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.
~