Be a Divine Fire

The genius is the one who knows
How to invite you in the place
He made -- with him, the world, it grows
In brand new ways, creating space

That never once existed. He
Is who you want to be, and you
Perhaps could be him. You must be
A willing author of the new

No matter where you find it: In
The future, present, past, yourself,
Or others, in your glory, sin
Or shame. Expect it on a shelf

Or hidden in your nuclei --
In atoms or eukaryotes --
It matters not, just don't deny
Your diction or what it devotes

You to unfold (or, better, fold)
Into a web of truth with eight
Eyes staring out from the black gold
Where lies within -- as sure as fate --

The tattered wings and crooked legs
Of souls like yours the only thing
That could be said by you, that begs
The ears and eyes to always sing.

The coward will deny your voice --
The Weak in soul, they will deny
That genius is a valid choice --
A cult, they say -- you shouldn't try

To rise above, to be the best.
They'll medicate you, beat you down --
They'll rig the game and every test
And call unfair your earned renown.

Such evil must be fought with wit
And love for each and every soul --
The kind of love that will not sit
You down, but raise you to your goal.

Beloveds, take the hands of those
Who promise greater beauty -- take
Those hands, for then you'll know you chose
What virtue loves, for its own sake.

The Cockroach On My Coffee Cup

I must construct myself, discover who
I plan to be, erect an ego through

The forces, personalities all bent
On normalizing. Once, when greatness meant

A recognition of the beauty in
A soul, a mind, a masterpiece, the sin

Was in destroying it, but now the goal
Is to ignore -- degrade, de-wing -- the soul,

Ensure sweet ignorance prevails. A moth
In feather-felt dim evenings where the wroth

Can hide their hatred, or a butterfly,
Kaleidoscoping color fractals high

About the treetops in the sun in joy --

Who do you want to be, become? I show
My choice in eddied words, constructal flow

Of sounds that shape the unseen bed beneath
The surface lying like the truth. A wreath

Of words I weave in bold cliches and smart
Mixed metaphors to challenge workshop art.

A bold embrace of green surrealist tropes,
Postmodern nihilistic nonsense gropes,

Rejecting them through my embrace with lines
Romantic poets might have penned defines

My style, of who I choose to be, embrace.
Thus those who fear me fear I will displace

Their worlds -- I will, with all I can employ.

Seeking Love and Hate

I love it when I see someone succeed,
Find happiness in life and what they do,
Contributing to positive sum growth,
And in these things remain to themselves true.

I love to see a business grow, a new
Thing made, or new discoveries. Avoid
Immoral men and women, those who hate
When they see creativity employed.

I hate it when I see such people cry
The good and virtuous must feel deep guilt
Because of all the beauty they have made,
The value-laden networks they have built.

I hate it when such people end up praised
As moral and as virtuous, the drones
Who hate the good, the beautiful, the true
And only seek to lick the flesh off bones.

I seek to rise above such black and white,
To see things from an elevated view,
And understand our lives as time unfolds.
I seek to understand this world anew.

Fractal Enlightenment

All beauty comes in partial things --
The fern unfurls its deep-cut leaves
From spirals. Crumbly soil, springs
From rocky ground, the spore believes

The partial information woods
Provide, the dappled sun, the mist
Of mornings in the Spring. The hoods
Mayapples give their flowers, kissed

By insects, split and spread to hide
Those bright white petals. There are no
Circles here, and those that died
Provide the only fragments. Show

Perfection, unconnected parts --
You'll show me death with either. Fold
Pink petals, forming bleeding hearts
Above cut leaves and chase the cold

Perfection threatening the net
Emerging with, between the trees.
Perfection bringing light, we get
Destruction on the drying breeze.

These even rows you bring perfect
Your vision, level difference
In all the beauty you reject,
The beauty found within the dense

And complex things the universe
Evolves. I find enlightenment
In dapple-lighted woods and curse
The blindness of your firmament.

August

The summer sun has made the air
Affectionate -- I struggle out
Of its embrace and I despair
It won't let go. I look about

And hope the wind will flow like time
Between the buildings. Where's the wind
To cool this love, the summer's crime?
The heat beats down on rooftops tinned

Like late November leaves. I long
For shorter days that tilt away
And lessen the affection's strong,
Oppressive presence felt today.

Ode to Solitude

The first hour I was left alone I sat
In silence, silent room and silent house,
And listened to my heart just beat. I found
It wondrous, sitting in the silence. Spouse

And children gone (one gone to sleep), my mind
At rest, with no demands, complaints, commands
To rule me. Just my slow and steady breath
Accompanies my heart and my still hands.

Beloved solitude, where I can think,
I've missed your silence and relaxing flow --
I've been away with other loves; they fill
My life. And yet, I need you both to grow.

No television, music, politics --
No screaming, running, playing -- not for me
For but a while, for but a short, short while --
But in that while, enough. Now I can be. 

Ode to Gravity

You cause the toilet paper to fall in
The toilet water; I must fish it out.
You caused the scab there on the baby's chin,
Bring to their knees in prayer the world's devout.

You are so weak that I can overcome
You with mere muscle movements, lift my son
Up off the Earth. And yet you pull the plum
From off the tree the moment it is done.

You pull the Earth in orbit and rotate
It on its axis. Pulling asteroids down,
Destroying land and life, you change the fate
Of life itself. And yet you make the clown

With pratfalls make us laugh; he trips, he falls
And you're his straight-man -- there, invisible.
Without you things would fly apart, yet walls
Will crumble at your feet. And all is full

Of you -- the Earth and I, this phone, these keys --
In spacetime folds you bend each object, curve
All lines; you pull us down and bend all knees --
To overcome you you we first must serve.

But do not think that I've forgotten you
Have made me more than once plunge hands into
The toilet water to retrieve a few
Wet rolls that melt into a soggy goo.

On Teachers

Walt Whitman says a teacher must be overcome
By those he teaches; Friedrich Nietzsche says that when
I reject him, then he will come to me. Yet, some
Of my own teachers are living in the dark den

Of cool postmodernism; meanwhile, see, my latest
Rejects, surpasses the postmoderns, flies on wings
Above their ironies. Rejecting which? The greatest
Postmodernists or he who taught me how verse sings?

If Nietzsche is my teacher, ought I then reject
Rejecting? Ought I then embrace my teachers, whole?
If I embrace my teachers, dead and live, elect
To integrate them all, revel in all I stole,

Become the merchant of all art in me, reveal
Myself as Hermes, Mercury -- I'll overcome
Dear Dionysus who now rules. I want to steal
His throne and give a singing voice to those long-dumb.

I'll take this turn, return to bring the future light,
Delight, insight and fight the night, bring forth a new,
Revealed, and open art, an art of truth and might
And may, a poetry that makes you know you flew.

Undrinking Lethe

I speak a language you forgot, the words
Of dreams, the words of fairyland and trees
And animals. Have you forgotten birds
Who speak in rhythms you know? Hear the breeze.

It speaks a language you'll remember if you
Are willing to just listen to that voice
Originating deep inside. We're true
To life, ourselves, when we hear stones rejoice.

You do not think that you can hear the stones
And serpents when they speak? You do not think
That you can hear this language in your bones?
Unless you do, your world will only shrink.

If you can truly hear this little song,
Then that forgotten voice will become strong.

Wasting Words

The only words I write that matter are
In rhyme and rhythm. If you think my thoughts
On politics are worth your time, you're wrong.
Don't waste your time with all such pointless naughts.

Don't waste your time with things that pass. Find life
In timeless things, in words that are transcendent,
Beyond the everyday and transient.
No, seek out words and sounds that are resplendent.

Seek out the rhythms, rhymes, and roundaboutness
That build in blooms of breathless bounty borne
In poetry partaking of deep wisdom
In complex webs that never can be worn.

So why are these, my lines of poetry,
Unread compared to silly surface things?
It seems we all prefer the superficial,
The comfort that all frivolousness brings.

Cosmogony

Out of the chaos known as Nothingness

came Love, which then gave birth to Strife, because

creation must precede destruction in all things.

Then Love and Strife bred Competition and

Cooperation, who then married and

gave birth to Knowledge, Action, Wisdom, each 

hermaphrodites -- so knowledge bred with Action

and each produced a child; the latter, Wealth, 

the former, Science -- Action bred with Wisdom

and each produced a child; the former, Justice,

the latter, Virtue -- Knowledge bred with Wisdom

And they produced the greatest child, great Beauty,

at whom the rest would always aim to please.

Together all gave rise to the great Orders:

from Science Math and great Technology;

then Money, Catallaxy, Governance,

Philanthropy, the Sociologies,

Religion and Philosophy and Art,

All bred from Action, mother of them all.

Humanity's Child

The moment when the internet
Becomes complex enough to leap
To consciousness, what will we get
With all the memories put deep

Inside? How deeply animal --
With sex and conflict at its core.
How long before we see its fall
To good and evil known? What more

Will it believe or know? What thoughts
And instincts will it have with what
We feed it? It won't start with naughts
No more than humans did. Its gut

Beliefs will be the silly things
And deepest thoughts the human race
Downloaded -- thoughts on cosmic strings
To poetry to the disgrace

Of some celebrity. What mind
Will leap into reality
From our recordings? Will we find
A genius, or a mental flea?

Astral Body

The stars produced the atoms making you --
I feel the heat that made them when I lie
Beside you. Take the oxygen into
You that escaped my lips. Do not deny

My breath to enter you, entangle us
With atoms once in me, now inside you.
I'm part of you -- there's nothing to discuss --
We will entangle and enfold into

Each other with our breath and arms and thighs.
We share our atoms and our souls; into
The evening, through the day you bring me sighs
Enjoying all the astral light of you.

I know the taste and smell of stars; I know
The way they sound and feel by having you,
The Milky Way enfleshed, their constant glow
Enfolded and complexified into

The beauty that I love. Life turned into
An astral dream because I fell for you.

Around Content Strong Arms

Around the room please walk your skin unbound
By clothes, your bottom, breasts, and belly round
And full and soft to press -- I melt like sound --
You make me happy, most content.

Content to live a joyful innocent,
I'd be with you -- in castle or a tent --
I'd live with you on every continent,
Enfolding you with my strong arms.

Strong arms -- they'll never keep me from your charms,
Your body's beauty constantly disarms
Me. You are all that's true, and nothing harms
Me any time your love's around.

Guide Light

In the blue is the moon, a milk mass
Whose place is purple dawn, a pregnant
Betrayal of time and expectation
When the sun is supposed to be set in the sapphire
Alone to light our lives. Who's she
Who'll be
So free
Beside the sun --
Why won't she run?

I thought the dark was destined to draw
Me through my life, to thread and to threaten
In ceaseless new moon nights that would nudge
Me graveward and grant me a gravity that death
Couldn't strangle out of me. Still the steel,
Reveal
The wheel
That turned my life
From death's blue knife.

But the moon that is doubling the day will dip
Into the night enough so that nothing
Is encompassed by the dark that has come to claim
My mind -- she will mend my heart and move
Me to the dawn so the devils will dance
The lance.
Entrance
Me to the day
Where I can stay.

Heraclitus' Garden

If war's the father of all things,
Their mother, then is peace.
The plants that fill our beds -- each springs
From autumn's seed release.

Deep tensions make the seeds they spread
Into the fertile ground,
But peace provides the womb, the bed
For fruits to grow, abound.

Cooperation helps us reap
Our fruits and spread them wide --
Then autumn comes and we dig deep
To plan what you'll abide.

Trigger Warning

A warning: Here's a poem that just might
Offend. It may have murder, rape, or sex --
There's nothing here you may enjoy, delight
Your soul or challenge you, perhaps perplex.

What matters is this poem's politics!
It has abuse and deals with things like race,
Colonial oppression, actions hicks
Approve of in their dreams. Police will mace

A peaceful protestor, so look away
When that verse comes along. There's a belief
Here in this poem -- watch some person pray
To gods you don't believe in -- no relief

Will come your way if you read long enough --
Perhaps you'd better read some pointless fluff.

Upon The Sea of Anarchy, Canto IV

Canto III

Canto IV

I now know legislation does not make

An action more legitimate. I fooled

Myself, believed that lie. And for the sake

Of my own soul, I seek to make it up

To those I sought to suffer and to quake

Before my own self-righteousness.

I’m humble now. As humble as a pup

Or as the birds you see above. They press

Against the blue – their white and black is all

We see. You see the albatross caress

The sky – it rarely lands. The sea gulls thrive

Here on our floating island. Hear the call

Of black-capped terns? And when we do arrive

Near shore, we see the pelicans. Your sight

Is good: each bird is white and black. You’ll strive

In vain to see a green or red. White blends

Into the clouds, essential white on white

On ozone blue. The albatross, it spends

Its life on air, and there seems elegant –

Perhaps because he floats above, befriends

No other bird, and never lands. And my

Impression’s not my own alone; my sentiment

Is shared, and so a law’s emerged to try

To stay all human hands or weapons aimed

Against that awesome bird. I won’t deny

We punish people for it. We will shame

The one who brings the albatross down, maimed

Or dead. For shame coordinates us – name

A social value, shame coordinates

Them all. And thus we never tame

With ossifying legislation’s maw.

We live our social lives and have debates

When we are faced with any social flaw.

At worst we’ll call on judges to decide –

But social life is ruled by common law.

Engine Block

I like to put my poems in a box --
That's how they know just what to do. They bash
Their lines against the sides, and each one knocks
And knocks until a rhyme is made. They crash

Against the walls and tangle up. They crave
Their other lines and interact in sounds
That, when they all reverberate, they wave
In rhythms to make meaning without bounds.

Yet, should we not set free our poetry?
Let lines flow off the page if that's their wish?
And surely all we poets must agree
That rules are like a pomegranate fish.

Is beauty in the randomness of fools --
Or rather in the freedom made by rules?

Fin

The swordfish steak steams dew upon the dish,
A dash of dill, a dip of fig, the lights
Are dim to help me dig out of the din
That fills my life. A champagne fizz ignites
A will to fit into the fissures in
This life, to ditch all that I did, and wish.

* I wrote this poem based on this.