Slipping through Time

Slipping through Time

We were naive
to predicate believing
on a body, dipping through the ether
to another day; it changes, doesn't it?
Within a moment, not the one
to enter fantasy, indeed it is imposter
to a creed of self-identity, of microseconds
vanishing and re-appearing
as it thought it was, for it is new
and also nevermore.

The traveler may simply take
his presto-chango body as a set
of luggage, purchased on the way,
and like a spirit, set it down
within an instant on a different floor
of miles and centuries.
Spirit is the teacher,
thought, the faithful friend.
And, yes,
There is that dogged body,
stranger though it be, to tag along.

You smile.
This is for anyone,
at any time he may create. Go see.
And then return, though it is possible
I will not recognize the one who left me.
Who is he?
~

Creation's Irony

Creation's Irony

A man begins the search outside his head
with wondering, what kind of God would make
a wind-up primate, hot to rule his world,
endowed with nothing more than jealousy
to motivate his simian success.

But no, there simply must be something more
in peering out upon the field to see
an ass's jawbone crush a brazen skull
or drown with liquid words, an enemy.

Of what divine intent is the enfant terrible
who calls upon the prince to gasp above
the nails for his own sin? What triumphing
is that? There is the seed apostasy
has dipped in blood and planted in the soil
of apostolic greed.

Ho, everyone that thirsteth, come and buy!
There is a heaven here, a boon, a sigh
for every paradise pursued in vain,
for yellow cobblestones, and mansions in the sky.

A singular dimension waits beyond
the taking of a dream to consciousness,
for that becomes the moment when the God
of Abraham falls silent, angels need

to chant no more to shepherds on the hill.
The new Jerusalem has open gates
for every traveler; the wine is soft
upon the lees, the song is lush upon
the ear, the night perfumed forevermore
with love.
~

Ein Heldenleben

Ein Heldenleben

The element was sacrifice,
the set aside of commerce; what remains
is just that browned reminder of a yesterday,
the crowded theatre of retrospection
one could not let go.

What remains are all the questions...
Hopes were high, now there is none...
only the present, eking out existence,
just a crumb of joy to keep him going—
yet those questions are his magic:
that shade of dawn behind the crescent moon
that asks...expects no answer,
basks in adulation for a breath or two,
and then would readily exchange it
for a death entirely his own.

And so the final days
of lost celebrity
are worn away within
the West Virginia hills,
shouting at the thunderclouds
to make their peace and co-create with him
a requiem for vanity,
a mountain echo for the voices
singing in his heart; his heroism
rests within that place
and there it celebrates not pride
or strife, but profound mystery,
agent provocateur in everyman
and every solitary life.
~

Of Lilliput

Of Lilliput

They are such tiny people,
slipping in your blood stream
unperceived as you, crusading,
ride the clouds and seas
exposing unseen cavities
within the noble paragraphs our children read,
or did upon the times of innocence.
Semites all, they roamed invisible
with Moorish wiles through Consitution Hall.

We are the ones who still
may fight the Saracens beyond the Alps
and take no prisoners, the enemy
is always with us, always must be killed
to save our way of life. Better there
than here.

The Asian hordes are dead,
the swastikas are torn away,
the jungles with their bloody footsteps
have decayed to grow anew
upon old screaming ghosts
now silent, yes, too silent underfoot.

The Moors are hovering—
too small that we may see them;
they dive into our brains
and steal our mushroom clouds—
they thrive on secret plans and planes
and black economies
that rise from underneath the earth;
as dark and slippery as their own skin.

What presidential grace bestows
this Lilliputian race upon us; just
as we were out of enemies,
these riders of the sands to test our will,
our sons, the peril of our peace...our love.
Now we may raise the flag again
and sing of bursting carapace above
and not of bloated bodies
in the cargo space below.

Oh, no.
Oh, no.
~

A Psychic Manual

A Psychic Manual

Time is a coverlet
of secrets not to be withheld,
but dressed for the revealing,
just as humankind sits down
among the gods partaking
of the succulence of truth,
and no priority may interfere
with that vainglory of the feast.

See, it has begun
with whispers in the air,
alerting us that it is there
surrounding thought
like friendly shadows frolicking,
calling out to passersby
that there is always more within.

It is the hour
when judgement slips away...
the inner ear entices
in a strange romance,
and everyday is set aside
to clear the way
for new dimension, moving in.

You may attune your mystic sight
as flesh retreats;
the field is vast enough
for you to play, embrace its green
and celebrate the day
of your awakening.

The fresh halloos reverberate
across the miracle
of this new consciousness,
our hidden friend for many years,
our self emerging from the sleep
of alien domain, an infancy
to suck upon a proffered breast
quite unaware it only pacifies.

Halloo! There IS a crystal universe.
There is a holy light upon the sky.
There is a company of messengers
that we in blinded days
ourselves considered aliens.
We called them angels, yes, but they
were winged of mere intent, unseen
yet with the song of bounding
and rebounding love alone
and only now and evermore to be.
~

Behold, I make all things new

Behold, I make all things new

There was a yesterday, pulling at my mind,
disclosing the expected mundane self
reacting, not inclined to throw the clay
upon the wheel, to love without a cause,
to walk the forest path seen overgrown again
and yet there was an incompleteness hovering.

It was as if a man would be content
caressing all the little treasures
that he knew and loved--the ones he kept
within a little box that rested close at hand.
Old friendly ghosts were there for nourishment
and with emollients for dying days.

And yet there was a scent upon the wind.
There was a voice, more powerful than ears accommodate,
that beat upon the modest self
that hides beneath my consciousness,
brought forth like Lazarus and swathed
in winding sheets, reluctant to arise.

A working Christ would be like that.
No force of arms, no epithet of conquest
nor a blooded history to write.
A gentle call into the tomb would do it—
just a soft reminder
that there is no grace in sleep
beneath a monument or stone—
that there is glorious bursting of the night
in store; there is a paradise to own.

It takes that tug upon the consciousness.
It takes an empty page or two
before the forward to a mound of years
set down. The alpha and omega bow
before that bright eternity of now
and are consigned to rhetoric;
there are the stars aborning,
charted, crumbling as their yesterday
becomes today.
~

The Cherry Tree

The Cherry Tree

To crown the foil of window's questioning disclosure
and an afterthought—the ready sweep of old terrain
that would not seek completing, only slept
in still reflection of the passing hooves
returning from the wars, the lesser footfall
of the deer to gain the forest just beyond,
the baking of the sun...the years deluding...

This was only heritage, encapsulating ghosts,
but yet prepared to raise a living monument,
a friend to feast the eye, the body,
so contain each memory
within a morsel's succulence
as its own sacrament, bright red
and clinging to a disappearing past.

Then with a triple grace, the tree ascended,
fashioned from the vision
of a mind that saw the little slope
reborn as one observing, reaches back
into his heritage, illumining the trail
with purest loveliness pursued,
and finally in death, its richest wood
as offering to frame the instruments of art.

The thought is framed as is the view
outside the cabin window...longed for
even as fulfillment of an old desire.
Its fruit is of the years embedded
in the transcience of a hope
forseen on shipboard long ago.
Step across the time with me
and seek the cherry tree.
~

Of Myth and Men

Of Myth and Men

But is it true?
Does flesh impart
the spirit heart with mystery
to synchronize its beating—
fare its child with golden history
beyond its bloody birth,
its soft resigning death
to spur romance alone?

There is a touch of sainthood
in the firelight raconteur who
sketches in the apparition of a god
to dress his reach into the past...
from where did that emerge?
In truth, inside of us.

In truth, each journey to the mountaintop
will pass the lions in the heart,
medusas on the sands to lure us
to the lands of strange delight
where men and beast unite,
where totems tower
beyond our failing sight.

And with it all, the fantasy of song—
the legend sung to men
far long upon the trail
who caught a glimpse
of that old highway through the mist
from earth to fair Olympus
where the demigods cavorted
one last time, and left their imprints
in the golden dust.

With humankind there just is not enough
to raise the breath of life beyond,
yet with the fabled must
of prowling lions, teacher and disciple
feed their mind and soul
not from the carrion of Eden
but the cradle of the Ark.
~

Le Penseur

Le Penseur

Merci, M'sieur Rodin!
for you extruded from a faceless blob
the naked sinews of a man
who in his abject solitude
embraced a galaxy of mind
that sings creation,
nude of all but truth and purity
conmingled in the kiln's holistic fire.

From such prolific pondering,
he shares with us one absolute—
reality originates
not from an alter image floating
in long robes beyond the skies;
his gaze is downward, cast away
from reaching fingertips, away
from dancing sprites who will persist
in worshiping the dawn.

His shoulders bear no triumph,
neither promise of reward
for lack of pretense; there they crouch
with not a single argument for victory
or sacrifice—Dante in seclusion
at the gates of hell,
and silently to tell of paradise
that is the intellect alone.

It is no wonder that we tremble
as we stand before him,
for we may not shy away.
No less than all that is
between, beyond
the hours of our imagining
lies there among the racing quanta
of his thoughts and our despair.

Je vous en prie M'sieur.
Tiens pitie!
~