At Ease

The days easier.

The disease has rolled
Off like the leaves and nuts
Slide off parked cars
When the rain sways.

Washed away in a flood of

Grace.

One Rainy Night

Soft taps
On the tattered roof
Boom into full
Drum corps rolls
As the
Out-of-season
Monsoon
Opens up
A beleaguered heart
To her humans,
Ever-welcoming shoulders.

Her sighs,
The cold flurries;
Her tears,
The piercing rain.

Saying goodbye,
Her woes
Leave us
New songs.

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.

Warden

every moment chained

and

coiled to its siblings

wherein I breathe

in

the Spirit's hovering

is all of grace

for

I am alive

and drunk

and all is well

for God is both

up

and here

in the quagmire

with me

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

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

Living Water

Ah, yes, the view is crystal
From down here where the bugs
Ramble.

Up the canyon the clouds
Swirl and the blue
Expanse course
Through my throat--parched
--like thawed ice.

Parody

Life is a pardody of life

When mouths are poison arrow frogs

When the job pays but the candle burns

When your woman plays the frog too, croaky

When lately silence is the best jazz in weeks

But life indeed must be laughed at for

What is funnier than me thinking of

Me as

Somebody

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.

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.

The Pumpin' Stinger

The lords of the world demand blood
To the exclusion of gardens green
And the occasional bee sting.

But do paint me a picture of this magnetic lush
To hang on my wall and keep me inside
The halls of sanity for a less bumpy ride.

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

All Over the Place

Heavy and dark
I sleep and try
This toilsome cloak
From my soul to pry

Yet when slumber cracks
Escape denied
Still I lack
N'integrated mind

A branch loose
From the Vine I am
So must I again
Be entwined

Coffeelation

I've discovered the truth
That for coffee to kick,
It must be downed,
Hot and quick,
In one fell swoop.

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.

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.

Green Leaves

green leaves fallen
on asphalt strewn about,
random--silent--who
decides which

ones ride the wind
or burn in the pile?

off to chlorophyll heaven
or hellish carbon ash
come argue freedom
caterpillar men

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.

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.

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.

The Love Pig

It sees the barbs
it must squeeze
through, the full
breadth of its pink
body: the love pig.
All the way over
the other side,
it comes out dripping
of rose petals;
the air foggy
with the steam
of love cried,
sang, screamed--lived and died.

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.

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.

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.

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.

A Scetic Day

Drawing near

                             is me

                 in a room

                                                                    solitary.

The hunger

        is a

                                   whisper

        after the quake

                                                           that came on

                                                                                                    the heels of the wind.

Under a Fern-Type Plant

The sun's photon fingers reach
Through spear leaves striping
Me beneath into alternate
Rows of yellow.

Any more feet further and
The heat makes red, so
Here I stay breathed upon
By my fern-type friend.

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.

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.

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.

31 Outlets

A night of toil,
Not a measure of repose had;
Was with others in the same coil,
We all, when done, shall be glad.

The sun has broken.

Eyes, burnt coals, flicker.

My face set beaming,
For soon faces now shall part
To meet with heart smiles
From faces all night waiting.

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.

The Leaves Fall

The leaves fall in a wind cradle


Lulled by the lullaby of autumn lips,


Fallen on the arms of a wet earth


Golden, it sleeps.

Dish

Many a man subsist merely on grub,
On earthly herbs sprouted from notions,
Notions of the lovely.
But there are ones with palates forged in the flames,
For whom grub is refuse, whose tastes incline
Towards food of angels, the meat of the holy,
Everyday tasting of beauty
In the silver leaves of the rain.

From a Pale Window

A blue day

gray air

specter from the land of dreams

bidding farewell to you

one gracious host.

Piper Tunes

Piper strums the chords
Making music of the Word
That gets me dancing

The Worm of Habit

I overheard my secret companion worm whisper,
That the fires I kindle to smoke and sear
Serve just to make it sweeter: the taste
Of my nerves on its viral jaws.

In kind, I lay my own rejoinder: you
Shall nibble your last on these eyes
And arms I tear loose from my body, your final
Feasting before hunger lays you to ash.

She and She Says

She has been
Within snake holes,
Within earshot of tales
Of lust and love,
Tales turned true
In romps of nothing more
Than leaks of abuse
Now character.

She has been
Bruised by them,
Serpents with slithering
Tongues forked to poke
Into her rattling instincts,
Her prisons of pleasure.

Depleted she climbs out,
Squinting pits for eyes,
The shouts of the sun,
Trying with all might
To focus.

The clutter cleared, the smoke
Blown, field of sight eased,
What does she see?
A familiar face, a common friend,
A childhood star, nothing barred
But the same slit below.

She says love,
And she says love.

Cool Breeze

Alone at home, the family's gone to the high hills;
Hills of pineapples flanked by crowns of green;
Where the lake adopted a volcano, itself a child;
Where the horses neigh bucks for back-rides and
cow meat and marrow fetch for less than the lowlands.
There the coffee is pungently fresh as if a spigot
plunged poured brew straight from tree to tongue;
Where fruit stands lined up on street shoulders pander
the rainbow and all sorts of sweet things;
Where the cool breeze everywhere is salve to city skin.

Alone at home, solitude is my high hill and reflection
the blowing breeze.

A Snack

Fine, terse poems are
Freshly-popped O2 ampoules
To an asthma man

Armless Man

I saw an old man
left forearm gone

A worn blue cap
on small shriveled head

Creases make circuits
around glazed eyes

Dry lips curve down
is he a sad man?

What soul's not betrayed
by hope clasped even

by wrinkled armless hands

Polite Games

The bleak peek at passers-by
on a day of legs in hurried business
of eyes here but really in transit

and warm bodies almost laying skin
on skin in a blanket of smoky wind.
She sways her head away almost swiftly

when his eyes, throbbing vines in the tangled climb,
invade her private infections, leery of her own
subconscious revelations in red, as he

slides past secrets poised
like marble musuem pieces
across the subway platform.

The Pink Swan

How high you have flown, you once tatter-feathered
Raptor of the high hills?
How many of the young have you made to pass
Between your slender silken talons?
With your razor eyes, none of the choice meat
Of innocence escaped and willing did they
Partake of your concealed kisses.

Now you are one among the swans, pink in delicate
Plumage, calm in the gentle unfurling of pink,
Purposeful wings. You laugh with the swans
Thinking that you are one of them; the sight
Of young hares at play seem but memories
Of a time when love meant a torn, pulsating
Heart, dripping blood, from enamored prey.

Beyond Hands Up Close

The connoisseurs of art part with cash
For works of hands depicting trees, flowers,
Butterflies, snow-capped mountains over a sea
Of green meadows, birds on the wing, humming
Streams and the splash of brine waves on the shore.

What's more, the poor plant trees and flowers befriending
Butterflies, crossing green meadows on wooden feet up
Snow-capped mountains where frolicsome birds roost and play,
Stopping for a brief splash on musical sreams recollecting
Seasons in the sea and shore.

Yesterday

The dead litter the days that led to today.
Tomorrow today will be lamented as dead
Along with all the stars unplucked,
All the daisies unpicked, and
All that could have breathed
Immortality to yesterday.

Locusts and Wild Honey

To live everyday as an artist, not a pragmatist,
Is to have the world singing in seven days.

Easy Living

Walk the daily walk
As if finishing the strokes
On a masterpiece

They That Wait

Where does a fleeing heart, that has on bruised wings
Been on the run from that which formerly gave it light,
Go when staying is a creeping blackness that begs,
Smiles, bends, and cries with an angel's white face?

Must it pass through creeks where bones ease
The passage of murky streams?

Must it climb the shapely valleys
Embraced by hills of aromatic trees?

Must it desire untimely exile
Behind the pearls of the golden city?

Must it not yet endure seasons more
Until the raven with bread,
Until the flaming messenger,
Comes with a new heart in hand?