Damselflies

Damselflies in cyan-shining green

deftly darting though the weeds,

land on cattails’ pollen hat,

lighting yellow dust into air.

Sunlight glints transparent wings

held steady, fold-up fashion

like thin-winged butterflies

whose bodies shine in blinding blue.

The damselfly’s deft, delicate line

lifts up on cellophane wings.

It darts through the air

to find its prey.

A mosquito caught

by crunching, tearing jaws.

Blue Skies

The skies were blue.

I went to hear a band play
in the park. People were there.

They called it off for threat of rain.

The skies were blue.

 

The skies were blue.

I wanted friends to come with me, 

go for a ride in the country.

They would not come for

threat of rain, though

the skies were blue.

 

The skies were blue

when I went out

to walk in open woods.

So soon I found my clothes were wet,

from warm summer serein because 

the skies were blue.

Creative Destruction

The demon ignorance is danced into defeat

By Shiva’s lifting legs. Destruction can create

When it gives birth to knowledge, source of all the arts

And creativity. Destruction’s dance will fate

Each cycle, spiral, unity, and all the parts

That reconstruct the world in Shiva’s frantic beat. 

 

Sweet memory, the mother of the poem, song,

And science—from their father, lightning insight, flash

Of rhythms, patterns crafted, chiseled into stone,

The words we sing and print from face and curve and dash.

 Remembering is memory—the shadow zone

That we construct, for all we know is right and wrong. 

 

But when play our music, lift our legs and dance, 

And when we sing our poetry, our memory

Remembers us to greater things, to newer things,

And we, together, join our hands, refuse to flee

And, as a chorus, know the poet’s words, and sings—

Then all the world in truest knowledge will entrance.

The Age of the Poets

 The Age of the Poets is gone—

Complexity of thoughts is not the rage

Here in this sullen age—

Each person has made themselves a pawn

To merely pretentious right rage

 

The mountains are razed, but the valleys

Aren’t filled—the city’s in danger of flood—

Water and trees and mud

All blinding the eyes and filling the alleys

And mixing with heartless blue blood

 

No thoughts are cool serpents who shed

Their skin and shine here in their auburn sin—

Both-and renewing—win

Our ought in the years when we will wed

And culture will die and begin

 

The eagles now fall from the sky—

Their beaks and their fathers are oiled with prose

Fragments—the nothing shows—

The hatred of heights—no, don’t deny—

Belie that it’s love they oppose

 

The lions they want to declaw—

The artists, poets, rock-n-rollers—bright

Culture they hate and fight

To win by the force of the flaw

To bring on the night with their bite

 

The camels they want to embrace

Would spit, refuse to move—these desert beasts

Burdened to lose—the priests

Who pray and who prey upon the grace

Of hatred—on them they will feast

 

But the Age of the Poets will come—

The playing child will in the future speak

Truth that the wiser seek—

His wisdom and beauty’s not dumb—

You’re deaf—but this child is not meek.

The Pumpkin

 The pumpkin took the pirates at their word

And wrestled words to waves of the absurd.

The pompous pirates, showed to see their lies

Performed by pumpkin dared, as each denies,

To froth and faint and fester, all appalled. 

There is no name the pirates never called

The pumpkin who had used their views to see

The river boat that he could fly to be

The captain of the canal capital

So he could drain the swamp 'til he was full. 

Be Free

Why let its fingers grasp your sleeve? You’re through

The wicked forest, in the field of flowers

I planted just for you. There are no powers

Preventing you from gazing at the stars, 

To see the streaking dust, to gaze at Mars.

I’m by your side on winding mountain roads,

On winding roads beside the lakes, the nodes

Of rivers man has made, and through the trees

That hide the singing birds and mute the breeze.

I’m by your side, so calm your racing mind—

Don’t let your anxious fear kill joy and blind

You to the field of flowers, colors spread

In living, loving patterns. Don’t be dead

To all our living moments—do not fear

Our future, a horizon never near.

Beloved, please. Enjoy your life that we

Have built, our children—let your mind be free.

The Common Lies

I watch the news--I'm told the common lies

I cannot trust a thing I read online

The teacher teaches what the truth denies

And information now is indefine

The politicians lie, the newsmen lie

About the politicians and for them

And you cannot believe what they deny

They sell a glass as a true diadem

How can you know the truth on such an earth

Where truth is weeded out and lies are fed?

When everyone is speaking lies, what worth

Is there in truth?--yes, even facts are dead

The sophists and the demagogues feel shame

At their replacements who believe no fact

Or truth, but only who they get to blame

And spread that blame without a shade of tact

The liars are the last to dare defend

A dying world--when even scientists 

Prefer to promulgate the mere pretend

Of science, falsifying what exists

The only people left we could believe

Are poets who do not pretend to truth

But lie in honesty--so do not grieve,

For we predict a new world in its youth

The Path of the Poet

This awesome, awful curse

And blessing none believes

Or would believe--God's voice

And touch God's choice receives.

I'm waiting, still to blossom,

I feel I'm still a bud

And yet I've lost this mark,

No longer bleed his blood. 

An awful, painful curse

That has split me asunder

Is driving me to work

Before it puts me under.

I do not know if God

Is pushing me to live,

But surely it is true

He's pushing me to give. 

Resurrection

In death as in rebirth the soul is brought

By Hermes--up and down are made the same--

We only sell the things that can be bought--

Embrace rebirth, renewal without shame.

The double serpents must untwist to shed

Their skins--to shed their deaths to be reborn--

The serpents then rehelix and are wed--

The male and female each other adorn.

The staff bestows upon you somber sleep--

The staff bestows upon you waking life--

The lyre is lifting legs, so dig down deep

To breathe your coals to fire, to love and strife.

Then Hermes laughed, "Now dance the fractal border!

I make the land between chaos and order!"

Arithmetic Will Not Suffer

There's nothing less comforting than comfort.

Salmonella typhi will do the trick--

He's the kind of germ that'll make you sick!

Maintaining requires constant change

Staying still means falling back

Change requires maintaining and constant change

Giraffes are broken in the forest edge

In visible arrays across the savannah

Behold! An eschatology of man!

We'll surely end as mankind once began,

Evolving into something else--no plan

Can get us there--just know we will and can.

Deciding it was time to go insane,

I chose to be a poet.

Hallucination

We always feel so heavy when we're high--

We think an altered mind will make us fly.

Ending the Siege

There once was an old, wicked witch

Who with her old, warped, crooked switch

Made a castle a sponge

And then, with a lunge,

Made its moat into a mere ditch.

A Serein-Filled Today

I gotta finish what I started

I'm crafting sounds no-one has heard

I can’t leave here all heavy-hearted

And still full of these rhyming words

These words my soul has carted,

Both fly up a single bird

And I know that I know what all that I must say

Both tomorrow and a serein-filled today.

 

You ask me why do I sing?

Well, I just feel l should be singing.

You ask me what does it bring?

Well, what should songs be bringing?

You ask me is this just a fling?
Well, what should I be flinging?

But I know that I know what all that I must say

Both tomorrow and a serein-filled today.

 

Each life lays out its feathered, arrowed arc

You can never know its bend

You fill it like a sacred ark,

You fight and you defend

But in the end the meadowlark

Knows how this all will end

So, I know that I know what all that I must say

Both tomorrow and this serein-filled today

 

I gotta finish what I started

But which no-one has heard

I can’t leave here all heavy-hearted

And still full of these rhyming words

These words my soul has carted,

Both fly up a single bird

And I know that I know what all that I must say

Both tomorrow and a serein-filled today.

 

Sir!

The melted sand made clear

With cooling, dew drops dripping down,

Is full of carbon—hear

It rising through the bubbly brown

Liquid… just call it Coke.

Be Pop, commercial—do not frown 

At beauty, if it’s broke

Or bellicose or makes you drown.

 

The Teslas fill the street—

My son, he sees them all, YouTube

Had laid them at his feet—

He plays the game, he is no noob—

Electric as his brain.

The carbon-powered owner, rube,

Won’t see that all he’ll gain

Is formula when there is boob.

 

It’s fire, these modern words

That bubble up and pop the scene—

Some will curdle, curds

Of metaphors we’ve mixed, obscene

To expert, elite ears

Who get too salty, cannot glean

With carbonated tears

That on the now new art must lean. 

Look

Look at her shoes. These eyes are looking back

At you, but you don’t dare to see the gold

Warm-laced with brown. Look at her socks. You lack

And knit your brows. Your sigh is all that’s bold.

 

Look at her skirt. Your blush makes you complete,

A fool whose thoughts are blue and wandering.

Look at her blouse. Her silky skin, defeat

Your mouth you button, with clichés you’d sing.

 

You can’t imagine what you dare not see.

You just get angry—her and hers you blame —

A rabbit, you can neither stay nor flee.

You lash out—shoot and stab and maim—in shame.

 

You golden-trophied boy, you think it’s true

That all you want deserves to be for you.

Agape Eros Agon

 I wish to make a home of loving you. 

I wish to fuck you endlessly, contrast black sheets with your body.
I wish to love no one but you, a true 
Lust, a never-ending lust, fulfilled by you and your girlfriend’s
Love, as pure as apple blossoms, a snow
Of clothing strewn about my  bedroom,
Of petals whitening the spring, as pure 
As I have never been and never want to be again,
As the wind I was before. Winds blow
Skirts up over hips, hinting at life’s greatest pleasure,
Across the tundra of my past. You cure
My lust for the moment—I will need you again soon to fuck
All winters and turn them into bright spring.
I want to bring light to your covered places.
Nothing is purer than the love I bring.
Nothing is purer than my lust and my desire for your body

There's Nothing In This Pain I Feel

There’s nothing in this pain I feel

It gets me through the day

There’s nothing in this pain I feel

I’m going to go away

I want to feed the flickers flying

Sparks into the sky

I want to feed you as you’re sighing

Sighing your goodbye

 

The ship is sailing

Whales are flailing

Shooting down the stars

My strength is failing

Sirens hailing

Down the dusty cars

 

There’s nothing in this pain I feel

It gets me through the day

There’s nothing in this pain I feel

I’m going to go away

 

The grackles gather, gaze with wise eyes

Up from concrete ground

I cannot find

Within this grind

The feathers that I prize

Within the songbirds’ sounds

 

These folded flowers cannot free

The bees until the morning

Within this pain, I cannot be

But be in painful mourning

 

I want to feed the flickers flying

Sparks into the sky

I want to feed you as you’re sighing

Sighing your goodbye

 

The forest fell

The ship is built

The barnacles will drag us down

You hear the bell

That chimes your guilt

You drop your floral gown

 

Behold the gold that we have found

Depression’s pain will fall

Upon the good and bad whose ground

Absorbs each raindrop’s fall

 

Now hold my hand

And understand

We must be sailing on

We must agree to fight the sea

The land’s dissolved and gone

 

There’s nothing in this pain I feel

It gets me through the day

There’s nothing in this pain I feel

I’m going to go away

 

I want to feed the flickers flying

Sparks into the sky

I want to feed you as you’re sighing

Sighing your goodbye

 

The Death of the Muses

An empty mind, an empty God—

The Muses are deceased.

An empty art we now applaud—

There’s nothing to release

Our souls, our spirits, raise us up

With reason, passion deep

As ocean rivers—fill our cup,

The overflow we’ll reap.

 

The Muses have been flayed alive,

But you’re deaf to their screams,

Dismembered them—but we’ll revive

Into grander dreams

Than you could dare imagine. Rot

And ruin is your source—

But some of us have not forgot

The ancient future course.

 

The Muses live within the deep—

The darkest oceans crush

The artists who believe. You sleep,

Demand the world should hush.

You’re lacking even surfaces—

Your empty minds and souls—

Believing neither ought nor is,

You’re unenlightened coals. 

Vault

A step. A ripple that reverberates.

A string of bells, a blend of drips, a line

That stretches smoothly. Forms that all our fates

Have curved, have chiraled--all it will define.

Our hands have halted. Feet have formed what failed

Our minds to make. A square blank on the bank

Where ideograms grow and words have wailed

In pink-streaked rounds that slowly rose in rank.

Reflection disappears in depth--you'll drown

In voices--volumes only you can hear.

You grab, you grope, you gently jar the gown

That cooly covers with its cotton fear.

The whelks are weighing on my mottled mind

Until they tell you all you bind and find. 

Faze

You have a halo, hazy like the moon's.

You're singing lyrics lazy like the loon's

Your guitar grunges, gathers up new tunes.

I see your halo, hazy like the moon's.

You think that you can hide here in the mist--

You think that there is nothing, none you've missed.

The moon illuminates the haze--the days

Of dreams have danced us to a darker daze.

This phase, this phrase--I'm in a moon-filled faze--

I want to raise my gaze within this maze--

I want to find new fashions, form my fist--

Or, no--caress and care and craft what's kissed.

You have a halo, hazy like the moon's

That drives and dissipates all dreary noons

Whose too-bright light foreshadows all the runes

That make your halo hazy like the moon's.

Near-Sighted Love

You have to love a country from afar--

Where everything is out of focus, eyes

Inventing half of what it sees--don't mar

The visage with everything your heart denies.

The warts and moles and cancers and red boils,

The drooping eyes, the frizzy hair, the smell

Of something warm, bacterial recoils

The stomach, and you know that all's not well.

And yet, the human in you wants to hold

Her tight. And yet, the virtue in you wants

To push her far away. You'll stand alone.

And yet, there's nothing in her flaxen, gold,

Loose curls that doesn't pull. Yes, her hair haunts

Your heart--demands for justice turns to stone. 

Dream Cathedral

I wake from dreams of work--I'm weary--sleep

Won't let me rest--I lie upon the bed

And lie to all my weary ways that creep

Into the edge of consciousness I've fed.

I sit alone--I'm half-asleep--I perch

Upon the limb of R.E.M., erect

And at attention to the shadow-church

Of images awake I will select.

Bohemian success--my dreams address

Reality instead of all my aims--

My dreams betray my dreams, I must confess--

The edifice of art collapses, maims.

Cathedral of my dreams--I lay new stone--

For, for my Judas mind I must atone. 

Fire Season

In mountain firestorms the lake reflects--

While here, where heat is home, the cool collects

And washes trees down dry ravines where pools

Are parched, where fish reflect and we're made fools

By their philosophy. The heron's throat 

Is thirsting for its fish. The mountain goat

Is singed and sings its mountain-echoed bleat

Lamenting all its dead who weren't as fleet.

The earth is red, the moon is black in soot,

Tornado fires are twisting--underfoot,

The lightning strikes while northern shrikes stab mice

Upon acacia thorns. Their bones are dice

That roll beneath the burned and broken bramble.

Too dry and hot, too cool and wet--we gamble

And leave a shamble, ignorant of all

Our worth, our wealth--and we don't hear the call.

The wolves are silent--monarchs flit and fly,

Pretending that they rule. The fish reply 

With fingerprint-ridged scales that prism-days

Are when the heron hunts. Blue breaks the waves. 

My I

When I says "My body" who is this "My"?

Am I not my body? Is it my "I"?

If it is not my body, can it die?

If it is not my body, how can I

Control my body, make it move and cry?

Could this separation be a true lie?

If I say that I know that I will die,

Do I mean this, my body, or my "My"?

Do thoughts such as these make you rage or cry?

We ask such thoughts, but then only get by

On the simplest thoughts, so why even try

To ask what happens when our deaths draw nigh?

This is what makes us ask the question 'Why?"

And no matter how hard, I cannot shy

From asking what or even who am I?

I am this I who I see--I am I--

I am this body, my body's my "My"--

My eye I see I see now is my I.

When I meditate on it, I see my

I looking down at my I, and my I

Looks at my I looking at me, my I.

And all of it, my "I"s, are my body,

And, as my body, change and let me be--

And, knowing this, now I know that I'm free. 

Fairness

Why should I give you immortality

When you've repaid my love with loss and lies.

My interest in you's given me no gain.

When I'd invested in you, I'd the sense

That you had wanted me, to spend your life

With me, no matter, through all gain and cost.

An irony that my poetic art

Should find a use to lease eternity

To one creating all this darkness coined

In such a soul creating, making due

The dividend of all my poetry

That I wrote since the time that I lost you. 

You should be banished from the city, not

Be given immortality by me. What? Mercy?

I sit in black-robed judgement over you--

You have repaid my love with lies and such

Indifference. The promised blossom wilted

Despite what I invested in us two. 

Would priests dare grant that God would give

What I now give you here? No light would enter

Through rainbow windows coloring the church

You entered in. You're blind behind the veil

Of bitter blue you choose--life without gold

Sea shells, sunflowers bringing life your value. 

You left me and the only way I'm paid

Is by my constant balance on this bridge

Between my past with you and some far future

Finally free of this, my memory

Of how I felt and feel and spent on you.

For that, I grant you immortality? 

Barren Desert Cliffs

Go swing, swallows--sudden arcs up in the sky,

Away, cliffs with nests they hid from wind--They fly,

They dip, fly up, eating insects in the dry,

Barren desert cliffs.

Yes, once people lived here on these cliffs-they dwell

Among ancient ruins still. The stones that fell

From hand-fashioned places decorating well

Barren desert cliffs.

They graze barren land, the desert bighorn sheep--

They're cliff-canyon fleet, and knowingly they leap

Along ledges--desert residents, they keep

Barren desert cliffs.

When great Nebuchadnezzar's beautiful wife

Began feeling homesick, he made come to life

A great garden that transformed out of the strife

Barren desert cliffs.

Returned, condors soar above the desert places

They once winged above--they fly in ancient spaces

They once vanished from--now each dark shadow graces

Barren desert cliffs.

Now, man built his own high cliffs, and he assembles

In them numbers such that earth herself now trembles.

Transformed land is raised, and now our home resembles

Barren desert cliffs. 

Reaching Essence

The sage scholar that intimidates (or so

I've been told) so many I have met with all

I know--art and science and philosophy.

I've carved out this mask.

A small part of me, I reckon's still up in

The green hills--Kentucky where I'm still laid back,

Where jokes jump more freely, friendly from my tongue.

The South made this mask.

Can you not see I am right? I argue with

And quick-question people who I know and meet--

This love lives in me, unpleasant though it seems.

My least pleasant mask.

My brain's wired autistically--do not expect

A good memory to shop or for a name--

I can't feel the same as you--the world's intense.

My gene/brain-made mask.

My art aims for beauty--All my poetry,

And plays, novels--I transform to beauty words

Through sounds, rhythms, symbols, and in images.

Descent gave this mask. 

A dark hermit here in my library-cave.

I read, study, write, and think--alone. I make

In home-quiet spaces, decompress from life.

A need-daily mask.

I love, think of, love to spoil the ones I love--

My wife, children--I make them feel all the love

I feel--more than anyone could ever love.

Why not see this mask?

The Key to the Temple

Do you what to know how I worship?

This is how I worship--

This, here, what you read, with words, words

With rhythms, words making meaning through metaphor--

Connecting time up and down, up and down

The same, a circle, but not a circle, too simple.

I worship the word--In the beginning was the Word--

I worship the most human in man, the word, the logos--

In the beginning was the Logos.

in the beginning of man was the thing that made man--man--

I worship  the thing that makes the rocks sing--

I worship the creator--

The Word that is with God--

The Word that was--and is--God--

Words in natural rhythms--the rhythms of nature--

Words winding around my mind--

Words a west wind carrying pregnant clouds on the horizon--

I am pregnant with the word--

The words flow out and through me--

The words that sing and dance and make me--me!--

I am my words--the best part of me plays upon the page--

What is left of me will be my words--when I go

Only words will be left--

The Word that is in my is the Word on the page--

The best of all words, the best of all worlds--

I have learned to become the best part of me--

I have learned to be and become--me!--

Here is what I worship--the Word--the word

Is what I worship--words in rhythms--

Skipping across the page

Like stones skipping across a shallow pond. 

The Company I Keep

Romantic poets, Nietzsche, Faulkner keep

Me company--their company I like,

Embrace, find dear--these minds that always strike

My mind. They make it dance and curl and leap

In ecstasy. I rise to angel-heights

Of light that's threatening to kill my cave

Where shadows once were seen as real--I'll save

My body-soul in tensions of delights.

The ecstasy of body feels the call

Of reproductive bliss, my body warm,

Responding to her touch, the feather-fall

Of fingers, lips, and love, our body's form.

My body-mind entwines--I don't dismiss

Where minds touch mind in reproductive bliss.

Magma Rising

The land of living mountains slopes out gently

To the green sea in fold of tiny glass--

The glows red from dusk to dawn, and brass

Clouds move to bracket blue from red intently.

These are the lands that call for us to live

As these lands live--more dangerously. Careful,

Though, that you are not burned, that the heat's prayerful

Pull will not threaten every step, or give

You over to mere carelessness. Each movement

Needs style to perform you  to a new

Person, renew your body and your mind.

A past without regrets, and each new moment

An affirmation of your life, the true

Lava that makes the land much more refined. 

Nymphea

The water lilies spread across the water,

The veined, round leaves spread over their thick stems,

Hollow and buoyant, white and pale pink gems,

These buds and flowers opening, a daughter

And mother to an invisible nymph

That skims the water with her dainty feet

The minute she emerges, wondrous heat

From opening damp flowers, white as lymph,

Pink as early dawn. Opening between

The lily women nodes create desire

For cool pool forms that shimmer like they're fire

Across engulfing waters where men wean.

These nymphs will merge in hope to purge each urge

To see the beauty of their pond emerge. 

Revery of Fire

Are you prepared for revery? Cold silence.

The fire's flickering flames are meant to bring

The mind to quietness so it can sing

Of purified scents and a new reliance

On comfort, on the ancient well-lit hearth

That warms each soul before it, flickers it

With rhyme and rhythm, metaphor and wit,

Contra Ashbery, Lyotard, and Barth(es).

A silence in her natural biorhythms,

The rhythms' flickering flames are pulsating

In ears and minds, are dancing, gyrating

Until from absence rises newer rhythms.

Art's killers face the judge and jury, flee--

Now flames can once again give revery

Pensee

A garden full of pansies, long and broad-

Faced, multicolored flower, stern or smiling,

All making faces, frowning as they fling

Away their truest thoughts--their bed's a fraud.

You try to pry into their pansy-thoughts

And you will find your deepest disappointment--

A Sartrean deep angst so when you're spent,

You may proclaim them only flowery naughts.

Their capillary xylem, sap-filled phloem,

Instead of our red arteries and veins

Don't make their lives inert--it's true, life wanes

No single bit in difference of poem.

When we learn many-thought, we'll come to see

All wisdom's poetic reality. 

The Silver Sculpture

My brother and I stood in the white room

Of the museum, each of us staring

At the silver sculpture, mirroring whom-

Ever walked by. A round-bottomed spike sharing

The room with a tall man in uniform,

The security, each uninviting

Until the man told us to push the form--

We did, each making a tinkling delighting

Each of us and the man as the sculpture

Rocked back and forth. This was the thousandth 

Time he had heard the tinkling--the future

Would of course bring more--I doubt the millionth

Could make this man's delight ever depart--

His constant joy was the far better art. 

The Cliffdwellers

The topless natives in grass skirts. The cliffs

Where they have fashioned homes in wind-carved space

That overlook the canyon, petroglyphs

That spell out each dark spiritual place.

The neighbors nearby and across the canyon

All work together to etch out a living--

Dry desert farming and collecting pinyon

Nuts from this desert land, dry yet quite giving

For a century to those who would work

To leave their mark in this echoing place,

Now ghostly silent. Birds and lizard lurk

Here now, but nothing else, a slower pace.

These people now are gone--we don't know where--

But, seeing what they've done, none should despair. 

Mythogenesis

The lion prowls in shadows just outside

The edge of consciousness and the tree's shade,

The blond beast in the sun--it will abide

In our unconscious mind, where fears are made.

The hawk swings, soars above, just out of sight--

It's hiding in the gold-glare of the sun.

His shadow terrorizes, sends to flight

Ancestral fears that death kept at a run.

The serpent slithers, low on the dark ground--

He's venomous and hidden in the grass--

He creeps with crushing coils, won't make a sound--

He brings us fear that few could dare surpass.

Such fiery fears--our minds act as a flagon

To mix these fears and make of them a dragon. 

21st C, Salon

A cafe, black tables, fresh fruit, and wine,

People in black chairs outside conversing,

Surrounded by the thick, sweet scent of pine

That precedes even the flowers of spring.

I miss the salons, the movements, the thought

That comes out of like minds talking as one.

We've missed out on things that we could have taught

Ourselves about culture, what art has done.

The cafe brings us the promise of art

Lifted from the shackles of Heidegger,

Kant, existentialist angst. A new heart

Can now be born, flowering within her.

We sit at the black tables, lean in close,

Art's new medicine is the strongest dose. 

Shamanic Return

Where are the shamans that descend to bring

Up poetry from Hades--these new Huns

Cannot transform without the gift of art--

The world will desiccate in decadence.

A gold and emerald feathered serpent

To terrify us with its promises,

Convince us we must all at last repent

To gain his insights--shed, renew our souls.

One must descend in order to receive

The gift that will transform the pain and strife

We find ourselves in--we must now believe

In a new culture that believes in life. 

The shaman's poetry will heal the rift

That's poisoning our culture--that's his gift.

A Night Below

Where were your dark eyes when I searched for them?

I found a place, a deep, water-filled cave

Where I could lose myself for a time, stem

The expanding void--I knew I'd be brave

Among the bats and the mud and the stone.

Instead, I found echoing in the dark

Heartbeats of promise I was now alone--

I saw my life on a desolate arc

That would not vanish when I left the cave--

I'd stayed down so long, I now saw the moon

Lighting the forest that fractured the wave

Of falling rain beating out the same tune

Your eyes made in me when I saw them last--

All my love's beauty belongs to my past. 

Why Bother?

On those you love the most, your words fall silent--

At home you're just ignored, or seen to boast.

You know, but no one wants to know--you share

And no one want your knowledge, wisdom gift--

It goes unheard by those you want to hear

The words you wish to say. You know no one

Who has the ears to hear--as Jesus said,

A prophet is not without honor, save

In his own country. None who know you can

Believe, for those full of the wealth of knowledge

Of you cannot believe, and even have

A horror that you possibly could have

Within a wisdom that they don't, could not,

A knowledge to unhearing ears that's new.

Condemned

The old woman sits alone in her house,

dust filling the creases of her skin.

She now matches her clothes,

her furniture the same shade of gray.

She chose her place years ago, a place

where light has not sifted through

the soiled panes in soiled walls.

She no longer has the energy

to rock in her chair

or yell at children frightened

of the witch who lives in the spooky house--

children's imaginations the same

yesterday, today, tomorrow.

The same as the loneliness she feels,

having given up on the sun, preferring

the chill of the empty room, empty

but for her, as empty as her drawers,

her refrigerator, her closet, her cupboards.

No children to see her, to even miss

her calls or absence.

And now the smell has dissipated from the house,

the flesh stretched tight over her bones. 

For Roland Barthes

I

I am

I am so

I am so very

I am so

I am

I

I am

I am so

I am so very

I am so

I am

I

I am

I am so

I am so very

I am so

I am

I

I am

I am so

I am so very

I am so very bored

Are you, yet?

A

A poem

A poem based

A poem based on boredom?

Why?

Why not?

You accept Theory based on boredom. 

Voyeuristic Philosophizing

Voices on every side, saying

And meaning in islands of sound

Merging and emerging to mean

New things in my ear--

Channels to my mind until

I hear ideas and twist them in

My mind to thoughts now filtered by

Derrida and Wittgenstein,

Nietzsche and E.O. Wilson

Until they have become my own.

I philosophize on the sounds

Slipping through the air, across tables

And to and through my ear canals,

Translated to electric pulses made

Into meaning in my mind, twisted

To thoughts, new and reworded, forming

A new world view of fragments

Heard and read--

Philosophy by collage. 

An Elegy for Cathleen

When everybody's second mother died

Then everybody saw her casket, cried--

A tribute to her years of mothering,

Of giving children in the neighborhood

A place to play, a place of love and cookies--

Of homemade chocolate-chips that all kids loved

But me--a mother, warmly, to take care

Of everyone, to head the PTA,

To be a room mother for everyone

As much as for her own two dear-loved children.

Yes, everyone she ever spanked in youth

Came crying now to see her in her death,

For one last time, each wanting now to see

The one who, living, loved them so, so much--

No spankings kept a kid away--they came

Each day to play and, more, to feel her love.

The children she "adopted" coming hours

To see her one last time--more children came

Than any mother who had given birth

To multitudes. A funeral full of youths

To see the woman who had given them

A mother's love, enough to share with all

Who came--the bad turned good in her embrace--

All felt her equal and unequalled love. 

When everybody's second mother died,

Then everybody came to see her off

There were more youthful arms to carry her

Away from all the crying eyes that day

Than there were golden handles on her casket.

Man and Message

"People should listen to the message

and not look at the life of the man"--

A sentiment common, heard places 

other than from a young women in a coffee house.

Good art is--

form and content in harmony.

An unaesthetic sentiment above--

Unaesthetic : unbeautiful : unmoral.

Hypocrisy is--

form and content in conflict.

The person portrays the message beyond

syntactical, grammatical sounds strung together.

To be aesthetic: "People should pay attention

to the man who gives the message."

You have to live a life of style. 

Trying to Say

An endless series of poems.

An endless series of novels.

An endless desire for sex.

An endless trying-to-say.

And endless trying-to-show.

An endless series of paintings.

An endless series of sculptures.

An endless superabundance.

An endless overfilled cup.

There are those of us who try to find

That final thing which will still the mind.

But do we want desires to cease?

Do we want our active minds at peace?

The poem which finally says it all.

The prose which shows the finished soul.

The full-filling orgasm.

The at-last-I-have-said-it.

The at-last-I-have-shown-it.

The painting which expresses all.

The sculpture which turns all truth to stone.

A final satisfaction.

The cup is finally emptied.

A dream of death--

A dream of Hell--

A loss of breath--

A dungeon cell--

I must share, I must share my view

Of life--for my sake, not for you.

I never wanted this rare gift, it's true--

But now that I have it, I must confess

It is a curse that manages to bless

My life, transforming all the more from less. 

On Partly-Cloudy Days

The clouds clear out to an azure opal sky,

The blue patches white and gray we've seen for days--

The sun sits unseen behind the thick, slate remnant clouds,

But warm, felt at last.

I sit, sullen, in the shadows now--at least

There's sun shadows I can sit in, separate

The well-lit and shadows all the same, the dusty

Dull shade-colors same.

The clouds move above, the light expands, contracts

In life-pulses slow upon the gray-green ground,

And yet, every slow expansion of the light

Shines life-life to me.

I know clouds will soon depart, the opal sky

Transform, spread above in even shades of blue,

Give free reign to sun and sunlight--and yet I

Will miss clouds of gray.

Romantic Lips

I want to sing about your lips, so red

And thick and full. I want to part them, kiss

Them moist, brush them with my fingers, keep fed

Your thoughts I may have tried to lead amiss.

If the lips I speak of in this verse

Are those you use to kiss and breathe and eat,

I know that you would never think to curse

This as anything but a romantic feat.

Why cannot speaking of those further down

Be so expressed in all our poetry,

As this? Why must these lips bring such a frown

Of disapproval--they should be set free.

Beautiful, romantic, and not perverse,

Those that think not, it's their souls that are worse. 

The Baobab Tree

In the cavern we carved in the baobab tree

We awoke to the life we had created

In the openness cut out between the thick

Wood walls and branches.

In this space we can find a small place of peace,

A small place where we can separate ourselves

From the wildness we find outside these walls--

Out where leopards lurk.

The unpleasant heat of the sun stays outside,

All of the smells are replaced by just the one,

The cool, soft, heady, pleasant smell of the wood

Penetrates us both.

In here each of us can make a home of each

Other, the dark hollow of the baobab 

Is a place where our closeness can finally

Be felt most fully. 

Falling Stars (2003)

Above us, in a clear, blue Texas sky, 

Our heroes we forgot were heroes

Scattered out in a trail of white and sparks.

Our heroes in death, our heroes in life--

Where were we when those stars shot into space?

Why must their bravery become their deaths

Before we remember them as heroes,

To love them for who they already were?

Look up to the blue sky and understand--

From star dust we have come, and to star dust

They, who came closest to touching the stars,

Have returned to us as a falling stars.

Such brave stars rising into the heavens,

Men and women facing death on the edge

Of their own destruction for us on earth--

We, who proclaim the death of the hero--

We, whose lives are made better by their work

And their sacrifice and heroism.

Why must we act until it's too late?

Our heroes also return to their homes

On intact vapor trails of white on blue. 

Macaques

In the steaming springs

The frost monkeys warm themselves.

Light sparkles the snow. 

How I Was Moved to Feed the Birds

The black grackle hopped

Up onto the patio

Its feet puddle-damp.

Untouched

My love will not be touched, like all my loves

I've ever had--my hugs are not allowed,

And holding hands with her, it just enshrouds

Us in a new-moon night. She'd wear her gloves

On both her hands and heart--cold unheard-of

Behavior for a lover?--such dark clouds

Reign over women now and only crowds

Away the chance of true love. Darkness shoves

Its way between lovers, women and men

Driven far from each other, yes, until

All contact's lost among most everyone.

Why must we taste this cold carcinogen

Called fear of being touched?--it makes us ill,

Alone and lonely--without hope or sun. 

Rebirth

The man I was, the child I've become

Are separated by the gulf of Hell--

A sea-voyage past terrible islands,

Into storm-tosses seas of chaos--without

The benefit of the taste of Lethe.

Surrounded by black flames and spirits I

Wrestled with the Devil until I won

The right to sail from the storm and away

From the beautiful islands of joy--bliss

Blew in from the west to carry me, cold, 

Up to the rising sun creating new 

Horizons of rosy-red, orange, and gold 

Spread across the sea--evening's rainbow sea

Shining smooth in front of me in blue miles.

Nothing can be the same for me from now.

I have returned to these stone shores, reborn,

A child once again, I'm living wonder--

A child returned from graves of living men--

A child with eyes that learned to understand

In ways the man I was could never do,

Blinded by my dark, preconcepted world.

Now, I see the world I thought I knew--dark

Is light. I return to these shores, reborn. 

Sorrow's Haunts

The cypress and the willow weep the pond full--

The sorrows of all they have seen slowly drip

Off their long, light, green branches and leaves.

Sadness fills the pond.

Dusk calls the loons to fill the sky with their calls--

Such sad calls from water's mirror surface spread

Through the woods and echo off the mountainsides. 

Sadness haunts the woods.

The evening's mourning doves give way to gray owls,

Whose deep, full, sorrowful songs cause cool shivers

To spread through everything small, creeping, and warm.

Fear fills the dark woods.

As morning breaks, I wander. beside the pond--

My skin is clammy in the dew. The crickets

Chirp their last, and I find that I still miss her.

Fear haunts my sadness.

Upon Your Leaving Me

The house is empty now and full

Of ghosts of all your works, the things you said,

The words which would delight and pull

Me out of all my sadness, gone

So long as you were there. And now you're dead

To me. The crescent moon at dawn,

The vanishing moonlight of night

Which I reflected from the sun to you,

It hovers over the sea, bright

For one last moment, and then fades

And fades into the bright, expanding blue,

The blue beyond the waving glades.

I walk among the grasses now,

Dalmatian by my side, scaring the birds

Before us--they fly up aglow

In the sunlight to carry high

The sorrows flowing out from all my words,

To carry them into the sky.

I stop and wish their lives were mine--

So simple, good and bad, hunger and thirst

So clear, obvious, and fine--

But such a life retards the flow,

We must refine and redefine the worst

And best in tragic high and low. 

How can a poet writing songs

Have base concerns like hunger, thirst for sex--

Should not the faculty which longs

For you be only of the soul,

And separated from my darkest X,

My animal lust, darkest hole

That wanted you now naked, under

My naked body, just two animals?

Why must we fail to be our wonder?

Our Dalmatian runs beside me,

And, neutered, happily is scaring gulls--

He acts we think our our lives should be.

The glades give way to sand and beach--

My boat rocks gently, alone at the dock.

The waves laps on the shore and preach

The love of the embracing arms

The sea can offer me, its loving rock

That makes me feel as one and warms

Me with the sameness of the clock,

Its regular tick-tock, its rhythmic feet

Which whirl me like a dervish flock.

I step onto my boat and wait

For my Dalmatian to join me and greet

Me joyful, ignorant of fate.

The sky is blue, the wind is up--

I set the sail and say into the sun

Which pours its light out of its cup

For me to drink deep into me.

Relaxing, I let my Dalmatian run

Around up on the deck--he's free

And, free, allows me to drop off

Into a revelry, and then, asleep

For I don't know how long- a cough

Awakes me, caused by falling rain--

The skies and seas were rough and gray--a deep

And flickering fear from my pain

Combined with the sporadic gusts,

Which tossed my boat between chaos and calm,

And made me, god, and boat mere dusts.

And then the gusts became a gale

And all the calm dissolved into a psalm

Of chaos that made me turn pale

With fear of the madness around

And deep within me--terror, terror, terror!

The sublime monster was unbound

And made the world around me dark

And everything vanish to nothing--error,

Nothing, and all the nothing's mark.

The darkness cracked into the gray,

And gale returned to gusts, which calmed me down--

The calms as beautiful as day.

My dog lay, cowered from the rain--

I feared the two of us would surely drown--

I held onto my rope and pain

And gradually released the last

As winds died, calmed and clouds drifted away

And clarified me to my past.

The sun has calmed the sea--above

The sea, the calm, the unity, the play

Of chance--even the sand I love

More now than I could understand.

I sailed my boat back to the waiting dock

And followed my dog to the sand.

I took a break and I felt hungry--

A meal was due--so what if man and clock

Said otherwise when there's an angry 

Stomach that's calling for good food

And drink--for nothing is wrong with the pleasures

Of the flesh, neither bad nor good,

Like sex with you-- I see it's true--

I see it now as one of our gold treasures

We shared--it was one of the few

We had together--food and drink,

And sex were all the pleasures that we had

Together--and our only link.

And now I see, I see so clear--

I see the thing which nearly drove me mad

Was this, precisely what's so dear 

To seeing how to be a man,

An animal more than an animal.

And, seeing this, turned and ran

Up to my hilltop house where I

Could now begin my new life, my new call--

Art, to ensure I'll never die.