Traveling Without Moving

I have passed from the past, I have moved

From science and history, traveled to

The realm of poetry and my story,

I have moved to the future, the void

That is the realm of nought, philosophy.

I traveled all the way by river boat,

I am rocked by the waves of its time.

I sink the screw into the water, churn

My way upstream, then lift it out again

So I drift once again in the frothy flow.

I seek at once both mouths and sources, sense

And dark nonsense and, between, a new sense.

Can I rule, be a hero, and a saint?

An artist, with each image that I paint?

A Song for Anna

I love my life

I love my wife

I love the home we made

I'm full of praise

For all the days

We've live and loved and played

She is my source of happiness

With her I feel most free

With her I feel I must caress

The life she's given me. 

I love my life

I love my wife

I love the home we made

I'm full of praise

For all the days

We've live and loved and played

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. 

For More Timefulness

I spend my days in constant study,

Finding how I need a more timeful life

Wherein existence becomes less muddy

And I've evolved to clarify this strife

Which lies inherent in this existence,

Where only small green buds may slowly form,

Meeting every new and old resistance

To such cool, open flowers from the warm

Buds from plants from sun and minerals came,

Complexity bringing forth much more time

Than we can at this low, bud-level name

Or understand or even start to mime.

And yet, I feel the pull into complex

New timeful levels than my mind reflects.

Mammon

A Prayer to Mammon

"I bow down and worship, ready to serve--

You are all, what I live for. And even if

I see no soul staring at me from my

Mirrored eyes, I will see no evil

In anything you make me do. For the promise

Of cars and planes and vacations

To places I have never been, I will turn 

Myself into your supplicant, manipulate

Every man I can manage to your ends.

All means shall be open, as necessary--

Charm and meanness, truth and lies.

There is no meaning but what can be purchased

By you who rules all. I will sacrifice

Myself, my friends, my family--

My happiness and joy, the growth of my soul--

To making more of you, my god.

With you, I can purchase all I lost--

Let my anger flair at those who stand

Between me and having more of you.

Amen."

The Happy Man Speaks to Mammon

"You are a way, and not the end

To which we all must aim. Things

Will not bring me joy--only comforts

Of life, clothes, a belly full

Of good food--good things one can enjoy

With family, friends, and wife.

You are a means to physical comfort,

Experiences, a relaxing life,

To books and music, movies, plays, and art--

May I never forget that is all you are."

Conjoined

Perfection is conjoined to death

Just as the soul is truly breath,

As to a carcass vultures fly,

The breath is gone, the dreams will die.

The vultures hop upon the earth,

Devouring what you are worth--

The worms that wriggle on their beaks

Will sound the soul's resounding shrieks.

Your carcass writhes--you're living yet--

Utopia is where you met

The onyx blade, hear beating still--

The vultures, maggots get their fill.

From chaos you can't order life--

From vulture bones you'll make the fife

That leads you children to despair--

Your beauty's one that is not fair.

Yes, you bring death, the vulture's meal--

The culture's ground beneath the wheel,

And you rise up--the Devil's son--

For death's conjoined to perfection. 

Contemplation

I'm asking you to contemplate

The meaning of the stars,

The placement of the planets, fate,

How Venus seduced Mars.

And I will contemplate your eyes,

The beauty of the turns

Of galaxies and fern, your sighs

That make sure my blood burns.

And we will contemplate the birds

That sing their mourning song,

And all the phrases and the words

That make us both belong.

And they will contemplate the two

Who sit upon the hill:

The moon, her mate, the sun, who do

For each the other's will.

The earth, well, it will contemplate

The life that makes it live--

The animals, the plants debate

The love that we must give. 

And you will contemplate, I ask,

These words I sing, the song

Declaring death won't deal its task--

This, love, will right that wrong. 

Speaking Poetry

The key to speaking poetry

Is practice, practice, practicing,

For then your language will not walk,

But take the music, dance and sing. 

The Golden Age

Was poetry revered

In some forgotten age?

Was rhythm, rhyme once cheered,

Each author seemed a sage?

Perhaps I'll sing a song--

That poetry's alive--

And you will sing along--

My words will then arrive.

Perhaps a future time

Will love mere poetry,

Where conversations rhyme

And rules make language free. 

Replicas

I climb these stairs, a replica of stairs

That are a replica of stairs the nuns

Would climb--yes, Plato'd be appalled. Each bears

The cares of children, artists, each one runs

Deft dewy droplets down the long, lined leaves

And waves in wavelets then, each dancing, leaves.

Perhaps great Plato's thoughts and dreams absurds

Our views on art that Aristotle cured--

A copy of a copy set in words

Makes voiceless every sweetly singing bird

That makes the poet swoon and rise and bow

And even love the seagulls on the bow. 

Why sail in seas and row on rivers rising

From deep, dark places in our souls, from death

Where deepest knowledge rise from our surmising,

Through our unforgetting, warmth letting breath

Communicate in complex chaos, life

In art, the beauty forming endless life. 

The Artist and His Muse

She lays across my shoulder, head--I lift

Her high--she whispers in my ear--I'll die

If I don't cede--my winged soul must shift

To take her sirens' song I can't deny.

She is a burden I must love--her beauty

Breeding more beauty through my fog-filled voice--

I love, I hate to feel her song--my duty

Is always to obey--I love my choice.

Beloved, there's no burden that can raise

The soul to realms of child-play--she'll prey 

Upon your feathered mind--yes, she will raze

It to rebuild, and to her you will pray.

The sirens are the sisters to the Muses--

Creation or destruction--each one chooses.

Salvation

A painting is a meditative space

Whose beauty lifts the troubled soul to grace.

Mind

The man-made cavern mind of coal and white

The monster dust delights the nose to cough

The blackest phlegm that yellows with delight

Our eyes and all the bowler hats they doff

The sigh wrens tiptoe on the tide abide

And do not know and dare not hide their scales

And teeth that tear their caverns opened wide

And blowing air that belly out the sails

The belly of the leaf is coral who

Has lectured us on pataphysical

Soft diamonds who speak every lie that’s true

And mark the world with every alpha bull

Akkadia is where the soul now rests

Assyria has eaten every heart

Behold the concrete nowhere and the breasts

That drag with chains the abalone cart. 

North and South

Summer sunshine in July

Darkness to December

Dancing in the turquoise sky

Nothing to remember

Paradox will drive the ox

Slowly down the field

Crashing, caught upon the rocks

Knowing it won't yield

Sex and sex and sex and sex--

Nothing, nothing, nothing--

See the sun, how it reflects--

The lake, the moon are bluffing

The Garden

Above the soil cracked by drying mist,

Above the river flowing, eddy-kissed,

Glass flowers bloom up on their stems of steel,
Their rainbow swirls against the earthy bricks
Refracting fractals focused light we feel

As heat that harrows off our hides and licks

The lemon, orange, the watermelon green,

Raspberry and blue--fruitful, true, and blown

By breath that bears the love of life unseen

Until the transformation to known

Unfragrant understanding is unwound

And fractured flowers do not make a sound.

Wandering Mind

I'm bored--I think of writing poetry

I'm bored--I'm thinking about you and sex

I'm bored--my soul is aching to be free

I'm bored--I'm drained down to my very drecks

I'm bored--oh, did I mention sex with you?

I'm bored--my mind is flitting, flying, fleeting

I'm bored--I have no wings, my feathers flew

I'm bored--the time has stopped, always repeating

I'm bored--I need some liquor and some food

I'm bored--I don't know what to do today

I'm bored--I visualize you in the nude

I'm bored--I want you in the bed to play

I am so bored that I've become perplexed--

So send me naked pictures via text. 

Careless Culture's Consequences

In this world's longest, widest, deepest valley

The world's tallest and strongest dam was built

And left to fill, and then forgotten. Silt

Built up as water filled. It drowned each tree

And bush and covered every tiny hill

Across the mountains' slopes, filled every cave,

Until the great dam could not longer stave

Away the weight of water, slit, until 

The waiting water pushed across the top

And cracked the concrete until it broke

And all the water washed, a single wall,

Downriver. Force, no force could ever stop

What they'd unleashed upon themselves--they woke,

The ones who could, to what destroyed it all. 

Stories Need Be Told

Postmodernism--voice of the elite--

Their poems reverted in the sure defeat

Of all the voices of minorities

Whose stories need be told. A story frees

The soul from Hell. A story will give birth 

To future paths we never thought were worth

The time to contemplate, perhaps a new

And branching branch of time. Each voice is due,

Each voice should sing its single subtle song

To show autistics, women, both belong,

To show that African-Americans,

Hispanics, Asians, all the world have plans

And goals and stories we should hear, are told

In lovely lines of lyric poetry

That free us all and make the blind to see. 

Metaphors for Vengeance

The vengeful cannot grow in love—

You cannot see in red

Each actions that your loved ones take.

Your feelings will be dead.

 

The vengeful cannot grow in virtue—

Machetes don’t grow trees—

Its scythe with harvest poisoned grains

For death’s all it can seize.

 

The vengeful cannot grow in peace—

They live in constant war—

The valleys flow with horse-high blood—

You’ll slip upon the gore. 

 

The vengeful cannot calmly sleep—

They toss and turn in hate—

They’re slashing throats and gouging eyes,

Distributing their own fate.

The Future Immigrant

The future immigrant is longing for 

A mystery, a hope, a future new

And so romantic--it's an open door

Into a meadow full of morning dew.

Dissatisfied with where he lives, was born,

The future immigrant will gladly pass

Through deserts, over mountains that adorn

The body of the earth. Her endless grass,

Her flashy flowers, forests full of fear

Are ways to gain the beauty of the way.

For all the future immigrant holds dear.

He has to go, although he wants to stay.

I must admit, his wanderlust I share--

I dream his courage, going where I dare.