At Gravesite

At Gravesite

How is it I draw near to you
as I approach this common ground,
yours above and mine beneath
connecting our mortality yet still
symbolic of the separation that took place
as I laid you there apart from everyday.

I know you hover there with me,
our mutuality in tribute to the Adam dust
that formed us, carrys us along
to ride the winds
across the fields and towns forever
while these minutes here
when I look down, resist,
and in our tryst pause to allow
'I love you's' here and now
to bridge the days beyond
when I must turn away.

The visits carry vanity as well.
I choose them to assuage
my feelings of neglect; it never works.
The stone, defiant, strong
in its assault upon my eyes
betrays the irony its vigil promises.
Its song of death alone
is all I hear behind my upraised heel.

But it is not the ash, the dust, the winds,
the stone of taciturn reproach I keep
upon my heart as I drive off.
It is your voice I hear again,
"Dad, I'll always be here, loving you."
You knew I needed that.
~

Port Discovery

Port Discovery

The mind on course is nothing but obtuse,
recalcitrant and leaderless.
Silent particles stream by unnoticed
and a soul doesn't care;
the stopping ports are easier...
until the ones and zeros re-arrange
and an electron jumps
the other way... not much incentive
for another listless hour on shore.

No matter then, the prayers are said,
the songs are sung,
and suddenly there is new joy
upon the threshold of the day.
That which is known
is much too prone to cloy.
The time has come
to celebrate the open door,
and why?...not for the prayers
or songs intoned too readily.
No, there is more.

I am a captain with a visionary crew
who long for the unknown,
along with me are ready for
a midnight rendezvous
when we shall toast the sunrise,
set the sail upon uncharted sea
and drink the wine of love.
~

Reliquary

Reliquary

See? Beyond the hill crest,
there laid down the words,
the tokens of a life as unintended gifts
like gems remaining, precious,
to be gleaned as one more little universe
to save—an ember of a personhood
surviving death.

Then seek them out, for they
are worth the price of the uncovering.
As monks illumining the word of God,
retire to your cell and dip your pen;
the commonality of all the saints—
of you and I is on that page,
encapsulate in time.

Scholars pore upon
words dropping down...
upon a timeless stage,
upon a now that celebrates
each time the mind says yes.

But it is mind that needs no more
for monuments will wear away.
While for an age or two,
mortal clues are everywhere...
these gatherings, however spare,
will prove to be enough

to die for.
~

Santa Fe

Santa Fe

It is the hovering time,
moments made to bear defining.
Someone should declare when it is night;
the dear white ghosts slip down the corridors,
wordless, in and out of rooms
as if the walls did not exist— and commerce
is a strange and other-world imagining
fading quite away, just after eight o'clock.

Sound is sacrilege, gesture frames the hour.
And from the morgue below, the cart is bound
for 722; there is no one to weep.
There was a prayer a little while ago:
"You know, of course, dear lord,
I have the promise of my son...
that he won't let me die alone up here...
and in the dark."
~

A Remote Christmas

A Remote Christmas

It was perfect today. My wife and I were alone, dinner had been
eaten, and the beloved family were hundreds of miles away.
We love them dearly, but today we did not miss them. We
loved the quiet, the finemusic on the DMX, the warmth inside,
the good reading from my recliner chair (I'll tell you the book
if you ask) and the time to reflect that there is love wherever one
is, if one takes time to absorb it. The peace was tangible, the
sense of gratitude, suddenlyprofound. I do not credit my own
spirituality for that, but I do thankfully credit an spirit of
acceptance that says that is what communion with God is all
about...a taking of the moment, breathing it, and finding that
loving all that is, can be a simple thing if it is simply permitted
to be. The God part was not out of meditation, or worship, or
even gratitude, but merely experiential for its own sake. It
required no creed, no sense of duty, no falling upon the knees,
and certainly not any relics of childhood or even faith, to grasp it.

No football games were on at my house. There were no little
ones to discipline (though that too, is lovely), no Christmas
wrap mess to clear away, and not many dishesto wash. But,
yes, for this former Christian who pried God off his throne,
demoted Jesus from his scapegoat sonship, and derided the
nobility of intentional sacrifice, I duly noted that love had
seeped into the room, the path that Jesus illumined still
showed the way, and the God that the centuries were seeking,
still filled my heart. For an iconoclast like me, that was enough
of a miracle, though not unexpected, to overflow the remainder
of my days on planet Earth.
~

The Metamorphic Heart

The Metamorphic Heart

It's Christmas after all.
Of sweetness it may not be wrong,
this chamber of the damned,
with destiny to take the spears of politesse,
break, and give again,
live as if the age were new...
as if there were a healing God within,
not out beyond the stars. It knows
the perfidy of humankind.
It knows itself.

For there is bleeding, here, and cold.
There is crusting on the heart;
a wellness quite apart from charity,
a schism of the soul that never heals at all
but festers and divides
and in its agony succombs to war.

It's Christmas.
There is death upon the field of sweetness;
There is valor dressed in blindness
for the zeal to coverup.
There are carols out there,
loud enough to mask the sighs,
the wrenching, last goodbyes we say.
There is a baby there, to pray to.

Somewhere, lost out there
among the penitents upon their knees
...caught up in all this splendor,
there is peace.
~

Blithe Spirit Company

Blithe Spirit Company

My daily walk for exercise has changed;
for there are souls along the path
I have not seen before. Oh yes,
the regulars are there,
and smile at me, too often share
my miseries from ice and snow
and muscles slow to dance in synch
with my advancing age, but these!...
the shy ones...they who subtly appear
before I am aware, and then are gone.
What can I make of them?

They're at the borderline of sight;
they catch that old third eye
designed for sensing—clusters
of old friends at points along my route,
then family I supped with
while the energy of breath prevailed—
the ones I didn't get to say goodbye.
And there they wait
to see me make my rounds,
and Zounds! I don't know why.

Perhaps it is because
I soon will join them
on their vaprous other side
and want to get me ready, or
more probably it is another way
to let me know that they are there,
to catch me in a time when I
am not preoccupied with pleasures,
pain, or measuring my own
crude mortal quest to reach them
from my sterile room.

For on this mobius circle of my walk
I have the luxury of silence plus
the absence of demand, and they are free
to stand beside my route
and unassailed, stretch forth
the lavish purity of love.
~
["Poor Dean", you say; "he's cracking; we'll be gentle
with him, let him keep his imaginary friends. They
are harmless, as is he, so long as we don't get too close."
Ah, fare thee well, my friends, I promise not to drool
on you. And I don't really see them...just 'almost'...and
that was enough to bring on this crazy poem. Yeah,
I think they're there, all right, but I don't stop my
circuitous rounds long enough to talk to them. It's just
that I never knew ghosts could be quite so much fun. :-) ]

In Full Humanity

In Full Humanity

They were naked and were not ashamed,
pristine, unknowing of the world—
unknowing of themselves, the undertow
to draw them down,
beneath their surface paradise.

For that is what it was,
a crust to hide the deep, the mystery,
the richness of a feast
set forth in royal David's city,
hidden still beneath the tree,
the man and woman unaware,
the linden in the garden
apart from innocence.

A woman and a man,
a crust of ignorance, a tree...
there was a sensitivity to good and evil
waiting for a fall.
There was a hunger for the festive board,
an overlooking of the cost, a restless urging
...and a stable rest.

There was a Galilee—
an infant god, they say,
who would not have them call him good.
Was there a tree, for his undoing?
The wood of faithless fruit?
The wood that touched his blood...
would it be death that sired a homo sapiens?

No, it was life that taught them.
It was the tree from which was plucked
the consciousness of good,
the love which is reality,
the gracious gift of knowing
we may be
all that awareness will allow
in full humanity.
~

The Question Man

The Question Man

There goes the question man.
See how he walks?
Deliberate, and not like others
...not at all.
His lust, unlike our own,
is for the shadows right and sinister;
they play a different melody
for him. They seem
to sing of soft excursion,
tasting of an eastern shore
already redolent of Asian mystery.

He is the question man...he seeks,
not struts, for wealth is not ahead of him,
but dancing by his side.
How singular his pride of heritage
laid down by books, not blood,
an overwhelming flood of curiosity
that sends him off to islands
where the tradewinds call,
and he may answer with a spirit song.

His prize is in the quest,
his being filled not with desire,
but with the fullness of Matisse,
black hair down to the waist,
bare footprints on the beach,
the crinkled pages placed most carefully
beside the mythic bed, and left there
for a maiden fond of dreaming,
longing for a different strand
another midnight might disclose.

So much for the question man
who walks his magical domain
within the crystal globe upon his desk.
So much for nostrums
in the wake of shipping lanes
that cloud its clarity.
It is the questionning that drives romance,
and not its appetite.
It is the dance unending that will breathe
the tropic splendor of the night
~

From the Third Eye

From the third eye

These are the words that write themselves,
phrases struck in steel
and driven into me,
borne of tablature and burning,
speaking only of their silence
as Atlantis, lost in dark constancy,
might re-appear out of the sea
knowing, still unknown,
yet known to be unseen.

There is a cloud upon my brow,
a doubt embracing certainty,
a synthesis of thought and draught
quite rich enough to taste. It augurs death;
it augurs why; it smiles and spins away.

I smile as well.
This unknown knowing
leaves a trace to follow...the ellipisis
saying this is not the end. It augurs breath
a little while, the mind upon
an open path, the pristine gift
suspended somewhere
just beyond our eyes.
~

Thoughts at Bedtime

Thoughts at Bedtime

What may be said
of the phenomenon
perceived just once,
and almost not at all,
that were it known
across the galaxy,
would shake the stars?

Might it be likened
to the faded signal of distress
picked up one time
out of the ocean wilderness,
the lonely listener himself unsure
of what he heard?

Invasion of the lost upon
a single consciousness let go,
or tumbling in the mind forever
is creation, helpless in its stormy power,
a spark that may have glowed there
for a moment off in space,
ignited by an infant god.

It is too much.
That which is there, or was,
is never not,
will not release its hold,
most certainly may never be dismissed,
for it will streak across the inner skies
with all the force
of an intrepid infant universe
to claim a destiny as faithful as our own,
to life
or to another certainty
the bald impertinence of death.
~

Inside Out

Inside Out

The face is still,
the personhood a mask
and from outside, there is no door.

The world slows down,
its voice as if a worn down tape
devoid of presence, drifting,
lost in its pursuit of time;
it is a galaxy of strangeness
where a breath of lonesome melancholy
would relieve, but still the wind forgets.

How taciturn, outside,
how churning is the turmoil from within.
How resolute, the longing of the sperm
to tear into the heart
and liberate its glory or its agony,
its oratorio to God, its plaintive hope for love.

How curious indeed, upon its evanescent throne
is love, still innocent of thrusting light,
still hopelessly naive
before the pounding hooves that heroes ride;
how frangible its shell.

Millenia preserve their heroes very well,
although their colors bleed
upon the pages that we read,
upon our inner souls when we allow them,
though the face,
yes most certainly the face
is cold and still.
~

To seek the "I"

To Seek the "I"

Amoeba swims...
unconscious consciousness and then
a growling in the earth...
divide, and multiply and co-create
and life encounters life;
the ganglia reach out...and touch!

Now there is one again, comprised of two
and as I trace the "I," I think I know
right up to the edge of my awareness;
there's a dangling thread
that reaches in between the dark,
still causing me to wonder at the little boy
who stood there in his coveralls
content to watch the world,
and not inclined to undertake a trip
back to the womb for insight.

That is my beginning?
An egg and an intrepid tad
out on the town? No blinding light,
no "ta da" from the band?
...and my hotel without a single star?
No, thanks.

There must be more
than just a one-celled shiver with a friend
to make an end to nothingness.
Just who pronounces me an "I"
a nano moment following the void?
...for I did not.

Aha, break out your best champagne,
for if there is no death of consciousness
there is no birth; around the sifted solid
where we just presume to play, the kindly guides
prepare our downy beds again for astral flight
as they have done each night, a scant eternity
without the slightest, "Thank you,
I shall have another glass." Perhaps

it's best that we not speculate
on origins of knowing who we are, and why.
Perhaps, indeed, discovery of what it is to be
is cosmic study quite enough
for this our tiny corner of infinity.
~

Beauty and the Beast

Beauty and the Beast

There swims in each of us, a catalyst for dreams,
an urgency that calls from shores that never were,
a twinge of terror, lining distant paradise,
uniquely all one's own.

No one knows where all this comes from.
Oh, perhaps it is innate desire
to temper every fortune
with a modicum of pain, a hint
that if we know that all is not quite well,
we simply shrug it off
and chase the angst away.

First sight became
a theatre of absolute deliciousness,
a goddess with the right excess
of pulchritude to send
my conscious spirit spinning off
on errands of delight, my body
journeying a fantasy of flight with her,
for no one else created in a smile
such sinister conspiracy of mirth.

It was not she who cowered
at the brutish mien
so tactfully unroared,
but I, the ingenue, who saw
the beast had not consumed her; no,
he lurked there in her carnal confidence,
his quivering claws impatient
for contumely, catastasis
and my condign consent.
~

Of Loss and Victory, of Poverty and Wealth

Of Loss and Victory, of Poverty and Wealth

It is a curious tree of paths
we take to justify the place we are,
the bold and sacrificial leap to insecurity--
one step to left or right to override
our common quest for righteousness,
for unknown breathless wonder far ahead.

Higher on the climb, the codicils
to all the monuments of history,
bravura songs of loyalty that we were taught
amid the hands on hearts,
the festive manifests we sang
before the home team
flashed upon the scene.

Looking down, we never knew
that we were lost before the game began...
that we were fed upon decay,
the victors' bounty measured in its septic glory
only at the birth of consciousness...too late,
too late to claim the prize
beyond a price called love.

At the height, the branches will dissemble,
tremble at the tentative alighting
of the dove. They are tender infants,
prone to alarm beneath the laurels of success.
And it is not for us to know
their sheer audacity to grow
beyond the riches of the earth
into the skies of peace.
~

Of Prophet Stuff

Of Prophet Stuff

They made the wilderness their womb,
the lairs of beasts their motherland,
and in their eyes, the fire their god
had kindled from a spark of spirit flint
embedded in their souls...faced the terror
of an irony millenia would never understand.

What was it, spurred their zealous hearts
to speak the voice of the Invisible Divine?
What stony pre-Damascus pathway
led their bloody feet out of the mire
of history and to the portals of the king?

It seems to be the beasts
we may not send away.
These hairy men knew them too well,
and lay beside them,
heard their pounding blood,
their breath,
their agonies of birth;
they knew the bond of consciousness' embrace,
the seeds of love emerging from a common weal
and spreading as a tree unites the earth and sky.

They felt the flow of passion
that could only grow within a silent intellect,
a peace,
and a creative sigh.

And then they preached and stormed complacency.
To every wasteland they were bound
in stubborn zeal until the chariots came down
to bear them to our dreams,
a corridor of voices streams them on to us,
scarce listening, scarce reaching back.

For now the voice is ours, the messengers
within our flesh, still ready to proclaim
their thunder birthed out in the wilderness,
a feral peace, still burning in our hearts
a strange, compelling legacy of love.
~