I Love What You Do To Me

Inside what universe do I deserve
What I’ve been given when I married you?
A dream walked in the restaurant, to serve
Notice that all my dreams of love were true –
True love walked in on me, the lovely curve
That trembled on your lips, your lovely look
Owned all the space my eyes could see. You then
Came up to me and my cold world shook
Upon its weak foundations. You have been
My love the moment I saw you. You took
Into yourself my heart and warmly lit
Night’s shows even I had failed to see
Slip up around me. Who knew you would fit
Into my life so safe and easily?
Dear, you fill up my days with love and sit
Easy upon my heart. This easy love
You make me feel, this easy love makes life
Our life. It rises like a simple dove
Until it fills the sky. You are my wife,
Ridiculous as it may seem, a glove
Made for my grasping hand, because I knew,
Outside the fact I’d just seen you, that I’d
Undo my life if I could marry you.
That day my life before that day, it died –
How could I live unless you’d say, “I do”?

An Ode to the Internet

Self-organizing social systems were
Not physical until you grew
Into a wired order, new
But not unknown –
From mind you’re grown
And, social, sprung a brand-new social spur.
We social-network from our homes,
From desks our shopping has grown frugal –
We’re reading electronic tomes
From Amazon, but found on Google.
The blogs have given everyone a voice –
We had a place
First on MySpace
And then we tipped and swarmed and took
A look, and now we’re on Facebook –
Your network feast
Brings up the least –
In seconds, what we like is now our choice.
The world is more connected now
And humans have become one race –
You join free markets to endow
We humans with a common face.
Your scale-free network we have grown to feel
As home in spreads
Through people’s heads
And information has unfurled
Weak social bonds throughout the world –
And thus we sit at your new family meal.

Mountain Lakes

The big lakes in the West are all dark blue -
Lake Tahoe, the Great Salt Lake, and Bear Lake -
Blue under the open sky, a dark hue
To make the new naive mistake them fake.
They're not the blue of spidered turquoise rock.
They're not blue like the smooth blue of the sky.
They're not the bright blue of an endless flock
Of mountain bluebirds ready soon to fly.
They're ink-blue like the blue that makes the border
Of evening rainbow blue and indigo,
An endless blue and circle-fractal order
That makes your soul merge in its endless flow,

Blue like a dark, clear Indian sapphire,
And bringing to the heart as much desire.

Celebration of Trees

We need to celebrate the trees again
The way we did when we were young,
When we would hide and climb and swing up in
Them, bellowing with every lung,
This tree is ours, drenched in adrenaline.

We dreamed of building tree houses that stood
As testaments to our sharp wit,
Where girls were not allowed – though soon we would
Desire the opposite, admit
Instead the girls into our dark, deep wood

Where we were dreaming of bare bodies, breasts
And bottoms, what we’d do with each
Girl that we’d never bring or get undressed
No matter how much we’d beseech
Them to give in to our lustful requests

Until we were much older still and much
Too old for trees, tree houses, play
Becoming serious. We’d leave the touch
Of innocence behind that day
Just like, now mended, an old wooden crutch.

These were the trees we hid among, the green
Of leaves and wind-danced shadows, bloom
Of dogwood, redbuds purple-pink to bean
In Autumn, seeds spread in the womb
Where we once danced in innocence, unseen.

The Human Condition

Contemplate.

The frozen butterflies will bleed in green
As ice cave algae in the pumice desert –
They rise, desert us, copper wings unseen.

The hummingbirds with syrup wings sing red
As artic cacti bloom in salted prairies –
They drink the silver nectar from your head.

The broken bats betray us, breathing blue
As deep-sea alpine orchids make us wary –
They build the golden lips that we are due.

Now, you.

Selene

Who would put a floating pearl in a cage?
What kinds of winds would even rage
From a gold and orange volcano cone
To lift a black pearl all alone
Above the mountain’s tricorn peaks?
Why does the mountain, where it leaks
On either side of the gold-cage bars
Fade into a dark gray-gold? Where’s the stars
In Selene’s black and dismal midnight sky?
The mountain speaks – do you hear it cry?
This mountain moonbeam tumbles down
From Selene’s darkened moonlit crown –
Hear her rumble in her pearls of rage:
She does not belong in her golden cage.

Late November

The tryptophan trickles into the blood
To tune down brain activity -- the couch
Is so inviting after all this food --
The turkey sings us all to sleep, the pouch
Of dressing spreads to fill our bellies up.
The football game excitement barely shocks
Awake the few of us who watch. The pup
Down at my feet, his head on his white socks,
Infected by the mood that permeates
The room, is sleeping. It's midafternoon,
And the adults all want to nap, our fates
All turkey-tied to a tryptophan swoon.

The Two Blue Seas

The old man sat out on his beach house porch
And watched the white waves roll on to the shore.
He looked out to the sea and seemed to do
Nothing as he sat rocking day by day.
The house was salt and sun and weather-worn,
And saw-grass grew beside the porch’s sides,
And small palmettos made the only shade,
Useless under the golden August sun.
The company he kept remained the gulls
Until the summer that the twelve-year-old
Boy began to play on the old man’s beach,
Making castles and playing in the surf.
For three days the boy played without a word
Or glance up to the old man on the porch –
Even the day the boy screamed when a snail
Had slid across his cold submerged bare foot.
But then the boy found a large old conch snail
And became excited to tell someone.
He looked up and around to find someone
And for his first time saw the quiet man
Who had watched him play on the beach for days,
Who had been for him absent and estranged.
He carried his prize to proudly show off
The sea’s strange wonders to this strange old man,
Unwary and naive and unaware
That anyone could feel unlike himself.
“Look at this wonderful shell I have found,”
The boy said to the man as he approached,
And held the shell high up over his head.
“Doesn’t the sea make most wonderful things?”
The man looked at the boy’s young face and looked
Out past the boy to watch the waves wash in,
As though the boy was not a part of life
The man was interested to know about.
The boy dropped his shoulders and dropped his arms
To hold the conch in front of him, and frowned.
He dropped the shell in front of him and stepped
Over it and walked up to the old man.
“Why don’t you want to see my shell?” he asked,
“Don’t you want to see the ocean’s wonders,
And notice more from it than the mere waves
You can see from this old and distant porch?”
The man looked down into the boy’s wide eyes,
And narrowed his own and began to speak:
“You wade in the shallows and think you know
Of everything in the depths of the sea.
I can tell you, my boy, the only thing
You know is the surface of this deep sea.
You see the blue sky and the golden sand,
The green palms and the grass and think that this
Is all the world there is to know. But you
Have not seen this world until all around
Is midnight black – so black the slightest hint
Of a single star brings infinite hope
And joy in living that can never be
Described, or even understood if I
Could ever describe all that I have seen,
Unless you’d been through the same kinds of storms.
For you see, my boy, I’ve been in such storms
That bring that sea to life that I cried out,
Desperate for any island, place of calm.
I have fought against such strong hurricanes,
It was impossible to see my hands
That gripped the ropes of the ship, and we prayed
To reach the hurricane’s eye so that we
Could reach some relief, no matter how short.
I have seen the monsters of this deep sea,
And all you bring me is an empty shell.
You had three days to come to talk to me,
But you only came when you wanted me
To bathe you in attention. Before then
You never once even looked up at me,
And you come here up on my porch to say
To me that I’m the one who fails to care?
Look beyond the waves that come up on shore –
They reflect much more that lies out at sea.
Life is better than playing in the sand,
But only if you know the sea’s terrors.”
The old man stopped and looked down at the boy
Looking down at his bare and sandy feet.
“My boy, you’re young and have a lot to learn,
So let me share with you this one last thing:
True wisdom comes with great pain, not with ease –
Great ease brings you to pessimistic thoughts,
And you lose sight of joy, miss out on love,
And you never learn to affirm your life.”
The boy, confused, a bit ashamed, looked down
And turned to step off of the old man’s porch.
“One day you’ll understand all that I’ve said,”
The old man said; the young boy walked away.
The conch shined pink and silver in the sun.

Ae Freislighe for My Love

My love for you ever grows –
A flower beautiful
In the garden never knows
How it is so plentiful.

My life is a paradise
Since I fell in love with you –
I will always bear a price
Unless I make our myth true.

I’m on a tall garden post,
A coiling snake, my dry glove
Slaking off – please pardon most
Metaphors for my love.

To Helios

The sun. The Greek sun. Bearing down on me –
I feel him pressing on my head, I’m pressed
To look for shade. I feel him on my neck,
My shoulders. More and I would feel distressed.

I understand the ancient Greeks now more
That I have been to Greece. The sun’s a friend,
Who brings us life and light, and yet he is
An enemy to make you bow and bend.

You live intensely in such lands, the sun
Will make you understand more than any
Texas sun-lit book can bring – for in Greece
The sun brings one death and birth and plenty.

But why is the sun felt so sharply here?
Is it because Greece is Helios’ home?
And, living here, he gives the best he has,
Not knowing the sharp heat from his sky-dome?

Yet, knowing that the sun is there, I feel
The sun and love him more than I loved him
In either Texas or Kentucky, I
Now know the sun – he seems to me less dim.

Time for Love and Art

Because I’d loved her more than anyone
That I had met before, much more than I
Should have, I came in to this crisis and the sun
Slow-setting on my spirit, made this cry
Go echo deeper through the lonely lands.
The emptiness that was in me, unknown
Still by me as I tried to fill demands
Made by the hollow that I made my own
Enfeebled way to touch my poor-souled spirit
To others’ through her soul, it never could
Connect me to another, I’m a weak fit –
Something I learned when she left me for good.
Provoking reason now asks me, a plea:
Should I try to connect – or should I flee?

Provoking reason now asks me, a plea:
Why couldn’t reason help me to get out?
Should I try to connect – or should I flee
Society to learn something about
Myself, as separate from all the others
Who do not seem to want me here, around?
Why, every person I know only smothers,
Refusing even to try out the ground
I’ve cleared before them – but these new ideas
Are frightening the sheep – so I will let
Them plummet to their rotten panacea –
I should not have to have this burden, set
To give us insight of immanent death
That everyone must face to get new breath.

To give us insight of immanent death
Created in this fractal-loving time
That everyone must face to get new breath,
Is dark and light, descent and angled climb
We cannot do without if we create–
Through either thought or touch. I need a touch,
A body against mine, in love or hate,
I’ll take one, both too little and too much.
I would have either one or even both,
I’d take disdain for naked flesh that caused
Me so much pain – to go or else betroth
Me to her now and, then, to death. What paused
In this, my life? I’ve found a consolation
In nothing, just a dual isolation.

In this, my life? I’ve found a consolation
In all this terror that I feel, new belief
In nothing, just a dual isolation
Made into one, identical and brief.
I can no longer see the differences
Among these things or even anyone.
Is there room even for the preferences
One has for good or evil, pain or fun?
This prickly world endangers, angers, worries
Me more and more with every passing moment
I stay – I feel behind the deadly Furies
Come up on me to kill or make me repent.
My consolation’s one: the world’s purpose
Remains to me clear – it is just here for us.

My consolation’s one: the world’s purpose
Has slipped away, and now only one thing
Remains to me clear – it is just here for us
That seas exist, in order just to bring
Increasing senses that no clear direction
Exists for us to find, or to attach
Ourselves to. In the sea my old reflection
Will wash away, each wave more than a match
For this mishap of my identity.
I’m lost, nowhere to go, not anywhere,
But powerless in all reality
Of going back to where I was – the fare
So much to pay that I could not afford
To pay to make such a little reward.

So much to pay that I could not afford
Has been charged me for these loving feelings.
To pay to make such a little reward
Seems so unfair – these incoherent dealings
Betrayed my mind and made my life unclear.
All now is pain, every person the same –
The way that we relate just brings us fear –
No certainty exists in this dark flame,
Only the likelihood of loneliness
To rule my life that now is so unclear
That I cannot discern within this mess
I call my life, once ocean, blue, now tear.
I feel the world is losing its coherence –
The world is dark and nothing to me makes sense.

I feel the world is losing its coherence –
The dark abyss before me opens now.
The world is dark and nothing to me makes sense
And I can see me staring back. So how
Can I escape the torturing old pain,
These mad, dark voices rock and reel my mind
In wave on wave – am I really insane?
I feel the ropes, the tightening cold bind
Of pure becoming, terrible sweet chaos.
Is this where she has driven me, a life
Full of this bottomless abyss of cold loss –
A storm creating high whitecaps of strife?
My greatest fear no longer is of her,
But finding madness what I now prefer.

My greatest fear no longer is of her
I’ve now become unite-divided with.
But finding madness what I now prefer
Was as surprising as finding the myth
Of Nietzsche’s black abyss was set in truth.
I have descended, carelessly have peered
Into the echoing void of my youth
And inexperience – all that I feared
Has truly come, I’m surprised to find
A comfort there in all the aftermath.
My fear is something I have redefined
Into a new and sun-lit upward path.
I’ve learned the world can never be controlled,
It’s beauty that I have learned to behold.

I’ve learned the world can never be controlled –
The world becomes to me much clearer now.
It’s beauty that I have learned to behold,
These islands have emerged over my bow,
Upon the opening horizon, sun
That peers out through the dark chaotic clouds.
I still cannot make out the sea, but none
Of my old fear before that brought me crowds–
I just see the increasing clearness,
Such an improvement over my deep fear
Of the abyss. The gold path up, the slowness
In the rebuilding of my self now clear.
In time I know I will find on this road
The way to better living and abode.

In time I know I will find on this road
A clear direction and a fresher sea.
The way to better living and abode
Lies clear out in the country wide to me.
I feel myself arising on the tide,
The world spreads out before me, all time endless
And one, the world is one and unified.
I feel life lifting from me all the senseless
Depression I’d before had brought and darkened
The world that I had never learned to love,
The world that now has lovingly enhearkened
Me back from the abyss – I am above
All of the things that once had caused me pain –
All of this clearly will bring me much gain.

All of the things that once had caused me pain
Has raised me up into a newfound purpose.
All of this clearly will bring me much gain:
Immediate insight was meant for all us
To see within the rise after descent
Into the underworld – this is how all
The knowledge, world, and art connects, present
A newly single world that breaks the wall
We built opposed to seeing how each one
Is indistinguishable, one and the same.
New shame at seeing all that we have done
Can now be born out of hatred’s old flame.
Acceptance new-found for all of mankind –
One of the gems I’d never thought I’d find.

Acceptance new-found for all of mankind
In who we are in each and every way –
One of the gems I’d never thought I’d find –
Acceptance of fun, sex, our waste, and play.
The world is as much two as it is one –
Good must have evil, woman must have man,
Heat must have cold, and moon must have the sun.
And though we want to, we will never ban
From this old world the messiness of beast –
The sex and soil, the feces, food and scent –
We make — and we should make an endless feast
Out of the joy we feel in this moment.
I now feel I am ready to ascend
Up into this new-found life on the mend.

I now feel I am ready to ascend
Again to this beautiful human world,
Up into this new-found life on the mend,
That makes the old one, that once had been hurled
In the abyss seem really most pathetic
In a comparison to this world I
See now before me. I am sympathetic
Now to this broken world – I could now cry
At how so many will resist this human
World. Fragments are how we can reproduce
The bright symbolic world of minds – so why ban
Our reason, icons, love – it will reduce
In us the very thing that makes us all
Alive – this is what made us humans fall.

In us the very thing that makes us all
Go up above – our art and knowledge – make us
Alive – this is what made us humans fall,
When we denied united as a chorus
All of the things that makes us us – I bring
A light from Hades for all of the world,
A music and new song for us to sing,
A new poetry and myth that I unfurled
From deep and ancient sources, me and past
Now come together – I can bring this art
To you its shining light can brightly cast
On shadows that our culture can impart.
Because I’d loved her more than anyone
Should have, I came in to this crisis and the sun.

Almost As Happy

The sun, the light, Brazilian warmth, the sand
To softly surging sea, a hotel room
With wife and children there and no demand
Beyond the conference where I assume

My place among the experts who are there
To speak on economic liberty.
I get to listen and I get to share
Ideas and truth and possibility.

I spend my evenings with my children, wife –
Brazilian beef and deep-fried yucca roots
For dinner, music twists the air, a life
I wanted, so I nurtured each green shoot.

And I am on the radio, a talk
Show interview on liberty and I
Am taking calls and do not ever balk
At even the insulting questions. Why . . .

I wake, disoriented. Was it real,
Or this hard life of evening naps before
I’m off to work at night? Life will reveal
Itself in Dallas consciousness I wore

Before I went to bed. I wake up to
The same beloved family and the
Same hopes and dreams, but the wrong life. Undo
This curse, let me redream reality.

Scales

The distribution of the galaxies
Across the universe resembles nerves
Within our brains, the pattern reproduced
From simple, largest scales down to the most
Complex phenomenon’s constituents –
A scale-free network is the universe.

A timeless nothingness gave birth to time
In particles emerged from waves transformed
To atoms stars complexified, which strung
Together into molecules, then life,
Then man, society, and then the arts –
A hierarchy is the universe.

How do we reconcile the fact these two
Must coexist? The world will organize
As equilibrium in steady-state.
The world will order itself in a far
From equilibrium state too. And thus
In paradox the universe creates.

Economies are made of men and firms.
Our cells are organelles and molecules.
Our language comes in poetry and words.
Our bodies are of molecules and cells.
The hierarchies and individuals
Make up the scale-free network universe.

Most galaxies are spirals with the curve
Of fern and shell, the phi and fiveness tiled
In movement, action, energy, and growth,
Expressed in evolution which invents,
Complexifies with scale-free sameness to
A universe that’s free by making rules.

And man is its complexity, a bridge
To more we cannot understand, so full
Of good and evilness, so full of love
And envy, full of generosity
And theft, as paradox is reconciled,
The universe creates more paradox.

The Gate

With messages sent back through time from more
Complexity to now, an oracle
Is needed to translate the metaphor
Into a metaphor once he is full.

A python wraps around the dendrites, hides
Away the branches, there in silence hides.

Confessing one’s an oracle is sure
To open far more eyes with cataracts
Than those prepared for wisdom can endure,
Than those prepared for disconcerting facts.

The earth is open underneath, the air
Is full, the temple makes truth gauzy, bare.

I’m but a node between the next and now,
And blind and deaf translator in the song
Of yet unspoken languages – endow
The world with beauty and you won’t belong.

The sun and song both form one side of me –
The wine and dance the face that makes me free.

The oracle confesses, but who dares
Believe the words, the words he sings, the ignorance
He must confess, you must embrace, the mares
Which lift you up so you can truly dance.

Public Education

We yoke our children each to the same yoke,
The slow are dragged, the fast attempt to run
Ahead, until the slow slip from it, broke,
The fast break out, their education done.

Unless the fast are beaten to submission,
To mediocrity, and made to drag
The plow that underturns the slow, derision
And pity all they get for early lag.

More fields would become plowed if like were bound
To like – if fertile fields are our true goals –
We do not educate the deaf with sounds,
We don’t expect more egg-laying from foals.

Don’t say you love them all the same when you
Tie down the spirit, crush the weak and slow
Instead of helping to make strong, give due
To those who hunger to be wise and know.

It’s not strong oxen that you want, and less
A horse with lively spirit. No, it’s sheep,
That you can safely herd and sheer and dress
To feed upon – your goal as they still sleep.

Mate

I cannot envy anyone,
Not just because this monster is the source
Of almost every evil – no, the sun
That runs the course
Of my bright sky is you, and I
Could never envy anyone when my
Beloved wife
Is with me in my bed and dreams,
Fulfilling all I need and want in life.
A shelf of makeup, creams
When you’re away bring you to sight
And I delight
In flesh and eyes and mouth, your chin and nose
Envisioned in your absence fail
To live up to your beauty as it ever grows
Each warm-wind day I sail
Together through blue opal waves
Discovering new continents together.
With me no pools
In sheltered forests without weather –
No, my route’s for fools –
The glories of discovered lands shall be
My promise, to be free
Of certainty, stability – but love,
My love, my destiny, I promise beyond death
As this, my love, will rise above
And bestow breath
To us so long as mankind reads
These words and love love’s deeds.

Relief

Is that a crocus peeking through the snow?
The winter melts away around the bloom
Of tender promise in light indigo.
I'm thankful for the disappearing gloom.

Developmental Economics

I’m here to help because I love you so.

You don’t know me. Go help the one you know.

I love you for you are one of mankind.

That’s saying you can see when you are blind.

I want to give you help, you nameless man.

You’d give a northern Indian a fan.

It’s always hot in India, I hear.

The one who best can help me is who’s near.

I’ll irrigate your land so it has worth.

The only thing you’d do is salt the earth.

I’ll send you tons of corn on which to dine.

My culture thinks that corn is food for swine.

I’ll teach you how to grow more fish in pools.

My culture thinks that fishing is for fools.

I promise my intentions are but good.

Then do no send a desert-man a hood.

I don’t think you appreciate my help.

I’m burning – you throw gas and I will yelp.

But you’re a helpless man – why can’t you see?

Get off my neck – I’ll prosper when I’m free.

The Cave Dweller

I sit up in my cave and contemplate –
Why must the swallows dive down at my head? –
I search my soul and with it I debate
The meaning of my life, the place of man
Here in this world, and wonder at the plan –
The swallows in their nests are chirping now –
Or if there is a plan, or yet a goal
For all that fills the universe’s bowl,
The atoms without ends are given ends
By life, and human action, it now bends
Us back to systems without ends. I brave
The damp and cold, the almost-empty cave –
With night now near the bats blow by my ears –
To understand myself to understand
The whole – Ow! Mosquito! – to see the sand
That shifts softly underfoot. Where’s the rock
We’ve all been told exists, that stops the clock
And brings to man his goal, his promised bliss?
I’m going to crush that noisome cricket
So I can get back to my thoughts. A thicket
Is growing up around them – they’re impure
Because of all this crap I must endure.
A single cricket is annoying, why
When fields of them delight my hungry ears?
It’s like a single, hungry man – he’s so
Annoying – but my soul is stung by choirs
Who sing their hunger – then I want to crush
The ones who have until they hemorrhage green
To feed the mankind that I love up here
Inside my cave up on my hill where I
Am safe from watching real men slowly die.

Salvation

Has poetry saved someone’s life?
Their channeled lines have certainly saved mine,
Warm rhythms born on my cold strife.

It’s poured forth as a constant wine
Confluencing my tributaried self –
But they were most prosaic lines

Produced by this slim moral elf
Until I found a common voice in form
From Blake and Keats upon my shelf.

The voices in me made me warm,
But Frederick Turner brought me to the place
Where one is strange and in the norm,

That borderland of half-filled space
Of scribbled silences unheard until
I learned to weave poetic lace

So I could learn how to fulfill
My destiny, to ensure the world’s rife
With life upon earth’s wooded hill.

Robbed

The old man sits on his front porch. He will
Not sell the wooden birds he carves or trees
He started in his back yard. Cold winds chill
Him though he wears a sweater in the breeze –
A sweater that his wife made him but can
Not sell out of their home. The check they get
Is not enough – a little more would fan
A warmth of dignity and ease their debt,
Would let them feel more useful once again.
But they are not allowed to use their home
To make a better life. It is a sin
To take an old man’s livelihood. The loam
He plants his trees in is his own, but he
Is daily robbed of hope and dignity.

A Tragic Promise

Please swear to me that you will love no other.

Do not forget I also have a mother.

Then promise me no female else can come
To take your heart. We want it all, not some.

He swore that if another female should
Bring love into his heart that God, He could
Then strike him down so he’d no longer live.

She smiled, was happy that her love would give
His life if his heart should divide into
A space enough to love more than the two
Dear woman in his life when he then spoke.

And so they married, white on both their arms,
The happiness of each one surely warms
The wedding-goers as they look upon
The two united, promised ‘til the dawn.

And two years passed, and then they had a child –
When she was born she totally beguiled
The man who did not think it possible
To love someone so thoroughly. So, full
Of love of his new daughter, with his heart
Now split, he died, as he swore he’d depart.
He died beside his female loves, heart broke.

Heraclitus or, the Source of Order

Behold the strife that drives the world
The strife between both strife and love
With paradox all life unfurled
The eagle works in wing with dove
Cliché is mated with the new
What is is only what becomes
With art we tell a lie that’s true
The sweet and bitter lie in plums
While all is one it’s many and
All digital and analog
The world’s a marsh both sea and land
An endless stable shifting bog
The laws and lawless wed in strife
To make society and life

Whither Wisdom

The solitary in the cave is gone
He has abandoned us it seems forever
He does not look upon the nearing dawn
He does not move the earth with wisdom’s lever

The television’s on the radio
Is drowning out all thought Nirvana’s but
A band and no cool thoughts come fast nor slow
It blurs online there is some gossip on some slut

Somehow the ones with wisdom have to work
The ones with leisure have nothing to share
The know thyself it does not even lurk
In navel-gazing shadows without care

The solitary’s married now or dating
And everyone is worried he’s alone
And any time that he is out debating
The invitations fail to come by phone

And if he’s melancholy or he hears
The voices telling us how we are fated
Or feels the nausea or sheds woeful tears
You can be sure that he’ll be medicated

Our wisdom is now fossilized in books
The fossils buried in a college lawn
No matter where on earth the pupil looks
The solitary in the cave is gone

To My Concrete Abstraction

Blue feminine pure harmony is not,
My lovely beloved not-I,
Enough to make a tune. Your woven cot
Seduces me to stop and lie

Among your folds, your crystalline embrace,
And forget that true love must take
Red masculine tension torn from its place
Of war we fought for its own sake

And transform both into a symphony.
No, how can I forget our lust
Is leavened into purple love? I’m free
Because of you, my lifelong trust,

My yellow sun that brings me life and light
And searing heat that dries and drives
The grass to match its color. I find height
In rising to your summits’ knives

That do not split (alone) but (also) shears
Green patterns that transform mere raw
Materials into artistic tears
Of joy and laughter, sorrow without flaw.

I must arrange our orange counterpoints
To point out metaphors must fail
To bridge the gulf of words and heart – the joints
Can never reach and I mist wail

That all that I or any man can dare
To have is playful art to say
What can’t be said. I’m only left to share
These indigo word-thoughts of play.

Do I repeat myself? It’s harmony
In tension yet again. My art
Can only weave a rainbow honestly
As sun and rain combine to part.

Webs

The spider pulls the thread to thread the web
In spirals on the star across the stems,
A zig-zag to the side to stitch it up,
Then centers itself, looking out in eight
Directions, its organization firm
Beneath its sensitive eight legs that feel
For movement so the spider can pounce on
The profit from its hard and lonely work.

A hop and lonely buzz entangles fast
The locust looking for some grass to feast
Upon. This was the one that would have tipped
Next year into a swarm, a plague that would
Have stripped the land and starved the herds and tribes,
And pushed the men to other lands and war.
A predator this year made next year’s prey
Enough for next year’s predators to stay
Their numbers. Life will stay in bounds and grow
A healthy rate, for wealth must be made slow.

The spider wraps its prey up in its web
To feast in peace out on the margins of
Its web. It then returns to make repairs,
To weave with liquid hardened in the air,
Until the web is perfect once again.
No central spider, though, can weave the web
The spider, locusts, herds and man must live
Within, a web that’s made in complex trade
Of life or value, woven in their need
One for the other. As important as
The spider is, do not mistake his web
For that one which we weave invisibly.

Wealth

A mist sprays out upon this wood
And lays among trunks dark with living.
A rush of blossoms burst, a good
And worthy show of this world’s giving.

Such rich growth masks what, hiding, must
Fall into what is lost. It’s making
This land and wood, this sun and dust
And all you know. This lack is shaking

All of this world to grow, arranging
It into mountains, oaks, and birds,
To all this world that’s always changing,
To human brains and all our words.

What missing thing is in us all,
That forms all chaos into form,
Transforming information’s call
From icy cosmos cold to warm.

Our warming sun transforms this land,
A world which grows and, changing, cracks
And folds until it shows its hand
In paradox through what it lacks.

Waiting

To learn this poem’s meaning you
Will have to wait awhile first.

I see that Wheel of Fortune’s on.
You have to fill these papers out.

Your turn will come and if you’re not
Available you’ll lose your turn.

The sun no longer glistens off
The pane or casts the building’s shade.

The news is on. An accident
Takes up the news. I sigh in thanks.

The other hospital in town
Is filling with moans, screams, and blood.

It’s The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.
I love his Headlines bit. I’m tired.

I really have to pee. I have
To pee. I cannot lose my place.

I read this page. Is it twice?
Or thrice? My wife hates the word thrice.

Was that my name? One just the same?
My dizziness, it has returned.

How many lamps are there? I think
There’s twice as many in here now.

I hope they didn’t call. My crotch
Is demonstrating I’ve been dreaming.

The sun is shards of glass in my
Green eyes. The early morning news.

What am I doing on the floor?
the sun left since I tried to stand.

I love you, darling. I hope you
Had known. I hope you’d known. I love . . .

Truth

Mountains rising to the clouds
Snowy peaks the mist enshrouds
Stones protrude above the trees
Bent down by the mountain’s breeze.

Glaciers grinding down the stones
Lay to light the ancient bones –
Ocean creatures touch the sky
Where the birds no longer fly.

Continents are moving, crush
Mountains and their glaciers, rush
Stones and ice up to the edge –
Sky and space meet stony wedge.

Air is light, with cold embrace –
Icy cap on stony face –
Orchids on the twisted limbs,
Greening cliffs up to their rims.

Death is stalking, white and gray,
Springs upon the goats at play,
Drunken on their joy of life,
Cut off by the leopard’s knife.

Glaciers trickle in the light,
Dripping down through every tight
Crevice in the mountain’s face
Winding in a hidden lace.

Rivers form from trickling streams,
Merging like an author’s dreams
Into epics grander than
Mountains – they fall short of man.

The Trees of Life

The neighbor to the right of me
Has hacked off all the limbs on all his trees –
He’s happy that he now is free
Of all the leafy mess in the Fall breeze.

He’s certain they will stand, so grand
Without their leafy crown blocking the sun,
Such stately trunks sprout from the land
Repeating unity that makes them one.

The neighbor to the left of me
Has hacked off all the roots on all his trees –
He’s happy now that he is free
Of his yard filled with woody, knobby knees.

He’s certain they will stand, so grand
Without their roots disturbing even one
Trimmed-equal leaf of grass, the land
Now smooth, still sheltered from the horrid sun.

My trees just grow delightfully,
Deep-diving roots and growing limbs, these trees
Disturb the ground and air, are free
In order and disorder to just please.

And so my trees bear fruit, a grand
Display of health and wealth. Not even one
Belonging to my neighbors stands. Their land
Is bare, their homes are crushed, their lives are done.