Synchro's Poetic Thoughts

Hors de Combat

2009-05-13T14:48:00.002-06:00

Hors de Combat

This is where the river forms...
from out of that which seeks
a new defining..that which dares to look
across the battlements thrown up
throughout the night.

Streams are like that.
They flow most readily
along the lines
of least resistance.

Like love.
~

'

A Song for Abraham

2009-04-23T20:17:00.004-06:00

A Song for Abraham

My feet leave blood upon this mountain path.
They seek the stones that tear at them--
that tear away my thoughts of Isaac,
far ahead of me,
effusive in his lust for the unknown;
these stones that speak to me alone
of an ineffable command.
Of sacrifice,
of love I do not understand--
are they already stained with irony?
My son! Come back! The light is fast away.

Here are the stones as we might cause
to be the table of the Holy One...
see how they fit together!
Now you and I will labor in the night;
it is more suited to our task...and then
the labor is of God, please Lord, not mine!
Not mine, the lamb:
not mine, the shadow of the day.

But as it must, darkness capitulates:
the leering altar stands complete;
the last reluctant wood in place--
the morning sun upon that empty bier,
a tremulous Abraham,
an anxious son,
a knife still restless in its sheath.
No ram in sight

Whose act was it that arrested.
that bare arm's descent that morn...
Satan's caprice? Or do you plead
the changeless word of God?
~

The Shadow of a Stroke

2009-04-13T12:10:00.003-06:00

The shadow of a stroke
For all the damages
there was no pain
but for the thought,
I am the person that I was,
and knowing that I'm not...
A Wanna Be, dog-paddling
on the surface of my intellect
and decked in silence,
just to play it safe.

It is a confraternity I viewed
from just a step above,
or so I thought. But now
I need not think at all. I'm told
that I can get it back.
Perhaps.
But suddenly I'm old.
There seems to be
a niche for me upon a field
of reminiscences but please,
not yet;
grant me a plow,
a whirlwind or two
and just a touch of irony
to force a reach just past demise
into the endless now.
~

Where Angels Tred

2009-04-07T17:41:00.004-06:00

Where Angels Tred

The altar showed anomaly,
an orb of light,
a foil for small realities
that I could easily forget
for that twilight cast,
to things I touch or dream--
that spirit song sequestered
where I cannot go.

Thoughts of relevance
...of insight
...of perceptions being reconciled
with the mundane
then smiling at myself:
all those are imprints on the mind
vibrating in the here and now
and possibly across the isthmus
in the place where peace prevails.

Orbs are discreet and diffident,
and when you chase them down,
they're gone. No peace remains
this side of consciousness,
yet on the journey of the open heart
an awe ineffable, a resolution that a dream
would trust and understand.

Or a dream within a dream?
Reality is ill defined. Yours, mine...
until the breath is gone
and consciousness fights on
to redefine the light.
And you and I will take awareness
to the end of day--and bless it,
certain that the night descends
to claim its own dark benefice
and decorous ecstacy.
~

Richard's Outrage

2009-03-18T21:12:00.003-06:00

Richard's Outrage

Reading my good friend's poetry
caused him somehow, to burst through it
and he was alive, fully alive,
as if he never really left.
Perhaps he didn't.
He was always larger than life,
always giving away himself.
And now he's at it again,
chipping away at an image
and in the process taking a shot
at his favorite mystery
called resurrection.
~

Parable for Obscurity

2009-02-25T15:18:00.003-06:00

Parable for Obscurity

Mere purity may not abide the breathless dawn
that even in its birth proclaims not innocence
but the virginity of time.

Yet with the rising wind, a shudder, all despoiled,
as in its hope for humankind is hopelessness for God.
The trees take up their compromise, frail fortitude
to greet with silent song a scene
already temporal. Man alone may speak,
and man alone makes prophecy of death.

It is the dawning unadorned of eloquence
that is the source of awe.
To speak of love or sacrifice,
of beauty hidden by a mountain mist
is to profane it in a house of age
.
For the marks of what is real
are not defined by birth and death
or by the footprints of a God
left by a careless tide.
No, there is more than beats upon our consciousness,
surpassing art, and making sport of good.

To shun the call that echoes out of reverie,
or not to know the nameless cavity
the heart reserves for stillness, is to set aside
a truth we did not carry in.

An afternoon's reflection on a hillside meadow
may leave empty hands and intellect,
but for the human spirit still spread forth
unseen star trails on the journey home.
~

Half a Ghost

2009-01-21T22:58:00.004-06:00

Narcissus dwells
beside the stream,
content to gaze, and not to be.
In all those wonder years--
consumed in self-indulgence,he
limped through snatches of reality,
joined hands with infant consciousness,
then slipped away into himself.

He's back,
left-brained and prideful,
his image unenhanced and lost
beneath the roily surface of desire.
His seeking is the storm,
the passion clarity denied. So too,
the space for any denizen of paradise
to read the beauty lurking there,
for ego never visited the fathom sanctuary
of compassion and of peace.

His fingers touch the water,
but the universe is far away;
there is no god at all
or even self to smile at him--
no contemplation of a purity he could not know.
Alone, he could not weep.
~

Ecclesiastes Now

2008-10-13T17:01:00.003-06:00

Ecclesiastes Now

And with the wind, a lost fixation
almost drawn unto my breast
will dress upon its memory
a self-inflicted pain to cling to--
a shred of life preserved in crystal
as unknown potential, seen
with that unseeing eye
embracing grief as nourishment
and resolute as death.

And with the wind, defining too
will cling to sadness, letting go
of source to cherish an emotion
needed, vague as Renoir's retina
to score humanity. A world set right
is wrong; pursuit of vanity the light
that shines upon another face of God.
~

Stability

2008-10-04T21:24:00.001-06:00

Stability

The rippling sun completed its catastasis
upon the earth and spread the sky with denouement,
a pastel commentary on the vesper light to follow
as it sings of rest,
of hope,
of an expectant peace intruding
on a still relentless mind.

It is of such we celebrate
the paradox of life and death,
the orgiastic feast ensuing
as the meek presume
in their own arrogance to claim
supremacy, the centaur's beating hooves
caught stumbling
at the onslaught of the night.

It is a peace eviscerated by romance;
the centaur knows--is helpless
as the vespers close,
when mind and hoof are quartered
in a stall together, shaped to a reflection
of their vanity, their alien heritage
in combat as they dream,
their peace an insane hovering
until the lust of day.
~

Conflict Resolution

2008-09-24T14:26:00.002-06:00

Conflict Resolution

The world's compatriots remind me
I may not permit myself too much
of that resource called awe; it relegates them
to the mists that morning just proposes,
never dignifies, though they are of my blood,
my passion, and indeed the clay
between my hands.

Persistent is the vision of the one
who plants her kiss upon the ether of the stars
and will not shrink from all the glory
of the hedonist below.

There is a death involved,
the passing of duality; its requiem
a song of strange redemption I embrace.
Interred, the warring of the apocalypse,
the sprinkling of the earth, the stone,
the liberated sword.

The dew is not of tears
but of the gift of the departing night
that casts refreshment as annointing
to the silence lingering,
It celebrates the birth of truth,
a sacrament to seal the certainty
that all is one.
~

A Perfect Love

2008-09-22T13:56:00.002-06:00

That which each of us is, and cannot let go, is our common "I Am"....our common God that binds us as one...that we must share always, conscious or unconscious, as it comes home when we are open to it. It is personal. It is essence. Let it in. Here is all the God we want or need. This is the core of all that we may know, the kernel of awareness, the spark of substance disappearing in an ocean of the void.

A Pefect Love

He looked at her and said,
"I take you as my own, my breath, my blood,
the one that is the incense purifying
all the vessels of desire, the stream
that surges life through channels
dry with birth."

He knew the silence as his God.
He knew the presence of I am within him,
fair impossible beyond--
knew that there was nothing more
than emptiness creating,
nothing to surpass its beauty--
nothing more than now.
~

Now and Evermore

2008-09-18T15:45:00.002-06:00

Now and evermore

The final flight is past.
With closing eye the cycle is complete
and heavy on the fair receiving ground
is reconciling, confirmation
of the fall--a quivering wing
to bless us all, to save us
from insouciance, naivete,
unfounded hope
.
Within the weak, the strong,
awareness hovering, -for there
among the dying are the winds of change,
the moment they've been waiting for,
rushing in to lead the dance,
to take that moment, singular,
conjunction of beginning and of end
that slips away from time,
enshrined somewhere corruption may not know.

Yet as our fingers loose their grasp,
there is one truth remaining;
one aphorism still is left behind...
there is no peace upon the earth.
~

Reality Buffet

2008-09-08T11:02:00.002-06:00

Reality Buffet

Prepared illusion is the offering;
you are invited to remain, sustain
your pre-ordained existence as you wish.
The cost is just your freedom--
non-negotiable, I fear, but then
our common heritage is that
which sometimes we call God--
something cosmic bouncing
in the foetal twilight of our brains.

It may be envy of an innocence
that some will hold
fast to their breasts, never tasting
the largesse before us,
never wise as we, approaching
spirit delectation sensibly
with appetence forever unresolved.

Perhaps the church is right;
creation acts ex nihilo,
for even chimera presents
its shining mental child
amidst the atoms of the mind
irresolute to celebrate its own.

As for the mind, it too
shrinks from the questions
of its birth. There are no answers
and the feast serves questions of its own--
those as well, illusory. As such
I may be pardoned for my lack of faith in God.
My words are product of an emptiness
conterminous with me.
The good news is
I have some timelessness
to deal with that.
~

Which Was, and Is, and Is to Come

2008-09-04T12:24:00.002-06:00

Which Was, and Is, and Is to Come

Timelessness is vague, I'm told
until I press for that specific moment
to express what truth is all about,
to shout back to the rooftops
that their god is centuries too late,
too willing to discriminate, too wise
for the unborn to catch him
in their consciousness without
a crumbling passport scribbled
on their knees.

I call upon those rooftop prophets
to forswear their hubris for a moment;
wear their sackcloth loosely,
binding neither souls nor progeny
for a millenium or two, until
the light is better, all the voices stop,
and out of nothingness emerges
the divine illusion that is ours.

It is the only source--out there
along the fence-rows where
the howling wolves patrol,
the sky is ever blanked by snow
and every sigh sent out is unreturned.

There is the refuge;
there the realm of God,
where senses fall--where stillness
is the cornucopia, and where
I Am is understood. The voice
grows fainter still, until
it may be heard alone
and wordless
and totality is known.
~

What kind of Paradise

2008-09-02T11:04:00.002-06:00

Death is increasingly my friend
as breath subsides; it hides no pretense
of regret or fear, but lets me own it
as a coverlet that I will know
as now is lover of eternity.

It is most gracious. Candles
all around me silently snuff out
and share their peace
in trails of rising smoke
that teach me of their transience,
speak as voice may not
of faithless time--of a reward
confined to castles in the clouds
or barefoot, unwashed gods
with spirit swords.

This body graces me with death enough
to yield eternal joy:
if consciously, no promise need be made,
if not, a dreamless nap devoid
of tangled bedclothes,
thunderstorms outside,
or mattress out of warranty;
insidious alarms will not exist,
nor yet the "I" to stand apart
and wonder,
wonder why.
~

Reductio

2008-08-25T19:09:00.004-06:00

Reductio

Beakers ready, gentlemen,
titration calibrated to the critical degree;

unveil the poetry distilled

until reagents strike at all the barriers

that we erect in love, in agony,

in little niches, shadowy within the walls

along the course to home.

The night is warm and lovely,

radiance too harsh for summer's mists;

encomium may palliate the grave

yet leave it heaving with the frosts of truth.

May I not listen to the night?

May I not revel in its sweetness?

There is the lover with a heart congealed;

I would not see the distillate.

I could not care, for I am moved

not by nuance but by the lumbering

advance, the shameless ploy

of glorious beasts too wise

to manifest themselves within

that paradise of art I face,

that soft chagrin emerging, ghostlike,

from around my pen.

A pause upon an evening walk

2008-06-03T18:01:00.005-06:00

A pause upon on an evening walk

My thoughts are of survival.
The things that were and now forgotten,
seem to claim a patience that the earth imparts—
soft decay to spite the years spent underfoot
and celebrating change with silence,
waiting for the chance to leap
into the memory and chide it for its crass neglect.

What riches lie within the old man's wrinkled skin,
his clouded eye, the phrases almost said
and soon contained
beneath the coffin's lid forever—
their heritage concealed
in that successive line of dying age to come...

and there is earth down there
to hold it all; fecundity awaits the rain
of sorrow when the years come by,
get in the way, and then are brushed aside.

Here is where I wish to die.
This restless earth contains my peace,
my lofted spirit bourne upon the spring
that wells up from a depth
I never knew in life, a heritage
remembered from some gene within me,
or a misbegotten meme.

Such thoughts, contentious as they seem,
become my friends. They let me wander
through the cemetery, listen to the dead
and smile with them. They know me,
feel my passions, sing my songs of hope.
They congregate, there on my walk
to tell me that they understand. They speak
around me, through me, in my passion;
as their stones decay, they lift my moment
to confirm the stream of love I sense
as I walk where they last lay down,
my family in consciousness, my holy blood,
my consecrated rest.
~

The Villain's Song

2008-05-28T13:57:00.002-06:00

The Villain's Song

Now there is some sort of truth in flashes,
a challenge to endure,
to let the change within me speak,
the words not mine alone,
but of that mystery that feeds me
from the spring of life,
the axiom of who I am.
However I may fight the god within me—
tear out his heart lodged stubbornly
within my chest, once more.

And yet the end is mine;
the means upon my hands,
the surging life my talisman.
It is the sweetness cloying,
the simpering surrender underneath my feet,
the colloquy of rage that fires my lust
of conquest now before the burning dies.
The skies are tempered now
with some divine forgetfulness enabling
a kingdom's power, a trust left far behind.

That glimmering across a far horizon fades
and truth is relative; the whispers
of an old, worn-out eternity
are now discarded as a dream
of old millenia, now let it go.
There is a triumph waiting over there,
clear, but light upon my mind
like blood beneath the snow.
~

Letting go

2008-05-08T14:56:00.001-06:00

Letting go

It is as if one had an instrument
to see the self...a view not seen before,
with contours, depths and insights—
source beyond imagining.

That which will come
is of its own, not mine,
maintains its own integrity
and I am there to watch
and let that inner part of me
(that rules the universe)
decide my course—
to walk along, or go another way.

Breath yields
to breathless awe, aware
as if a life had changed its skin;
there is another heart, another peace
to penetrate and far away another spring
becomes a fountainhead for love.
A soul strikes out upon a virgin path;
a song begins.
~

Listening to the Silence

2008-05-07T12:50:00.002-06:00

Listening to the Silence
(a tribute to the thought of Eckhart Tolle)

Unsought and arrow-like,
an instant happiness speeds in upon the virgin mind
when all desire is valueless;
the choice of misery an incandescent now,
burning out without a warning, gasping
as an infant left to wonderwhere the love is...

There is a way,
for there is silence everywhere to hear—
beneath the rocks, beneath technology,
beneath the roaring vanity of lust,
and when the ear will leave a space for consciousness,
there is an unexpected joy, impossibly defined,
a single-mindedness that understands the now.

You are already on the path;
there is no need for time.
You will not find it anywhere,
but there within you is a strange one
that you thought you knew.
Sit down, and look him over.
You have no need for clever thoughts,
for he is God...
and he is You.
~

Intimations of Hell

2008-05-07T12:43:00.002-06:00

Intimations of Hell

From out of that preserve one cannot see,
from every soft dimension of the new
that forms itself where ether trembles, parts
and yields, where intellect threw up its hands
and words were not enough...it came.

One hundred thousand glances down, and then
belief suspends and breaks away;
it is as if there is no path back home,
the self departed,
sent a stranger in,
the body is an empty drum
regarded warily.
Identity awaits an infant now
alas, too late arriving
and the niche anticipates,
anticipates...
~

I think

2008-05-01T22:12:00.001-06:00

I think

and righteous indignation flares...
the essence of defining is prestige.
So may I learn to love.
So may I cease to predicate
my wisdom on cliche,
my fatherland, my god.

So may my pride swell valiantly
when I may see
a beauty only, not a fault
in every soul who breathes upon the earth.
May I be blind,
may I be weak
and drop the gavel from my hand
as everyman walks by...
for there is grace in front of me
and all the lack of it is mine.

My love must flow from deep inside
my heart and not my mind,
and if I make of it, a product
of my intellect I want to feel
the heat of shame upon my cheek,
the rising scourge of judgement
I alone may throw
upon my sorry flesh; I need accept
no less than fire upon my head.

Were I the less humane
and lack a god to thunder at me,
I should be a bootless cinder
wandering within the cold embrace
of some divine contemptuous space.

In point of fact,
I am.
~

Awakening

2008-04-28T22:17:00.002-06:00

Awakening

The inner I looks out, disinterested.
It is the same, the spirit realm in color—
a reality that I may know, no more
than those sweet mists of silence I adore...
keeping them intangible and rare,
yet absolutely there with each successive breath.

I am illusion, yes, incapable
of charting that which even brain
may not define. Yet I may be aware,
may listen, watch and share,
then store it all somewhere
that I may find within a mind
that somehow manages
to flout the blood, the ganglia,
the whirling cells
within this transient body—
fly awayto some transcendent realm
and play among the stars...and for how long?
The spiritwill not say
.
And here am I,
a hopeless little galaxy
with unknown tricks awaiting me
somewhere inside myself,
the peril and salvation my own laughter
at my infant consciousness,
my chunk of the divine
that whirls with all the rest
quite lost though quite deliciously
bemused.

Awake? Enlightened? I?
Join hands with me
in search of just ourselves. I sense
that it's the only choice that we can make
with all that mystery.
~

In the Name of God

2008-04-25T20:17:00.002-06:00

In the Name of God

A fire was burning at the city's edge.
It seeped into the underground
and fed the twisted strandsof passion,
forthright in its zeal at first
and then like starving roots content
to feed upon the warmth of pabulum,
of mindless glory in patria,
even as the fatherland grew strong,
consumed all insight held secure.

A leader came that night
(for day was too intense, too bright
to bless the sleep of practiced dream)
and priestlike, signed upon their heads
the cross of victory and conquest—
as the sheep he led heard him proclaim
that war will not forsake the nations of the earth
but gather them together in its flaming arms,
and in the name of God.
~

En Garde

2008-04-23T17:39:00.003-06:00

En Garde
There in the ghetto,rising with the pain,
it is as if the one deprived of consciousness—
targeted by ignorance, ego at the helm,
was born to anger—there, where raw emotion rules,
there the roots are suddenly exposed,
the unctuous light prevails, sardonic
in contempt of an intruding day.

The night is queen,
her reign upon the sodden street perpetual;
the housetops' failure to release it, slumbers,
drones through the torpid hours tenacious
as the sponge-like air of summer.

There are no choices here, no one
to single out the breath as savior,
to tender just the moment as a space
to set apart...no one, save the self.

Below persona,
buried as a blanket earth keeps faith,
the fever rests and bores into the soul.
The Trojans march and tears are burning.
It is night.
It is ever night.
~

The Mystery of Love

2008-04-21T08:29:00.002-06:00

The Mystery of Love

Within the space of nothingness
there lies totality...dimensions
that the sailing ships will never find,
the lurking presence of the self
within the guise of consciousness
and yet unseen, unknown,
among the whirling wisps of every "I"
that stopped to trace its alpha
and in pretense face omega's fire.

There is no mystery in looking back
or building for the holocaust; the distant rumbling
celebrates the watch, the now in formless splendor
that the longing heart has waited for,
that still-creating tug upon complacency,
as if to draft a paradise forever new,
a mystical embrace to place imagining
too far beneath the stars. There is
a light bedazzling our fondest hopes,
devotion past desire that enters
like the dawn, makes saints to blush
at burning, the selfless rush to sacrifice
mundane.

It is enough to know, and not to understand
the stuff of all that is within creation's hands.
It is enough to burn in the refiner's fire,
consumed or no by a reality
that holds within its womb, itself,
its passion for the light, a birth of God
upon its bed, and ready with a bursting breast
to nurture with unprecedented awe,
the progeny of home.
~

To Gramps

2008-04-09T22:06:00.002-06:00

To Gramps

An is, is there forever
where there is no fear, and like a fountain
joy is always bubbling up...from underneath.
The more is always still to come,
not summoned but released from unknown hands;
the light suggested only, stretched across the land,
cast in its power of gray, pervades
its heritage unto the day
...unto the day

and from the lost upon the lea
the cry of home regained,
the plow cut deeply in the ground again,
the patient men who found their glory
in the ones who rode along,
who loved and buried them—
these, enamored of the earth,
would speak forever, may
for those few listeners
who will not turn away.

It is a sacrament, this presence
half-remembered on a cloudy day
when now comes back with fresh,
refreshing grief, a smile returned again.
The light, the soft gray light
that filters through the grove
is harbinger of a reality
that makes of time, illusion,
scattering its rays across the field
of old regret, and leaving
only love behind.
~

Halfway to a Dream

2008-04-07T18:24:00.000-06:00

Halfway to a dream

It lurks there, fitfully
around the corner of my mind
and will not show its face
like an April thunderfront, and
scarce aware that winter slipped away
a week ago behind a cloud of consciousness,
reluctantly occludes the air with nebulosity,
a shy Olympus in denial.

It isn't fair. Unknown, invisible,
it tests my patience, challenges
my paradise and leaves my equanimity
in shreds; reserves are meaningless—
my plaint as well.

It moves within my chest, a void
creating sleep, denying it
as some sardonic phantom torture
just outside the room...the stillness
its ally, not mine...the calm
a faithless sanctuary, death delayed
as if my very breath were there
to test a faith that I no longer own.

What kind of ghost reality
will mock its own existence...
claim its victim with an objectivity
in doubt...a phantom court
without a charge to read,
a plaintiff unidentified?

Indeed, what kind of God
could graciously endow
his Adam in a garden home
so redolent of unseen sin
diffused before his unborn eyes?

I do not know. For though millenia
have passed, I'm only of hominidae,
my blueprint is not finished and
my paradisal masterwork
amorphous , still.
~

Journey Apart

2008-04-04T21:54:00.003-06:00

Journey Apart

The travelers had disappeared,
the trail obscured by choice,
the pale romance
of greed, of lust, and of the dancing flame
upon the hearth that always must distract.

If somewhere there were hidden tears,
there were the years to crowd into the way.
And in that cruel finality that settled in
between the glances when he saw her that last time,
wonderment
that it was right.

A body melts beneath the fire—
not so, desire.
~

As charged

2008-04-02T19:53:00.003-06:00

As charged

For I am free.
Two stood upon a hill to watch the stars.
Will he who sees a lesser light create
a rhapsody? Indeed, will compromise
to glory sing of supernality?

The weapon of the liberator is his sword,
dividing thought. The one who questions
may not be the swallower of status quo;
the watcher on the hill will not become
the wallower in pain.Each one receives the gift
to stand aside, to celebrate his liberty
and not apologize. To join the flow of life, not death
and sing there in his heart
of flowering, and not decay,
to flout the politic with MLK
and see in compromise a death
to tolerate, and then to mourn.

I am free
to sing a thousand songs of love kept close
and bursting to adorn my tribute
to the marchers off to war. I would spread
the barrier of peace before them—
would display my tears without regret

and I would plead
my weakness, my hypocrisy,
my mindless hope.
For I am free.
~

Back in the Old Hometown

2008-03-31T20:59:00.002-06:00

Back in the old hometown

You never think what is to come.
The little kid you smiled at
is a well-known author now, a thousand miles away.
The trash-filled lot you didn't want to see
is now a church—the nicest one around.
The old stockyards are gone.
Your young best friend is dead.

You think: that was the life I built,
my very own behind my third-grade eyes.
And Is the village park still there?
You'd settle for a journey back
across those 70 years—with jackknife probe,
dig up a marble, still intact,
and now three inches down. You lost it once;
it was a shooter (big one) and
you couldn't understand just how it got away.
Poorer when you went to bed that night—
You'd traded off six glassies for it...
Yes. The blue and white.
It's got to be the one.

You knew the grown-ups wouldn't care—
no miracles for them,
just irony; a kid's old rusty knife
could never be the tool
to resurrect their life.

The little park may still survive
upon a ghostly plain, you thought.
And not the marble, but a part of you
have lain there underneath the years
not quite forgotten,
yet with some bewilderment
to see the sun again
~

The Imponderable

2008-03-29T21:45:00.002-06:00

The Imponderable

The thinker
stares into the space inside himself
with some ignoble wonder,
"Who am I...and why?

"To found some mindless form of life
and blame it on my sculptor...
ah I see the timid wraith
who runs away from my presumption;
no they say it is awareness
that I would not face head on.
I simply stare at him, and he will flee,
Now could it be it is not life I see
but farther back into the swamp
with some finality to focus on its germ
that writhes and agonizes to prevail.

"I am a stranger in this shell,
a lark without a song,
an infant arrow with a consciousness unborn;
I am an instrument that tripped,
became a God upon a grain of sand,
that tumbled in a bowl
of some primordial soup
unable to decay.

"I do not like it very well...
that I alone must roar out to the edges
of my mushy little universe, just what is fair
and what is merely salty air
to birth in, breathe, and die.

"Or just...perhaps...there is another path
that leads to the discovery of me
back down the line, for at the basic level
I do not know myself; the past I had
did not rub off—it moved me just this far—
the night is very dark as if to smother me.

"Or at the very least,
my curiosity."
~

His Bequest

2008-03-26T23:07:00.003-06:00

His Bequest

It's back...
unsought...
that cold, wet lump within the mind,
that Frost had known so well.
It bids me close my eyes
look at my hands--
then open them, repelled;
they do not sculpt as his,
nor dare to hold the clay.
His day enlightened yet
by suns still burning down
upon the coverlet of sod
that will not seal the eloquence
of his poetic grace.

It is I
who ill affords the privilege
of suffering--the light beneath my stone,
the brightness of a legend in my youth,
the triumph of the one who found in loss
poetic deity, who flashed
the image of his mind to me
behind the rostrum
on that day with JFK.

It is the gnarled earth he leaves
upon our pedestal,
to grope and turn,
and turn away, remembering
the wall, the woods, the whiteness
of the birches—the man who loved the clay,
installed it in our consciousness
as one who used remembering
to guide his hands, his pen, and ours,
and then to close our eyes
and see.
~

2008-03-26T18:29:00.002-06:00

Theatre of the Universe

"Perhaps," he said.
"It was like this..."
--void--
--a beam of light--
--a speck of consciousness--
--implosion--
--dark--

"Or rather, we perceive..."
--eternal God--
--explosion--
--a creeping on the earth--
--decay--
--paradise--

He shuddered, sputtered, "No..."
--I choose outrage--
--as my own creed--
--to gaze within--
--this floating cluster--
--of my body-- -
--borrowed for an instant-
--just to see--

"...that I am spirit here
within a micro, numberless eternity."
~

Reading the Obits

2008-03-24T12:49:00.002-06:00

Reading the Obits

Hmmm.
I remember him.
Strange fellow.
Loner.
Used to see him on street corners.
Always wondered what he was thinking.

Ah, well.
He was a fixture here.
He'll be missed, although I hardly knew him.
One thing I can't get over—
I always thought he looked like me.
~

The Citizen of Heaven

2008-03-22T23:17:00.003-06:00

The Citizen of Heaven

Patria...sacred to the one who walks upon it.
Hallowed...from the sacrifice that passed it on.
Home...from infant life that still reposes in the body.
There, it will entreat with that fair eloquence
the body politic employs--all torn from old nobility
that blood bears in its stream,
enriched from fragments that the heart
has stored away--the jagged memories,
the tears of those we loved,
the bells that sang from towers
still remembered as the years sink down.

It resurrects the dead, this fatherland
that cries for loyalty; its cunning tries the patient,
trips up the ingenue
who sees what is supposed to be and not what is.
It fosters bravery and blindness,
soars upon the winds of rhetoric,
and casts its stones with khaki kindness
at a world that interferes.

God bless the citizen
who follows on the highway where the marchers
said goodbye, took up their arms,
and faded in the far-off sky.
God bless his vision of returning...
bless the faith he musters for the heroes nigh
at that far turn ahead,
still washed in that pale emptiness
disclosed across the evening sun.

He is the watcher, still,
who hears the bells,
and hums along expectantly

...the blessed one.
~

Distilled Purity

2008-03-18T18:40:00.001-06:00

Distilled Purity

One has to like the price,
which never fluctuates.
It floats,
like some suspended orb
imparted from another heaven, perhaps...
itself a consciousness unknown
and undefiled.
It is the good the ages seek,
still there before our eyes.

Were there a formula,
a prize to touch or taste,
it would not occupy the metaphor
of grace nor scorn its worshipers.
There's time to let the rain sweep down
the valley, time to revel
in the harvest when the fullness comes.
It's time to yield a little, come alive
to listen while the piper plays;
the air is sweet,
the song is of the eminence of day.

If there is any paradise
let us make room for it
within our precious now
though set upon with every fond device
of intellect to struggle to our feet;
the highest good not ours alone,
persists in that strange crystalline precipitate
when all is done—old Paul knew what it was
and called it love.
~

Which Way

2008-03-17T21:44:00.001-06:00

Which Way

It is beyond closed eyes I see
that alien precipitant
of trembling in my heart,
a partner of my soul I never knew,
whose constancy is certain
as that looming space that throbs
before my consciousness, demanding
that the song be heard, impossible
the song, the song inviolate
and there upon a waiting breath.

Words make court
around the beauty I may not contain.
The goal is given not defined,
intoned, and thrown upon the board.
I take
I break
I share the body and the blood,
and there within the courtyard
is the prize millenia have dreamed to touch.

There...
within our outstretched hands
this very moment and
We shall not pass it by.

This is one you will find difficult. I do, too, but I had to write it. It is multi-layered and mystical but at the same time celebrates inevitability, a purpose to the universe not yet understood...but, nevertheless inevitability that is just beginning to dawn on me after so much reading of late. Make of the poem what you will, or nothing at all if you choose, but I hope you will take something from it. Yes, it has faults, and I think needs further polishing. But it is a fixation I am in love with.

Off Starboard

2008-03-12T15:45:00.001-06:00

Off Starboard

Horizon is illusory.
White sails appear across the morning watch,
are lost at noon,
and sighted once again at vespers
when the antiphon is sung.

Beneath them at the rail
another sailor over there
may share the vision,
half of fantasy that I exist
and half in brotherhood of faith
in mythic splendor of mirage.

and there am I
when sails and sky
reflect the blooded sun
as I linger on the deck, yet blest,
my restive fingers touch
the talisman around my neck
while he in supplication to a headless God
beneath the little guillotine
suspended on his chest,
would be content to marvel
that a savior such as mine
could stretch his body on a yoke of wood
and die like that.
~

Perigee

2008-03-11T17:19:00.001-06:00

Perigee

Time floods my consciousness
with pretense of reality that like a mist
is faithless, vanishing,
exchanging slavery with me.
That which I know, I am;
that which I see
is just an object over there,
apart from unity.

Yet all is one,
the one I cannot fathom--
one I surely cannot know.
As empty as it thus appears
one question looms essentially:
will it ever be
that I am not?
~

The Secret of the Void

2008-03-10T18:17:00.000-06:00

The Secret of the Void

What is it? One may venture only
that it is the fullness of non-entity,
to call and wait for my response—
gravamen hovering, always there
and not to be content;

yet patient in its timelessness alone,
suspends infinity above my head
to render words a useless toy,
and bring about in me
a tumult that I could not do without.

For in that vortex of the undefined
is all the vast unknown, undreamed,
unfathomed truth transcending peace,
dissolving thrones, ceding eminence
to just one evening that a helpless God
let slip away.

Sic transit gloria.
~

Lacuna

2008-03-04T20:20:00.000-06:00

Lacuna

It is another calibration of my journey,
pre-ordained but shrouded
in the belly I perceived in childhood,
distant signals, stuttering,
of flight a soul could make
beyond the apogee of earth
when home was much too lush,
the girl who spoke with velvet lips
too pretty to ignore,
the state of appetite too unrefined,
the lust within asserting its own arrogance
before the face of God.

And now in age, it smiles
in irony...it whispers,
"Do you know me?
Do you see?"

I do. And with a heart
half full, I seek
and smile at my own frailty...
and stumble
as the storehouse of the earth
still whirls beneath my feet,
albeit not so steadily.

Decay
and loss
and luscious fruit
are at my side,
and curiosity
about that former nemesis called death
may now contend together
in a strange equality I sense
but may not understand.

I have the watch.
It's midnight, and I shall not sleep.
~

Condensed Eternity

2008-03-03T18:51:00.002-06:00

Condensed Eternity

The ripples
on the lake preserve
a history that is not yet
until the surface calms—
oh please, I see them still.
Look there, they have not broken
off upon the shore; we may not speak
of death nor in this breath
is license to forget.
~

Of Being

2008-03-01T18:56:00.000-06:00

Of Being

A world must have its moment even as
the river and the lava flow.
The blood, an echo from the seething womb of earth—
the wind, defying origin and death,
are alien to footsteps which must cease
when wisdom speaks.

Then only humankind can hear.
Then it is that listening and stillness
find their wedding bliss...when
awareness of another plain drifts in.
Frisson within the heart arises; there
in that dimension made where time is set aside,
flesh and spirit chant the hours

and this transcendent consciousness
that you and I who walk below the stars
have dubbed humanity, must marvel
as it pushes back its intellect
and learns again
that love is all there is.
~

Illumine our Time

2008-02-28T16:39:00.000-06:00

Illumine our Time

Escape with me.

Go forth from all your glorious hold
upon the hollow earth, that churning
vessel filled with pliant clay you seize
to build a higher day, a paragraph
of history your own, an immortality
that someone else may understand.

Your power exists as well
to throw it all away,
to celebrate the light alone
out there beyond penumbra,
waiting for the grinding hours
to have an end.

You need not put your shoulder down,
or prove your worth, for midnight
wears away, the dancers wake;
the sea is crystalline out there
beyond the shore. There is
a bacchanal of joy that waits
for tired sins to dry their tears
of reticence; hope is for creating—
love is for forgetting sometimes.

These are the years for gathering.
Escape with me.
Move down the road a little farther
...where the light is better.
There is healing in the air,
and just a little time to breathe.
The dance begins again,
the unknown set aside awhile.
For us, the sunlight sings.
~

Postulate

2008-02-25T21:43:00.000-06:00

Postulate

Some time
before the biped thought
of history, he carved out image
of himself, and in the murky dawn
of consciousness, began to look around
to see just how he fit, and how it was
that he had come to be; he wiped the drool
from off his chin and then exclaimed prophetically,
"My God! I am alone, out here. How can it be?"

And thus, his magnum opus, "Genesis"
(his first, obviously) appeared
beneath his stubby fist upon the stone,
a quasi-answer from his mallet
and the thought-begat Divinity,
and all the brethren cried, "Amen."

But they were faithless fellows
and a few millenia beyond,
Big Bang appeared, extruded from
the pangs of yet another womb—
happily dubbed intellect by some,
and leaving others
with their wounded vanities
to wonder what had taken place
before old Father Time
had set the fuse afire.

It could not have been desire;
a lonely God who needed
toys and subjects, will not wash,
and leaves us at the helm
without a helmsman...poor Adam
sputters, cries, and from his fire
before the cave removes a blackened stick
to mark his nascent words upon the wall,
enjoins his deity to silence
while he writes, "In nomine Patri...."
as the spirit and the son look on,
content awhile, to wait.
~

Recreating Gods

2008-02-21T17:11:00.000-06:00

Recreating Gods

Let us sit down together now
to form reality. It isn't hard.
We do it every day
without a conscious push,
and there it is, staring back,
a joyous, often fearsome monster toy
that never goes away.

What kind of wisdom may apply—
furrowed, relic of the wars?
Perfection, then, is not an option;
for there are too many tears.
Aha! To make a point,
that surely is the sense
and sensibility, the magic power
between our palms, and vanity
the joy to fill the cornucopia of time.

No, someone chose instead
the only gift that could emerge
from ghostly hands, that longing look
that history is always dredging up—
the one that tears horizons down
to feast on bread and wine
it never saw before, nor entertained
upon the slate of its fond paradise.
~

At the End of the Day

2008-02-20T22:30:00.000-06:00

At the End of the Day

It is as if there were a pall
upon my little universe, intruding
since I had gathered it so comfortably,
insisting on the sense of it,
extruded as a past gives way
and hardly anything is lost.

But yet not so,
it glowers at me sometimes;
its familiarity contrived in myth,
in lessons that I learned too late
to save my pride—
its smiles misunderstood,
its irony forgotten on the steps outside.

I have become too old
to barter lassitude for zeal, to trace again
that twisted trail of hope and chance;
I moved on down it, trusting
on a crusty, yet farsighted God
to meet me halfway out.
And there he was, always out of reach.

It's misty on the land out there—
not like it was, and what I gather in
is not the harvest; it is much too strange.
Dying will, I think, turn out to be
not all that much of peace or plenitude,
but puzzlement.
Where did they put away my world?
~

Consolation

2008-02-15T23:45:00.001-06:00

Consolation

Look down to gaze upon the hours
moving through the void of unconcern,
forgetfulness on every side
and isolation dear
because it is the only thing
to cling to.

Stop...where birdsong knows another plain,
where peace is blended with the rain
of sorrows entertained, and touched,
and smiled upon because they still sustain
the present in all time—
the childhood kissed,
the love that slipped away,
the youth that bowed
and stretched forth aging arms
to hold the sun.

Then turn with me;
it is not done, and when
the turning is at rest
there is the rainbow
to reflect what it does best,
the final memory of light.
~

Greater Things than These

2008-02-08T20:59:00.000-06:00

Greater Things than These

There was uncommon breath
in that wild wind that swept across the sky...
a surging barely understood, and there
to claim the reason we believe.

Did you see it there, creating? Leaving us
a time before the night comes on
to be ourselves, to shout against the storm
that in the knowing there is power
all the more for being undefined.

How far beyond our fantasy
is such contentment bred
from missing echoes
tearing at the flood of consciousness,
roaring at desire, demanding fire
upon the tinder of a dry and hopeless heart!

Then is the wellspring fresh and nourishing
out of the ground abandoned in despair.
Then is the wondrous moment we may see
emerging from our hands, a genesis undreamed,
the very instant of a prophecy that two millenia
upon the promise of a ragged Hebrew Lord
awaited, trembling, that day.
~

Strange Oracle

2008-01-29T17:43:00.000-06:00

Strange Oracle

A boy who spoke as an aged man
sat on a stump in the woods
to ponder North and its deliciousness.
"If I were youth alone" he said,
"you would not listen, or
if I were age, you would defer
a moment just to be polite, and then
swing wide your soul ship's helm,
your captaincy nirvana bound."

Few undertook the forest voyage;
fewer still saw mountain tops
behind the trees, nor wisdom
in the moment of eternity.
They merely rested there upon the stump,
for any consciousness of unity
will cast out time
and bounds,
and destinations in exchange
for glimpses of the truth.

Then it is to seize exuberance
of youth. the open patience
of the aged visitor.
Then one may detect beyond the mists
a new reality unborn, undying,
always there within,
without a prayer,
bedecked in joy--unseen, untouched,
unqualifiable, the light of light
eternally begotten, God from God
and most would think it
very, very odd.

I hear you, on your isolated stump,
your mountaintop disguised...
you are right, of course.
There is no age entitlement
for wisdom, and
there is no journey,
no arrival, nor decay.
In truth, there is no "no"
at all, to set apart
the paradise of now.

But there's a quantum jumping orbits
quite without permission,
quite without, indeed, a cause.
And yet sometimes
if we should look the other way,
he does not leap at all. It's time
to celebrate the little fellow,
for he opens up our minds,
our Bachs, our Michalangeli,
before we ever even wonder why.
~

The Vanishing God

2008-01-24T21:25:00.001-06:00

The Vanishing God

Go home, old man, turn to your bed
and draw the covers to your eyes;
there is no papa in the skies
to hear your prayers,
were you to dare to frame them.

No spirit hovering?...to flood your mind
with golden streets? No harps
employed by pretty messengers
with sunbeam hair?...no enemies
to tread beneath your feet?

Go home.
Our censers do not swing for you;
our choristers sing out of tune,
our crowns, bereft of stars,
are tawdry bibelot
to weigh you down. Ironically,
your heaven just passed you by
and left your saving Lord to die
alone.

All you have left is the unknown,
a bit of awe, perhaps,
a sense of mystery
and cries to an eternity of silence
unaware that you are even there.

Your peace, your rest
is not in sacrifice or penitence
but listening, never mindful
of reply.

Old fellow, what have you to say?
"My children, how I wish
that you might understand
that I am merely blessed--
my only loss, impossibility
to speak of the ineffable
around my head...confounded
only by its pious adversary,
love."
~

Uncommon prayer

2008-01-21T14:41:00.000-06:00

Uncommon prayer

it is for me to watch...
to stand in where the shadows were,
absorb the light
and fill my heart
with those vignettes of knowing,
skittering before my inner eyes
like diamond dust.

Here is my chance to age
with wisdom not my own
but wander here between the stones,
their relative array, perhaps,
a sage's gift in chiaroscuro
stone, to stone, to stone.

The night is for the cherishing,
the silent requiem,
the first and last 'Shalom'
to fade without regret.

This is where the shadows were...
Shalom to feast upon and to forget
but for the watchers,
emulators of the Holy Ones,
the breathless worshipers at Stonehenge
echoing the chant of God
across ten thousand years

and you may hear the whisper of it
now, within...death is a dream
you saw at Easter Island, and
upon a mountain in Peru.
Watch
along the deathless hours
before the sun appears.
~

Shadow Grace

2008-01-17T19:41:00.001-06:00

Shadow Grace

How is it
that I know
that not to know at all
is gift of the divine?

How is that
no thing at all
is all the riches of infinity?

How is it that
no God, no friend
to walk beside me
leaves me
still in awe,
devoid of insight of my own
but for the absolute in ecstasy to know
that nothingness may not depart
and I am not alone?
~

Mind to Mind

2008-01-14T19:18:00.001-06:00

Mind to mind

The door is closed. Behind it are
the congregation of the saints
and as the silence churns, each listens.
From each tower flows dharmata's peace,
the sum of emptiness, the breath of the divine.

From fantasy as this, the lore of hope—
a flood, bare of design, emerging,
feeding its perfection, bursting
as a flower to share a precious frailty
in its uniting. Now the welkin has its sway;
come rein the horses with me,
for the mystic skies are full of thunder
and the day is ours.

Come quickly. Who will pass?
You know.
You are the keeper of the door.
~

My Own, my Native Land

2008-01-10T22:46:00.001-06:00

My Own, my Native Land

The golden grain stretched out like sheets
upon the Kansas plain, like birthright, innocent
behind the festered sun and unaware
of upstarts in the rolling Minnesota countryside,
defiant to the blistering avalanche of corn.

There were the sidewise glances,
prudent in their reticence, worn pencils
tucked behind their bibs, the markets'
vagaries aswim, Chicago far the east of home.

In Iowa as well,
the warriors of the plough,
the timeless men of bread,
the conquerors of earth and sinew,
beast and baronet,
to thread the cloth of motherland
before our birth.

Thereto in Illinois, my cradle sanctuary
nested from the mountains
and the alien sea; I am the listener
within this deep midwestern ground.

It is not still where I have been;
the voices and the footfalls
make their print in time
and may not be erased.

And though my ashes fly in space
my breath, my bliss, my bower
rests forever in the heartland of the earth.
~

Never in Pursuit

2008-01-08T21:09:00.000-06:00

Never in pursuit

The stumbler thought of happiness
and how it crept upon him
as a spectre, extracting from the mist
without a dare, to resurrect
the Buddha's absolute delight.

There was a precedent, of course—
a self accepted ecstasy, then set aside,
forgotten as a surge of joy
may never know reprise,
will lose itself as motherhood
may bare her breast, each sacrifice
an act of love.

It is today I stumble, giddily, with him.
It is my moment to rejoice,
to celebrate no cause
but all this universe may tender,
sculpting men from mists,
molding its beatitudes
upon the desert sands,
departing with its kiss.

Ourselves are not for burial,
nobility not for the seeking,
terror not an overture to run away.
There is a fertile ground
for tears to dwell in, to enrich
the harvest tree of mirth.
It stands.
It stands, you daughters of the earth.
Cantabimus et psallemus, Alleluya
~

Strangers on the Bus

2008-01-04T23:14:00.000-06:00

Strangers on the Bus

Your world is just about
to branch away from mine
just as the two of them converged
moments ago, and settled in;
out of thousands that I see each day
what makes me look at you
and trace your gaze into infinity?

A commonality is far away.
Did you once share a baby's wooden blocks
and build a tower for his delight,
to shatter down? ...and build again
for yours?
Did you forget?

I look across the chasm
of the consciousness that we might share,
and see it widening.
I see the numbers ranked like soldiers
in your mind, your schedule crowding in,
the memory of scent you know so well
upon the girl you'll meet in the hotel
at five.

Our lives are not commodities
we would exchange, yet still they sear
the moment with their nonchalance,
their downward glance, their inner lights
of mutuality that filter down like dust,
the likes of common friend, of taste,
of faith—all silent hasting to their rest.

There is no greeting, no goodbye,
and no acknowledgement
that either of us make.
But there is thunder
rushing in to our vacuity,
resounding still, the cry of the pursuit
in vain that you and I,
the thoughtless hosts of mystery,
will never entertain.
~

A Pre-Primary Resolve

2008-01-01T23:10:00.000-06:00

A Pre-Primary Resolve

Allow this day
to fill with ivory-tower dreams
and carry to the booth
the paradise of hope...
one candidate
whose passionate desire
would place strong arms
upon the pilot wheel,
enabled by the miracle
of peace.

In Cenotaph

2008-01-01T00:51:00.000-06:00

In Cenotaph

One may not name them, for they died
as faceless as they lived, their monument
unseen, its peak above the clouds,
remembering, as they could not forget,
projecting on their beds at midnight,
acts of faceless love.

Theirs was the courage just to be,
for that is what love is, that hate is not—
can never be, for it does not exist.
Love's incompleteness is our gift,
our stuff of dreaming, and
the mortar of our soaring cenotaph.

Love is the song of faceless ones
and ours, for it is all of us,
the countless sands of Abram's sea
who hear the call to be.
~

At Gravesite

2007-12-31T15:04:00.001-06:00

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

2007-12-29T23:38:00.000-06:00

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

2007-12-28T21:37:00.000-06:00

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

2007-12-25T22:18:00.001-06:00

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

2007-12-25T16:24:00.001-06:00

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

2007-12-25T01:28:00.000-06:00

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

2007-12-20T21:56:00.000-06:00

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

2007-12-19T19:24:00.001-06:00

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

2007-12-17T19:12:00.000-06:00

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

2007-12-17T10:58:00.000-06:00

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

2007-12-13T17:07:00.000-06:00

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

2007-12-10T20:59:00.001-06:00

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"

2007-12-09T20:14:00.001-06:00

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

2007-12-07T23:05:00.000-06:00

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

2007-12-05T19:34:00.000-06:00

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

2007-12-04T21:57:00.001-06:00

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.
~

Tell

2007-11-26T21:48:00.001-06:00

Tell

We speak the language of the dead.
That which we describe
is only echo in the empty hall of history,
a ghost of memory, imperfect,
whispering against the walls
to make its point, and lost, forgotten,
dry before the wind of change.

It is the change itself that lives,
that vibrates, sings the Gloria;
It is the power of creation,
bearing life undreamed and hopes
that never knew to be expressed,
an ecstasy quite reachable
inside the stillness of a time
just set apart.

Somewhere the sounding of a bell proclaims
an angelus the heart alone recites,
a hymn to the divinity of joy poured out
in that pure sacrament of love.
Soft and far away.
I heard its echo somewhere

...ringing.
~

Another Vantage Point

2007-11-26T17:21:00.003-06:00

Another Vantage Point

I visited the shadow world,
preoccupied with shadowed thoughts
that smoke across the page,
and vanish in the light of reason.

That is to say, it is the proper way
to deal with thoughts like these,
the ones with worrisome exteriors,
fuzzing up the mind...to visit, sift them
through the lens of the unknown.

Is it not pure sacrifice of light
that sculpts an evanescent joy?
Send the night upon my heart
and let the shadows dance
their pure, seductive art
that streaming day would cloy.

Something else occurs beyond
the simple blockage of the sun.
Something past humanity
tears at romance, makes possibility
of pathos and of festival; it speaks
of rest and restiveness. and sends
its waning light on pilgrimage to truth.

Shout down the stealth
of gods who blaze across the sky
upon their firery chariots; their myth
is wearisome, their legacies of death
are past design. The time is ripe
for children's games at twilight
when the shadows play, and tease
and disappear into their history,
yet there in immortality
for still another day.
~

The Scent of God

2007-11-24T18:09:00.001-06:00

This poem is dedicated to Beryl Singleton Bissell, whose book of this name
reveals her love affair and sometime contretemps with God. I thank her for
graciously consenting to a poetic adoption of her wonderful book title.
The poet makes no claim of representing her thoughts; these are his own.

The Scent of God

To speak of deity
is automatic blasphemy
inside the gallery of man.
Here pontificates
the power beyond the stars,
who listens in when his
creation cries and sighs
and tactfully reminds him
of the plight of poor benighted
creatures on that speck of dust
that floats upon the milky way...

the grand old man between
the galaxies who loves and hates
according to the chirps
on planet earth...the triune spirit
who with cosmic skill unleashes
lightning on his enemies,
salvation on his friends,
and tomblike mystery to shroud
his everlasting court.

He is thought to come some day,
but in the interim, a sometime friend
who dwells quite far away for most of us.

...until...

our eyes turn far off from the skies,
our cup is emptied of his blood,
and we consent to do the listening.

Thereupon, the tongue is bound,
the breath will bear Jerusalem
unbreathed, the senses yield but for
a single vapor on the air,
the everlasting mystery ineffable,
that is the scent of God.
~

November falls asleep

2007-11-15T22:27:00.000-06:00

November falls asleep

Outside, a world of grey...
no one there to share the bravery
of weakness, only those few ragged leaves
that fight the wind before
they resurrect, low flying
in their feeble lust to seek
a winter niche within the wood.

It is a time to celebrate regret,
to think of tears that wet the cheek
in spring, and dried in summer's heat—
of grief postponed until the seasons sighed
and left their challenge incomplete.
It's time to set out thoughts
and make them work, not just drift
into another winter unredeemed.
The leaves do that.

Desire forsakes itself.
There is too much sterility
to cold, forboding ground
that may not whisper of the spring...
too much to leave behind,
abandoning the prize of breath,
of dream,
of warm creative light that bursts out
from compassion's womb.

It takes departure
from a foetal berm,
impetuous to join the sojourners
who dare approach the city
where the pilgrims stay. It is there
around the sacrament of peace
they break the bread of unity
and drink the wine of love.

Beyond the gate are monstrous things
I have not known before,
and from the core of me
is sung the antiphon,
Thanks be to God!
~

Mind, reaching into the void

2007-11-13T16:51:00.001-06:00

Mind, reaching into the void

The forest path pretends a voice
of purpose through distraction,
birds sound their curious intent, and then
the voices all around will cease to be,
time slows down, the lake
too far away to break the spell.

There when the leaves were down,
I bought the measure of an ending
that would crush a saint, a wild cry
inside me, resonating in a memory
engraved in pain that only I could know.

Late autumn is the time for gathering
not only of the harvest, but the fruits
of loss, the tearing, grinding
resignation of the sundered heart,
ever too obtuse to understand

Then it is one may perceive
the place within, the soft retreat
that speaks a stranger tongue—
a flight from mindlessness
to that familiar silent hovering.
A restless peace it is, but on another plain,
with still another kind of joy
that glows behind the sunset clouds.

There is a promise there
that one may count upon—
to be sure, as yet unknown.
The flight is past.
The mind is home.
~

Surprise

2007-11-12T13:13:00.001-06:00

Surprise

Equanimity is like that—
great for day by day.
Triceratops comes out to play
among the smilers, scoffing
at his claimed reality;
the screams are left there,
hanging for a time,
when creativity refuses
to be stuffed back in the box.

The poor old fellow, horns and all,
will not be taken seriously,
no matter how he mugs
before the camera; believers yawn
until the soldiers join the march
behind the flags and pretty girls,
their pretty legs--and then the band!

Our ugly, born again,
intrepid hero with his plated armor
never had a chance;
it is his destiny to be unloved
and munch his vegetables,
and sink into the pit
that feeds the armed machine

far past the Pleistocene
that hovers on his dream.
~

But, is it true...

2007-11-10T20:29:00.000-06:00

But, is it true...

A mind may settle in a groove
of circumstance suspended,
unaware of all the deep beneath,
all the sweet bouquets tossed out
by early travelers taking pity
on the darkness that they saw ahead;
they gave the best of theirs to give,
the little spurs of light , the baubles
that would never lead them forward,
only penetrate and stay,
waiting for their call.

And there they wait, the sperm
of new philosophy amid the flowers,
patronal in release, and bearing
thunder in their genes, a tracing
that will probe the silent ages
for the helpless now, and flashing,
flashing an integrity that says, "Go back
still more to celebrate
the birth of consciousness."

"Go back, into the womb of God,
the true mother of your soul.
You bear in your own body
all the scars of sacrifice,
all the seeds of wisdom,
all the triumph of eternity."

There is the litmus of belief,
the greatest postulate of faith,
and it is you.
~

Mission Statement

2007-11-08T16:37:00.000-06:00

Mission Statement

My empire is the wind of change,
that blowing field of gift and seizure
out away from sanctuary,
out in wilderness domain, where
signs of hope are spare, redemption
may not intercede to foul the air,
and there is purity within.

There is the wisdom of intent,
the love that is not summoned forth,
but overflows when gain is sacrificed...
when nothing but dry grass is seen
upon the meadowland.
There is where creation soars;
there my sons are born.

I dream of fields like this.
My craving is for conquest
where the self gives way,
for there is tempest far beneath
my consciousness, where I may yield
and feel the morning on my face,
the deep desire of all the race
for home.
~

Ghost Ship

2007-11-08T00:51:00.000-06:00

Ghost Ship

It is quiet on the bay
and boisterous on the shore;
the ship awaits its destiny,
romance awaits its foil and soon
departure claims its troth
above the lovers' agony,
beyond adventure's lore.

The sails are turned again to open sea,
the mast is high, all hands on deck,
and through the mist is scanned
the pathos on their faces,
eyes upon the land, and hearts
upon the lea they'll never cross again.

The Hollander is resolute,
the capstan locked, the deep possessed
for yet another seven years
of still horizon, salt upon the lips
and tales once more down in the hold
of tragic irony,
of love forever left behind.

Now in the night off foreign shores
when that dark hull appears
within the fog, or just above the clouds,
the captain might be seen alone
behind the wheel, and silent
as he listens for a distant bell
to sound the dawning
of his wedding day.
~

Campaign

2007-11-04T16:43:00.001-06:00

Campaign

Poor truth will bear the blame for lies
and live in costume, in disguise.
It is for use, not sought for its pure self
but rather in polemics, overlooked,
profaned and booked on flights
of rhetoric and inexactitude.
It whores its beauty, sells its soul
adorned in profaned innocence
to die unnoticed and unmourned.

It is victory we must lament;
beware the buyer, dangling
that dessicated prize
before a January crowd,
for in its final moments
it had not the strength to weep.
~

Zooming In

2007-11-02T20:11:00.001-06:00

Zooming In

Shall I take a single word along,
upon my morning walk?
The scars it left upon my mind
some days ago do not heal easily;
my pace is slower
as three unassuming letters
rake across it, once again
demanding more than I can give.
My step is ponderous
beneath the weight of just
'how long is now?'

When is the point that it begins?
When does it end, and why?
Is every 'now' in truth a 'then?'
and every need already in the past?
I stumble then. Oh dear.
Precisely when is that?
~

Encounter

2007-11-01T19:22:00.001-06:00

Encounter

There we were, my coffee cup and I
secluded in the corner booth
where flights of new realities,
my own created children, rose and soared
and readily transmogrified, touched down
and died according to my will.

I loved them all.
They were my fleet of consciousness
and altogether temporal,
yet in their frailty could darken houselights,
raise their stage to hide the universe
and for the nonce assume totality.

A single wisp of thought came through
and it was no surprise to be aware
that the professor with his pipe,
tweed coat and frowzy hair
now sat across and looking at me
quizically, but not disposed
to answer any questions

I was eager to propose, though I
had read his latest book, and knew
his vast research could lead me
down the path I wished to go.

For the moment I could merely know
he was my august puppet, not my key
to magic chests of insight... that he shared
the wisdom of the academes
that I once listened to,
and who would only point the way.

My cup was empty; I snapped back
and saw the room return, and it was time
to kill him off in tenderness. "You know"
he said, as he began to fade,
"I cannot help but go out wondering,
what kind of God are you?"
~

Crossing

2007-11-01T19:19:00.001-06:00

Crossing

It is time.
My forehead brushed with kisses,
I am blessed with knowing
in a moment they will close my eyes
and cover me...send their prayers
across that soft grey wall I see now,
drifting in...I try
to form my lips into
the love words...
try...
~

The Revelers

2007-10-29T18:35:00.001-06:00

"Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail."
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Revelers

A tilt of the head
and there's a universe
never seen before in time and space,
and passing strange—it's boiling hot,
contemptuous in its familiarity,
for though the slate is new,
it mocks the mind and speaks
of high adventure, Mondrian upon the wall,
the queen of age enlightening...
that fresh page a ship at anchor,
tugging at the post to sail
before the morning's past.

Do you feel it?
Can you breathe the air
Arcturus saw when you were born,
and passes on afresh— stirred anew
this time around with one
forgotten eyelash?
And, do the changes
thunder in your heart?

We are the revelers,
the chasers of the dawn,
who from our beds may joyfully
engage Leviathan, or rage
upon black flowers of the night
that dare to cast their shadow
on the day.
~

The Lighthouse

2007-10-29T02:42:00.000-06:00

The Lighthouse

Its singularity is insular
until it stirs itself
and throws its restless particles away,
out to the blackened, hungry sea,
the heaving grace of irony
whose understanding is but to receive
and never to return.

Now in the steady beam of sacrifice
there is disclosed the synthesis of fire,
that essential spirit stuff
which place is only to destroy
yet on its saving mission
borne along on minute quanta,
substance of the universe.

I cherish that cold vision
of a lonely cynosure upon the coast
that draws me from the world
and speaks of vigil to the night...
speaks of faith where none is asked...
speaks where time enfolds
an unknown plain
in its embrace of light.

The lighthouse, that last ghost
of mother shore and set apart
like some evasive anchorite
enchained in vows of silence,
demonstrates its wisdom
in th' immaculate restraint
of modesty that we who write,
audacious in petensiousness,
will never understand.
~

For All That

2007-10-26T13:04:00.001-06:00

For all that*

A man assembles in his mind
that which he knows,
then listens to the colors
of oncoming thoughts,
tempered in the fire
of passion and of love.

It is the knowing that he fears,
the messages that trail across the years,
creating "I" within his mind
and tremulous that he might cast aside
a piece of soul that nestled in him,
his alone, or worse the germ of everyman.

He pauses by the stream
to dip his fingers,
wonder at the incompleteness he has wrought,
and suddenly impatient
with the rippling image looking back,
he clings to the identity that is
his permanent sarcophagus,
a sacrosanct mortality
no one may ever share.
~
*(with gratitude to the spirit of Robert Burns )

Ezekiel Reborn

2007-10-25T13:40:00.001-06:00

Ezekiel Reborn

There are hazards there.
To board imagination of another soul,
to probe behind the rocks along the way
and find too much, converting chill into reality—
there is the romance!

There too is desert, the wandering for years,
knowing that the self alone will dessicate
until there is another sacrifice,
another mingling of the blood there at the wrist,
forsworn to die as breath is dry upon the skin.

It is as much a ship's departure
blessed of the wind upon the back,
blessed to see the stars above the prow
and still detect the beating of a second heart
as passionate as mine to cease
its feckless thundering.

There is the time to seize the glory
of the second wind from out the east,
the second rising of the power of God
that lurked behind the cloud of innocence
to interpose its frailty
upon device, its patient magic
on the dryness of despair, the bones
of a forgotten day, connected still again
by two...and by that still outrageous gambit
forged of love.
~

C'est Moi

2007-10-19T11:13:00.000-06:00

C'est moi

In my childhood
they
impressed on me
not to galumph,
lest I be typed
in stereo
as my eternal twin,

but now somehow
it pleases me
to see you are
constrained to know
that I will go
galumphing on
into the nevermore.
~

I shall not come home again

2007-10-17T20:00:00.001-06:00

I Shall Not Come Home Again
(reflections on a college reunion)

Too much of loveliness enfolds the ground
I walked in youth, again in age,
and I shall soon lie down beneath it
as my spirit wafts above its art
in clear salute to mind's eternal joy.

Too much, I stand upon the edge of a regret
I do not wish to re-explore,
though I did not succomb.
Old flowers would sigh with me,
and speak of gravamen
that memory could not restore to light,
of crusted wounds I had ignored for years,
then strange in their emergence
would leave their ghostly shouting in my ears.

Yet I had smiled politely as I watched
the curious melange of student mirth
among the pretense of a mellowed age
which walked beside them
for that shred of while last weekend...
and that inside a host of smiles
that flashed around in vain denial
of a fiercer truth.

The time was beautiful
inside that frail transparent shell
of grace that comes with blessed rarity,
and I departed with a heart and mind
in dialogue upon dualities
that never should appear, but drum
upon the tympanum of my perspective
on a world I caused to change
two generations past, and now impart
a flavor in diminuendo, a seasoning
refreshed, more newly wise
and in finality, more spacious in its love.
~

Chimera

2007-10-09T20:58:00.000-06:00

Chimera

I saw a titan trembling in the wood,
a little deity who once devoured
the power I gave him, stormed at me
for my naivete, and left me on
my knees to pray, not for today,
but some chimeric garden spot away.

It is the fall of leaves and titans
as I pass the wood again,
divested of its mystery
to make its pathways plain—
that I may look within
upon another twilight of the gods,
a new apocalypse to write
and yet another new Jerusalem
to settle in.

It is a transient Eden
we would give away,
to celebrate the monstrous in ourselves,
to recreate within a forest plain
the holiness of fear—

and an Olympic irony
that we as gods would tremble too
beholding all our gnomic children
scampering to seek a paradise
or an oblivion.
~

Statue

2007-10-06T18:52:00.001-06:00

Statue

A whisper of his life within the stone
emerges from the cold of retrospect,
that he behind the figure's vacant stare
could know that other hands saw history
within the reach his fingers stretched, could throw
his burning soul across millenia
and we are there attuned, somehow, to catch
a shred of wisdom, borne upon a gray
and crumbling art.

And do not look apart just yet, for there
is mystery within the telegraph
of ages left to us that may not foil
romance, but prey upon the dying age
that we, ourselves encapsulate in time
to shun mortality.

It is a voice we may not like so much,
unable to attain vitality
that seizes the imagination as
a Praxiteles did, a voice for us
that we may not let go, though photos fall
aside, for this was life incarnate in
the stuff of earth, a transient man come down
to breathe upon us as before.

How still he is! How firm his stubborn grasp
of all we are—how lost are we outside
this quarried slab to meet a personage
that we already knew within ourselves
and fear to know again, lest life and death
in harmony may speak aloud before
we run away.
~

Touche

2007-10-01T20:50:00.000-06:00

Touche

At the end,
there is the silent field alone
to offer up its peace , and then
his eyes upon the rising smoke
Pyrrhus smiles,
not for his hollow victory
but for the twisted, blessed men
who do not have to see.
~

And then, and then

2007-10-01T19:14:00.000-06:00

And then, and then

Quite apart
from anything to touch,
more is an increment
that lies behind the consciousness,
to swell the mind with new imagining,
inexhaustible—thriving in its sacrifice
just as a fountain
throws its treasure to the sky.

Still as a vision never seen before
and nevermore returning,
haste to burn it into mind and then
away, away across the clover fields
to seek the wooded edge aglow
with inspiration's light.

It is just such fantasy as that
to feed a passion where reality
emerges from a thought created,
just as God ex nihilo sought out the earth,
the dew upon the ground,
the misty heaven, the distant haze
of peace.

In dulci jubilo,
the endless questions
form the ziggurat
of humankind's delight—
the endless answering
a sacred palindrome
of an eternal life.
~

Wisdom's Tree

2007-09-29T11:29:00.000-06:00

Wisdom's tree

I meant to set aside the self
and follow that clear beam of knowing
on its journey to the earth. It shone
on Aristotle, Plato, Kant, and William James
and pulls the rest of us along,
a breathless following, half-mired
in transient, vain contempt.

And now we have the future
reigning down on us
to shatter that bright column
into further dissolution. Universities
parade their colors in processionals
of PhD's, regaling us with red and gold
and dissertating academic truth
amid the shards of light.

It's time to seek the self again,
to probe beneath the skin,
for there is just one brightness there
to shine upon posterity.
It is the gleam of Everyman
as his own prism,
gathering Old Greeks and infant toy
philosphers, and with a smile
to filter them between transparencies
of insight, probing every flash of light
emerging from within.

It's time to put down roots
from wisdom's tree. It's time
to introspect, to tap the mind
and set aside the noisy boxes
with their strange hypnotic ghosts
who only play to win.

It's time to dine with Thoreau
by the pond,
to revel in its quiet depth
and in our own,
where wisdom saturates the ground
and nourishes the soul.
~