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.