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. 

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.

Condemned

The old woman sits alone in her house,

dust filling the creases of her skin.

She now matches her clothes,

her furniture the same shade of gray.

She chose her place years ago, a place

where light has not sifted through

the soiled panes in soiled walls.

She no longer has the energy

to rock in her chair

or yell at children frightened

of the witch who lives in the spooky house--

children's imaginations the same

yesterday, today, tomorrow.

The same as the loneliness she feels,

having given up on the sun, preferring

the chill of the empty room, empty

but for her, as empty as her drawers,

her refrigerator, her closet, her cupboards.

No children to see her, to even miss

her calls or absence.

And now the smell has dissipated from the house,

the flesh stretched tight over her bones. 

For Roland Barthes

I

I am

I am so

I am so very

I am so

I am

I

I am

I am so

I am so very

I am so

I am

I

I am

I am so

I am so very

I am so

I am

I

I am

I am so

I am so very

I am so very bored

Are you, yet?

A

A poem

A poem based

A poem based on boredom?

Why?

Why not?

You accept Theory based on boredom. 

Voyeuristic Philosophizing

Voices on every side, saying

And meaning in islands of sound

Merging and emerging to mean

New things in my ear--

Channels to my mind until

I hear ideas and twist them in

My mind to thoughts now filtered by

Derrida and Wittgenstein,

Nietzsche and E.O. Wilson

Until they have become my own.

I philosophize on the sounds

Slipping through the air, across tables

And to and through my ear canals,

Translated to electric pulses made

Into meaning in my mind, twisted

To thoughts, new and reworded, forming

A new world view of fragments

Heard and read--

Philosophy by collage. 

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.

Man and Message

"People should listen to the message

and not look at the life of the man"--

A sentiment common, heard places 

other than from a young women in a coffee house.

Good art is--

form and content in harmony.

An unaesthetic sentiment above--

Unaesthetic : unbeautiful : unmoral.

Hypocrisy is--

form and content in conflict.

The person portrays the message beyond

syntactical, grammatical sounds strung together.

To be aesthetic: "People should pay attention

to the man who gives the message."

You have to live a life of style. 

Trying to Say

An endless series of poems.

An endless series of novels.

An endless desire for sex.

An endless trying-to-say.

And endless trying-to-show.

An endless series of paintings.

An endless series of sculptures.

An endless superabundance.

An endless overfilled cup.

There are those of us who try to find

That final thing which will still the mind.

But do we want desires to cease?

Do we want our active minds at peace?

The poem which finally says it all.

The prose which shows the finished soul.

The full-filling orgasm.

The at-last-I-have-said-it.

The at-last-I-have-shown-it.

The painting which expresses all.

The sculpture which turns all truth to stone.

A final satisfaction.

The cup is finally emptied.

A dream of death--

A dream of Hell--

A loss of breath--

A dungeon cell--

I must share, I must share my view

Of life--for my sake, not for you.

I never wanted this rare gift, it's true--

But now that I have it, I must confess

It is a curse that manages to bless

My life, transforming all the more from less. 

On Partly-Cloudy Days

The clouds clear out to an azure opal sky,

The blue patches white and gray we've seen for days--

The sun sits unseen behind the thick, slate remnant clouds,

But warm, felt at last.

I sit, sullen, in the shadows now--at least

There's sun shadows I can sit in, separate

The well-lit and shadows all the same, the dusty

Dull shade-colors same.

The clouds move above, the light expands, contracts

In life-pulses slow upon the gray-green ground,

And yet, every slow expansion of the light

Shines life-life to me.

I know clouds will soon depart, the opal sky

Transform, spread above in even shades of blue,

Give free reign to sun and sunlight--and yet I

Will miss clouds of gray.

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. 

The Baobab Tree

In the cavern we carved in the baobab tree

We awoke to the life we had created

In the openness cut out between the thick

Wood walls and branches.

In this space we can find a small place of peace,

A small place where we can separate ourselves

From the wildness we find outside these walls--

Out where leopards lurk.

The unpleasant heat of the sun stays outside,

All of the smells are replaced by just the one,

The cool, soft, heady, pleasant smell of the wood

Penetrates us both.

In here each of us can make a home of each

Other, the dark hollow of the baobab 

Is a place where our closeness can finally

Be felt most fully. 

Falling Stars (2003)

Above us, in a clear, blue Texas sky, 

Our heroes we forgot were heroes

Scattered out in a trail of white and sparks.

Our heroes in death, our heroes in life--

Where were we when those stars shot into space?

Why must their bravery become their deaths

Before we remember them as heroes,

To love them for who they already were?

Look up to the blue sky and understand--

From star dust we have come, and to star dust

They, who came closest to touching the stars,

Have returned to us as a falling stars.

Such brave stars rising into the heavens,

Men and women facing death on the edge

Of their own destruction for us on earth--

We, who proclaim the death of the hero--

We, whose lives are made better by their work

And their sacrifice and heroism.

Why must we act until it's too late?

Our heroes also return to their homes

On intact vapor trails of white on blue.