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.
~