Of Lilliput

Of Lilliput

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

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

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

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

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

Oh, no.
Oh, no.
~

A Psychic Manual

A Psychic Manual

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

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

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

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

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

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

Behold, I make all things new

Behold, I make all things new

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

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

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

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

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

The Cherry Tree

The Cherry Tree

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

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

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

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

Of Myth and Men

Of Myth and Men

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

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

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

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

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

Le Penseur

Le Penseur

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

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

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

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

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

The Little boy Who Wouldn't go to Bed

The Little Boy Who Wouldn't Go To Bed

I followed him
upon the stair,
saw his spirit stare
beneath his leadened eyes
for there were cries inside
that would not be expressed
until the meadow day,
the time for him to play
and not to weep as
he would now if distant love
were not sustaining deep
inside.

The meadow was his refuge;
he could be alone,
appear to fly across the crest
and disappear from earthwatch,
hide the tears no longer,
speak the words
that welled within the dark
beside his bed,
were in the crowding of the night,
unable to be said.

It was resounding of the sun,
a badinage that tore at tenderness,
that made of rest
a shrouded interlude,
a quietness that screamed
of flight, of meadowlands
that in their emptiness
could understand.

And so to bed,
and coveting release
with every hour he stored away
as bonds to be redeemed
at that bright meadow's call
to lacrimation unrestrained
by its attendant joy,
the surge unheard and unobserved...
the time unique to its belonging.

He knew--I knew
the meadow gathered up its own,
the speeding night too slow.
He knew within him overflowed
the love and sorrow of a Samuel
the cosmos blessed,
and dressed in an emotion
few will share, or care...
that with the sun an age is born
and in the age another prophet sired,
another mystic son of man.
~

A Song of Victory

A Song of Victory

As conquerer
he stood upon the hillside with his army
looking down
upon the silent town below,
miasma of the battle slowly rising,
thankful that he could not see
the fallen bodies of its fathers
in the streets, nor in each house
the infant cribs stained red
from every blankly staring doll
upon it, every bludgeoned mother
on the floor.

His lieutenant, watching, venturing,
"Will you raise the flag, commander?"
"Yes."
"The white one."
"Look."
"We are undone."
~

A new kind of patriot!

I've long been cynical about patriotism, but Dr. Bowman, a former military pilot, and in charge of Reagan's Star Wars program, his given me something to think about: I urge you to go to the site I have indicated below, and then follow up by finding out about his thoughts on 9/11!

www.thepatriots.us

Knowing

Knowing

Unlearned, unfathomed,
lurking in recesses of the mind,
they suddenly emerge...
understandings that would not appear
in any yesterday, yet here they are,
a trick of consciousness,
ready to disclose new mysteries,
ideas and adventures
never thought about before.

But I must chase the images;
they disappear and fly away
before I pin them down,
yet have their way of coming back
as inspiration—hollow, silent
thunderbursts within my viscera,
that substitute for God—
may indeed be God implanted,
not by whim, by passion or entreaty
of a master sculptor in the sky,
but by the glorious cosmic chimera
of our creation.

You and I, it is who wield the wand,
perhaps indeed from a divine intent,
but it is we who are the sculptors,
we who grace the skies
with kindly paradise, and we alone
who have the power to love or to destroy.

The thunderings are from within,
the insights ours, the loving father
not out there among the stars
manipulating his divine machine
inspired by mortal prayer,
but of the dust beside the river,
just like us.

There is a certainty within it all...
and like the river running through us
has a job to do
in all that quiet thundering.
It has to do with sustenance, of life
we never knew until this very moment.

It has to do with celebration of the new,
an unimagined, closer walk with God.
~

Remembering

Remembering

See the images parading, passing,
falling back into retreat,
their rest still unassured
while restless mind may hover o'er the field,
to feed upon white faces,
pioneers who hunger for the light.

Old friends, old teachers
do not resurrect...their coffins
closed forever, neither does
identity within a mental photograph
corrupt, but dwell upon the ether
I inhale as if it were a live daguerreotype,
persisting in my consciousness.

And there they are, secure,
profound beyond corporeal,
a voice transcending earth,
a portrait brighter than the sky
that lives because it cannot die,
and of its musty sweetness
one could scarcely comprehend
the everlasting hologram,
a shrine though hardly seen,
where love and truth prevail.

If that does not confound a man,
then memory may rightly fade,
its heros wrapped in softness,
packed away beneath the earth,
and never visited again.
~

Innocents Abroad

Innocents Abroad

Scarce a year it was before my birth,
that Lindy set The Spirit down
at Le Bourget one night
and all the old voitures
as suddenly lit up the runway
with their headlights.
as he taxied to a stop.

Thirty years beyond, I landed there
from fair Bruxcelles and it was day;
the city of the light took rest
avant le gaiete of night—
there was no welcoming;
"Attencion Monsieur,
you are in zee way,"
and my attempt at French
brought only curious stare.

"Et je n'ai pas de plus argent
and little more to bear me home
to Orleans. Je suis un etranger
dans ma cite des grandes lumieres, "
I thought, and sent my fond farewell
to Brussels and its wondrous minature
Etats Unis and Circarama
still unknown in fifty years back here.

Sacre Bleu! C'est incroyable
that naked little boy in Belgium,
and the Champs above the catacombs
in Paris, now still flaunt their youth,
their vibrancy, as I advance
to that dim room somewhere
when irony prevails—that Lindy,
luckier than I, will share with me
the just equality of death.
~

On my birthday

On my Birthday

There are a thousand births like mine
in that cluster of the noosphere
the rolling earth had left behind—
where birth and death joined hands
to siphon off the heavens in a moment,
in a block of space
etched by an evanescent time.

A thousand births, a hundred years,
and altogether disappeared
as father of the father of my father
will not cause extrusion of a single tear
nor anything beyond a dusty line
of history—the earth will not look back
upon the airless cubicles, and I

may smile upon the moment
when my father smiled, and let it go.
Within that crystal box, and scarce observed
there is a breath drawn in,
another sent away...
a candle life ignited, snuffed,
to float out to the stars, unseen,
where memory is like the rising mist
that one time only
may refresh the morning air.
~

On Beauty

On Beauty

It is no ordinary stop that captivates,
no lush green paradise
as if to flush the ugliness of war.
There is instead, that rush of purity
that sweeps across the panorama of the mind
to speak of the uncommon,
of something changing everything
just by standing still.

It is said that pain is that which will evoke
the journey to the mountain peak, yet
quest is the fulfillment of desire
and not the burning fire of dreams
that dance before the one to seek
the pinnacle of art.

And when the best defining
may not approach the mark of truth
that in that sacerdotal lay
God dwells in you...
that on the shining rim of day
God dwells in you!—

it is to know
the fairest beauty of them all.
In supreme accolade
before the fair impossible
white angel of a far ineffable
white paradise, there comes
a son of man, a daughter of the earth
for whom all worlds, all time
attends.
~

Zero Point Field*

Zero Point Field*

A mind is something not content
with stimulus-response,
but must go flying off
into the never lands
to see if they are there...
and when reporting back,
at best is greeted with a stare
of incredulity.

But minds are stubborn things
that go on processing
both truth and doubt,
and greeting fantasy as friend enough
to squeeze it, probe it,
love it with a clinical devotion
plain romance would never understand.

Of such a love as this is born the light
that penetrates both time and space
and bounces back into the consciousness
of humankind and feisty lean bacteria
forever bound in brotherhood.

Pride is the casualty.
The idiot savant may lead
the Hawkings of the world
into the wondrous places,
those diaphanous and misty islands
that their instruments could not disclose,
that were in fact not even there
until he thought of them

and like a painter, sketched the trees,
perfumed the air,
and filled the surface crown
with many-colored animals
never seen before—
and then with idiot delight
might whisk it all away
before their eyes.

Not the stuff of fantasy, all this.
We would endorse the cry of unity,
accept the god of miracles,
the triumph of a science
leaping past his lordly heels,
but this? To heal the sick
by thinking back before their birth?
To marry the millenia ahead
with history?

It is a bigger field on which we play,
too much to entertain the day
with less than breathless wonderment—
to see beyond the window
where the scientist and God
rest finally from all the work
that they have done.
~
*In order to fully understand this relatively simple
poem, it is necessary to read "The Field" by Lynne
McTaggart. Both the evidence and the speculation
that she presents, is truly mind-boggling.

Jody Too

Jody Too

Jody was nine, her namesake calf
but newly-born, soon shorn
of his vitality, to be a steer
and hers alone, for just a year;
it was for both of them to grow,
and know of love. Thus
with her brush and comb
and her aplomb above the skin;
she rushed the hours on
until the day the Four-H show
crowned Jody Too in blue.

It was the day
that Jody learned to weep,
for champions are made
not just of love alone,
but masterly caress of shank and bone,
organic marbling, and charts
and sleeplessness;
there were dark forshadowings,
insistent silent taunts forced back
upon the trip home from the fair...
yet there were weeks beyond, to dare.

She knew she could not dwell
upon the end that she must not ignore.
There was no store of stoicism
in her heart, no lust for sacrifice,
no practiced separation might be there
to strengthen her, prepare her
for the market day when she could see
her father readying the truck for those
magnificent black steers,
(nine hundred pounds enhanced
each frame) and watch them
on the ramp.

From her bedroom window all of them
were seen on board, then Jody Too,
when eyes still dry, she turned her face away,
her own tear-drenched goodbye an hour before.
Her father had not known, came in,
and in bucolic wisdom, thus
invited her to watch them go.
She shook her head, there was
no consolation for her dread.
"Dad, Jody knew!"
~

That we cannot know

That we cannot know

The role is servanthood,
that which belongs as some sweet entity
but dangerous, a tendency to fulsome loyalty,
a liquid unction serving as supporting arch,
complete so long as it is rare, and yet
no matter how abstemious the doing,
hate brews underneath, the kind
that unarticulated, strengthens
with the rising heat of day.

The pommeled human clay
assumes its destiny, its birth and death
a twisted dwarf in halflife,
the pity flowing from above
as some mad spring,
its flowers just to touch
before the king might choose—
inhale their sweetness
or to crush them
underneath his royal feet.

It is done.
They stand before us,
waiting but for grace or martyrdom,
the father and the son,
the slave not yet complete,
the master, orb in hand
and shadowing the sun—
and who will speak,
and who will write
of justice at the last?
~

Grave's Eloquence

Grave's Eloquence

It was as if a friend I never knew
came in to speak of some old honor
left behind while in the rush to war...
as if there were a bond
between the tides of men
expressed upon an ancient scroll,
and pressed into the mind.

I do not know how it occurred
but found that words may have their birth
as heartsong from the other side
where seasoned consciousness
emerges not from men,
but from those fallen souls
incarnate in the spirit void.

These are the words of passion that we cling to,
that even in their error,
echo in the hollow corridors
where heroes strolled,
intoned by eyes alone,

and as I sit before my desk,
drop tears upon the book I read...
confronting old vitality,
then in a stone engraving
now refreshed by immortality,
there is a timeless, personal rapport
I may yet presume to understand...
a strange new epithet,
that life begins at death.
~

Chasing down the day

Chasing down the day

For a fallen man there came
a most engaging metaphor;
the light persists while consciousness endures,
streams out across the empty spaces
particle and wave, and unconfined,
immediate and still abstract,
dubious as wind whose origin
is steeped in mystery, whose end
forever lost in the unknown, as is
creation of a mind, reaching out
beyond the galaxies to seek where history began.

And then antonymous, a mindless rule
opposed, squeezing from its barren birth canal
to celebrate an instant death
(god from god
light from light
very god from very god)
while torches blazed in protest,
the light not of itself, illuminated
just itself alone!
And there was evening; there was morning
on that first stupendous day.

So the wars began.
So the gods processed in irony,
and so the little people far below
held festivals of light
in triumph over dark
until the sun burned out,
their cannons fired no more,
and they no longer could remember
how to pray.
~

Divine Arrogance

Divine Arrogance

The little man stepped just beyond
transcendence from his little world
and found divinity outside. The huge surprise
was that he found no throne, no kindly spirit
there, no lowering papa in the sky
but there was ecstasy in emptiness
he had not seen between the stars,
between the frenzied prayers of men
who sold their commentaries on belief.

What irony to note the hidden god
who sent him back without reward.
That humankind might lift the sword
and find it weak, inadequate, the symbol
of a stumbling gospel half believed,
half emasculated from the altars
censed in smoke.

And then to venture deep within at last,
emerges just the glimmer of a cosmic pride
that always turns away
until our tongues receive the simple sacrament
of love, and only then
our knees may serve as pedestals
for truth.
~

God thoughts

God thoughts

From on the bank above the bay,
I see the passing ships embrace
this newborn world of me,
unknowing of my captaincy
that maintains their course
along horizon's edge, connecting worlds,
combatting tempests of the mind.

Inside their little universe, they do not see
their god look on. They do not know
about his helpless love,
about his curious majesty
enabling electrons to perform
before his eyes among
the unseen planetary orbs.

Quite the bemused deity am I
to watch my little boats defy
the corner of my paradise
that blurs my sight,
and powered only by my love
will disappear into the night.

Impractical am I, and wise enough
to send them storm and peace
and sun to keep their faces dry.
And only I have destiny
to contemplate, for I
have given them the last, best watch
before their midnight,
and before the shadows die.
~

...and I must write

...and I must write

I hear crescendo in my body,
bursting at the fissures in my mind,
churning up the tears that flow from springs
inside the prototype of flesh that I became...
far back when dreamers went exploring.

I hear the song passed on
from those grey men who marched,
and laid their hopes aside,
their passion drained—I hear the word drums
beating cadence as I rest.

I do not know what is to come,
yet I may not hold fast
against its strange caress,
invincible duress that emptiness alone
invites in spirit intercourse.

It isn't quite enough
to joke of muses, deities,
or objects of desire.
It is the hollow place inside
that calls, that sets a turbulence

too urgent to deny. And I
must serve its singular intent,
accomplice to its mystery
and lover to its fervent power
so long as it prevails.

We are a race caught up
together in romance,
a melding of delight and sorrow
in the dance of arrows to the heart—
a dance of danger and necessity.

Now may such wonder be preserved,
and understanding such a rarity
as to be left behind. The cadence thrums
its unforgiving song,
and will you dance with me?
~

Resurrection

Resurrection

The dead still walk
within our memories,
and breathe
and smile
and talk
inside that strange preserve we keep,
a room still redolent with life
above the boxes where they sleep.

What irony prevails, that we
may call them forth upon a whim
as frozen servants microwaved,
enjoyed, and then returned at will
to their uncertain rest.

Might we indulge them,
favoring a spirit laugh
at our audacity?
Might they indeed, be guiding us
inside our stumbling bones,
inside this diorama
quite obsessed by touch?

We might do well to understand
they fly to us
with such astounding love
to fill our reminiscences
upon demand, and yet
with sad politeness fade away
at suppertime.
~

Divine Deafness

Divine Deafness

There were shadows
shaped like feathers in your words,
drifting in and out of focus—
a consciousness that could not speak.
though mightily it tried

without pretending anything,
without a shred of pride,
and made of sweet politeness
with its wild vibrations
pulling back upon sincerity

as if it cried—
as if it knew that there was more
unsaid, and holding back
caught time alone, and held it close.
There was a trust

before a distant God
who might emerge all wooly,
open to both lust and sacrifice
and sheltering the I and Thou
beneath a cosmic question mark—

beneath his baking sun...beneath his glory
you and I beheld with some amazement,
for the saga quite compressed
within a moment's irony
had only just begun.
~

Afar

Afar

Beyond the plain,
beyond the distant hills
the coast is calling,
even in its silent diffidence
proclaiming richness to horizon's crust,
that here is where the world begins—
here is where a man may throw
his soul into the wind, and gather
echoes for the journey home.

Here the ember glow of vigil
still betrays old fire of mariners
who lie beneath the sea, of broken men
who saw the land again,
and of the ones who dared
to carry England to the left of God.

Here is where one breathes
the scent of history,
here where romance was hovering
when rest alone was hungered for.
And it was here where blue-eyed visionaries
raced,
and flew,
and shot out for the stars.

And there is yet a timeless phalanx
built of heroes lined upon the shore,
the ones who face new hazards every day,
do not quail before the hot demands
of solvency. We're dealing
with a system made of irony,
of reticence, yet steel resolve
amid a fantasy annointed with desire.

No wonder death appeals,
for it is either summary completion,
or an open highway
to a plain where more aesthetic sophistry
proclaims its awe.
It is the choice afar
that rides upon the mist above the land,
that reaches with a man
beyond the twilight of the day,
beyond the churlish midnight toll
to celebrate the flourish
of the dawn.
~

To Know Regret

To Know Regret

It was a misplaced trust, a moment
that refused to slip away—
a burning for a lifetime
just because it could have been avoided;
there was a time to shroud temptation,
pathos selected just to try it on.

And there I was, my verbal sword
undrawn until the moment,
and at impulse came the thrust
to free another's blood,
and interpose in me,
a strange, quixotic love,
impossible to seek.

It is a curious thing,
this wallowing in paradox—
this gravitas so chosen of a whim
that streams may flow down
each remaining breath...and wondrous,
for it bleeds the heart as well
and makes of tears a fountainhead
to birth a new humanity

—a curiosity indeed, that arrogance
is conquered by its own default
while love defiled is lovely still
and in its frailest sovereignty,
its unequivocal reward.
~

All my trials, Lord

All my trials, Lord

The thrust of mind on every plane
relflects adversity...
and life idealized
is every life that cannot ever be.

Profound, the misanthrope that operates
behind the shadow of our consciousness.
Pervasive is the hate that flavors
that bright charity abounding
in a smile benign,
yet shallow in design. We would not trace it,
dare not face its counterpart
inside. It hurts too much.

There is one injury that cannot heal,
that echos down the corridor of all reality,
confining us within
the little world we own;
the hurt that never fades
is like that stubborn visitor
L'esprit de l'escalier,
a threshold of regret.

Perhaps such thorn as this
within a well-kept soul
is our condign salvation,
our protection from insanity
remembering too well
a frailty too easy to forget.
~

The Interstices of Time

The Interstices of Time

Time's world is porous.
One may slip between the fabric weaving,
journeying upon the back of art and music,
poetry and meditation,
and the offering of love.
It is transition in a paradox
of peace-filled paroxysm
faith would not accommodate.
Then just beyond, the spirits gather
for a welcome that exceeds imagining.
There the past and future laugh
at their deception, vanishing like smoke.

Come to the marrying
of fear and celebration,
the collision of realities
we never sorted out.
It's over there a bit,
where mornings never yield
to resting suns, and yesterdays
that know not how to say goodbye.

The pathways lie within your dreams
but far outside as well.
and all penultimate
to that grand boulevard that we forsake
with each device of breath
and one insensitive laconic label,
death.

~

The Course

The Course

Mine is the fountain of the winds,
that glorious whorl of happenings
pursuing one another, chasing of
the leaves so carefully laid down
as plans and dreams and victories
far gone or still to come, or faded
fast away in disillusionment.

I wear the garment of the visitor
upon the hill, the novice on the green,
not so much confused as
dazzled by the pace of cosmic rush
upon my little universe
where once tranquility was queen.

Mine are the rising waters
cast in peril rather than as grace.
Mine is the face of questioning
upon the headlong child
who found himself half reaching back
to grasp the pre-dawn shadows,
still compelled to march into the sun.

It is a time to celebrate the doubt,
not to lament. It is that prime ingredient
that may transform existence into life,
the first and final breath into
a festival of everlasting spring.

Mine are the verdant mountaintops,
their offering a panoply of view
to stretch the heart,
to heat and cool the veins
with love and fire and joyous lust
and at the last, contented rest.
~

Take neither cloak nor staff

Take neither cloak nor staff

It takes a manner of a sweetness
laboring each day to build a faith
forsaking complex structures,
knowing there's a paradise afoot
...a stubborn joy that clings like sand
to those retreating from the beach.

That serendipitous refreshment from fatigue
comes when forgotten love speaks out
behind the shining other world out there
that looms in some tendentious ecstasy.

It takes a bible, doesn't it?
A yellowed, well-thumbed document
to hold beneath the spotlight—
add a mellow-voiced evangelist
who holds beneath contempt
an anti-perspirant
or yet a scholar's honest sweat;
it takes a book upheld
from mesmery.

A bit of holy trickery is all it takes.
Saints turned out like sausages,
with sandals worn so thin
that they must shake the dust
from off itinerant feet,
ooze forth salvation as they can, yet
praise the Lord, the blessings
flow more sluggishly this year,
the price of widows' mites
more dear.

And was it Satan who lived on
to fall another day?

The Overflowing Pen

The Overflowing Pen

I write of paradox,
the catalyst of mystery
to flood the desiccated corpus of romance.
I write of stark obsidian
to dress the silver of the night.
I write of wild things
racing on the edge of everyday,
creators of imagining,
progenitors of lust and love
and laughter at the far, expectant tomb.

To write is to release
a rare, pristine ejaculate of self
churned out of dreaming,
fostering a karma made of ages,
built of old beginnings and the cosmic circus
drawn around the instant now
that is our prison, and
our lustrous paradise.

I write of kings and ragged men,
of paramours and saints
more dissolute, more brave than I
who sounded all the bells within me,
whispered that they flowed
within my bloodstream,
cried out upon their battlefields again,
upon their crosses that no holy death
could sanctify. And all of it is I.

I write in borrowed words—a seizure set
inside the impudence of my design
to join the vast concentric vortex of creation,
just to find an eidolon of truth,
to sing with history a new reflection
on the trek of humankind,
and then with them united, close
and throw another song
upon the altar of repose.
~

The Leeward Side

The Leeward Side

There is a moment when the senses fade
their beating on the walls of personhood.
It is the moment when the test begins,
the probe into the secret places of the earth,
the waiting places on the leeward isles
that drum into our hearts,
the flaming places set apart
because they set ablaze
the mystery of doubt.

Such is the stuff of longing,
not the blatant hunger to possess
called forth from every lorelei of greed.
Heroic need is drawn
from deep within the wellspring of desire
that core of humankind, the inner child
that loves through tears,
that hopes in faith
and sends out affirmations of aplomb
to shame the day.

It is the leeward side, assailable,
that draws the kisses of the wind—
the side most ready with its open heart
to sing of beauty, to feed the mind,
to fuel the passion for a truth
we would not see inside the storm.

This is the matrix of a true desire,
the peace to live in joy,
to love in bold extravagance,
to be, that all be well
and even bravest hearts may swell.
~

The Disappearing Self

The Disappearing Self

On plateau, the view is everywhere,
and makes the body stretch to meet it.
Something calls, beyond the railroad
far away, beyond the storm clouds over there.
And in its shy defining, there is restlessness.
The earth is waiting for reply,
and that unspoken; words are blasphemy.
The towering sky embraced is that assent
to journeying. The rich embodiment
of shadow worlds becomes the chariot.
Identity cuts loose, the mind aflight
mounts higher on the stair of consciousness.

Something stirs where sense transcended
molds itself around awakening,
arresting doubt, and recreates reality.
The appetite is gone, the interchange
of science left behind, and time is meaningless.
That which remains is of a new creation,
whirling as the nebulae, but infinite
beyond that which an "I" might probe,
for that has faded too.

The reach is far away, into awareness
quite beyond enlightenment,
quite beyond the power of being
whether man or God to bless
or to ordain. It rides upon my breath,
upon the mystery that waits
just past the will—indeed it is that I,
though bound in wonderment,
am nowhere to be found,
and lost within an ecstasy
I'll never understand.
~

Cogito Ergo Sum

Cogito Ergo Sum

If a light thinker, I am superficial...
If a ponderous thinker, I am the elephant
in the room, unwanted and unloved.
If I think at all, I am in the minority,
wandering from problem to conclusion—
over and over,
bringing forth curious glances
from everyone who likes kira own conclusions
undisturbed, set in place,
like rows of potted plants
drying out over the winter.

It is better only to see, not to act.
It is more gentle to the mind
to sit in the attic with a book,
making notes in the margins,
listening to Bartok on the tape,
and wondering if it is safe
to descend the stairs
and banter with the world again.

And what of the world?
To whom does it belong?
If it thinks, are we one?
If it falters, are we lovers?
It is dangerous business, this brazen act
of cogitating. It is the province
of world movers, and rogues.
Perhaps, among us all,
there is more hope for the rogues.
Gratiae ut Deus.

Agape

Agape*

Here we meet, a company
plucked randomly
from every shore to dine,
to gather from the mind's full store,
enriched, aware of all the particles,
of spatial plain within, beyond—
we meet as if to pull together
this mysterious self
that breathes and breeds
inside the depths of God.

...that in such unity it makes
synoptic sight of that fantastic feast
that is the body and the blood
consumed for all of humankind,
the pagan and the child
untutored, bold
beneath the hands of Christ

...to meet...and to adore,
to fall upon our faces then
full-stunned to greet the Lord
inside our viscera, in every time
within our timeless souls.

...to meet, to know
there is no need to crush the grape
or bake the loaf, no need to speak
of sacrifice, atonement, penitence,
or fast before the board
thoughout the night.

We meet, quite helpless underneath
the fierce tenacity of love,
and thus it is that we are fed,
partaking of the fare of ragged mendicants
like Jesus and Siddhartha,
unwashed royalty beneath the tree of light.

Then, chagrined to find our eyes
directed to the dust around our feet
in self-determined shame,
we meet epiphany.
A little boy begins
to hand out fishes to
the multitude upon the earth;
we hoist our packs to make retreat,
and sigh,
and say
that there is still so much to learn
of Agape.
~
*in the universal sense, pronounced AH guh pay

Knowing

Knowing

A dark. unfathomed emptiness
swirls and coalesces
on the stage of my desire,
demanding nothing sired of need
or advocate, and of itself complete.

Yet I may own the unexpected certainty
and find that it is known
without a thought,
through just shy glances
as one moves inside the self.

It is an unpretentious wisdom, free
to fly upon the cliff winds,
turning toward the sea again,
above the crumbling decades
with their votive candles burning still,
above the shouts of triumph
just beyond the tomb, and yes,
more sacred in its wordless legacy
than that enscrolled
from any prophet pen.

At length, It was the little man
inside the prompter's box
who shook his head, and said
to watch your little universe go by
for still another dallying spring.
It isn't yet the denouement,
not yet your time to sing.
~

A Troubled Genesis

A Troubled Genesis

Beginnings do not pop
into reality, nor did that first
creator suddenly decide that he
was incomplete. Like us, he had
to first associate at least two things—
big bang was not alone,
despite its cosmic, roaring birth
that down the line would spawn the earth
and all its sibling particles to dance
among the stars.

Pop! Another isotope unfolds a man,
and leaves its own mate shrouded
in another mystery, another
thousand ages of a mystic night
while the deities are winking
at each other. No wonder some of us
are weary of creating creeds,
of using inverse telescopes
to focus on the seeds
inside the womb of Mother Universe.

It's recess time! Our present
calls us far away from weaving myths
around a non-existent past,
to tap instead our youth-enraptured sun,
to grasp a new eternity
that sings of finite gods no less divine
than their original, whoever she may be...
nor may indeed demur to see
her Zeus-like counterpart on high.
~

Forbidden Dreams

Minutes from oasis in the night,
there is a flight together
that my body and my mind prepare,
writing chapters in another consciousness
that takes its joy from that entire state
of mindlessness, both past and future bound
upon my pillow.

It is a school that I attend with caution.
If I could just prepare,
I'd meet the wondrous monster
on a plain that I design. There it is
to twist the time, conflate into an "I"
already dead, already disappeared,
forgotten at the dawn.

Yet as intent is stronger still
then from the well inside
both apogee and perigee are one
Now like a sentinal upon the path
the watch is centered here and I may
reach the corner of the wind and
throw the swift forbidden dreams away.

The night is mine to own,
to revel in, to play,
and in its own illumining
to frame the blazing day.
~

Apologia of an Iconoclast

The maker of the universe is God.
or so I read; if that is so, I need
to be aware that all that is, is good--
or he, himself, is not. But that is rot,
of course.

Then Aristotle has his say. I may
not slay the progeny of Good, or I
betray the logic of my thought and thus
create anathema; no God am I,
or might I then become, to my dismay
a schizophrenic paraclete!

Oh I am very good at chopping heads,
and yes, I see the irony in that, for how
may I be made of God and still believe
in brother enemies when each of us
shares not a care for his own blood?

Ah, no, I fear there is no room for this
dear papa in the sky who makes such vile
pretenders down below. Hard-pressed to reach
Him here, they press their knees to earth, look up
and try to make amends, while seeking help
to go on sinning just a few years more.

But in the process, there are those who see
that He is not the major fellow up
above, but us together here below
and stretching to the stars in this
vast playground, yes, forgetting who we are
sometimes, and pressing forward to the mark

like old St. Paul, (who could not get it straight)
his fearsome lightning-tossing deity
defines the universe that we are now
and all of cosmic time and space is God.
~

The School of Dreams

Asleep, recalling yet again
a moment on the path that we call life,
and quickly gone—rejection's pain
now too acute to cherish,
still those soft curls are filed away
in memory much too intense
to be forgotten.
But Wisdom speaks to say
a past like this must never be
the prologue to a second vanity.

The only moment is the one before us,
close at hand to touch, explore
and reel at all the priceless possibilities.
This is where repose may win the night,
to take the now and flood it with new light
to give it of ourselves, our old remembering,
our hopes and manufactured dreams,
the love programmed within us;
all the sweetness of a smitten child
is ours again, and now to give away
for this is all we have.

The battle lines within are clear;
the present must regain the day.
Yet through it all, the dream retains
a maddening, persistent vision
of a little cardboard box inside a drawer,
and laid among its cotton fill
is Charlie Brown,
his own creator also still,
while Charlie's slumbers prowl the night
with deathless dreams
of that red-headed girl
inside another box somewhere,
forever out of sight.
~

In an old school building

There is time to watch the eagle's talons
grasping what it may, the arrows or the wheat
creating legend some will fight for, creating
heritage they didn't fully understand.

I saw the children's feet
upon the wooden stairs, concave
from all the years of children climbing,
rushing down to music only they could hear--

their colors blending in the tapestry
of always yesterday, always in
concelebration of the swirl
of one more generation in the dance.

They stopped in time,
and with their piquant crumb of insight
that a fleeting pre-pubescence gives,
informed me with a glance

the moment was their own, and I
might frame it only with my memory,
its capture that pure vanity
that only visionaries ponder.

Then why do they not take
their voices with them?
With what trans-time device
do they still rush

upon my consciousness, insisting
they are better ghosts
than those before them
on the stair?

And then I knew
their predecessors too
are children, mirroring the lives
of everyman

who crept, and marched, and flew
through centuries of festive rite
and held their sage observers
in their thrall

as headlong children teaching
love to watchers, sprites
intoxicated by the dust of chalk
and leaving

their forgotten kind of laughter
in the staircase walls
for passersby who listen
with their hearts.
~

Theatre of One

I stood aside the other day, and looked
upon the superannuated man
I have become, though I considered it
the climax of the years
devoted just as caricature
of my anticipated self.

Walter Brennan's role inspired me--
Grandpappy Amos, with his elbows
tightly flaring, voice in octaves, ah
yet all remains unclear
until I learn to dodder--now just watch
I'll master that next year!

Strike out the days of grand design
and see across the rift
elusive images that worked
and played upon my open heart--
that let me sift
through their own store
of youth and wisdom,
caution and delight--
but never spoke of endings.

Why do you wonder, little boy?
What may I give you
that does not contain
the scent of death?
It may yet be the wondering...
what we old men have taken
from the years
that gives us license
to pontificate, or yet repine.

By cracky, youngster,
I just heard your mother
calling you to supper. I'll admit
I had to turn my face a moment,
indulging as I must
when mothers intervene,
that old intensive wish
that she were mine.
~

Visible and Invisible

Visible and Invisible

The first forgotten
(non erit finis)
was the I,
(non est)
and who would not,
(in phasmatis reverentia)

for my
(Et credo)
expanded world
(universitas)
climbed in
(saecula saeculorum)
and even God
(pleni sunt coeli et terra gloria)
was dwarfed
(et homo factus est)
by nothingness.
(pro totus universitas)

Come, see the light
(et vitam venturi)
of knowing,
(saeculi amen)
for there is no other truth.
(amen)
~

Mission

Molten steel
is what I wish to pour
from all the gray confusion
of the liquid wall inside me.
I want to see the mountain tremble,
to hear the roaring nether earth
assert its consciousness, to join
the yeomen of the mind who travel
on the higher ground of light.
I want to call the seraphim from out the East
and taste upon my lips, refiner's fire,
to sing the Wisdom choruses
the prophets heard.


Let me engage the beasts of reticence,
the somnolence of hordes bemired
in hedonistic clay. Let me cry out
upon the day, a sanguine joy
in triumph over lassitude, conquerors
and endless kingdoms of desire.

There seems to wait within, a page
inscribed by messengers who
having heard the throbbing song,
will fly through time with me
announcing through some spirit grace
the stunning news of love.
~

History's Elegy-a peaen to monism

Slipping through the fingers of my mind,
all those vague perceptions of the "I"
inside this body do provide a strange parade
behind the mirror of my life.

If I have learned from growing old,
the fallacy of endless plodding
from one victory until the next--
celebrating notches carved
down to that last bouquet
upon my grave, then it's no journey after all,
but an immersion into truth.

Make of the day, the captaincy of night,
a starship traveling from light to light
when time is one. Let wonder settle in
where hammer blows are dieing.
Stand off upon the crest of doubt
and watch creation groan,
a universe in manifest;
see the one, the present moment
coalescing in our hands,
for that is where the glory lies.
That is where the resurrection waits,
and only there beside the hidden God
the Alleluias ring.
~

The Ghost of Schrodinger's Cat

What is this thing that I may do,
that at this moment is no thing at all
...and cannot be until the it is done?
Thus having done, I must have nothing
for my rivalry with God.

This poor tormented cat
in every lifetime poured
but half a life and to this day
will play within a shroud, or worse
invisible.

She skulks around
the bleak, convenient pretense of a time
that knows not of mortality
nor falling of the hours.

Half a feline ghost, she mourns
the absence even of the now
and maddened both by science
and by time,

entrapped within her whimsied box,
in irony, may righteously lament
but we, the watchers,
still will never touch

her quantum-spiked magnificence.
~

War no More

May that faint light go out
upon a world that wrestles
in the fetid swamp of tears.
May the last uncompromising stream
expose the foul enormity
of battle screaming for
a darkened consciousness,
a day stopped rumbling
through the night
to gather strength for its return--
a wild imploring of death's benediction,
impetuous to cast off God.

Those are the glory days.
There is the refuge of the patriot.
There are the songs of victory,
the roll of drums
above the boxes in the earth
where children sleep.
There is no silence to a nation's pride,
but marching bands, flames across the sky,
the bugle calls, the guns
to break the irony of peace.
May I have surcease?
May I decline the folded flag,
the hand across my heart--
May I pledge instead my love,
my loyalty, my honor
to an island in the stars--
the mother of my brothers, sisters
and the breath that we were given
to share and cherish,
not to take away.
~

Reprise

Across the room
behind the shadow of his diffidence
he knew the passion of desire,
felt again the question forming on his lips,
while far outside the barrier
sealed from a hundred agonies,
not hearing stifled cries choked down,
the new prospective lover
slipping fast away, became
unknowing despot to the heart
obedient,
compressed.
~

My Father's House

Amit Goswami says, "The basis of consciousness is not the material world, but the unconscious. And, heaven is the collective unconscious." I have tried to approach this in a poem to see what my own unconscious (the center of creativity) might reveal:

My Father's House
I may tap into it,
as in the deepest well, drawing forth
that which I never saw before--
but carefully, balancing the wisdom
of my fear, against exuberance.

My children swim within the pool
beneath my mind; I do not know them
very well. They act as prompters
when I dare access
holistic mystery that rises
when the gods create.

My little gods!
Unruly as they are,
subservient to consciousness,
will not appear when I may call,
though on the cusp of all that I find beautiful.

Let he who chants the roundelay of madness,
turn the page and listen
to the antiphon of peace.
Let hurricanes subside
in combat with a single breath.
Let tumult die
before the fragrance of a rose,
and joy emerge where sorrow
knows no bounds.

It is an order not of hands,
this fanciful parental flight of refuge,
into a crystal void
where words are vanities,
where sense is like
a brooding spirit hovering
above the waters, yes
a mansion most bizarre
where love alone prevails.
where gods and goddessesgrow strong.

Such spirit residence must have
its downside in the skies,
its light ascending
from a paradise untouchable
beneath a mortal guise.

I know of nothing to explain
a metamorphosis from darkness,
tragedy, and strife.
and scarcely comprehend
that I am signedby resurrection and by life.
~

An Adult Lullaby

Awareness is some kind of god,
self-creating, just as daylight manifests
from nothing but the darkest hour.
Once again pure infancy, the height
of weakness is the roaring power
to titrate consciousness, precipitating bright Sophia,
from the night.

And there she reigns,
the avatar of all we know,
our mistress/mother made of dreaming,
come upon us as a flight
shy angels might elect...
and we who wish to trace beginnings
may as well drift through the stars forever,
never quite so blind as now....
never quite so filled with grace.
~

One World View

It is at best a silent teacher
this pin-point of reflected light...
this ball of blue and green
floating on the cooling rock...
this eminence that time congealed,
and in its wisdom
drawing forth the questions
as a heavenly grace,
eclipsing answers.

It has learned more than you and I
for its frail shell of atmosphere
will not repel the titans, always,
and embracing them, thus wounded
weeps and shudders,
storing up within itself
a heritage one day released
to all its children deep within the womb--
and then across the star trails, roaring
once again upon its journey
when there is no one to hear.
~

Meteorogeny

The snowflake crowd,
unlike John Donne's amorphous hominid,
inclines itself to glorify uniqueness,
standing off the main on frosted islands,
festooned in crusty, bigoted, uncommon
droplets soon, alas, drawn back
into the sky
.
Thus I, soaked by degree in rising heat
to my more common skin,
am pressed most hard
to locate loveliness, distinction,
or implied bravado
in a tiny, arrogant and disappearing
hexagon.

It is enough for me
to tramp the quasi-tropics of my island,
brush the fuzzy flakes away,
and dream of non-distinctive lovers
on the main.
~

Executioner's Song

Three walk the path to darkness on this night--
one to embrace, one to observe, and one
Deus ex Machina, a travesty
of the divine; the role is mine to serve
as I create. I am death's man.

There is a fissure in the earth
and I must stand alone
upon the other side
against all time.
Though on another day I might
perform the hero's art,
there is no part of me
that may be left to be redeemed.
I am death's man.

It matters not that my commission is
but once or many times--
that I am sweet and fair,
that I may laugh and lust
and forswear luxury before
all humankind,
I am death's man.

There is a shell around me; though it is
invisible, it still may hide
the gaping wound upon my heart.
It was my choice to be unique
although I could not know
the ultimate perfection
of that dull inchoate dread
which gathered over me
when I became death's man.

And do I pray, you say?
No hope, no penitence
may reach the void inside of me.
My smile alone is alien
and unreflected in return.
It is I, you do not know,
nor may I ever fathom you.
Now stand aside.
I am death's man.
~

Rx

Inside you
is the universe, entire
and in each instant
glorious and perfect,
shining as you feed the sun
with cast-off yesterdays.

A man called Jesus knew.
To he who has completeness, more is given.
We saints are destined to inherit every part
for we are works of art--
the golden orbs that flash upon the earth
and bless its kings with light.

That which remains for us
is just a word
--our "yes"to ratify the thunder on the path
--our dialogue with consciousness,
to laugh and celebrate
the measureless domain of God
. ~

Mystic thrall

Within you, do you feel it,
that compulsion to create?
Break the bands of mindlessness,
take up the song
that like a river surges
to the mothering sea.

Throw off the gait of common dreams
that plod the midnight hours
still mired in sunsets; spur instead
the silver crust of every restless dawn.
Each sends its wild "halloos"
across the moor to better fantasies
that speed the traveler home.

There is surprise upon familiar ground,
waiting for the moment,
an oasis of delight to celebrate
or pass on by. Listen!
There is tumult in the stillness;
there is a fearsome peace
you'll never understand,
yet in its tremulous embrace
the last descending God
would never be the same.
~

Lunaverse

The last alive upon the earth
sat down upon
the moon-illumined plain
to make an entryin his journal, knowing
that there was no one to see,
no morning yet to be.

Though madness raced
inside his brain
he chose his written words
more solemnly for they would be
the legacy of humankind
in florid, timeless script,
the declaration of a war.
~

Execution chamber

Execution Chamber

OK.
The priest just went out the door.
He didn't have a clue what I needed to hear.
I wish I did
.
All right guys, the straps and tubes are fine.
Fine? Yeah...bastards.
Midnight's black crow is flying at me.
Must it pull the shadows so close behind?
Please, a few more minutes?
Those faces behind the window look like corpses.
What do they think this is, fuckin' church?
Is that Harry in the second row?

Nobody understands.
Why is it so damn quiet in here?
I'm scared.
I'm cold.
I'm
~

World without End

It was on a day quite ordinary
that the stream of consciousness
bore gifts of green and white
and frozen silver
where the old ones walked.

The mind, about to turn away,
is captured. Something
not quite rising as a memory,
though brazen to presume,
thrusts in upon a reverie

that here a boy
took hold of dreams
and saw that past is bound
to tumult yet to be--
still hails from out of history;

its blood, not stanched
but flowing still. He climbs
the stockyard fence to watch
the mewling ghosts
hold sway once more, while

just beyond the hill,
the pines are sheltering
the little owls who never sleep--
their wisdom tractable
and flashing from their eyes.
~

Impressions of Cezanne

The light's remembering
is just reflection of its boistrous birth--
each pastel plain laid down recalls
an echo moment and a liquid sun
at play, for with his brush
he sculpts the earth anew
and sets the theme's array.

His view is of the time,
the friends, the gardens
in their softness taking memory
as dialogue within the mind,
creating that which may
not fade away.

Each yesterday returns
to lay its twilight down again
and on the soundless streets of town
we know
the purple rain is falling.

Portrait, sacred and profane

A heart quite overpoured is mine.
It replicates the breath
inspiring purity and art
with just a piquancy of lust,
expiring endings of romance
and promises, of wisdom in the dance
that holds decorum back
and celebrates the wilds
of fancy, balanced by
excursions of the moment
into love.

Two natures reach
across the table of my life,
and at the moment they are friends.
They vie for some ascendancy
but give no thoughtto final victory;
it is a badinage with no superior
but forthe instant flashing of reality,
the fleeting smile of tolerance,
the protocol of dreams.

And then the desert wind comes up
and passion flares. Sirocco dares
to cross the sea and steam my body,
yield, invoke the sanctity of art,
and bowdlerize the arcane glory
of desire. Thoughts of transcendence
intertwine the carnal heat, and I,
aware there are two men
who ride the storm within me,
am finally at peace.
~

The Crux of Hope

The crux of hope

Eight billion billion miles away,
the asteroid grows colder
as the one inhabitant
who has no god, falls to his knees
and blows upon the spark of light
he sees from one retreating,
distant star.
~

You ask where I am from?

A recent contest on another site challenged us to write on the subject, "Where am I from." I didn't know my entry would center on my mother, but that is the way it turned out:

You ask where I am from?

I am from a woman
who stretched out her breath
upon a hundred years,
and strikes upon this day
a distant voice,
a thunder tympanum advancing
low across the sky,
a heartbeat rising from the earth,
more eloquent because she is and was
a symphony without a score...
a dialogue of resonance within
that stretches out the years instead
and makes their number meaningless.

I, a part of the premiere,
partaking of the air that left her nostrils,
of the milk that drained her breasts,
am from a heritage of love;
a quiet patience that was her bequest,
adorned her like a jewel
too lovely to display its fire
but from her open heart.
~

Errant Scalpel

Delighting in my bliss
I split my personality today
as if to look aside
and find an argument
that I could follow through,
and win.

Alas, my adversary
had outsmarted me
and also sliced himself
in two.
~

At the Mountaintop

I asked the wisest man I know
just what it was beyond the word.
"Could it be God?" but he said, "No.
We used that up, millenia ago."

"But I have seen it,
heard it,
tasted it, not with my senses,
but with more!"

"For awhile, it seemed I died.
but then I realized, the I
behind my eyes, just didn't matter
anymore...the universe
was magnified, and all I knew
was love."

My mentor looked at me.
"For everyone, it is a secret
ke may see and not describe,
nor understand--not you,
not I,
nor may it ever be."
~

Elegy

A man stands on a hilltop, weeping.
Come and see.

For he has watched a nation unaware,
chipped away to just this memory.
We'd found that we could meet a war,
and through a sacrifice to find its end
and then in one obscenity, (a burst of light)
attended with our souls the foetal cavity
of madness--gave to the world
a blood-besotted flag,
and yielded up its ghost.

His tears come hotter, will not
be assuaged.

It was where love existed.
Beauty quietly confirmed itself
before our eyes; we had a god
and ate his flesh, and drank of him.
And once we lost ourselves in moonlight.
Once we sang.

We may not turn away;
such grief is unconsoled
and ever shared.
The man has tears enough for us.
The nation, swept away by greed,
left us this hilltop.
Come, and let us weep with him.
For all eternity.
~

To Reminisce

To Reminisce

It was as if the old ones re-appeared
to die again, to write the words within
blank lines-- to show that history
had carried on beyond my sight,
where vapors moved aside, made way
for breezes daring to intrude
upon a hot, dry summer afternoon.

How many stayed behind,
to age as upstarts, unconscious
of my wanderings, keepers of the town--
and then the one from college
modeling with his fingers
on the faces of the dead?

I sit here, looking for a reason
I should make a journey back.
They'd look at me, and not remember,
nor would I, but then perhaps just one
would look again

and for an instant there's that vapor
with its strange caress, the steeple clock
just chimed as school let out;
he'd see me step across the street
with my familiar gait,
and entertain one transient thought;
have I seen him before?
...No, let it go; it's late.
(I too, would never know

we once flew kites together,
made milkshakes at the time for rest
and always were the very best of friends.)
~

Childhood Tree

He was supposed to be there still
in forty years when I returned,
but then of course, a boy's home town
is metamorph and tolerates
old maples patiently until
old homes come down and new ones rise.
I'm glad I wasn't there the day
my old friend could no longer kiss
the skies, but fell and shuddered
on the earth, and bled in green.

Though not unique, this grandiose
old fellow was my first true friend;
I mourned him more than any human
that I knew, and though I hold
no faith in spirit trees, I was aware
when I came back, of his success
in taking part of me away, as well.

It is forever I have lost
the sostenuto of his loyallty.
Forever that his thunder of lament
is still...in heaven's now
and in the glade of hell.
~

Omega's Death

What have I done--
to crash the dome of heaven
upon the head of sweetness...
to turn a loving moment into pain?
It was a time to stand alone,
creating evil on the universal page
of paradise; I would not see
that there was no retreat.
Instead I seized the power
to banish innocence,
and by myself ignited
all the fires of hell.
For this, a pennance is too late;
no thought of magnitude
may temper it to save
the devil in the sky,
for he is I.
~

China God

Homo erectus, from the moment
that he looked into the dome above
and knew he could not stand to be alone,
raised up "El" in his own image,
let him step between our weakness
and our fears, then prostrate,
groped in vain to reach a new reality
that seeks escape as its device,
that glories in the niceties of elegance,
of twists and swirls,
baroque enhancing of an argument
now creased with time.

And vanity it is, all second sight,
all flowers in the night
that we had breathed before
and loved,
and fell upon with tears.
It is these pinpoint moments
flashing at us, that contain
a universe, a glory
to sustain a life, an era
made of breath, a now
that may not fade away.

The hunger does it...the holy lust
that drives us to ascension
in the mist of morning,
some kind of rapture
we were called to,
back within the cave.
~

On growing deaf

Each year
my world is muffled
just a little more. I watch
the ones I love, whose pique
grows more transparent
when I ask them to repeat.
I see them drifting somewhere,
and I know that I may not presume
to go along.

Behind the spongy walls
around my mind, I watch
this process of invisibility
that comes with my retreat...
how soon will they be unaware
that I am even there;
the ease with which I fade,
now sets in sooner, cued
by changing leaves not welcome yet
to crowd upon September.

No, martyrdom is not for me.
This padded universe affords
too much of spirit realm
to carry in despair. I leave you
bit by bit, abandoning my cares
with every crumbling sense
and thus prepare to navigate
the larger world within,
and there take refuge
in the silent consciousness
of truth.
~

Another plain

defies relating, near as breath,
as far as imagery capitulates,
and no one knows who has not visited
the is that cannot be,
nor ever seized within.

I touched its edge, full knowing
that it could not be contained,
or grasped, or even sensed
in its completeness. Nor
would begin to satisfy,
else its embrace might be defined
as love, or truth, or God,
or any such shortsighted blasphemy
our tiny words might throw.

No, it transcends all that
and if there be an end
we shall not apprehend
the roaring comet's rest
or find the consciousness
to see it sweep away the stars.
~

Directed by

We are illusionists, you know:
each molding fantasy
on opening night
for an indifferent crowd,
but mostly for ourselves.

That's not good news.
For when the curtain falls,
the morn will bring us no reviews;
the critics' faces will suffice.
How nice.

But I can try again...
this time.
~

Why

I never greet discovery
with all the joy
that it deserves,
for standing in the way is fear
that I will violate
its pure integrity
.
I may thus become aware
of danger
that my own protective shell
grows thinner still
when others look at me,
and fear to see
my own endemic sores
contaminate the world.
~

Closure denied

When they ask, I tell them,
"Yes, I have three sons--
and two are still on board."

Ten years are past,
and I may speak of you with ease,
with the knowing still inside me,
you are more alive than they;
more thoughts of you are churning
in the day that never ends,
in such a time that is for you
forever disappeared.

Point present is your heaven--
earth, the love you spurned.
Your spirit being
crowds upon my consciousness
as if to say that endings
may not cede surrender
to the falling dust frail fingers
will release--may not celebrate
eternal peace as if it were
their rite as well, to die.
~

A personal note

A beloved friend died yesterday unexpectedly. He was a
priest, a poet, a superb homilist and teacher, and a
loving man to everyone. The following is not a very good
poem, but expresses how I felt at the news, since I had
never realized how hard such an event can strike.

Richard

Yesterday you took away too much:
your eloquence, your passion,
and your love, but then today
you gave me something quite tremendous
that I never had before--
that certainty of knowing,
just how much I cared.
~

Horizons

I seem to be a malcontent;
my restless eyes scan to the East,
across the plain and then beyond the hills
to where the night beats down,
to where the past surrenders
to the winding earth.
But then the throes of agony,
create the day.

There is some irony
in such a gaze upon the past,
hurrying tomorrow--
some parallel to every warrior's
pleading for the coup de grace
to set it all apart.
There is the I-ness, I forever own,
the consciousness we share,
that I may never dare renounce.

No darkening wisdom, here,
likewise no flashing joy
from the transition.
There is no spirit reticence,
no fear of time, or death,
or loss. Not for me
the sunset of a cross,
the headless tumbrel ride
back from the guillotine;
it is the East that draws me
through the night,
and may within its grace
requite the day with still another
gracious birth.
~
~

Insight

Perspective has that gift
of being present when,
though nothing changed,
and it is not,
then everything has changed.
The quiet started and
there are those strange
interstices between awareness
that how like a butterfly,
permit the gentle resting
for the moment,
of a non-existent thought.
~

~

Time Out

What is it?
Something stirs within
and while I look upon a scene,
then I become aware-- emotions roil;
memory kicks in, nostalgia follows,
the raw material for poetry is there.
No event has called it forth,
but still there is that tightness in my belly
that I may not throw aside.
There are no words as yet,
no formula for wisdom,
not a mountain waterfall or tear.

The scene itself is just device.
There are thousands of them,
all of one reality, blending in a moment
and the call to consciousness
becomes the phantom muse.
Somewhere a quantum flashed,
and in its tiny universe,
a bold electron jumped its orbit
'mid a festival of the unknown
to make me turn my head
and see.

So that must be.
And I must write,
not of that which I may know
but of that microcosm never stopping
at the field before my eyes,
for it is singing exaltation in the dance,
its antiphon surprise,
its destiny, romance.
~

Castles in the Sand

Gray warriors entertain
the myth of pride in victory
or sacrifice of love drained out
and running red into the ground.
Tradition's heroism.

There is a way to settle it.
There is a way of timeless honor still available
to set upon the course of peril--
a soil to stand on, still unknown.
It has the purity of loss,
and is pristine enough to foil
the hypocritic sands of artifice.
Sometimes.

I dream of sands that will prevail
to mold upon the crust of earth
a work of art, a restless texturing
to make the spirits cry in ecstasy,
to resonate with every heartbeat
from the deep, awakening
the serendipity of joy
.
Direct your longing out beyond the cliffs
where all the winds begin;
where that which sculpts the earth,
that mothering, may speak of elegance,
that everyday enchantment from within,
proactive as the benefice of innocence
from royal children frolicking
upon the beach.

How many feet will race the tide,
first to efface their handiwork?
How many tears will still preserve
the matrix of the insouciant sand?
~

Water World

There is the constant danger we may drown.
One learns
to take a promise with serenity
for waves of bliss in any victory are short.
Events move in
like unexpected flood tides on the islands--
pressing on attention,
stealing from contented images
built in the past,
demanding burial at sea.

And we must let them go,
for were there not an ocean there
to hide the present to the moment
when it suddenly appears,
there is no voyage,
no suspended triumph
and no thrill of doubt.

Will you drink with me,
the wine of God?
May we celebrate uncertainty,
the ports of call we may not see,
and yes the turbulence
that we ourselves create
in transient souvenir.

If that is not enough
there is the fury
of the rain,
the tempest,
and the blood
diluted in the deep,
the gift to sponge away
the curse of time...
before the tide returns.
~

First Day of College

The syllabus was likely to arouse
vain sentiments of a nobility
he never felt before.
Eight o'clock on Monday morning,
books and pencils not yet burdensome,
and down the hall, the classroom
where he hoped to be inspired,
would seize his body and his mind
and shake them, make them scorn
the adolescent scampering,
and he still not aware.

How dare the prof presume to teach him
how to take his notes...
how to detect his nakedness.
So much for sociology--
so much he did not see!

And that is what it was to be,
the years to dawn aware
of cavities, not knowledge,
wisdom just to contemplate in awe,
nor in presumption dress
yet late that night
six tender new-born men
will sit together in a tiny room
and speak of Rabelais and Eckhart
unconcerned about a rest
surrendered to the looming day.
~

Oblivion

The flight is past, the crane is gone
and there above the silt and clay,
the scattered reeds and sticks
of sheltered birth,
the precipice and promise of a life
are disappearing, soon to leave
no trace of the wild delta's mothering,
no echo of the cries of flegling hunger
tearing at the heedless skies.

She will return another year
to co-create her own;
her semi-conscious faint remembering
begins crescendo of the urge within
to gather once again
the transient nursery
to host a miracle, and fly away.

The delta too, endures
the smolderings of consciousness,
it also throbs within
to host its god of genesis each year
and then to watch him die,
to feel the sterile winds
clear everything away
in their escaping irony
without so much as a goodbye.
~

Another Way to Grieve

Is a memory less real
than the event that it replays,
or the video that seized its light?
Death trifles with them both,
powerless,
not of itself twice born.

I see a picture of my son;
the image on my brain sees life
unfading, and I may
immerse myself within that vibrancy
assuring me that death
becomes the more elusive lie
though as I sift
his ashes through my fingers.
I know he did not die.

There is no past, no future,
and the present gone
before my consciousness accepts it--
this photograph performs
the thin totality that shines
upon my mind
through each forever,
giving birth within an avalanche
of still another trillion worlds
behind.
~

Poet's song

It is in the first of morning
that I sense my magnum opus--there
among that which is most mundane,
and like a ghost that I
may never see or touch--
of which I know no thing at all,
except that he is there.

I said it was not fair
that he should haunt me,
said that he is mine;
let him emerge from shadow's shell
and ride my lips,
my mind, my passion,
then release from spirit realm,
no matter how diaphanous,
another breath of truth.

I know.
As Adam felt a universe implode for him
within his consciousness
and as his sinews formed,
he gave us God
creating in the endless dance
among the stars,
co-creating in our midst
while light shone down

his own magnum opus,
(and for me as well)
a pathway for retreating night,
and all the painters, sculptors,
physicists called out for light,
became aware of texture
and the price of tears...
and time and years
could disappear.

He is my friend,
this little formless god
who plods along with me,
not big enough to share.
Come on, a little farther,
there is starlight here, he says,
and you
have not yet learned to dance.
~

Aware of Awareness

That I know,
that I have insight
is a grace, so I am told.
But how much more
may wonder yet abound
when I become aware
that I have known the world
to stretch its shore for me,
disclose its mystery
behind the mists
else I should be
confined forever
in cold certainty.
~

Taking Stock

Three years to go
and if I fill them all with breath
eight decades will click in, complete.
Already I may pinch my skin
and see the ridges stay
when I release.

It is a curious thing that I observe,
not at all my self, this body
dancing with old twigs, smooth rocks,
and closet skeletons.

I don't hold much
with praying anymore,
would not reclaim decaying youth
when I was much too dull to see
that every now is all there is,
and all there needs to be.

Is that not risible?
That life may not afford
another hope at all? Shall I
one moment after death
be loathe to die?
~

Fantasies

Do they invade our consciousness,
or are they merely mental paintings
of our unfulfilled desire?
Always, the happy endings
add cloud fluff, and drift away
a little while until we call them back.

Little comedies, they are,
for just an audience of one.
No budget, no critique,
no lines to memorize,
no little boy to stand outside,
his nose pressed to the glass
and wondering.

Just now, however, I am looking back at him
and wishing, oh so very much
that he were really there
to watch these pictures all go by
and share his insights
molded from the womb, sparing me
the dark-begotten gains
of my sophisticated greed.

Move on, young fellow.
Flirting with the dead is not for you.
Here is your brush and canvas.
Go on and paint for us reality--
paint only what you see.
~

The path behind my eyelids

The path behind my eyelids

The inner course contains
a happy irony.
for as I seek the higher self,
I see the breakaway
of little pieces of the I
and there is no regret,
for even self
is locking up his empty house,
content to evanesce.

There is no question of nobility;
no self-effacing sacrifice.
There is no loss,
for though the all we know
be just a child of mind
it is complete forever;
you and I are none
that may contend, are one
to consummate a universe
without an end.

There is a single refuge
from the storm, the fire, the enemy.
There is a single element
that will surpass desire,
to place reality beyond pretense.
It is the only certainty I know,
the antidote to strife,
for love alone one day
will take me by the hand
to cross the bridge of death
from life to life.
~

A stitch in time

Somewhere the watcher sits
upon the instant moment's edge--
there, where spirit smiles, as if
to punctuate the order of the day.

And all the while, the breath is pending.
All the while, the heart rests,
time dissolves, and God may sleep
upon a throne still etched in light.

Might that one trillionth of a second
mark a new eternity? The concept
dressed in fantasy, becomes fair game
and I must step within.

Any photograph will do.
A present simply gifted,
storms the battlements of history
with just the turning of a page.
Enter
.
With a click of will there is created
life forever, sweeping down
upon complacency, a Narnia
upon a timeless stage
to touch, to resurrect,
to catch upon the air another now,
another living tapestry
of consciousness--quite enough,
I think, to fill a restless soul.
~

Meditation on Love

(Canto I)
It is vision, not desire, that moves us.
It revels in its glimpse of each eternity
All that is real may flood our eyes
and feed our hearts--a universe
our hands may never touch.

It is the priceless gift of weakness
we may cherish now,
not in ourselves alone, for need
provides love's moment
as love's catalyst--
rushing in upon us suddenly
as if it were a wave
to drown our cloying peace.

The well of tears is deep, compelling,
offering the draught of memory
so soon released before,
so set aside for laughter's sake,
so alien to the desert's rootless plain.
There is new joy in weeping here.

Then feed upon such love as this.
Breathe it as each quantum particle
may catch and send its spirit light
between millennia--translate the longing
in each chest for loveliness
and weep with me
among the wounds of innocents
that cannot heal.

Weep, and rage, and pound
upon the thunder in the sky
that speaks of love unable to return,
that speaks of loss within soft rain,
forever unredeemed.

The wound is open when the love crowds in.
Somehow the irony of joy and tears
must dwell together;
tragedy must marry triumph.
Ke who celebrates undying breath
must cling in kira love to kira death.
~
Canto II
Though love may be the bond
that seals the universe,
it may not be defined...
not created, nor brought to an end.
Unseen, untouched, unjudged,
it may attenuate its fire
but never die
despite the cooling of desire.
It is the blessed tie that speeds
its "yes" across the emptiness
of loss, and of the darkening day.
~
Canto III
My mind swept through
the gamut of analogy
to teach what love is.
Only one who knows
may understand, for knowing
of itself is undefined.
The promontory made for leaping
is unreachable--love's gift remains
the mystery creating all the world
of this unending now.
~

And there was evening, and there was morning--another day

Aware of light beneath the eyelids
clinging to the world just departing,
folding silently away,
I feel but slight reluctance...
as if the final chapter of a book
were too soon taken from me--
is that what death is like?
Is that the way the spirit I-ness planned?

I think these shifts of consciousness
are slivers of the pie,
surprise rehearsals
for a laudable adventure
in transition soon to come,
when breath is softer still
and with the barest touch of sadness
drifts away to die.
~

The Invisible Man

The Invisible Man

My thoughts keep coming back,
reflecting on the hour glass,
and knowing with the bottom mostly full
and darkness closer by,
the thing I was supposed to do
is undefined, retreating
in the now descending dusk,
a most sardonic eulogy, indeed,
for I shall never even see myself!

There is a cadence beating
as I turn within. It echoes
as the truimph's hollow drums
would sound beneath the pines
along the Appian way, a counterpoint
to whispers that thou art a man,
a shell, a fallen leaf thrust by the wind,
accountable the least of all
to some invented pride.

There is a song within such turning,
that is unsung, unending,
like a silent god, an unobtrusive,
still insistent art in parallel
along the corridor I walk.
It is the spectre that I also do not see.
It is the consciousness I share
unborn, undying,
and the I-ness that I do not dare
to touch.

And were I then to reach for it,
would you as well?
And are we not dependent
on the swell of every soul fulfilled?
Upon the hope clean ecstasy
may bring to sing at last
when all the silence bursts
upon us...

Come, and bear with me
the crashing of the sea,
the fire emerging from beneath,
the planets crumbling,
the blackened sun--for that
we shall espy
within an endless cosmos of the mind
that cannot calculate
the way to die.
~

ParaDieu

ParaDieu

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 merely me,
an object over there, apart
from unity.

Yet all is one. Subject, I am
and which I am, is not.
And was it not a God we heard
to claim to be? I like it not
to be a God within,
without a trinity
I cannot fathom--one
I surely cannot know.
Empty, therefore,
may it ever be
that I am not?
~

From a Christian in Exile

From a Christian in Exile

Do not think me cold of heart
if I decline to kneel before your God.
For I may pass within my mind,
into another room
and find its walls have given way
to vastness such, that if a man
before a throne were there, then he
would draw his hands before his eyes
in order not to see--my ecstasy
is by default...the rooms,
the rooms give plunder to the heart.

There are mansions in my father's house,
and still undreamed,
prepared by still another Lord
who will not wait for death,
imparts no benediction, just a place within
where time will drift away, and love creeps in.

The Savior knew about the lonely place
--led us there in life, and not by dieing;
(There were crosses quite enough
to teach us all of sacrifice) our salvation
trumpet sounded on a silent shore
before a stranger kingdom
than the one we knew,
before the outrage of a second birth,
before the blazing tumult
of a Galilean peace.
~

To Doctors Murray, Minor, Furnivall, and all

To Doctors Murray, Minor, Furnivall, and all

The breaths of sighing are time travelers
that draw one hundred fifty years up close
and reify old ghosts who will not sleep
between the pages of a history that they created.
Setting self aside,they died
with only slight regret, aware
that they would never see the end, yet knew
the glory of the OED* in birth.

Look back at them, who saw ahead to us
and breathe your sighs in concert, for you are
fulfillment of their dream to prowl the earth
beyond the breadth of England, or the sea,
to hold a candle high above the page
of humankind that speaks from every age.
~
*The Oxford English Dictionary

Come, let us reason together

Come, let us reason together
It was at the gate we waited
hoping that the wind would change,
and still within our hearts that cavity
of sure despair.
It was denial that sustained us,
and the flame of rhetoric
that threw its light upon us;
mutatis mutandis we shall win!
And we do not.

The war grinds on
and victory dies at the breast;
mother love is its undoing.
Second hand, her own sustaining
feeds our weakness
and preserves our infancy.
Most certainly it is the toys
of adult contrivance that we hurl
out of the motherland,
out of the treasure store we filled,
out of the crib of hate
we cannot understand.
~

Confessions of a Panentheist

Confessions of a Panentheist

There was no tearful parting from my God.
I merely saw him pale before the light of truth,
and fade before me. It was as if he knew
I didn't need him anymore, although
he didn't need to say goodbye,
for he was everywhere.

How can it be, his love is stronger still?
There is no "he," no icy realm,
no flame within his breath
to ward off beasts,
engage the penalty of death,
or thunder from the mountain
as we cower in holy fear.

No, we created those,
and they were phantom devils
masquerading in egoic foil
to all the weakness we might gather
to our prayers, all the feral predators
beyond the fire at the door.

The love is just for us,
the taproot of that true reality
that groans within us.
It is the stuff of Namaste
that snuffs out darkness,
re-creates a spirit peace
within each minute particle
someone forgot. How may it,
in its quietude,
rage as a storm around us,
as a hurricane within?

In truth, there is no object
to its furious assault. It is us,
in wonder absolute that this strange wind
blows to and from infinity,
and yet still bends to our control.
This cosmic mind is such
to speak in whispers,
yet it spans the curvature of time and sky
for listeners like you and I.
~

Quixote Lives

Quixote Lives

What tablets yet await our opening eyes?
What murmers through the ether rise
and coalesce on stone and slate and monitor
and on a consciousness transcending art
with but a thrust into a calloused heart?
A single year or a millenium times ten,
one prophet dreams to see a nova ray of truth
exploding o'er his longlost grave.

Feeble eyes are open,
gathering energy and filtered light,
not theirs alone.
For as a savior and his ragged band
upended sense forever after,
it is not the stalwart phalanx marching
to proclaim a magnitude of grace
beyond a bloodied beach.
It is the flaming chariot Elisha saw
that throws its light on all the history to come
when time is lost. It is the steadfast search
to offer up the blood of life,
the glistering ghost upon the mountain,
precursor of a spirit light
that floods all humankind.

The door is for the entrant,
lock unknown. The feast in splendor laid
beside Siloam's pool, Zaccheus' tree,
or the lordotic leper's bed;
Teresa's cup of water turned to wine
that I would sip after the beggar tastes and dies.
Alleluia! Alleluia!
~