Nova

Ascending up toward the tiny
Twinkling, teasing light above.
Forever focusing farther,
Wondering what it's of.
Into the darkness, into the colors
Of every shade and hue
Surrounded by stone, surrounded by gas--
Perhaps a friend or two.
Big or small, or nothing at all
That can ever be seen.
Pulsing or glowing, nor nothing is showing
With distances in between.
Born in a cloud, glowing in life,
Death in a whisper or loud.
Cooler at first, warmer through life,
Then releasing its external shroud.

Flushed in Red

 Black crows flying
Vanish to the sun.
Rising moon
Reflecting back
Secrets that we hide.
Rivers flowing deep between
Grass-lined lips of the valley side,
Plunging deep into the cavern
It masks from others' sight.
Peaking high along the ridge,
Flushed in red,
A cougar screams and claws its way
Panting to the outer edge.
Climbing down, rubbing softly
Against the hard stone valley side.
Mighty rams slamming hard,
Rushing headlong with a smack
That echoes deep into the valley,
Past massive outcrops
Of deeply moaning rocks
To the lapping waves of the river below.
Caressing round rocks,
Protruding to points above the flowing water,
The river sucks and pulls its way
To its waiting mouth
The glistens in anticipation
For the water to come
And flow into the salty waves.

On the Element of Fire

Come in closer. Do you feel the fire?
Do you feel the building of desire?
Are you drawn in to the flickering flame,
Mesmerizing, poetic, and untame?
Beware the fires we build on the dry ground,
Lest it light each rhyme and rhythm and sound,
And the flames leaps out from mind to mind
As wildfires that leap out from pine to pine.
The forests allowed to naturally burn
Allow for rebirth and so do not turn
To blackened skeletons and dark charcoal--
Only cleared underbrush should be the goal
So new seeds can spread from the opened cones,
Stimulated by fire, the flame that loans
New opened spaces to previously
Tangled forests and minds that grievously
Had been impenetrable to the light,
A former place of shadows and the night.
The fire is either a hearth or a Hell--
Place of renewal or of a death-knell
For the too-sensitive soul, too-dry trees
Acting as kindling, ignoring your pleas.
The descent into the flames of abyss
Renew or destroy, dark death or bright kiss,
The only options offered, the red heat
Burns off impurities, or's a repeat
Of the Hell we all house within our hearts,
Until we relive all of the parts
That only destroy us and drag us down,
And fires give way to waters, so we drown.
So some in closer and feel the warm fire,
Give in to the rhythms, love, and desire.

Enframed

A fire spreads upon the sea, and the land
Below all these churning waves of sea and flame
Lies in surprising calm and silence as she
Sits within the frame.

In one hand we can see this seductive girl
Carries cool water, and in the other flame.
Yet, she's neither wet nor showing she is burned,
Sitting in the frame.

She once belonged to the artist who painted
Her with such inky shades, until this girl's flame
Spread out onto the sea as her hair set her
Face into a frame.

Her hand holding the water weighs itself down--
Her hand reaches out toward you with the flame
And asks you as she asked the artist and me:
"Sit within my frame."

I have sat with her to fill her with water,
To quench our brows of such a terrible flame
As we, you and me, find in her, claim to see
Bursting in the frame.

I have watched her painting long enough to see
Her hair and breasts, thighs and navel burst in flame
I wished to cool--but I used breath, not water,
And burnt up the frame.

Blood

Like fearful, anxious children
We have grown afraid of the dark--
We fear the sight of blood--
And look away, avoid its mark,
Avoid allowing such a sight to make
Us into better, stronger, more beautiful
People. Look closely at the wound
Opened in the soldier's bare chest, full
Of outpouring blood of brightest
Red, throbbing with a dark and terrible
Sucking sound with each slowing heart
Beat. Look into his unbearable
Eyes, their fading glimmer, fading
Hope, bringing to us in that glance
A new hope of our own to bear, stronger
Spines, straighter postures, and a chance
To recognize our own short lives
In his. Do we dare follow him, dance
Into the underworld, our knives
We protect ourselves with in fright
Left behind? It is a dark cave
And we're not carrying our comforting light,
But this dark descent is how we save
Ourselves from this terrifying night.
Our brave soldier guides us to the stream
Stretching a barrier between
The world above and the world of dream,
From all we know to all we mean.
He stands, stares, wants to know
If we are ready to go
Down to his new old world to bring
Up new and tragic songs to sing.

The Shame of Love Poetry

A thousand sonnets written by deaf men
To sullen women who refused to speak
The beauty of those lonely poets when
Those men could only think or sing or seek
In all those loves the beauty that still drives
The men to recreate all of those loves
In songs or sonnets, concubines or wives.
The poets see them as flowers or doves,
When all these muted women ever see
In these, their poets grotesque swine or goats--
Never their beauty, just the fatal flaw
Of sensitive souls, when no real man dotes
On women that strange way, for if he does
Something must be wrong with him--nothing grows
From such a weak and ugly, damaged seed.
Nothing but a winsome poem can grow
In the polluted soil of women
Who must be right, as this poem does show:
These men have poor choices for seed or pen.

For Anna’s Birthday

You’re beautiful and gorgeous and very cute—

I can’t wait to see you in your birthday suit!

In Brackish Waters

 Passions pull and repel--powerful prides
In this pair bring them blue love and cool pain.
Whenever high rivers collide with high tides,
Their brackish waters bring them little gain.
Sheltered waters are where they have a place
Discretely checking out the intruders,
The sociable climbers who want to replace
One or the other's quick-changing waters.
In the shifting salting world of tears
Where neither earthy flesh nor oceans rule,
Their passions doom them to their tidal fears
And stop them from seeing with eyes too cool.
But those with enough strength and energy
To maintain their display get victory.

Pleiades

Away from the palms,
the mountainous shores
with cliffs to the sea, crumbling
houses into waiting water,
everything's obscured.
Where are the stars? The Pleiades
are one, fuzzy. The stars
are clear in desert skies,
cold and clear. They almost forget
to twinkle. No clouds
haunt the skies. The cold
is frightened away during the day.
The heat hides by night. All is dry.
But the Pleiades!
All seven sisters are clear on such nights,
inviting eyes to watch them,
pick them out,
notice them one by one
instead of as one.

Apprehension

Something strange is lingering
Storms appear they may appear
Clouds in gray or white do not obscure
Sunlight from the noonday sky
Spring, the air full, flower scents,
Pollen make the air more dense
Than the winter's colder air.
Something seems to hide
Something seems to need to be uncovered.
Gray rocks, rotten logs we overturn--
Snakes and worms and rolly-pollies--
Musky, earthy smells as sweet, attractive

Bug Collection

A glass jar sits in the window--
paring knife air holes punched in the lid,
holes of thin triangles.
Gray-brown twigs, too young for white lichen,
brown buds hiding green new leaves
protrude past drying grass, yellowing,
coiled across the bottom,
sprouting throughout the jar
for the creatures captured in the yard.
Some are missing,
eaten.
The praying mantis now lies dead
among the husks of fireflies,
white pepper-winged moths
and their black and brown banded woolly bear larvae.
A walking stick, perched along a twig,
lies as still as the tiny branch it evolved to imitate.
One wonders which is which
without looking closer.
The only life left is a millipede, waves of legs
along its two-inch body, black and shiny,
not noticing the cyanide it secretes into the air.

Clothed in Forests of Words

All poems are on death--this dark art
Invites us into the forests--islands
Of trees that spread shadows on the trails
We tread on our short trips across
And through--beginning and end threaded--
Woven in brown and green--warp
And woof--I wonder where these woods will end--

We dress ourselves in dreary clothes
And wonder why the darkness wafts over
Our lives--dark clothes losing us
In the dark forests--fear surrounds us--
Why must we live in such morbid fear--
We are unable to see that in the absence of greatness--
Pettiness prevails--what poor lives
We have learned for too long to live--and to die--

All poems are on love--and live longer
Lives than the lovers--living their deaths
And showing that love creates the same showers
Of death-blood as wars and droughts--
The trees these poems are fashioned from trickle
With the blood of those hung from their high limbs--
Dressed--I hang highest in these trees--

To Find God

I had to cleanse myself of all religion
Before God could, would finally come to me--
He shined in through my eyes as beauty, love
And peace--the holy opened, set me free.

For God is one, yet not just one, He lives
By being many, too--as a true healthy
Body is made of many kinds of cells--
No one investment ever makes you wealthy.

To live in healthy holiness we must
Go out to fight all of the cancer cells
That threaten this hold world as it grows,
Sending branches up roots deeper than wells.

A single path is not a choice, one branch
Is not a tree. Cancer kills the body--
If we want a healthy and holy world
We need plurality in unity.

The strongest loves grow between different,
Unlike things. God is not narcissistic--
He does not want us all to be the same--
For in Him, and us, cancer makes one sick.

And so, I cleansed myself of all religion
So God could finally make his way to me,
And shine in through my eyes as beauty, love,
And peace, wholly open to be set free.

Back on the Road

 I must get out of here, away from all
The boredom, mediocrity it represents,
The boredom, mediocrity it is.

Shall I follow Kerouac on the road,
Sixty years too late?
In time for all my conflicts,
The nihilistic fight

Blows taken 'til we learn
If what they say is right is wrong
Then what they say is wrong is wrong as well

Let's go back on the road,
Go back to learn about ourselves,
Before we learned that wrong was right,
Before we gave up on the right
Before we found that we were dead
Soon after birth--and never learned to live

What will you choose to be your sure escape
From the realities of hate
Where creativity is scorned,
Intelligence despised

We must be trampled so they may feel good
Made mindless mediocrities
So they may feel secure,
Done with our sanction from our guilt
For being good

Let's go back on the road
To find ourselves
To save ourselves
From all the moral cowards they have med
With our permission
Because it was ourselves

Low Screams Unheard

 Low screams unheard
They never listen to our voice
Low screams unheard
They never let us have a choice
They'll hear us when we stone their ears.
Low screams unheard
When will they see our tears?
A voice they won't allow to hear
What do they have from us to fear?
Low screams unheard
The best we cannot surface
It cannot be allowed in any case.
It cannot be allowed to change this place
It cannot be allowed to join the race.
Low screams unheard
How do we terrify you so?
Our ideas, our thoughts, the things we know?
Do you fear the truth that we show?
Low screams unheard
What life will people know?
Your fear is all we see
Low screams unheard
Despite you all we will succeed
And you will be the one to beg and plead
And then we will be heard.

Autumn Dream

 An Autumn, warm and beautiful.
The colors, right and bright
Warm and wonderful. A cool breeze
From the north renders the day a joy.
I lay down in the yellowing grass, enjoyed
Autumn's company. The leaves rustled.
The birds sang. The clouds migrated
To warmer climes. A flock of geese,
Their honks filling the air, chased them there.
Her sweet caressing warmth filled me--
I closed my eyes to listen. I looked
Up at the sky. Familiar shapes were born
And disappear. Bright, beautiful, colorful
Wonderful, warm. I stood. Colors
Exploded in the field. Flowers
Bloomed, birds continued singing, waves
Rippled across the field. I felt pulled
Back into the grass. I lay among the grasses,
Took a deep breath. My eyes slowly shut.
I slept in Autumn's comforting embrace.

Enfolding Time

You will be reading this poem on time.
You are now reading this poem on time.
You have been reading this poem on time.
My reversal has placed things in order
Where we now question where lies the border
Where inside and outside are disorder.
Time occurs in endless repetition.
Time will never give us repetition.
Time circles linear repetition.
When will time rise into eternity?
When time rises into eternity,
Then time rises up to eternity.
More complex things are made through time's passage.
More complex folds are made in time's passage.
More complex folds make time's complex passage.
Changing time changes as changing space-time.
Folding folds folding in changing space-time.
Folding change changes in folding space-time.
Eternal return of the similar--
To know where you are, know once where you were--
Time's tasting of wine and smelling of myrrh.
Time is a rover that's flowing along,
A snake shedding skin and a lyre song,
A line and a spiral getting along.
Inside and outside are in disorder
Where we question the length of the border
As my reversal space things in order:
You have been reading this poem on time--
You are now reading this poem on time--
You will be reading this poem on time--

Omen

Lonely, lovely Japanese girl
Gliding slowly, gently across the kabuki stage--
She stops and stares at the audience, tense,
Her golden necklace seeming to float
Around a neck as green as the backdrop, gold
As gold as the golden lines around her face--
A startled action. And yet, she tries
To remain calm, alone upon the stage.
She hides her face under a pure white mask--
Her red and green and golden hair is stringy,
Flailing from the sides--her makeup makes a part
In her flattened hair on top--her severe
Part and flattened head of hair
A mask for us as well.
Red lips, green eyebrows, red edges
Surrounding lovely dark green eyes--

But can a Japanese girl have green eyes?--
The look upon her face is one of dull surprise--
And on her face the makeup dries,
The mask hides from all of her her truth and lies--
How will she fall, how will she rise?--
Yet, no matter however hard she tries
All we can hear from those scarlet lips are sighs--

Where is the lover she laments for on the stage?
Will he come before she gives up and dies?

Woven

A pair of masks are separated, red
And oddly rootless ti plants grow between
The eggshell blue and red masked faces, lined
In blue and in maroon--this chiasma
Of peering Asian and worried Aztec,
Deep bags under its straight, stern eyes--a mask,
A face? What is each mask trying to say?
When Asia comes to America--Self
And Other of any kind make a mask
They present, hiding who we are--who are
We to anyone? Our loves or our friends?
Is this why one face is stern and angry
And the other pouting in the corner?
How orange are your feelings, red and blue masks?
Grasp the rootless ti plant sprouting between.

Weird Balance

Yellow two-faced bird blowing smoke rings
From blue chopstick lips
Taking the red-eye to cross the red mountains
Blue hills rise behind
Yellow birds, yellow sun, shining cheekily
In black space comets
Streak through the sky past haloes that puff,
Puff, Puff in tic-tac-toe,
An "O" picked up in tweezers that question
In white and brown--
Don't be cross, don't make a sound

In the Flower Garden

The cock's combs, red and wrinkled, rise
Above the leaves to lift the blooms
They hide up to the butterflies.
Crab spiders transform feasts to tombs.

The buzz and sip of bees upon the breeze
That brings the honeysuckle--yellow, sweet--
To both our senses--theirs more sensitive
Than mind--they smell the clovers at my feet.

Keep It Unreal

 I'm always being told I ought to keep it real
But that is not the way I think, the way I feel.
My life can turn into what I would make it seem--
Success will only come to those who dream

And live within that dream. And then, I can aspire
And take myself to task, make me make me aspire
To streets of gold and castles in the wispy clouds
To airy utopias hidden in the shrouds.

The real will drag my dreams back down to mountaintops,
A high place on the earth where we can see the shops
And crops and tabletops of human life at play--
But we cannot aim for them or we will delay

The possibility of growth, increase, and wealth--
To aim for mere survival will deny good health.

Vital

Read and know and think and learn and learn to love
For if you have lost everything, it's all destroyed
Or taken from you, when the things you own do not
Exist, then all that's left lies in the mind.
Love and knowledge build and satisfy the soul
They are the riches in your life.
Hate and ignorance destroy and famish the soul
They are the founders of death.

The Conception of Art

Conception is how all art's made

Creation's how it's growing

We weave and wrinkle and we braid

To more than we are knowing

Like all my children, art's conceived

Through Eros, love, and passion

We give from all that we've received

And never start in fashion

All art are concepts concretized

We must conceive the concept

All art's from what is memorized

From inspiration's incept

Yet creativity's true source

Is in our social living

And art can only find its course

With every artist's giving

The Word for Soul is Breath

The first thing that you do when you are born--
The inward breath will independence you--
The air, the wind, the spirit and the soul--
And in your independence you are torn
And dropped into a world that is worn
By rivers into canyons running through
The desert of the real, the final goal
The final outward breath--we're left forlorn.

The water and the air we need for life--
The flows that help maintain complexity--
The flowers, birds of paradise, and man.
The water and the air are constant strife--
The land is worn, eroding to the lea
The mountains, stones into the delta fan.

An Ode to My Grandfather

I cannot see a bumblebee
Moth hovering on transparent wings
Without being brought back to the field,
Now new houses, where I first saw them,
Buzzing bee balms while we watched,
Connected through nature, bird watches
In the winter where we saw
His goldeneye-hooded merganser hybrid
Floating on the Saint Joe River,
Taking me to see the upland sandpipers,
The round, brown birds whose nesting site
He had discovered on the very day
That I was born. Where else can I trace
My love of writing, my love of nature?
The strokes that weakened him just showed his strength--
And yet he chose to die before my mom
So he would never have to face her death.
To me, he is the man who found the nests
The upland sandpipers made, who raised
Raccoons, screech owls, cecropia moths.
The man who taught me to love birds and nature
And not to be afraid. He's who I love--
The one who showed me moths
That look like hovering bumblebees.

The Sea's Current

Storms bring the seal out to deep, the current
Seas filled with swarming fish, the sullen shark
Taking advantage of them, the pink shrimp
Its size, the crab its mood. The current now,
Bringing life even to the unpleasant,
Resisting as these fish against the shark
Swimming too close to the shore sand, who hopes
To scare up food, the fish afraid for once.
The moon is low, the shrimp and crab can hide
In rocks, in tight enclosures that secure
Them from the greedy, crafty mottled shark.
The fish is crabbed by what she sees and can
Not understand. The shark swims by and sees,
Yet leaves her there, untouched, unharmed, unloved.

A Soft Mud Rain

Your cheeks are wet as fallen forest leaves--
You're sad as rain collecting in the dents
And puckers, soaking soil, wetting trees--
And you, so melancholy and morose.

I used to stand and stare up at the rain
On summer days,those  cloudless summer days,
Enjoying silver sunshine with serein--
The water stung my cheeks and rivered down.

And nothing in the way you look at me
Reminds me of those happy days. Alone
And looking through the window from my book--
Formerly so cold, so indifferent.

But everything I see in summer rain
Is now just gray and damp and cold, so cold
And I wonder what caused the clouds and pain
That's rolled in over me--and over you.

The Misogynist

He is alone at thirty-five, a man
Alone and single, never married--he
Has heard from every woman every excuse
And reason why they will not date or love him.
"You think you're better than me," one said
To him, though not exactly true--repeated
More accurately by another when she said
She thought he thought he was "Too good for me."
He wondered why women saw themsleves
This way, in a shining sun that hid their beauty
From themselves, lighting bright the flaws he overlooked
Because he loved them (or, so he thought).
Others would not leave abusive men for him,
Loving their abuse (he thought), makeup used to mask
Unwell what they could. Too old, he heard
Another time, "You don't fit into my plans."
And when his friends would wonder why,
Without themselves trying to help him
Meet someone who would love him, he was alone
When he was, "Such a great guy,"
And "Such a good man," who would
"Make a good match." But when his friends
Talked among themselves, they asked each other
"If you weren't married, would you date him?"
No one would even lie--any more than she'd explain.
And yet, he knew that they all lied when they
Said they'd try to find someone good for him.
So, he was left alone at thirty-five
To wonder when the next excuse he'd hear
Was, "No, I can't. I need to wash my hair."

The Postmodern Generation

A generation beginning
Kerouaced in the head,
High road hippies
Goovin' to the music
Of The Beatles and The Grateful Dead,
Heidegger, Sartre, and Derrida,
A generation living hypocrisy,
Living the lies of their ideals--
Ultimate conformists
Masquerading as individuals
Now showing themselves
Now openly conformed
Set loose their collective crisis,
Psychoses leagalised and loves
To then be contended and cleaned up--
Not by them; no, never by them--
T0 question is to grow--
But by a new emergent order

Melina and the Origins of Art

When you first became bipedal
You held your arm up high
And spread apart, in movements which belie
Our orangutan ancestry.
And now you think that you can wheedle
Your way with hugs and kisses--
You bring me shoes to put on your feet
And point at the "bir" that sits in the tree
And toss your plastic dishes.
Your arms are loaded down
With bracelets of all colors and designs--
Yes, decoration is the seat
Of art, I see the signs
Of how we try to make
Things special for each other's sake
And not just for our own renown. 

Where the Vanilla Grows

Each step lifts you up to the arcing sun,
Above the jungle trees in orchids draped,
Bromeliads and ferns suspended, spun
With roots upon the limbs bark-, lichen-creped.

This pyramid is rising to the gods
Demanding sacrifice in chocolate, blood--
The priests who stood here we believe are frauds,
And yet we worship demons in the mud.

The emerald quetzal's call is sorrowful,
Its ruby belly is resplendent, king
Of birds, the feathers crowning kings who mull
Over their roles the jesters mock and sing.

The frogs are guarding the north, south, east, and west
As we are dancing, dancing without rest. 

The Leisure Classes

In idleness and boredom comes the song,
The music and the poem, every art--
In utter silence, that's where we belong--
In noise, cacophony Muses depart.

In idleness and boredom births the crime,
The theft, the murder planned and carried out--
The criminal must fill the constant time
The Devil gives him, dissipates his doubt.

In idleness and boredom every plan
To plan your life and subjugate your souls
Is found--they'll place the boot on every man
And you will live according to their goals.

Submit to crime, submit to awful duty,
Or live by virtue, justice, truth, and beauty.

Psyche

The butterfly is on a leash, a chain
That loops back on itself--the butterfly
Controls itself or it controls itself
And this is something only fools deny.

Sometimes the chain is long, or it can grow,
And then the butterfly is mostly free--
It flits from flower to new flower, tastes
The nectar, flits now to persimmon tree.

Sometimes the chain is short--the caterpillar
Can only eat the leaves of one small plant--
It chews its way along the leaves, pupates
Upon the food it ate in rhythmic chant.

The butterfly controls the butterfly
Upon the winds that waft it here and there
It must control itself upon the winds
It can't control to reach a goal, to care.

The butterfly does not dare blame the wind,
The butterfly does not complain it eats
One kind of plant or has to fly for nectar--
The butterfly shows beauty in its feats.

The freedom of the butterfly is real
Because it has to live with real constraints--
This does not mean no freedom of its will--
The only real restraints are your complaints.

Transmission

Who did you choose to die this afternoon?
The spider feels the web with its foreleg
And waits for the vibration as the moon
Refracts the silk to silver. None will beg.

The poison goes from fly to spider, bird
To snake to fox to cougar lying dead
Among the granite snowfields--nothing heard
Their deaths they suffered, all because they fed.

The empty roads, the empty stores, the poor
Who die in illness and abuse, who die
Of hunger and disease--behind your door
You're safe, you're always safe. Enjoy your lie.

Believe the beautiful--it's always true--
The test of virtue, showing what you're due.

Dawn

You look upon it and you stare
As nervous as a hunted hare
And, looking longingly, aware
That you have done
All that you could, and yet you swear
You need a gun.

If only you had done your best,
Enjoyed the sunrise's warm breast
Then you would not feel so oppressed
By riches earned
By others, making you a pest
With nothing learned.

You look upon it and you find
That all your life will soon unwind
Because you thought you should not bind
Yourself to one
That wound into the mind,
The rising sun.

You have not done the best you could
And now you won't do what you should
Despite the fact it only would
Bring happiness
And beauty, justice, all that's good--
You wanted less.

You look upon it and the glow
Of wisdom you will never know
Is vanishing in its clear glow,
Its fortitude
Defying everything you show
In attitude.

Throes

In rainbow pools the body will dissolve
To nutrients for ancient organisms

The geysers burst from fissures cycling water
That rains down cool but came up scalding hot

The earth is swelling, cooking trees beneath
And nothing rises higher than the grasses

The heat and ash will rise and bury life
In gray cocoons the future will unearth

The heat of summer brings the fever pitch--
Cicadas singing, buzzing in our ears

The singing, singing, voices rising, rising
And everything we sing is deafening

The earth is shifting--boulders break to rocks
To sand containing cosmoses alone

The grunions surge onto the shore and writhe
Into the sand, moon shining off their scales

A surge of crowds, of herds, of prides destroy
To resurrect, to sacrifice, renew

A single man, a paintbrush and a canvas
A single woman, pen to paper, sings

A single stone rotating silently
Toward the earth and heating up the sky

The comet once foretold disaster--star
That comes negating all we think we know

The river swirling gently on our feet
Will rush destroying our homes behind us

A woman, pregnant, giving birth--that's you,
That's me--we're begging to be born, reborn

Be Like Water

A dew is resting, glistening on the grass
It is soft, it gives way to your touch
The splash of water from a struggling bass
Is the water held back by the Dutch

In torrents water rolls the house-sized boulders
In the rapids the swiftness can raze
High walls of hardest stone that would not smolder
If a fire were to rush in a blaze

The way is water--that's the way for you
To discover the flows of your life
You have to learn to flow in all you do
To be hard, to be soft, love and strife

Pie Chart

You spend a third of every day in bed
You spend a third of every day at work
You spend most of existence being dead
So loving others you should never shirk

If twelve percent is spent in eating meals
Then twenty-two is all I have that's due
To read and watch some shows and spin my wheels
From home to work and work to home, and you

And so I ask for two percent each day
And spend more time than that just to persuade
And often fail to get some couples play
When tiredness or soreness make you fade

Beloved, heed the math--A half percent
Is all I need--the rest for you is meant

My Tale

I found no cacao tree--yes, that's my tale.
I gave mankind no grapes--yes, that's my tale.

When opportunity arrives, I fail
To recognize his face--yes, that's my tale.

A sack of wind, a hurricane, a gail
That spins, winds me off course--yes, that's my tale.

It's sitting round upon a hill, my pail
Or jar that leaks, is cracked--yes, that's my tale.

I do not even hunt for a white whale
Or tilt at windmills, brave--yes, that's my tale.

An albatross, a kraken, filling sail
That keeps me off my course--yes, that's my tale.

An empty theater where I regale
My fans and followers--yes, that's my tale.

A bush, a brown-tipped hill, a rusty nail
That holds me up, alive--yes, that's my tale.

I burn a bitter flame, exposed like shale
That never truly dies--yes, that's my tale.

In shallow puddles I fear death and flail
In all initiatives--yes, that's my tale.

I'm loved and loved and loved behind my veil
As poet Zatavu--yes, that's my tale.

The Storm

The very wind has turned us timid--trust
In madmen, liars, power-lovers blows
Strong off the coast. We're lost. Our limpid lust
Has lured us to these Sirens, black as crows.

The sands are shifting, houses twist and fall
Into the frothing sea. There's monsters there,
Where once was only weather--hear the call
Of dragon-voices, snakes replacing hair.

We cower now below the rocks that roll
Into the sea--we pushed them there--we freed
Protection from the sea--we found our goal,
Destroyed our heroes, reveled in the deed.

Distrust has now become for us so strange--
Become the hero to become the change.

Social Distancing

I have to stay at home--now I can work
On all the projects I've delayed from all
The work and everything the children must
Be doing. Some good projects must, then, fall.

But, no. It's online meeting after meeting
For me, my wife, my kids. I can't home school
The kids because of busy work the teachers
Must send. The internet's become a tool

Destroying time to work on anything.
No Newton will create a calculus,
No Shakespeare will write a brand new King Lear
Because we have to drown in all the fuss

Of people who cannot imagine you
Could make good use of time for thinking, work,
Or creativity, or do a thing
Of value unless they're there, always lurk.

There's many things my children, I could learn--
There's many things that I could think and write--
But those who think they know how best our time
Is used destroy that time with great delight.

Of course, this poem preaches to the choir--
The only ones who would read poetry
Are those who would agree with all these lines,
And they, like me, are yearning to be free. 

Meetings

How else could you spread out into an hour
A minute's worth of information? Each
Must ask the same damn question, build a tower
Of great redundancy upon a beach
Dissolving in the waves of boredom, speaking
For the sake of speaking --there's nothing new
And never will be past some random leaking
When all our minds are down or each one flew
Into a daydream where there's something real
That's taking place. Stop wasting all my time
With all your self-indulgence, endless wheel
Of wind that wind into this boredom-crime.
The more you blather on informs the earth
How little value your job's really worth. 

The Promised Land of Liberty

And as the waters wash across the army
Pursuing all the prophets who foretold
Their certain deaths, I look up to the rise
That leads up to the mountaintop, the gold

The sun transforms the edge will found the true
And just society that we've been working
To bring into the light. We know the smarmy
Will seek to rise again--there's evil lurking

Within the hearts of every woman, man
To take advantage, take from others, take
Your life if necessary. The demise
Of that will never come--yet, we can make

A place where everyone will get their due--
I see it from the mountaintop. I can.

COVID-19

Succeeding means there's no evidence you
Succeeded--showing that you care brings strife,
Resentment, and all you say could be true,
But nobody will thank you for their life.

It doesn't matter what is, what good
It is, if virus or economy
Or education--doing what you should
Gets few rewards but anger, curses, envy.

The sweet abyss of nihilism lures
Those who would change the world--why not give up
When everyone refuses all the cures
You wish to pour out of your golden cup?

The virtue lies within the very fight
To keep your love and life from ever-night. 

Youth Stigmata

My hand goes to my side
I pull a palm of blood
I look--I see no wound
Red drips into the mud

How can I bleed, no cut,
No pimple burst to bleed--
Why is my palm in scarlet?
What did this doubtful deed?

I sponge my side--the blood
Is gone--I soap my hands--
The water pinks to clear--
The voice, it now commands

I never told a soul
About my bleeding side--
My parents never knew--
I you I now confide

What as a teen I kept
In silence--none believes
Me now, I know--and yet
My memory retrieves

This awesome, awful cures
And blessing none believes
Or would believe--God's voice
And touch God's choice receives

I'm waiting, still, to bloosom
My soul remains a bud
And yet I've lost this mark,
No longer bleed His blood

Fallen

Once Ba'al blew across the desert, dark
And full of lightning, whipping rain--the hinter-
Lands flooded--leaving, he would leave his mark
In summer heat--but he'd return each winter.

But he was wrestled from his winter skies
And trapped down in the underworld--his passion
Diminished, dissipated--a swarm of flies
Replaced his soul and made it dark and ashen.

The one who fought the serpents now if found
Among the company of those who sent one
To tempt with secret knowledge which then bound
Their lives--would he have fought to kill, prevent one?

Oh, what complexity would we have lost
If Ba'al had been on the Earth, not buried
And bade to buzz and rot--that was the cost
We paid for truth and everything it married.

Political Theater

The theater of cruelty lives on lies
We fell ourselves--the actors, heroes, win
Our hearts with promises that those who sin
Will get their punishment, be food for flies.

The theater of the absurd denies
The game is serious--there lies the gun,
Still warm, but we believe it's all in fun--
But streets will run with blood to get the prize.

Commedia dell'arte now rules the day--
No, it's a satyr play, the tragic end
Of tragedy a face, a feast of fools.

Why can't we have a Theatre Libre
Instead of agitprop? We must defend
Humanity from psychopaths' old rules.

Elusive Mysterious Smell

There once was a goddess, Demeter,
And a man who thought he could beat her--
He turned on his charm
And showed her his farm--
But the daughter of time thought him fetor. 

The Body-Soul of You

You are the wave-field space-time that I love,
The sequence of nucleotides that bring
Me joy, the body that brings forth your soul
In its becoming, makes me want to sing.

Your soul was strengthened, weakened by the winds
And waves of family and society,
To form the you your body grew--I look
At you, and love all that you've grown to be.

Yes, you, I want you in your nakedness,
Exposed so you can lose your fear, the mask
That covers body, soul both equally,
Because the same--I give my love that task.

Desire is both love and lust, the two
Are one--and thus betrothed shall love be true. 

In the Moonlight

The serpent slithered through the valley
     Searching for a whole
That it could make into its alley
     Comfort its warm soul

A million tadpoles in the river
     Searching for some land
They feel the air and then they quiver
     Changed by unseen hand

The serpent sheds its skin renewing
     life and then it feeds
On tadpoles swimming by--it's doing
     What it must and needs

Upon the bank thick grass is curling
     Hiding fear and food
Beyond the banks, the water's swirling
     Life pulls back its hood

Xenophilia

There once was a fuzzy brown beaver
Who feared that a snake would soon cleave her--
She met a serpent one day
Who convinced her to play
And now she won't let her friend leave her.

To Conquer or Be Killed

They've come to burn the ships of meaning--
They sailed to a new world
Blank canvases unfurled
The changeable winds harvested
Upon the salted water bed
To undiscovered countries they were gleaning'
But dimly, dimly on the quantum waves
Promising to make themselves their slaves
To circumstances, chance,
And to the wanton glance
They learn had promised nothing
And only promised nothing
In all its promises and offerings
Where even disappointment plays and sings
The ships are burning on the sand
To testicles of glass that now demand
You only say where you will soon be leaning

Becoming Who You Are

They've gone, the father, mother, children, aunts
And uncles, all grandparents, cousins, dog.
They've gone, the heroes with heroic rants,
The teenage gangs, rebellions lost in fog.
They've gone, the pastors and police, the order
And authority of written law.
They've gone, the business people, every border
And nation, what all elites like to gnaw.
They've gone, the eveners and bureaucrats,
The baby men and women whining, wild.
They've gone, but never gone, like feral cats
And city rats, the ghost of your dead child.
They're never gone, but you must learn to give
Each part its due for you to love and live. 

Golden Arrows

Why read about the life of Goethe? Why
Not read about the lives of common men?
I do not need to read where I have been--
For virtue aims at better men than I.

Why read the works of Shakespeare? Why deny
The local playwright writing in his den?
If there's a chance of greatness from this pen,
The greatest teachers must make my words fly.

The greatest trees grow in the deepest soil--
The deepest, widest roots raise branches bold,
And winds that wrap around the branching limbs
Will strengthen them through their near-constant toil.

The greatest artists mine the purest gold--
The poorest artists give into mere whims.

The Social Justice Warrior Speaks

Before I can be friends with you
I have to know: what did your father do?
Did your grandfather think things right
As we think things here on this very night?

Did anyone they know once own
A slave? Don't tell me that you all have grown
In ethics--that is privilege-speech.
You're born in guilt and sin, that's what I teach.

Your you's inherited from kin,
Your racism's inherent in your skin--
You cannot change, now don't deny
And just accept that you deserve to die.

The problems of the world were born
When your race came about, and now we mourn
What we perceive, through you, we lose,
Much like the Nazis felt about the Jews.