship--

This, here, what you read, with words, words

With rhythms, words making meaning through metaphor--

Connecting time up and down, up and down

The same, a circle, but not a circle, too simple.

I worship the word--In the beginning was the Word--

I worship the most human in man, the word, the logos--

In the beginning was the Logos.

in the beginning of man was the thing that made man--man--

I worship  the thing that makes the rocks sing--

I worship the creator--

The Word that is with God--

The Word that was--and is--God--

Words in natural rhythms--the rhythms of nature--

Words winding around my mind--

Words a west wind carrying pregnant clouds on the horizon--

I am pregnant with the word--

The words flow out and through me--

The words that sing and dance and make me--me!--

I am my words--the best part of me plays upon the page--

What is left of me will be my words--when I go

Only words will be left--

The Word that is in my is the Word on the page--

The best of all words, the best of all worlds--

I have learned to become the best part of me--

I have learned to be and become--me!--

Here is what I worship--the Word--the word

Is what I worship--words in rhythms--

Skipping across the page

Like stones skipping across a shallow pond. 

The Company I Keep

Romantic poets, Nietzsche, Faulkner keep

Me company--their company I like,

Embrace, find dear--these minds that always strike

My mind. They make it dance and curl and leap

In ecstasy. I rise to angel-heights

Of light that's threatening to kill my cave

Where shadows once were seen as real--I'll save

My body-soul in tensions of delights.

The ecstasy of body feels the call

Of reproductive bliss, my body warm,

Responding to her touch, the feather-fall

Of fingers, lips, and love, our body's form.

My body-mind entwines--I don't dismiss

Where minds touch mind in reproductive bliss.

Magma Rising

The land of living mountains slopes out gently

To the green sea in fold of tiny glass--

The glows red from dusk to dawn, and brass

Clouds move to bracket blue from red intently.

These are the lands that call for us to live

As these lands live--more dangerously. Careful,

Though, that you are not burned, that the heat's prayerful

Pull will not threaten every step, or give

You over to mere carelessness. Each movement

Needs style to perform you  to a new

Person, renew your body and your mind.

A past without regrets, and each new moment

An affirmation of your life, the true

Lava that makes the land much more refined.