Hors de Combat

Hors de Combat

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

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

Like love.
~

'

A Song for Abraham

A Song for Abraham

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

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

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

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

The Shadow of a Stroke

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

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

Where Angels Tred

Where Angels Tred

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

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

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

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

Richard's Outrage

Richard's Outrage

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

Parable for Obscurity

Parable for Obscurity

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

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

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

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

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

Half a Ghost

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

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

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

Ecclesiastes Now

Ecclesiastes Now

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

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

Stability

Stability

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

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

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

Conflict Resolution

Conflict Resolution

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

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

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

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

A Perfect Love

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

A Pefect Love

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

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

Now and Evermore

Now and evermore

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

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

Reality Buffet

Reality Buffet

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

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

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

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

Which Was, and Is, and Is to Come

Which Was, and Is, and Is to Come

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

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

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

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

What kind of Paradise

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

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

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

Reductio

Reductio

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

unveil the poetry distilled

until reagents strike at all the barriers

that we erect in love, in agony,

in little niches, shadowy within the walls

along the course to home.

The night is warm and lovely,

radiance too harsh for summer's mists;

encomium may palliate the grave

yet leave it heaving with the frosts of truth.

May I not listen to the night?

May I not revel in its sweetness?

There is the lover with a heart congealed;

I would not see the distillate.

I could not care, for I am moved

not by nuance but by the lumbering

advance, the shameless ploy

of glorious beasts too wise

to manifest themselves within

that paradise of art I face,

that soft chagrin emerging, ghostlike,

from around my pen.

~

A pause upon an evening walk

A pause upon on an evening walk

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

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

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

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

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

The Villain's Song

The Villain's Song

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

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

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

Letting go

Letting go

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

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

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

Listening to the Silence

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

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

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

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

Intimations of Hell

Intimations of Hell

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

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

I think

I think

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

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

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

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

In point of fact,
I am.
~

Awakening

Awakening

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

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

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

In the Name of God

In the Name of God

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

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

En Garde

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

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

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

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

The Mystery of Love

The Mystery of Love

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

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

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

To Gramps

To Gramps

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

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

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

Halfway to a Dream

Halfway to a dream

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

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

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

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

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

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

Journey Apart

Journey Apart

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

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

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

As charged

As charged

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

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

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

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

Back in the Old Hometown

Back in the old hometown

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

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

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

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