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? 

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.

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.

Time Saved

An hourglass, its waist too wide--the sand

Falls through too fast--in seconds it is over.

What good is it to tell time for my trip?

I travel down the parkway, missing sights

On highways that would wander through the trees.

It's faster on the parkway. More efficient

Time saved. Time saved at the expense of beauty. 

Poetry

My eyes grow weary and my mind grows dull,
And thoughts and feelings then begin to flow--
First slowly, fuzzily, then poetry
Pours forth, deep from the uninhibited
Soul, mind. All worries gone, all thoughts emerge
And all that's left is beauty, rhythm, words
Making beautiful sounds throughout my mind--
Released into the world as poetry.

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.

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.

Mephistopheles's Lament

I cannot tempt a man with knowledge now,
When knowledge is denied. I cannot tempt
The artists with true beauty--they deny
It in their art. None have the faith to fall.
The wise became philosophers, then they
Become mere scholars and then theorists.
What's left? Temptation of the lowest sort:
Temptation to raw, naked power. Blah!
Who cares? I tempt the worst with what is worst.

Forgiveness

You need to do something most difficult:
Forgive yourself for being human--flawed,
Imperfect. Yes, life is hard, virtue rare,
But love is best of anything and hate's
A waste of energy and time. Live full,
Imperfectly your life--always perfect
Yourself with joy and fill your life with dance
And poetry and song. The beautiful
Has never been the perfect--love the flaws
That make your life, all art most interesting--
Remain in awe of nature and the wealth
That you enjoy beyond subsistence, rare
In human history, and all the knowledge
The peace, the global trust that we enjoy.
And yet, because you won't forgive yourself,
You live in misery among abundance,
Condemn the tiny things, and seek out hate,
Anxiety, and fear, replacing all
We lost with our imaginations. Love,
And you'll be loved--give, and you'll get the gift
Of happiness--forgive, and live in joy.

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.

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.

Hectic

Alarm and snooze, alarm and snooze, alarm.
The rush begins. The shower, breakfast, clothes
Thrown on, the kids awake and dressed, their teeth
Are brushed, their hair is brushed, their shoes are found
And lunches made and matched with backpacks, out
The door and off to school and off to work
Where all of the incompetence of school
Is magnified at work in everyone
You're working with--you think you must protect
Your job and their jobs, taking up the slack
They make, you are the wall protecting them
From their mistakes and the administration--
If you complain, then you're the ass--just work
Until the evening comes and then go home
And work some more surrounded by your kids
You see for dinner, doing homework, practice--
Piano or their sports--, to clubs and meetings,
Before they go to bed and in those few
Short blissful hours without them you ignore
Your spouse to work some more--and you're behind
On work and all the TV shows that you
And those you love would love to see and sleep
And relaxation, rest of any kind--
The doctor tells you you have diabetes
And high blood pressure, deep anxiety--
Your stomach hurts, your head is aching, pain
Fills every joint--you're angry at your kids,
You're angry at your spouse, you're angry at
Yourself, your job, your boss, your co-workers,
The morons on the road and everywhere--
This isn't life, and yet you chose this life,
Afraid to make a change as constant change
Accelerates around you, random rules
That contradict, your arbitrary bosses,
A stupid butterfly with brown and orange
And black and yellow patterns on your arm
That flits and folds its chevron wings and stares
A moment up at you, or so it seems,
Then flies away to taste a flower sweet
To smell and taste and see--it's judging you,
Or you are judging you, but you project
That judgment, hatred onto other people,
And who could blame you?--not the others who
Like you are driven off the cliff by fear,
By debts you owe so many in your life,
And by the madness that this culture makes,
A madness that is growing, you embrace. 

A Chinjikijilu

A poem is a crystal made of time
That's built out of the future, made in sounds.
Emerging out of the unsayable,
Where I have known all the unknowable
And proven all of the unprovable
And reasoned through all the irrational,
I brought to complex order all the chaos
And disconnected the connectedness
That disconnects the future where I'm from,
In all the beds and shadows where I sleep,
In all the coffee houses where I dream,
And after I've returned to you from death
I'll bring to you the undefined, defined
In lines of rhythm, rhyme and patterned time.
I come upon the river of the blood
Of all the ancestors that fill my mind
And wade across it, slip to be baptized
By all the echoes they make from the future
Where truth is all that's spoken, if in rhyme.
The rest is all prosaic lies. The ground
That rises brings me back to Athens, life
Here in the city where the sophists lie,
Deny the past and future, beauty, good,
Light and shadow, complexity, and love,
Are hostile to the makers of time crystals,
To anyone who brings dead back to life,
To anyone who triumphs over death,
Emerges pure and clarified and true.

The Parable of the Pots

One time there was a village where the men
And women kept their money stored in pots
They carried everywhere they went. They held
Them low and so each saw what each one had
To pay the rent or buy the food or clothes
Their families needed. Many had large pots
They filled to nearly overflow, and more
Were modest, and many more were poor
And carried almost empty pots, and some
Were destitute and carried only air.
One day a man of modest means went down
Into the market hoping he could find
A brand new pair of leather shoes. He saw
Some people walking by with much-filled pots.
He looked at his, half-filled, and to a stranger
Complained, "If I had what they have I would
Do so much good." The stranger looked at him,
Then looked into his pot. "Well, sir, I see,"
The stranger said, "You have much more than them."
He nodded at a pair with empty pots.
"Don't look in others' pots wishing for all
They have. But look instead for empty pots.
Your excess is another's meal or rent.
Instead of envy, generosity
Is what you ought to choose, and from that, give."
The stranger then took from his pot---a pot
With far less money than the other man's---
And gave a portion to each empty pot.
The man then gave in turn, and others saw
And gave to other empty pots until
Each there had something in their pot. The men
Stood there, amazed to see the others give.
The stranger said, "If you can't copy good
That others do, then do a good your own.
Don't envy what you cannot have or do,
But rather spread the virtue only you
Can spread, and watch as people copy good
Instead of vice, for coveting's the source
Of every evil, and the viciousness
Of envy will destroy each virtue you
Should love. Determine to do good and you
Will lead the world to doing good as well."
And thus the stranger nodded, and he left.
From that day forth, the man chose to do good
And never envied any other man---
And thus he modeled virtue to the town,
Which prospered as resentment never found
A soil rich enough to sprout its weeds
And spread the deadly poison of its seeds.

The Forgotten Man

(An adaptation from William Graham Sumner)

The simple, honest laborer who earns

His living by productive work. We pass

Him by because he’s independent, self-

Supporting, asks no favors, won’t appeal

To the emotions, never would excite

The sentiments. He only wants to make

A contract and fulfill it, with respect

On both sides, favor shown on neither side.

He has to make his growing living from

The country’s capital that, as it grows

The better living he can make. Each part

Of capital that’s wasted on the vicious,

The idle, and the shiftless is the gold

That’s taken from the capital that should

Have been available as just reward

For him, the independent and productive

Laborer. We ignore, do not remember

Him just because he makes no clamor; is

He not the man who ought to be remembered?

What You're Not

You're not a poet--do not be ashamed
You're not a poet--very few can sing
Or play an instrument, compose a song
Or symphony, or paint a picture, draw
Realistically or write a novel, play,
Or television show, or act on stage
Or in a film or on the television.
You're not a poet--then again, you're not
A physicist or chemist, biologist
Or--though you think you are--psychologist,
Economist, or sociologist.
You have no expertise in these rare things
If you're a normal human being--yet,
You do not feel ashamed that you have failed
To be these things--but poetry's a form
Of language--and, you say, we do all speak--
And yet--and yet, and yet...we do not speak
In rhythms and in rhymes, select our words
With all their meanings and their sounds displayed
And crafted, framed and focused to be found
In ways that worry weary neurons pushed
Well past the way that language is most used.
So I'm a poet--you are not--enjoy
The work the artist does without resentment--
Enjoy the work the poet does--it's art.

Working at Days Inn

I wait behind the desk for customers,
A line of people checking in their rooms.
I never learn a thing of them, from them.
They need more towels, more soap, more batteries
For their remotes, and still there's nothing learned.
I want to learn their stories, histories,
And lives. I know I never will. They don't
Have time or care to tell a man like me.
I'm never worth their time or words. They think.
Who knows what they (or I) could learn from words
They heard or shared. But they will never share.
And I will only wait behind the desk.

On the Usefulness of Poetry for Learning

There was a time when people realized
That poetry was easy to remember
And people wrote in verse -- yes, essays too --
Because the rhythms and the lines which were
The same length as their short-term memory
Allowed them to remember what was written.
That's also why so many plays were written
In verse, to help the actors memorize
The plays more easily. As we have moved
Away from rhythmic verse, we've also heard
Complaints about our students' memories,
How they don't seem to know a thing, it seems.
Perhaps if we were teaching everything
In blank verse lines so that our rhythmic brains
Could map the rhythmic lines more easily
Onto themselves, then we could memorize
Far more than we do now. The science is
Most certainly behind me on this thesis.

There was a kind of poetry intended
To teach the reader, which has fallen out
Of fashion. Once didactic poetry
Was well-respected. Alexander Pope
Wrote his Essay on Man not in dull prose
But rather in heroic couplets. Just
Consider these few lines of his knowledge:
"Say first, of God above or Man below
What can we reason but from what we know?"
Epistemology has never been
More clearly stated, or more beautifully.
We have as models of this kind of verse
The likes of Hesiod and Ovid, Virgil
And Shelley. Why have we rejected use
And information as an aim of verse?
It seems the very worst that Modernism
Contributed was the idea that
All art -- and even the humanities --
Should be completely useless. Art for art's
Sake, nothing more. Indeed, this freed
The arts, allowed proliferations of
Such forms as we had never seen in such
A short time period. And yet one has
To wonder why the usefulness of some
Art could not be retained. The structure of
Our brains allow the regularities
Of poetry to easily deliver
The information and ideas which
Bombard us in high qualities today,
So much of which we need to know to do
The complex jobs we have, to understand
The world in its complexity, which we
Did not evolve to really deal with. Yet
We have a tool -- a tool which we discarded --
Which lets us learn so much so fast that we
Could even understand this world we live
In better and in much more depth than we
Do now. Can you imagine what we could
Learn more than we now think is possible?

Perhaps you don't believe the things I say.
Well, let me ask you this: how many lines
Of prose can you recite? How many songs?
A song indeed is poetry, and you
No doubt can sing a couple dozen songs
Without a note to prompt you. Why is this?
Perhaps it is because all that I said
Is true. The rhythms and the rhymes of songs
And formal poetry get stuck and play
Themselves on your brain's rhythmic circuitry.
When we get earworms, it is never prose,
But always songs which we hear in our heads.
Our memories are rhythmic and work best
With rhythms when we want to memorize
For quick recall. Imagine too the new
Ideas which our brains could formulate
If we in fact made use of what our brains
Could really do by taking full advantage
Of how it works. It is too bad that we
Don't take advantage of the usefulness
Of poetry to learn about the world.
The sciences and the humanities
Could all be easily accessible,
Could easily be learned if we could just
Present it to our students in blank verse.

Treestomp

Trees travel through these woods -- you see their tracks
And trailing cedar trunks hold growing rings
Of memories remaining light as fog
That creeps through streets, around the buildings' stones.
All rise, obscure the sky, the sun, the clouds,
The stars, the birds, the bats, the planes that fly
From port to port as some release small men
In parachutes who then drift down to caves
All full of calcium formations, cracking
Fantastic rising ceilings with their centered
Hot crystal chandeliers as clear as seas
Surrounding Caribbeans full of leaves
That fell from trees that marched into the water,
The fountains full of foam fragmented from
And into liquid crystal prism rainbows
That left their trunk tracks in soft sand they shaped
To glass-blown bubbles bursting into bright
Chaotic fireworks displays of trinkets
From places far away, on boats that sail
In, bringing branches from the distant West
To plant the places where the trees are gone.