Borders

The earth is populated across her weary face
For men have always wandered with hope from place to place,
Their wives and even children are all they often brought--
They look for open spaces where new life can be wrought.

From Africa mankind has spread, equator to the poles,
No matter where they've settled down they've met their mighty goals--
From fishermen to farmers and architects to saints
We never have ceased moving--our future's what each paints.

We paint the landscape future with ever-winding roads
On which we're always traveling with all our dreams and loads--
But often there's resistance when leaving or when there,
But that has never kept us from going anywhere.

The soul of man must wander--that is the natural law,
And those who would oppose it live with a tragic flaw--
They hate the best that's in mankind, and people who would hate
Want to destroy all beauty and dissolve our human fate. 

The Slow Death of the Death of Kings

There was a time when kings were killed--a year
Was all some had before the ritual
Brought down their reign in death--so who could fear
Such as would find their end in royal cull?

From those who heard the voice of spirits sing
And learned the language of the sky and stars
Emerged a slight reprieve--to kings they'd bring
Unnumbered years, then ritual death (or Mars).

An annual rite when fools would reign, the high
Would be brought low, the royals paupers made
And homeless made into the king who'd die
A scapegoat's death, the kin denied the blade.

The poets, hearing Dionysus, told
The tales of kings who fell--their audience
Would see the actors act, the parts unfold
To show the death on stage, a fiction fence.

The shamans and the poets lost their voice,
And all that now remains are kings who reign--
No death, no ritual reminder--choice
The only threat to break the iron chain.

Finding Happiness

I see deep beauty everywhere, in everything
And thus I've found true happiness--of it I sing.

Become as Little Children

"Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of God."

"The kingdom of God cometh not with observation: Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you."

From out of apes you humans immatured--
Yes, you, for I have immatured as well,
My neurotribe and I--we have endured
Much mockery--as children we still dwell.

The genes that made the man from swinging ape,
That slowed development to make more room,
They are responsible for human shape
And mind, and the long journey to the tomb.

And yet these genes are many more in me,
It seems, and immatured me to autistic,
To image-, pattern-thinking--those who flee
Those most like me deny the realistic.

The realistic truth is we've evolved
And are evolving still--nothing's resolved.

Against All Hate

Behold, the vicious misanthrope,
The hater of the differences in skin,
The hater of the differences in kin,
The hater of what others would believe,
The hater who would hate without reprieve.

Behold, the vicious misanthrope,
The hater of the greatness man achieves--
When faced with man-made beauty only grieves--
The hater of the makers and the wealthy,
Who's only happy when you are unhealthy.

Behold, the vicious misanthrope,
Who sees man as a plague upon the earth,
Denying humans have inherent worth,
Repulsed at all mankind has built--
Who wants us to dissolve in shame and guilt.

The ones who want us full of guilt and shame,
Inventing reasons humans are to blame--
From poverty to wealth and exploitation
To laziness, defenders of the nation--
This is the vicious misanthrope.

The nihilist denying life has meaning,
That value, values are a lie--those leaning
On nothing for support would dare deny
All beauty, justice, truth--say they're a lie--
This is the vicious misanthrope.

You lovers of mankind, the rich and poor,
The individual--open the door
Of greatness, creativity and life--
Deny life's haters, creators of all strife--
Oppose the vicious misanthrope!

The Wages of Life

You dare to eat the pomegranate seed?
A single seed will keep you bound to death
And life will disappear on earth--you'll feed
On frozen ashes taking your last breath.

You dare to eat the pomegranate fruit?
The serpent spirals up the limb to speak
A fact that's false--the truth upon the lute
Will have to find its voice among the meek.

We pass the blame and overhead the sun
Will pass to torch the garden--now the plan
Can play itself to bear new fruit--don't shun
The game instilled since time and space began.

The cycle finds its life upon its break
To spiral 'til creation is awake.

Perfect

You made today a perfect day
And all I had to do was wake by you--
You're like the flowers, birds in May,
The fresh, deep smell of early morning dew.

You made this week a perfect week
And all you had to do was be by me--
The blackest clouds can't make life bleak--
When life's too hot, you are my shady tree.

You made this year a perfect year
And all you had to do was hold my hand--
In all life's storms I have no fear
Because I know beside me you will stand.

You made this life a perfect life
And all we had to do was fall in love--
Yes, when you chose to be my wife
My heart would blossom like a spring foxglove. 

Honey

In Heaven from the mountains flows sweet milk
That fills the valleys with their opal silk
That quenches every thirst--yes, gone the thirst
For water, knowledge, wisdom--you will burst
As an exploding star with all you'll know
And understand, and yet you'll surely grow
With love and joy--and you shall bow and nod
As you join, head-to-head, the form of God.

Pythagorean Logic

The soul, we know, is sacred breath--
The soul's a butterfly
That sets to flight upon your death
Air-chaos as you die.

Don't eat a thing that has a soul--
It's bound to give you gas
Because that soul will have the goal
Of coming out your ass.

And that's a shameful place to be--
Ask shame, for she went in,
Though when love enters, she will flee,
The same as our souls' kin.

So vegans, do not eat the bean--
Their souls you will release
In music-making quite obscene
That never seems to cease.

First Person

What character are you in your own story?
Are you the hero? Victim? Prostitute
Or nun? A healer? Poet? Seeking glory?
Creating wealth, or are you destitute?

A shaman, like myself, just seeks to heal
In rhythmic words and myths, to bring the true
Into the light and shadow to reveal
The beauty of it all, make ancient new.

Whose tales have you accepted as your own?
Have you the courage needed now to edit,
Revise your story--falling, you've now flown--
And to the makers, doers give due credit.

We are the stories we believe, the lies
We tell ourselves, source of all joys and sighs.

From Yang to Yin and Back Again

The Goddess reigned in ancient days of stone,
When caverns were the temples to her soul
And sacrifice was made to bless the hunt
And ask the herds forgiveness for our toll.

The God and Goddess rose to reign together,
Proliferating into spirits, sprites,
More gods and goddesses of place and weather,
Emotions, actions, all the mind's delights.

The Goddess got demoted to become
God's mother, mother of mankind, serpent-
Seduced--the masculine emerging from
The desert and demanding we repent.

The God emerges, fully masculine
And motherless--the goal is to protect
The women from the world of men--the sin
Is failing to be bold, make gold, reflect.

Lip-service to the Goddess while the God
Is granted fullest reign and many goals
Are all that's worthy just elevates the rod
Of Hermes, justifying sexist trolls.

Affirm the feminine in freedom, fill
Yourself with all her virtues--Goddess true
To who she is should never feel the chill
Of merely manly virtues are her due.

The masculine and feminine must reign
With equity and we must look upon
Their virtues as on par to make us sane
Like sun-filled lunacy at break of dawn.

Alive in Memory

We are dissolved in every little death
That dissipates our energies into
Each other and the world--the cosmic breath
Ensouls the swimming, crawling things, and you.

And in a flash of light our life begins--
The shadows deepen, make distinct the dawn--
Our aims will not improve without our sins--
Yes, when will no one notice that you're gone?

We know the poem makes the subject live--
The object is to keep each soul alive
In minds and in that way their minds will give
Long life like that Achilles chose to strive.

Each death becomes a little death in art,
For when you enter it, you don't depart.

Harmony

The poem tells you what you are afraid
To know--and that is your discomfort. Verse
Transformed into the Way, made myth, won't fade
From mind--disturbing rest you think a curse.

You manly men, embrace your feminine--
The cold, moist moon that casts your shadow--find
Your Hermes, Aphrodite and begin
Your transformation to their child, unwind.

You women, too, embrace your masculine--
The hot, dry sun that casts your light--bind
Yourself to Mars and Aphrodite--sin
Is failing to embrace their child, their mind.

But balance does not make us negatives
Of who we're born to be--we need an eye
Belonging to the other so she lives
Within the him, and him in her, won't die.

Employ your taste, employ your sight, and listen
To what the ether says and smell the earth,
So cold and dry--upon the grass will glisten
Dew drops reflecting what we're truly worth.

Angel Flight

A flock of ducks, of geese, of swans ascend
From off my brow--I bow beneath the moon
That lights the willow by the pool---I mend
My soul into the Earth---the golden noon
Lies far upon the other side---I lift
My eyes up to the soaring swans whose wings
Will lift me through the night to my great gift---
The lead swan sweet of Leda softly sings
As over war-burned ruins we all soar---
The knights take up their place to guard my flight
From my coal cave onto the sandy shore
That shimmers diamond in the cold moonlight---
The messengers have come in swirling breath
To wing me wiser from my time with death.

Birth, Love, Death, Rebirth

A third of life in death, the winter cold
Comes from a pomegranate seed, the taste
Too much a red temptation--just ask Eve--
Persephone had laid the land to waste.

Yes, death is in the world and we've been thrown
From off the heights of Eden, and we fell
Until our deaths devour all we've loved
Lined on the executioner's stone wall.

The fruit of death, blood-of-Adonis-sprung--
Fruit of abundance and fertility--
The red globe bursts against the wall and spreads
The seeds to bless the home and family.

The seeds of death on Eve's and Adam's lips--
The fruit of life in Jesus's, Mary's hands--
The crown upon the poet-singer's head
Is how the blood moon fruit spread through the lands.

Persephone and Hades, twisted serpents
In double helix carried by the soul
Who carries souls to death--the merchant's wings
Lift through the skies to each soul's final goal.

The serpent twisted through the earth-tree's roots,
The serpent twisting in the eagle's claws,
The serpent twisting words so subtly
Will fall, has fallen shedding nature's laws.

The serpent bears the pomegranate crown
To gown the virgin lunar bride in fig--
Reborn into the bridegroom, as the son
Of man who, seeking, 'round the roots will dig.

Disturbed, the one-eyed eagle will lift up
From off the top-most branch and disappear
Into the sun, returning as the wren
Who flits among the serpents without fear.

The tree is felled, its wood is sawed and planed
And raised into a wall, the windows hung
With curtains red and pomegranate-trimmed--
A room where words are written and re-sung.

The wise will spend a third of life within
This room of holy wood, the book-filled den
Of nature's shattered seeds and learn at last
To love the the subtle song of the king wren.

Living Classicism

I traveled once to Greece, the ancient land
Of tragedy, philosophy, the gods--
And there, beneath the plane tree I would stand,
Escape Apollo's heat, take Plato's nods.

In Athens in the paths of Socrates
I walked--agora and the marketplace
Today where women sell their wares. I'd seize
The very air, the ancient time and space.

In Naxos where Apollo's gate still stands,
Where Zeus hid Dionysus in a cave,
I ate in mountaintop cafes, my hands
Felt marble mountains--Naxos I still crave.

In Delphi where the oracles would speak
Apollo's prophesies in vents now sealed--
I stood within the theater to  peak
At what great Dionysus once revealed.

In Thassos where the ancient Greeks had sailed
From Naxos, Dionysus first set shoot--
A dining archeologist regaled
Me with the findings of this ancient root.

I lived in Greece a month, and there I found
An understanding of the things I'd read--
And having traveled I have found the ground
That grows the sweet figs that keep me well-fed.

Facebook Commenting Blues

The stupid, stupid, stupid hurts my brain,
And though I know engagement isn't gain,
When stupid rises I cannot refrain,
Though showing such contempt is but my bane --
Have an opinion? Please stay in your lane
And don't create a fake news daisy chain
With answers complex we can't make it plain
On formats that are mostly made to train
The brain to feel a little twinge of pain
If we don't quick-react--and from this strain
We feel the stupid just will never wane--
And that is why I simply cannot deign
To let you by believing stupid things
No matter all the anger that it brings. 

Dedication

I find the everythings I'm chasing wind
Their ways on wings of wrens within the willows
That wrap themselves around my very wrists unkind
To keeping friends who flee before the billows.

Beloved friends who feel that they must flee
Before my new obsessions and impatience--
I have Cassandra's gift of truth--my plea,
I know, has never willow-bound relations--

I write these verses you won't read to tell
You of my love that doesn't end when you
Abandon me, deny me, curse to Hell
Me--so the Muse will help me say what's true.

I live in isolation with my Muse
And all our children--them I'll always choose.

Caridwen and Taliesin

When crafty Caridwen concocted stew
Of knowledge in her cauldron, the strong brew
Brought poetry to life--Taliesin
Had tasted three mere drops--transformed
Within the womb of Caridwen and born
Of her, reborn out of the sea--and now torn
Apart and put together--in his rhymes
The truth is told--his rhythms are the limes
That keep us straight--where's good Taliesin
Today so that our minds will be transformed?
Mankind can only be reborn again
From poetry's own goddess Caridwen.

My Ride Upon the Night Mare

As I lay down and closed my eyes I heard
Outside my open window whinnying--
A sound that's out of place here in the city--
Yes, even when the city is in Texas.

I crept around the bed and glanced outside--
A glance was all it took to transport me
Onto the back of a moon-white mare, black
Eyes absorbing all light into abyss.

I had no need of saddle, bridle, reins
All unprovided--I heard no owl, bird,
Cicada, cricket in the nighttime sing--
I heard no cries of danger or of pity.

And so we rode upon the very nexus
Of life and death and dream--my equine guide
Rode me through prairie Native ghosts who'd flee
Before--not me, but--my companion's track.

From danger, fear--from rhythmic hoof beats, bliss--
I listened, could not hear the faintest strains
Of music luring my mad mare--I miss
The bison filling up the shortgrass plains.

I'm haunted by the past that fills the earth
And fills me up until I pour out time
In present draughts to make a future worth
Our having as we make our complex climb.

This place does not belong to me--this place
Is not unique to me--this moon-white mare
Does not belong to me--she fills the place
That unifies all poets, we the rare.

The charming, cheerless chants of tribes that chose
To live their lives on lolling plains that lay
Between the hills and mountaintops--what grows
Out of the underworld that makes us play?

The mare has masqueraded me--the spirit
World winds in front of me and does not mind
My presence--ignorance and all who fear it
Remain in battle here among the blind.

The plains dissolve to deserts, rainbow stones
And trees of stone, of crystals, shades of brown
More numerous than rarer rainbows, tones
Resounding everywhere in moonlight's gown.

I lift the gown to pleasures of the mind
More numerous than of the flesh--I taste
The musky midnight, melt and then unwind
To find that I won't bind myself, be chaste.

The mare is climbing up the mountainside
And at the peak she leaps--from peak to peak
She takes me to a cooler place that's wide
Enough to hold my mind and all I seek.

At last she lets me down beside a cave
From which emerges a great serpent, heads
More numerous than those who found the grave--
He's everything the past and future dreads.

I know I can't defeat this demon, sword
Or other weapon I don't have--the mare
Transforms into a woman, steps toward
The serpent with her milk-filled bosom bare.

The smallest serpent head strikes out to find
Its fangs embedded in a swollen breast
Where milk and venom mix and, mixing, bind
The serpent's drinking throat to kill the rest.

The venom spreads out to the woman's limbs
And roots her to the rocky mountain ground,
Transforming her into a blooming tree
Whose flowers open, white, with subtle sound.

This sound resounds within my inner ear
And through this sound I learn to cherish fear
As much as love and friendship we hold dear--
And through all life and strife will truth appear.

I know that's why the mare has brought me here,
To witness transformation, her death bier
Poeticizing to a higher tier
My soul, Cassandra-like, no one will hear.

Gnosis

Too many have mistaken art for self-
Expression--only when the self's expressed
From hidden knowledge not found on a shelf
And not out of your bared and barren breast
Will you become an artist, poet, mage
Who's able to bring forth in metaphors
The future and from it be a fair sage
Whose images, rhymes, rhythms open doors
The select few are able to unlock
Upon the passing of the ancient test
Of memorizing all the ancient stock
Of verse and myth, inspiration, the blessed.
The bard who fills his cup to overflow
Pours forth in verse all that he cannot know.

A Little Song

The soul, it needs to sing--it needs to sing
In mountain meadows, needs to sing on hills
And on the stormy seas--it has to sing
To find itself, luxuriate in thrills.

It cannot sing while stuck in traffic--curses
Are opposite of song--and bare routine
Is searing static--raze these daily curses
That starve the soul until it's weak and lean.

Turn off the T.V., internet, and song,
The background chatter widening the hole
Within the soul that's only filled with song
And music emanating from its coal.

The soul, it needs to sing so it can bring
Itself to wisdom in its dancing ring.

Success

Not knowing how to play guitar,
He dreamed of rock-n-roll,
But if you're not a practice star,
You'll never reach your goal.

And yet, he felt resentment life
Should keep him from his dream--
A job, a mortgage, and a wife
With children filled time's stream.

The years went by, he found his work
Fulfilling and he passed
Up through the company--a perk
That childhood did not last.

The years went by, he worked to found
A company his own--
Some tougher years to lay the ground,
Then lift up every stone.

He found his happiness, when true
To family, work, and friends--
A deeper, healthy wealth was due
By seeking higher ends.

An Ode to the Still Voice

I've never ceased to hear the voice that called
Me to the Muses' realm--it's sometimes mute
Or muted, melancholy, maddening,
But always seeming welcome all the same--
I named my firstborn son the name it called--
I learned by then I must obey--I learned
To listen to the smallest voice, perceive
The smallest curt command it gave--the goal,
The destiny remains unclear--my wife
The voice commanded me to marry--she
Was walking up to me, the first her flesh
Was present to my touch--the voice sent me
To Mississippi, then to Texas, sent
So I'd diversity my mind's contents--
It's made me wise and foolish, ignorant
And full of knowledge, ugly, beautiful,
A madman and most sane--it made me know
Myself and hide myself and show myself,
Transform myself to become who I am
And truly was--I heed its call and dodge
Its call and pay the price for every slip
Off of the mountain trail it leads me up--
Behold the vistas it has shown me, darkness
Unveiled by it, lush valleys dense with trees,
Wide mountain meadows pointillist with flowers,
Sequoias on the slopes, bare rocky peaks
That rise into the clouds of thought and meaning
And scatter and collect before the front
That chills it all to senseless sounds that stream
To torrents of tales, then to waves of verse
To pour into the oceans that surround
This land that lifts into the peaks where I
Am led up to proclaim apocalypse--
Behold the house and debt, suburban life
That tame the voice that drives me on and on,
The voice that only sometimes speaks--I catch
The voice in random silences that swell
Into the ceaseless chatter, noise, and music
That now define our lives so we won't listen
To still and silent voices that could transform
Our lives--we like the hot and humid places,
The swamps and the mosquitoes draining us
So we don't have to hear the voice that drives
Us to distraction, creativity,
And innovation, art and madness, love
And new technology and ways of life--
The debt, the chatter, politics and strife,
We choose anxiety before  before we'd choose
The voice revaluating values verse
By rhythmic, often-rhyming verse to raise
Our thoughts to music echoing across
The valleys we make fertile with our songs.

Hermes

Your reign is over, Dionysus. Man's
Descended into nihilism. Zeus
Lost his divine throne to you--time for you
To ceded so all the earth can grow and change,
Emerge into a brand new world and leap
To newer heights from off the mountain peaks
You raised, but which erode beneath man's feet
As your divine enthusiasm fades
Into mere relativity and art
Without a touch of beauty, social life
Dissolving--atomistic collectivism
Now breaking down society. A new
Enthusiasm must take hold so man
Can rise anew, refreshed, complexified
To brand new heights--I'll bring a new old art
And revolutionize their science, help them see
Just who they are, or who they were, and who
They're destined to be when they follow me.
You have grown old within the minds of men--
Your powers dim, you're left with drunkenness
And nothing else. I am rejuvenated,
A younger god, and if we fight, I'll win.
But if we fight, mankind will be brought low
Before I raise them up again. Resign
Yourself to this transition both our fates
Have brought us to. Please spare our love, mankind.
Please spare them a transition that's traumatic
And let them rather ease from god to god
By hearing what our prophets have to say.
Relinquish now your throne for all the love
You harbor for mankind. I wait, my king,
For your decision, praying it is wise.

The Order of Things

I sit and watch as mankind blindly gropes
Its way to patterns that the cosmos found
Itself, self-organizing wish to hope
And placing everything on patterned ground.

Did life, like mankind, fight against the trend
Within the cosmos that gave rise to it
And all it needed to survive and bend
Environments to thrive, not merely fit?

Release yourselves into true personhood,
Become unique by showing that you flew
With others and rebelled to do your duty.

Release yourselves so that you do the good
In a society that now is true,
Emerging to the just and sacred beauty.

A Better Time

We all are searching for a better time--
It drives the restlessness of feet and mind--
It is the reason that creators find
The newness in the world that is their crime
And on whose wooden steps the world must climb
Even as they are burning it and bind
The makers and discoverers, unwind
This complex world and return to grime.

A world of beauty--that is each one's aim--
Some want a Rothko world, so simplified--
Some want a Dali world, a nightmare scene--
Some want a Michelangelo to flame
The world in deep complexity denied
By those who fear what isn't pure and clean.

Values

Important are the fleeting things--
Enduring things we leave as nought--
More gossip in our ear will sing
Our souls to do things that we ought
Not do because we think our friends
And enemies have us in mind--
But honestly, we're not their ends--
Peak at their thoughts, you will not find
You there when you are out of sight.
Yet we neglect the work we do,
For few will learning dare delight--
And almost no one loves what's true
But only listen to what feels
To them supportive of belief,
Ignoring medicine that heals
In favor of a lying thief
Who tells them what they want to hear--
Why do you want to believe hate,
Embracing those who peddle fear?
Why do you think destruction fate
When all the evidence is clear
That life is ever everyplace
Rejecting all that you hold dear--
That is what lifts the human race.
Important are enduring things--
The fleeting things, please leave as nought--
Allow the truth to always sing
Our souls to do things that we ought.

Moloch

The kings by every name--the bureaucrats,
The legislators, presidents, and queens,
The Secretaries, all the true fat cats--
Devour all the children. Moloch cleans
The flesh from off their bones, discriminates
Against them all, accepting no debates.

The children in the belly of the beast
Are roasted and their screams turned into moos
As gentle as those cows before a feast
Who feast in ignorance that they will lose
The peace of pastures in the morning sun,
Milk-suckled veal before their life's begun.

The sacrificers hear the sounds of peace
And virtue emanating from the bronze
God's lips--they know these children's souls' release
Will bring the jailers to release the bonds
That their imaginations bind them by--
Contrary facts they always will deny.

Their bonds are gone and have been gone--they bind
Themselves and feed their children to the flames
And lift their blackened bones in hopes they'll find
A place where they'll deny their secret shames,
Where finest pheasants fly, cooked, to their plates
No one has placed before them, perfect fates.

They only have to feed Moloch each child
They nurtured at their breasts--the sacrifice
Of all the future's worth it--they're beguiled
Into believing evil can be nice
With just enough burnt flesh and bones made smoke
For Moloch's hunger you cannot revoke. 

Reactionaries

The new, the strange--these things the people hate,
And have to hate to have a healthy home--
Creators of new values, virtues rate
As evil--burn them on the gate you'll roam
Right through in celebration as you pass
The body smoldering, the hero dead
Who opened up the date to bring the mass
Into a future beautiful, the bread
Of life available to all. The bones
Interred into the columbarium,
A statue raised, we hear the mourners' moans,
The mourners who could never make a crumb
The hero made now praise, indeed they hail.
The meaning that the nihilists reject,
The everything-has-meaning folks bewail
New meanings that he made, while some reflect
And think the changes obvious and true.
A brand new gadget? Please protect the old
No matter who it hurts--it's what is due
So some are safe from brand new wealth untold.
A brand new style of art? Reactionaries
Reject it, claim themselves the avant garde
And poison all the sweet-singing canaries
To warn off people from the gold the bard
Uncovered to enrich our souls to health.
But all protect the order that they know--
Except the hated makers of all wealth,
Who plant and water, make each person grow. 

A Prophesy from the Holy Spirit

Veni creator spiritus
Yes, Holy Spirit, come
Without You I will have no words
Without You I am dumb

The world's unveiled when you arrive
The shadows slip away
The stones begin to dance and sing
And interact in play

The rocks enring me, spread and loop
To almost-living shapes
Yes, living things and thought itself
Are atom-pattern apes

The holy world's revealed to me
And you, if you'll but look
If you can't see it it's because
God's love you once forsook

God offers everyone a gift
But he won't beg or plea
Some gifts are simple, full of ease
But mine's of prophesy

And prophesy's the land of truth
You think our lives are worse
But we're protected by the gift
Of telling truth in verse

But like Cassandra whose each word
Was true but all thought lies
I tell you this, but each of you
My prophesy denies

So do not listen carefully
These words I wrote won't matter
The world of misanthropists soon
Will dissipate and scatter

For hating humans brings on hate
Of God and love and joy
And those who love mere power fate
Will fool and then destroy

For envy is the evil loved
By those who hate mankind
Resentment is the killer who
The haters love to find

Deny the men who love to rule
Embrace what nature gives
For that's God's order--paradox
Is why the cosmos lives

The Enthusiast

This gift that God has granted me must grace
My life in living fullness--such a gift
Should never be neglected, nor a rift
Emerge between us such that I'd embrace
The world--I weave words to a living lace
That in joy or despair are wont to lift
The soul into new ways of feeling, shift
The mind to rhythms of a different pace.

God grants this gift to wake the world with words--
In the beginning was the word which breathed
The world to life one logos at a time--
The poet is the master of the words,
And through this power God in love has wreathed
With laurels poets' metaphors and rhymes.

The Two Are One

Take the woman, get her naked
Now's the time for something sacred
Toss tradition, time to break it
Time to open up the gate

Strip to nothing, vulnerable
To yourself--don't prick the bubble
That you live in--face your double
Now's the time to tempt your fate

Now's the time to paint your body
Matching patterns, bright and gaudy
You and she challenge the haughty
Complexify the all too straight

Bare her breasts to bring the dawn-light
Dance to lure out sullen sunlight
Love each other under moonlight
Sing with joy and celebrate

Celebrate your very being
From your soul to what you're seeing
Bodies, souls are not for fleeing
Love is one, division hate

Domesticated Animals

We're off to work where we make just enough
To almost pay for modest comfort here
In this suburban solitude--we fear
We cannot carry on for simple stuff
Like paying bills--we fill our lives with fluff
To starve our souls of all that we hold dear
So we can just maintain. Some turn to beer,
Some turn to self-destruction, think they're tough.

A few of us are simply stubborn, wild
And undomesticated underneath,
And feel there's nothing comforting at all
In comfort--yes, I am a restless child
Who wants to dance and sing among the heath--
I hear the Sirens' song, the Muses' call.

The Artist's Life

Until you're twenty-five, the world's a dream--
And then it's a No Exit nightmare seen
In black tree roots that just refuse to mean
And life turns into an unchanging meme.
You age and age and nothing's as you seem
To think that it had been--there's nothing clean
And you can't make it pure--you're feeling lean
From everything that's fed on your life's stream.

I know the average person lives in peace
With school and work and friends and family--
Each day the same until their silent death.
And I, too, love these things as well--release
From all creative drives would make me free,
But kill my soul with every labored breath.

Oxytocin

Enfolded in your arms, my sense of space
And time are gone--and in your temple cave
The little death will bring me to the grace
That lies in you until I find the grave. 
The welcome warmth of love that brings delight
Will bring me to the light, your noonday sun
That dissipated all the threats of night
That others bring, where ignorance has won.

The only thing I want to do is fold
Myself so fully into you that we
Are one--the more we make this true, we'll flee
The uselessness, stupidity untold
Of all the rest--our hate of them, our pull
Toward each other make us both feel full.

Mother, Moon, Serpent

The serpent sheds its skin eternally--
The woman sheds her blood and is renewed--
The serpent bites its tail, eternal ring
Illuminated by the changing moon.

The crescent moon shines subtle on the water--
Six petals of the floating lotus open--
Beginning of becoming--way of water
That flows like blood and gains its power flowing.

The father joins the mother, moon eclipse
The sun, the serpents twist around 'til struck,
Their magic making singers of the soul
Transform so we can know what we can't know.

How can you gaze upon the beautiful,
Not wish to reproduce it--vivid paint,
In dancing words, in double helices--
The sun will catch the moon and light will burst.

The permanent, the ever-changing merge--
The source of life, the source of death the same--
The seed must rot before it can be born
And we must enter in the cave again.

The serpent slides among the stars to eat
Each night the moon until death's black fills in--
But woman cannot let life die  and she
Renews herself, is pregnant with the future.

The moon in virgin white displays her grace
In beauty and in truth--sometimes her truth
Bleeds through and she sits red low in the sky--
The blood moon bares herself, her mystery.

The moon triumphant leads the poet home--
The lightning lights the vestal fire whose heat
Reminds the dancers what they've never known--
In mystery and in magic we remain.

Purification

The ore is brought into the factory
And smelted down to take away the slag
So only iron purifies.

The gold. the silver, platinum will see
Themselves removed and tossed without a lag
So only iron purifies

The diamonds, emeralds, rubies find they'll be
Discarded as a waste so none can brag
So only iron purifies.

The smelter cannot see the value we
Should see in all that we discard and gag
So only iron purifies.

Mythology

You, sun, the center of our system, source
Of heat and sunlight--you were once a god
And now you're just an object. In the course
Of thought, invention, and discovery
We came to realize that it was odd
To make an object subject to fancy.

You, dawn, are not a goddess baring breasts
To dazzle every eye--we rise from bed
By photons shifted red--all rooster's crests
Are raised as they begin to crow by light
That bends across the earth's horizon, fed
From our near yellow star to end the night.

You, earth, are not the goddess who is mother
Of life and gods and humans who have turned
Away from seeing spirit in the other
That's object now, now we object our kith
And kin are random-process products--spurned
Are any explanations from true myth.

You, reader, do not let yourself be turned
Into an object--let your love embrace
The beauty that remains more true--you've spurned
Too long the love that life is offering
And think ourselves reduced to quantum space
When truth is found when we laugh, dance, and sing. 

Name-Amnesia

The names, they come and go--we label men
And women well before we know them--known,
The name forgotten--I would need a pen
To pin it down on paper scraps, then thrown
Down to the ground, up to the wind they're strewn.
Perhaps a scrap will soon return--but when?
My name-amnesia's only ever grown--
I recognize you, don't know where it's been.

Sea turtle names are easy, names of sharks
And orchids spring to mind with awesome ease--
I'll tell you who or what I've read and show
My knowledge--meaning, memory--embarks
On nothing but well-traveled trails--but please
Don't ask me for your name. I do not know.

Becoming of Thought

It's easy to think nothing (not for me)--
It's how most people live (but I am plagued
By never-ending thought--what luxury
To think about nothing). I've often begged
For silence, thought's inaction (it's an act
Performed by neurons using what they're fed
And thus thought has no being) to refract
Us to a state I'll only meet when dead.
When thinkers think to concretize their thought
To become being, being-thought, at last,
They turn to making, poetry, not nought
Embraced by nihilist, iconoclast.
And yet unthinking order guides each mind,
Unthinkers, thinkers both, to all they find.

In the Swamp

I know there's something sitting in the fog
The water droplets densely swirl
I wonder will these waves uncurl
I haven't seen the sun for several weeks
Or is it months here in this bog
Black water ripples from the log
That seems to slowly float beyond my sight
Where is the road my foot now seeks
Is that a nail in wood that creaks
I feel out for a solid form but feel
An unknown witness bringing fright
When was the last I felt delight
I do not know the last time I felt warm
I almost trip I only kneel
I hunger for a warmer meal
I wish I knew which way where I could hurl
My body to escape this swarm
I'd settle for a cleansing storm

Concretes

Our modern concrete crumbles over time--
We must maintain our buildings, monuments
So we don't trip and tumble while we climb
From tower to transcending tower, rents

Within, beneath, which cause a caustic cost
Upon the structures we're depending on--
We cannot factor everything we've lost
By calculating only what is gone.

The Roman concrete only grows more hard
To stand thousands of years as tombs to men
Whose minds remain as monuments to guard
Traditions and the texts of what we've been.

What will the future read out of our tome,
And will our pages last as long as Rome?

The Goal

I got an education for a job--
I want a job so I can pay the bills
And buy the things I like and buy things for
The people that I love--all for a goal.
What is the goal to end all goals? Why lob
Myself into the expectations, wills
Of others? Why go through that opened door
That only ever seems to take a toll?
For buttered, salted sweet corn on the cob
And for a loving smile that gives me chills
I cannot think my life has become poor
Because I've taken on this social role.
This goal, this life, the values we embrace
Is how we leave our everlasting trace.

To Build a Creative Soul

The shamrock, with its trinity of leaves--
As modeled by St. Patrick--helps us see
The Godhead's trinity--the Father heaves
The Son to earth to live and die--a plea
That we believe--the Holy Spirit sent
To comfort us--and yet we know that three
Brings chaos to the world and won't relent
Except you change through creativity
Unleashed within you--there's no simple line,
Just fractal ferns unfolding endlessly
From this new strange-attractor center--sign
Of all the turbulence that makes us free.
I say this though the world refuse to hear it--
This comes from God, the Christ, and Holy Spirit.

The Art of Life

I spliced the gene that codes luciferase
Into the great white peafowl chromosomes
And all I got was glowing legs below
A resplendent spray of white -- new gene tomes
Of biologic art are bound to grace
Museum zoos, and sooner than you know.

Vitamin C

The folded petals of the dusty rose
Are making quite a surreptitious pose
Attracting every artificial nose
And each forgets a hip is all that grows
In ruby red like tiny little toes.

The Roses

A pair of roses--color of my blood--
Two torn tickets to my heart--I desire
The coppery taste that's mixing with the mud
That's smeared across my face--you'll taste the fire
That sears the blood, that lights the bush that will
Not be consumed, but speaks upon the hill.

Utopia

Utopia is poured out on the land
From books, from fiction and from poetry,
To make all airy nothings into grand
And beautiful new possibility
That guide the thinking into branching time
That stem from words in patterns, rhythms, rhyme.

To Potential Poets

You enter the abyss to gain a mask
So you can tell the truth in rhythmic rhyme
That's given to you as you make the climb
Into the world---but now you have the task
Of making words into a crystal time.

Intention

It's time alone that rots and breaks all things
And dissipates all loves, relationships
Into mere piles of  memory which brings
On loneliness in cool entropic drips.

To simply keep things as they are you must
Maintain and pay attention, add the oil
To joints and surfaces and be a trust
To realize mere sameness in your toil.

But if you are to make things grow in health
And beauty, you need more than maintenance--
You need to feed your love with growing wealth,
Your actions need to always make, enhance.

Indifferent aimless boredom makes you die--
Your love, intention, beauty multiply.

This Autumn

I'm on a path I do not want to leave--
These frosty mornings killing chlorophyll
Exposing red, orange, yellow as the bill
We all must pay. This Autumn, just believe
Your goals are worthy, and you will not grieve.

The Poet's Task

I sing a goat-song -- Dionysus begs
Exploding swirls of singing out of me --
I have to lift my voice and lift my legs
To dance the golden out of muddy dregs
So that my music can make people free.

Time Flowers

Time crystal in violet erupts in violent
Enflowered patterns showing the deep rhyme
Of all the cosmos--nowhen it is silent
No matter where this growing fractal mime
Empatterns everyone with fuller time.

Birdwing

The soul is winged in scales of black and white--
Don't pluck your psyche's wings, but let them lift
You into floral flutters of delight--
You are a worm? You have the sacred gift
Of transformation--hatch and grow each wing
And let the people hear you laugh and sing!

Ladybird

The lady sits upon the seed that swells
With all the future--her children helped save
What feeds us all--the parasite that dwells
Among the leaves creates an early grave--
We ought to thank the lady for our bread
That keeps us wise and knowing and well-fed.