Gossamer breastplate

There are the walls of flesh that hold us fast
upon this devil's island of an earth,
deceptive paradise of blue and green
that calls on birth to bond us, death to let
us go.

We are the restless spirits , ponderous
in bone and sinew, all but frozen in
a time continuum where only dreams
and stillness open windows to the light.
It is the soul's dark night that keeps us bound
when all the whirling universe holds court
outside, and we who touch the blinking quarks
but may not pass between them, are but half
angelic, waiting, wondering...

Perhaps there is a vesture that the mind
and not the eyes, may see and might there be
a trumpet to awake us after all,
a wonderhorn indeed, to sing of a
reality that may escape the dreams,
the torturous parade of lifetimes we
require to probe the mind of God?
~

Incarnate Dreams

There was a dome spread overhead
in that first lifetime, holding back
the waters and the gods;
perhaps there was a place beneath it
for the lesser thoughts that never grew,
but drifted easily away.

There was a summer when the mariners,
adrift upon the still Sargasso sea,
thought of the nearly-dead,
and though enlightened,
waited for the moment when
another dome, less tangible,
might, crashing down,
be shattered into evanescent pieces,
to their requisitioned end.

There was a pleasure dome,
defined by men at play,
in ancient time, and then anew
where thoughts were cast away.

There was a dome upon a hill
where men had once looked up,
spoken their noblest dreams aloud
...and everything was still.
~

A Song to the Unsung

These are the ones who dare,
these gloved old men with plastic bags
who roam the lanes on foot
while I drive by,
for they are more aware
of the adorning, aleatoric splendor
of the flashing crinkled cans,
the cups and wrappings
scorning those who prized them
for the moment, flying
to their rest, behind.

But now the countryside stripped bare
in naked challenge to the passers by
invites its heroes, still unsure
who they may be,the revellers who flee
before their minds take rest
upon their artifice, or those
who prize the green and see the art
of the pristine.
~

My Doppelganger

I've seen him only once
and then but feet away
outside the streetcar window;
whether he saw me,
or fled my sight deliberately
I cannot say, however

I still sense him near,
and might it be
that I shall meet him only
on the day I die--
some kind of irony in store?
Yet how I wish
there might be more,

that I might probe his psyche
as he brushes mine.
And does he pine
for yet another glimpse of me
confirming that October day
some fifty years ago
when I was borne away?
~

Is this the America we want?

http://www.bushflash.com/14.html

A challenge

to English teachers, poets, and linguists:

The language is in great need of a genderless, neutral pronoun. Poets must always compromise when referring to the deity, or when identifying anyone in the third person, and not wishing to confine that identification to gender. It is a limitation for which the time has come to be resolved.

The advent of the internet is that opportunity. Through lists, academicians from everywhere may confer together, make suggestions, have them analyzed, and eventually reach a concensus. What a boon to writers and thinkers that would be! I believe that this impediment to consistency and precision can easily be overcome without rancor, and virtually without prejudice. Yes, I have a few suggestions of my own, if anyone cares, but this is not the time to get into that. Ladies and gentlemen, heroines and heros. distinguished minds everywhere, may we begin? It is in our power to get this done. If there are obstacles, they are insignificant. Let us be consumed with the opportunity, not the obstacles. We can do it. Why wait? What better time?

Dialogue with a ghost

To the unseen and unknown presence that I made
I pour out all the doubt, the hopeless pemutations
of my thought, the dark intangibles, ideas strong enough
to tie the hours together and make of them pretenders
to a faded throne...a magisterium that everyone ignores.

My will is for some flesh upon these spirit bones,
an argument out loud, a sounding board
would near suffice, and I could carry you along
within a small attractive case, and bring you out
when no one else would care to pay attention.

Name your price!
And I will pay it joyfully.
Insulting, you may be; I do not need to win,
but only hammer at a patient ear
the inspiration of a simian mind
on impulse leaping out before remembering
the bars...and leaping...leaping.

Howl at me! I am your god.
How dare you fade
like those more proper shades
who first conspire with fame
before they take their places
in the heroes' books. and dignified
by fear. Speak now, or you shall have
no name at all.

I must conclude
that gods don't have much fun
with their creations.
Mine is such a disappointment.
Were he real, then all my thoughts
themselves might be more shy
and less inclined to play,
or fantasize,
or fight for me alone,

but merely drone inside my head
like stubborn bees
until the frosts descend
and by the winter fire
begin again.
~

Mind over Matter

His body sat there, in its chair, unmoved,
but for the whims of those who care an hour
or so, until the time clock sets them free,
yet he has left them long ago, his stare
misleading lesser travelers who stand
in elevators and in trains and are
quite unaware of their imprisonment
in other chairs less mobile, but much more
confining to the mind.

It is a question, truly, who may claim
to pity whom, and where the markers are
along the way. of when the watchers are
the watched, of how ideas play upon
the screens before or just behind their eyes.

And do we patronize a liberty
we may not know? Are there true, wondrous lands
to which the tiny particles within
alone may go? The Steven Hawkings of
the universe depart at will aboard
these spirit ships, invisible in port,
and then upon returning will report
the finding of an India that we
had never seen, or never ever dreamed
~

Corcovado

The plane approaching Rio sights
The God-man on the mountain
in the sunlight-- that cold tremor
just between the shoulders strikes;
we see the arms borne up by love
and reaching to the traveler,
the city, and the earth.

Then from below, the pilgrims mount
the heights to see the features
of the Cristo...first, the railway,
then the stairs climb higher
in the quest--
anticipation, breath and blood
now pounding in their hearts--
there comes the turning at the parapet
to watch the mists brush by his face,
gauze curtains breaking to reveal
that intermittent, scowling
countenance of stone,
once emerging in austerity
beneath the mallet, now
beyond the shadow of Elijah's peak
is seen again, and lost,
else one would need to look away--
before this stern,and re- transfigured God.

The city plays beneath his watch
just as the drama of
an immanent, transcendent deity
erupts in silent declamation, then to part
in a reprise of his ascension
in the cloud.
~