The Revelers

"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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.
~

A

A

that I may be
attuned
to the requiting
at the edge
of my existence
where I meet
another soul
attuned
to mine
~

It's Always Morning

It's Always Morning

There is a sliver of the dawn
upon the earth and sky,
as escort to the sun that speeds the day
and will not let it die....that rushes forth
aggressively upon the penitence of night.

So is the love that travels on that constancy,
in haste to flood the nether earth
with light arriving as a grace,
that perquisite inborn in all humanity,
and dusty with neglect.

It falls upon us, sweepers of
this cosmic bridal path, to celebrate
a permanent retreat of shadow,
consecrate the razored liberation
of surrender to the dark.

It falls to morning as the benison of day.
Its racing touch upon the sluggish earth
is the pursuer, not the fugitive.
It is the fabled hound of heaven,
its brilliance a progenitor,
an aid to understand
the raging nebulosity of man.
~

What time is it?

What time is it?

The time is always now;
then come invent with me
a treasure we shall never lose,
for if there is no future time at all
then it may never force itself
upon us...how?
How may it ever cease to be
if it may not become?
And if there is no ending
fear itself is hollow, empty,
airless in its hovering,
so let it waft away,
less than a dream,
less than a now in memory's retreat.

We are amazing, are we not,
creating our eternity?
Here is your now, and here is mine,
and I shall have a God today
while you, preoccupied with yours
may not come out to play
although you may within our fancied
planetary course, yet share with me
a common-birthed bewilderment
at such a wondrous cutting edge
on which we ride.
~

Closing In

Closing In

The distillation of a thought,
how like the science of a touch—
to brush aside the pretense,
scope within the lake of memory
and know that still intact
is all the passion there submerged,
genuine, for all the years unknown.

How rare! That light may penetrate
the depths of false despair, that history
may reappear and flash its insight
once again upon the yellowed obfuscation
of a consciousness worn clear of hope,
a blindness self-imposed and born
of ennui and pride.

Then from the waves, Excalibur,
and from concentric heritage
a triumph—to the lady evermore,
a mystery surrounding her,
past the eternity of men
who then must yield it back again,
drawn underneath the surface
of the mind of God.
~

Of Red

Of Red

Red flames its connotations at me
in machine gun style as I stand apart,
gazing down upon a viscous blood
that gathers on the ground.

It darkens, as to pour on
an offending brown of quasi innocence,
defiance of its claim to urgency,
though crimson petticoated ladies
scream, and stream away.

A color holds for me too much of sway
to siphon off mere brightness
from a twilight evil
just to make a point; it screams and rages,
throws romance upon a dalliance,
excites a passion far too colorless alone
to sweep a lady of the night
into the morning.

It takes its purplish and golden hues along
reluctantly. It is a prima donna
unassuaged upon its fearsome quest
to rule the sky at sunset when
those mocking soft pastels would rather
whisper their reflection of the day.
~

A Thing to Prize

A Thing to Prize

The sense of loss
transcends accounting,
hovering instead as that one gift
itself uncountable, to rank
with heaven's stars as candles
for a cosmosphere that blesses
with its questions, wrenches anguish
from its cursed calm, and dies perpetually
before the face of sins undreamed.

No savior in his mortal frame
might fair eclipse of that, indeed
personify a paradox so terrible
that for the curvature of time
all other entity may fall away
before the might of such pure frailty.

Presumption fails, and it remains
that loss alone is genuine
among the treasures of the mine.
Its power is infinite to wring the heart,
swing back the gate of pride
and open wider still another door
once spurned, a fool's magnificence
called love.
~

Veni Creator

Veni Creator

In traverse of the cave of my desire,
the next is fashioned from an ember
keeping faith within, silent, simply there
as called upon to glow between my palms—
to sing with borrowed voice
a song not heard before.

The next is that which calls
when there is life in unknown packages,
a little hill beyond plateau, and suddenly
for us to know, to leap upon,
proclaiming, "It is good."

Stay fast upon the embers warming
that vast interchange of spirit enterprise
upon us—manifesting where it will,
testing a reality that only sings within.

It is a mystery to covet, that rare fire
that flashes only on consent,
on love's conjunction with desire,
on restlessness preceding
holy intercourse when soul
may enter universal mind
and next is born.

A birth alone, no answer
from the churning black outside.
The question burning,
"Muss es sein?"
"Es muss sein."
~

The Educated Man

The Educated Man

"He can sit in a room, and not perish" *
Or might he stand upon the deck,
release the dove, and weep for years,
not for its loss,
nor for the triumph of its flight
above the waters; they are not of God,
they are the backwash of our fears.

There in his room alone,
imprisoned by his conscience
he may let his mind fly free
while fears beneath his wings
may no more flood the ground.
But we are not alone;
we have the educated man fulfilled...
and weeping. He has not such irony
for comfort.

It is a flood to cling to.
Fears, we understand;
they are our bulwark
when an educated man could speak—
could sweep us all away with wonder,
separate us from such grand pretensions.


We are not free to weep with him.
We may not seek the refuge of the mind,
eyes not for insight, not for closing,
senses bound upon another time
away, another circus of distraction,
yes, another box of little men
to dance upon the screen.

It is a dance to take away our fears,
a dance beguiling death,
suspending it awhile with candied tears
and frosted dreams protecting us from envy,
nodding to the educated man apart,

who sits there in his room alone
and weeping for us,
just as we who may not see
across the arch of his reality,
cannot.
~
*quotation from Jacques Barzun

A Capital Farewell

A Capital Farewell

"Will someone love me, please?
You see that I am naked now,
without a rag of pretense;
my province is an alpha lost,
a phoenix dessicated
in omega's ash."

We may look down at him;
in reaching out, he exercised
imperial domain
to choose his destiny.

Then pass him by
with but a modicum of pity.
See? ...an emperor indeed
of infinite resource,
who never touched
the soft infinity of power
to reach within.
~