Shedding Death

Behold the sacred source of life. In birth

The brand-new baby sheds its mother, drinks

Its life and growth from her--she is the door

Through which we enter, open life to life.

Life sheds the dead--from life life comes--

From death all life remains--both feed us all

And make the way for life eternally

To live--the serpent sheds death on the ground.

The cavern of the underworld leads down

To death and darkness, out to light and life--

The source of creativity, creation,

We enter to the ever-changing moon.

The seed that's shed onto the ground will shed

Its coat when watered by the moon's clear tears--

Then, trembling, the shoot spears the sky and spreads

Its roots into the soil--leaves grasp the sun.

This constant change unchanges everything

And entropy negentropies the world--

The key unlocking beauty into life

Renewed opens the door through its shed skin.

The Triumph of Mercury

When Dionysus marched into the East
He met with Isis to unite the East

Apollo stayed at home in Rome, the West
Looked on, appalled that Bacchus left the West

In decadence drunk Dionysus's feast
We've seen to weaken all those in the East

And golden reason, virtue stood the test
That war had woven all throughout the West

Yet, no one understood the fluid beast,
The Proteus who's river of the East

While from the boot the people deemed the best
Deep rivers full of blood shed in the West

The satyrs on the islands have not ceased
To dance in orgy dreams throughout the East

The Muses make the rhythms of the blest
And sculpt their golden means throughout the West

The Maenads should be feared when they're released
They'll rend and rip and rive across the East

There's none august enough to wear the crest
So long rejected by men in the West

And wealth's complexified, slowly increased
As dawn is spreading all throughout the East

Now Hermes will interpret all the East
And synthesize it with the weary West

To Dance Among the Gods

The clouds have made a ladder to the moon.
I must depart if I'm to get there soon--
I hear the loon, the sound of sorrow sad
Against the hoots and howls that make me glad
I push against the fad that keeps me tied
To when I'm all too often at--I bide
My time and hide too little and too much--
I use the craggy mountain as a crutch
As fingers clutch the wispy rungs that rise
As snow-topped iron--there, the loon still cries
While I'm the one who flies, the lunatic
Who listens to the moon, the voice a prick
In time's quick tick that seems so slow to you--
I'm forced to find the beautiful and true,
The morals as they grew, the just--those four
Are me, as every poet knows--the door
The poet opens you implore he close--
You hate the life, the light the poet chose--
And as he grows--I grow--to face the fight
To dive to nature and to rise in flight
To be as gods, delight in rising up
To orbit with the moon and fill our cup
And sup on gold ambrosia in the shade
Among our equals, dreams who slowly fade.

Barking Dogs

The woods induce a sudden panic
No man-made cliffs titanic
Above the concrete trails the lunatic
Is running from--no brick
Enclosure, home or building could contain
The rose that blooms from pain--
No thorny thicket could contain the ruddy rose
That bursts in beauty but one bard
Could dare deliver, rhythms hanging hard--
The north wind blows
The virgin from the concrete cliff
Into a different riff--
Horse beats are heard--their children cry
In whinnies which the wind gives wings--a wry
Response from cynics whose lame barks
Scare only larks
Already learning these are lies that lie within a cage
Declares the current mangy age
Of stagnant health that's death's true dream
Where passed-out drunks all seem
As kings within the carnival--mere fools
Elected as the true king's tools,
The scapegoats, satyrs at the end of play
Who end their day
As butterflies upon the wind
Who fly into the afterlife for all who sinned.