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