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.