Finding a Place

What shall we do with this young man--at ten

Much more a man than men twice, thrice his age--

Who plays a manly rock-n-roll--his pen

Has written lyrics showing manly rage

Against the dying of the light--no less

Opposes womanly pop music--he

Will build, create with focus, fearlessness,

Declares all rulers "suck"--anarchic, free.

But where shall he emerge into the man

That is his destiny? This culture will 

Declare him toxic. Focused on his plan,

Perhaps he will ignore and then fulfill.

This boy who loves his father was born for

A balance made in music, not for war. 

The Song of the Prophet

Eternity is present to the soul

That pain brings to the light. I follow fate

On which my will will freely dance. My bowl

Is filled with spirit. I will not debate

With God for what He’s given me—a voice

That speaks in only truth, in poetry

That sings. Come sing along. Come sing, rejoice

In all the complex love that makes us free.

You thirst? I pour out what has overflowed

The bowl God filled. There’s more than you can know—

Perhaps I cannot speak all that God showed,

And I am but a rhyming afterglow.

I am the moon who in the night will pour

The light out of my bowl to show the door.

At the Abyss

 I stood upon the edge of one of these

Before—they look the same, but different—

You stare, they stare, it’s you—the slightest breeze

And you could fall, it seems. I have been sent

Again, sent to stare at the abyss—bliss

Of love, bliss of death—nothing would dare tear

Me away from the source. My love for this

Was hereby made and made all that is fair.

 

But now I know where I am standing, dark

And infinite below—the things you know

Don’t bring the fear that you once had—I grew

Into this daemon-driven poet-lark,

And this new black abyss will help me grow,

Direct me to the nothing that I know. 

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!"

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.

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. 

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. 

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. 

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.