Sunday, December 21, 2008
No Reason Apart
The noise of this age
Is in its insistence
That there is more to be had,
And a reason to be glad,
Other than and apart from
The slaying...
...in every breath.
...in every thought, low and lofty.
...in every thorn plunged, meat marred.
...in every plea, desperate for redemption
From them all.
Reasons.
When all that remains
When these dark days
End
Is the soul
From You
For You
To You.
To be You.
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
My Shadow Remains
What have I lost that I did not
Lose upon entering this world?
Are not the seasons marked, indelible,
Never to be defaced?
So why do I grieve?
For these dreams that coiled
Around me, now fragments
Of broken bone.
For the light that now
Has its place where the wind
Spirits away its spoils. And here
In this old man of a cabin
Only my shadow remains.
My shadow remains.
Saturday, November 22, 2008
Hits and Misses
Let loose to the wind your many attempts
At divinity, and watch your skin crack,
Your knees fold, your calcifications
Double. You thief. You steal His air,
His grass, His plums--and with them,
His throne. The dust beckons.
The slither of worms call.
You go laughing and He laughs with you,
As His peace is served, your light is snuffed.
It would have been different
Had you heard divinity in the wind.
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
A Moment in My Pocket
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
The Lesson
Oh, yes, it is as if
The final drop of the storm
Has landed; and now eyes,
Dimmed by clouds gray and forlorn,
Can see the working man's sun,
Dimmed, gray and forlorn
No more.
It is so, for seasons teach
That the valleys and its specters
Must give birth
To the hills and its angels.
It is so. It was then;
So shall it be today;
And again in the carefree morrow.
Thursday, October 16, 2008
The Stickman
The stickman
He moves
With steps ailing.
He looks
Up to
The yellow sky
As the brown earth
His tears kiss.
He looks
Down on
His shriveled hands,
These hands
Have small mouths
To feed and clothe
And love.
But he wishes
To pierce
The yellow sky
Across the black expanse
For home to reach.
Yet not now.
Not soon.
There are small mouths
To feed and clothe
And love.
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
The Philippians 4:6 Cat
A black and white cat rests splayed atop the dusty pavement,
The occasional breeze ruffling his otherwise already disheveled fur.
His mind is on the shaking in the bushes that eavesdropping has brought to his senses:
It may be dinner beckoning or just the naughty wind.
But now he's too contented to move a muscle and too busy being a cat
To fret over a lost rat. So he returns to sleeping,
Fretting over nothing, too busy being a cat.
Friday, September 5, 2008
The Daily Joke
Never a day sighs
Its last breath
Into nothing
When I'm not driven
Onto hard ground,
To wet the floor
Cold with weeping
For fresh vision
Of a heart rancid.
Many a time
Have I wished
A departure
From the taunts of the sun
And moon; they shake
Their heads at me
For each sees the same,
The sun and moon.
They scream,
"Shape up, boy!",
And go their way
Shaking their heads,
"See you tomorrow".
Friday, August 29, 2008
Black and White
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Quiet Twinkling Stars
The quiet twinkling stars
That litter
The purple midnight,
They each have their songs.
Faces and forms,
Their peculiar graces,
Bound up in a sense
Spiritual in sad music.
The heart longing
For soft, sweet light
Finds satisfaction
In sad star songs,
When the purple midnight speaks
Of quiet fire on blank faces
And lonely forms
Spiritual in sad music.
Thursday, August 21, 2008
True Winners of the Race
Wrists and ankles burn and itch
From these shackles hanging
Like red rusty vines
From burned-out trees:
Rats in suits racing
For ethereal cheese,
Clawing,
Snarling,
Leaving teeth
Lodged
On grimy hide.
Some stumble, crushed
Never to bare
Whiskered smiles.
While the wise
On lush prairies
Roam the plains,
With them laughing
Their little ones.
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Ash Heap Hearts
Friday, August 15, 2008
Wisdom
Saturday, August 2, 2008
Life and Times
Travel times--those minutes, even hours,
On your ass, seeking a destination.
Sometimes the stroke of a pen
Seats you beside someone that makes
The hands or the sands move or fall
Unnoticed. At such times travel times
Are worth the furrowed brows and
Awkward knees.
But then there are better times
When your head allows for a sweet
Indulgence: the reading of a book
And the gleaning from it of spices
And fragrances, seasoning and spilling
Over to your need. At such times travel times
Are worth the furrowed brows, awkward knees, and
Sore ass.
But a lifetime--those years, even decades,
On your ass, seeking a destination,
Knowing not where where is--
Is furrowed brows, awkward knees, and
A sore ass forever.
Friday, August 1, 2008
Limp and Claimed by the Light
Thursday, July 31, 2008
At Ease
Sunday, July 27, 2008
One Rainy Night
Saturday, July 26, 2008
My Daughter's Daisy
A yellow daisy
Greets my revival
Onto a drab
Saturday morning.
Assaulted
By vivid light
Bouncing off eight
Grooved petals
And a fluffy darker core.
It would be
Just any flower
Queued for
The thoughtless
Wither
If not for
The fact, a fact
That formed worlds
And shed blood
Divine,
That it was plucked
In the throes
Of light
And love
By my smiling child.
Friday, July 25, 2008
Warden
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Alive on Metaphysics
I would rather
Be the greased-up rocker
Floating like a rag
On the streets of the metro
Grinning for nothing
But maintaining
A mind to dwell on
Metaphysics
Than any respectable fellow
About to pop
From affluence but
Missing something
The one thing
That looks living in the eye
And enlists the bloke
In the affairs of the King
Making living
Into something
None other than
Living
Saturday, July 19, 2008
Box
The rigid play
Of lines
On a box
No deviancies
But a consistency
An integrity
That I burn for
A daily clamor
That keeps my eyes
Opening upon
Every lifting of
The curtain
On the light parade
Which is reason
Not enough
But the only one
To be boxed in
By schemes
That slay
The old hunkered
Down habits
By ones that make for
Immortality
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Living Water
Friday, July 11, 2008
Parody
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
My Kitty
Have you ever walked the streets
And stopped for a while to wade
In a well-timed gush of cool wind
When suddenly, at your feet, a kitty
Rubbing her face against your ankles
Catches you wide-eyed and warmed?
How fearless, you think to yourself.
How small but with a heart big enough
To trust this towering alien.
How against all instinct of flight
She came not for just anyone--but you.
She really is a pretty one, you muse,
Stooping to stroke her face, her back,
Her belly, and her sides. You decide
To cup her gently in your robust hands
And bring her home, knowing
As cats often do, that she might
One day stand aloof, away
From the heart and hands
That penned these words.
Creating You
This poem is for nothing more than
Words let loose like ants in ordered panic
After the boot has heaved their heavenly earth
From off its Babel form.
No necessary theme.
Bereft of crafty schemes.
Just words.
I can think of dripping honey
And a three-day slumber.
Ah, beautiful words.
Anything to fuel creation.
It's all about creation.
Procreate and produce.
Not just any trifle fart, but the real.
The you. Create the you.
In your words speak worlds
Into being.
Like dripping honey and a three-day slumber.
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
Bukowski
As I watch Bukowski be himself,
Seeing how genius fluorished
In a pot of flaming earth, scorched
By the man who would normally be called father
But in this case gnawing pestilence;
How in his escape from the whipping and
From the marring of human clay, disfigurement,
Into a world where despair was lifeblood
And the glimmer of gold in the bottle was
Communion with the gods;
Amidst the parade of flesh, too late in coming
Yet too soon to fade, from where many moons
Shone, both in the whisky sky and rooms
Dank and ailing--I recognize
Creation, art, intellect, and the bruised child
Held like a delicate bud in Hands
That meant for words from wounds--upward,
Glorious and etched in forever--to fly.
And I am better off for it.
Monday, July 7, 2008
The Pumpin' Stinger
Saturday, July 5, 2008
Horse Smell
I wish you
A plane crash
Just when you're feeling
All white and one
A nasty plunge
Into
A blackened
Steel-thorned forest
Alone
I wish you
Stripped
Of your vestments of pomp
Yeah
See those imps
Coming they come
To claw
Their way through
To pretty hypocritical you
Scream soaking wet
Run to escape
The laughter of a million peeks
Bar the doors
Burn out the lights
Still inside
Pungent whore smell reeks
Thursday, July 3, 2008
All Over the Place
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Coffeelation
I Am Pleased
I am cross-legged behind a computer.
Looking to my left, I spot asleep
My wife, crouched like a cave over
David, a sharpened arrow fashioned
In the swirling mass of glory that
Is the mind of God.
The bright pools that are Sophia's eyes,
Her wavy hair blacker than any black
I've seen on hair and the way
She is her name, these please me.
I breathe in the air of a gift opened.
That waft of love that is the upward
Curve in the lips of Him who makes men
Through the love of them--and I am pleased.
Monday, June 30, 2008
The Fruit of Peace
These bones are critters that scurry through a freshly-mopped floor.
Eyes that dream of a cool freshly-made bed are lead...sinking
To the bottom of free days.
A few hours of darkness and a crack of light
From an old wooden door, strange wind
From a screened window covering skin,
And the fruit of peace is plucked and had.
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Green Leaves
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Fire Child
Would you skim through your breaths
Like a pebble flung across a placid stream?
Forgetting the eyes thirsty for just
A glimpse of fire in the sky--of fire
That walks among corn stalks leaving
Chaff in its wake.
She looks up singing, looking for the blaze,
The same inferno that rages within her--perhaps,
She is not alone.
Looking down on her rain-soaked feet, she wonders
How the sun loved the moon.
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
Incarceration
The peace that moves with the swaying of the mango leaves
On the provincial plains of our ancestors
Is the same peace that curdles within the man
Inside a prison cell.
Solitary.
Beating.
Listening.
To rivers screaming the past
And whispering the enlightened hope
Of mango leaves swaying
On the provincial plains of his ancestors.
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
The Colors of a Shadow
My best bud is sometimes dark, a pristine black,
when the sun winks.
He contorts, shifts shape,
sometime dwarfed, sometime humongous,
sometime my size. He follows me around
when the sun winks.
I see him in vivid color when
I stand behind glass.
I realize we've been meeting like this
for so long now, he's never late.
Whether I'm brutish or the softest child,
he sticks, reminding me
of my many colors.
For so long I was not much
of a buddy to him. He was
often dismissed while I went
wielding swords against familiar
dragons, but somehow
we fought as one.
The days have aged and
my friend remains,
steadfast in our commune, but now
I am to him as he was
to me--he would've taken dragon
teeth in my stead. It took
an angel behind the glass to make
me see when she spoke,
I love the rainbow after the rain.
Monday, June 2, 2008
The Love Pig
Friday, May 30, 2008
Blue Mountain
Beneath a mountain, immense as it is grayish-blue,
I stare up through eyes worn, coal eyes.
I imagine its cone shape if perhaps I,
coming from breaths called clouds, was an eagle
able to see the full bloom of this my blue mountain.
To this I aspire, the shedding of these crude
eyes, these vessels of myopia through which
the masses trade beauty for madness
--convulsing, exhaling, screaming for dung--and
seeing enough of eternity in trees and boulders,
roses and leaves of grass, I pluck these eyes
from off their Platonic caves and beckon the eagle:
enable me to see the full bloom of this my blue mountain.
Saturday, May 24, 2008
The King and Queen of the Week
The week rolls into this, the king of days.
The laborer rules on a Saturday, unmanacled monarch;
the queen by his side ever the charmer.
His word is law after the sweetest of slumbers
of the Friday kind; subjects with tails
hooked to walls.
The royal days deposed, the royal days
enthroned.
When the sun is a Face, it all shall cease.
Thursday, May 22, 2008
The Golden Goose
There was a man who found a golden goose
Whose down was no, not yellow, but gold, so
Gold it shone, and she was the man's and his
Alone, or so he thought. But she was loose,
A golden goose, so alone, so without peer,
So loved by the man, but loose. She loved
The hands that eased through her dress. Her
Wings she spread for men holding the staff;
Her man was a cobbler, but he loved her. Once,
The man saw: she, in high spirits, laughing,
Merry in the company of the mayor, his hands
Beneath. The hammer quivered, his eyes weak
Before the flood that swept across cheeks
On fire. On the floor he slumped, emancipation?
Never, for he loved her. Never, will he find
Another. The man and his loose golden goose.
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Ravens
Ravens, in a flash they are overhead amidst wing claps.
They are night given flight and the liberty to muffle
The moon's wooing of once-contented eyes.
Perched on a shoulder, the nightbird is a timemachine
With red wine eyes entwined with mine, portals
To worlds that precede the fragments on the marble floor.
Ravens, they sadden the soul with what once gladdened it;
But in the presence of silver doves they fly.
Saturday, May 17, 2008
A Scetic Day
Friday, May 16, 2008
Under a Fern-Type Plant
Thursday, May 8, 2008
To You
To You, emblazoned in the gaze of an impossible sun,
Mirrors fragile in every blade of grass,
Aloft in the flight of a fragrant east wind
That blows through mountains of white and blue.
It's true, in the billows of the foamy sea,
Puppet in obedient dance below moon strings,
In the eyes of the swift eagle, gold and taloned,
Or the elusive hare darting to its holed haven.
And even, when man is born with a heart far
From the desire of sweet river water poured
For them the chosen parched, still to You, it's true,
Is the love softer than a limp rose bowed.
Sunday, May 4, 2008
Her Mother Eve
How far she has gone from Eve, and yet
The curdling of her blood is ripe with
The cider of adulterous fruit and windfall
Testimonies. She denies her lineage with
Embroidered pageantry and fluff; underneath,
A dark dank crevice littered with the bones
Of the sons of a clown-faced Adam.
She will forever reach for snakes
Clutching silver spiked apples.
She Walks Off
Games, she plays for keeps.
To maintain her pet shadows,
Her anchors to the past;
Turning ears stripped,
Eyes gouged off and dry,
She walks off, bosom proud.
Who knows if the crisp leaves
From her manicured branches
Shall ever cease their shed;
To find another reason for roots
Stabbing the throbbing earth,
A new child defiled.
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
The Wheel
The wheel turns with a whirr, delivering
Incarnate souls to places and purposes,
Far beyond the familiar flowerbeds, sometimes;
And just across the 10-step turn at others.
To move, the wheel turns, brother to the cigarette,
Moving mornings by smoky embers, horizontal,
Precarious in its defiance of the early breeze,
High and perched on ebonized lips.
The rides are quick, leaving the blood
Adrenalin-spiked and high,
Just before the final crash that ends it all,
The turning of the wheel and fetal buds.
Saturday, April 26, 2008
31 Outlets
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Pinstripe
Why do parents wish for their kids to be supervisors,
managers, vice-presidents, presidents, or CEOs
of large and looming corporations, when in the womb,
the only light that bathed the baby was from mom's
sun, moon, and all the heavenly host in one?
When as a tumbling toddler every stark crimson
crack of the skin met with doting hands clasping
the healing balm? When every wise word drawn and laid
at the feet of the renegade teen came only from
hearts thorn-riddled? And now this death wish.
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