Forgiving the Original

There's everything outside of myself  

(The universe)

And myself 

(The universe),

And a dance

To express oneself

To the other,

To express, that is,

The other

As oneself

So to sense in the other 

Oneself, as the wholly foreign characters

In the completely unbelievable play

Pull out the soul of what you are 

In catharsis and tears.

It was me and her,

Her with her letter,

A she I never met

Except in the letter,

That changed me and her.

I became

What I am

Or was destined to be,

To dance 

With a ghost.

It was all 

I wanted to do,

And her, 

Far away, 

Not watching.

Autumn on the Vines

The passion fruit flower has decided
To grace us with its sadness today,
As its vine, moving like garland crowns
Around the down spouts, turns burgundy
In the early moon afternoons.

The hibiscus, by contrast, feels
It has waited behind the leaves
Long enough, it was time
For a party, of like-minded large
Orange bells ringing.

The grasses do not wish to move,
They want not to have to
Think through the day,
But to rest on their laurels
Of ephemera: white blossom. 

A giant butterfly does all the heavy
Lifting, communicating something
Incommunicable, as it is communicated
Through, above the shoots, above 
The roof and away.

Tomatoes are close to graduation from the vine,
Peppers and potatoes are turned purple,
The calla lily flowers have taken on
A character of grief, as the elephant ears

Stretch for the last of the sun.

Ah, the things that are done
To exist — the twists, the shifts,
The contortions;
The earth so radiant 
Is never quite enough.

Après le Deleuze

“Living in semblance as goal,” as “Nietzsche” said,
To find the true, one must use, says “Deleuze,”
Division, simulacra as excuse
For difference, to quiet the aching head
Against the agonies of the agora,
Its milieu of immanence,
The paid mage of the God on earth
Versus the amateur, the lover of wisdom,
Who borrows it to grind an axe
That might be peddled as wisdom, friend,
The philo-soph, a mark of distinction,
That shows the desire for what is not
Possessed. 

                    Another exercise in raw power,
Like shucking a mussel, as claimant
In the competition for consensus,
Where the sovereign is dealt injustice
And the unity is polluted, an experience
Where the true can not be conceived,
Even for Socrates, where there must be
An Ideal to be believed, where the sovereign
And unity are one,

          
                                  Because they are,
The universe exists in every cell, we just can’t
Conjure it up that way, the discus takes
Too many different trajectories
Depending on the individual will of specific
Arms. “The immanent must be transcendent,”
Not the holy eyes of flies, but the truth that can’t
Alight on warring mortals, so the higher
Crier would have you turn your attentions for,
A probative force in the unmediated res.

                                                                    Thus 

All things of mind turn to myth, for there is
Never mediation, no probative force
In the war between sensory forms —
All things are pretenders to the throne
Of theoretical, rhetorical ideal.
The simulacra, the impure, the thoughtless
Repetition, becomes a demon clone
In the proximity of bartered grain and poverty.
How one wishes for a son just like the father
For the bride, instead of the foreign
Intruder on the sovereign, the alien
That can never pass the test of verity,
The counterfeit Sophist, who insinuates
What he is and is not everywhere,
Contradicting all attempts to claim him
As he makes unfounded claims on everything,
Enough to make even Plato feel temporarily
Like Ulysses, cursing the nest of selfish suitors
Who must be avenged in the name of truth!

Their claims must be judged — false — in order to
Ostracize; nature must be deemed — wrong — in order
To justify, the immanence must be turned transcendent
In order to be corrupted, in order for the order
To be eluded, as being perverted
Away from ideal — desired — truth. Thus the fallen man,
Thus the senses are imprisoned, thus the lucidity
Of evil.

                So much will is hinged on being right,
The philosophers agree, however careful they are
To word their thoughts as questions impossible
To answer. Without truth, modernity regrets
To be informed, there is only difference,
Thus, c’est ca, there is no truth.
But how else could we have difference?!?
“Behind difference,” he bravely concludes,
“There is nothing,” as if there needs to be
Anything at all. Only those unpurified
In the fires of the agora would see
Any need for deeper meaning, for only those
Would see how their power has been corrupted
And how they were wronged because of it,
And how, because of it, they know what wrong is. 

 
                          Thus all critiques concern problems,
Not the solutions that a joyous heart pours forth
Across the tabula rasa of the philosopher’s stone,
And thus identity is born from the hearth fires
As difference; it cannot know itself
Except in contrast, like a photographic shadow,
As it cannot stay intact once it is recognized.
The mask unmasks to another mask, as the onion
Skin peels back, to endless displacement,
Unlimited divergence in the search for the abyss
That mediates.

                         Thus identities come to resemble
Each other, as “optical effects,” whose only soul
Is novelty. They actualize what they are, to be whatever ideas
They are allowed to be, what they themselves allow
To stay sovereign and intact above the black
Hole of form, where consequences lack consciousness.
They are only something other, as the witness
Who has given away all power in the name of it
Gains strength in being alone, for the sovereign
And the unity, it has finally learned, are one.

Bluster of the Little a

Once we were content to spit on each other

And laugh, and throw the word "asshole" around
Like it meant what it said. But the towel snaps
Usually rolled off of us like drops
Because no one knew anyone then
And even the game was too primitive
To ever say anyone had won.

Soon we moved into identical homes,
With identical women, and jobs we pretended
— Unlike the first two — to be the same.

We learned there was nothing to win,
No wild game inside the parks, so we sat
On our sofas and did some calculations,
Pulling more victories from thin air,
To share with a few, special people
Who didn't seem to understand or care.

Now we laugh when the boys yell we will die soon,
And we've started to wonder why we never
Learned to surf, and only wrote letters home
Under duress, and looked to get out of
Any homework that was assigned. Was there
Something more important than experiencing life?

The dribbling ball, the taunt at one's weakness,
It all kind of disappeared in shame.

There's enough polarity today to sail a yacht.

What a world we live in, where any claims
To consciousness can be drowned with
"It's stupid ... lame ... bullshit ... I don't care."

And you wait for something that they care about

To seep like anti-freeze from their chiseled,
Getting-their-dick-sucked mouth, but it's always
Something else, a more elaborate insult
In a longer, heart-rending diatribe
Lacking any argument or story
But full of a point that they are right,
Always they are right, and the wrong must wait
To respond until they've safely moved away.

For the wind needs to blow
And the trees need to kill
Some of their own branches
And drop too many seeds
So the wind can feel useful.

The Skip in the Groove, and the Nickel

There is no truth,

Just images pulling away.

The mind is not The mind,

No matter what the archons say.

Only light can hold the light

In the heart space.

If the only reality is your own,

Why should you care that there are others?

The hologram thinks what you're thinking

And delivers what thought created,

Like "Jimi Hendrix is 

Morgan Freeman"

And "JFK is not 

Even dead"

And it's all to see how deep you will go

Inside the as-above, so-below honeycomb

Of your spacious, endless globe of a head.

The nothingness you fear

Is a needing for things to be real,

As if the continual spring 

Of fanciful imagination

Taught you nothing

About what is.

Shards in Broken Time

1.

The little boy lost is my guide,

     The happy one

                    From the orphanage 

     Who misplaced — again — his ID

And fell outside

                    My custody,

A baby — despite everything.

2.

My "dense involvement"

          Is the headline 

     But can I receive

The gift of the chamomile 

     Placed before me

          In a crystal vase?

3.

The large I sees

     What the small I perceives

                      Closer to the ground —

Distinct perspectives 

     Rippling to the infinite.

The Layers of Distance

I stride the waves of the poem,

Its ebullient froth,

Slammed by the cross-swirl,

The punch it packs 

In the plexus I lack,

What I haven't looked through

The darkness yet 

To detect.

My feet lift from the sand 

And currents carry 

Where there's no center anywhere,

Just the turbulence of forces turning

On themselves

In a kind of longing,

Letting the suppressed

Through open eyes.

The sonar of the gulls

And whistles of the lifeguard 

Blend as one long warning

Of the lure

Of endless surf

And inexplicable currents

And a constant gasp at meaning 

As vision is immersed.

Along the shining crest

That arches up so firmly

To collapse,

Distant shadows 

Of the riders

Slicing lines

Across the swells,

The naturals

Who cannot think of what it is

Or imagine what could be,

They only know that to get from

Point A to point B

Requires a certain stupid bravery,

A faith despite the roar

In their delivery,

Though they dissolve as well 

In foam

Until another pipeline forms

To carve themselves and their boards

Inside the frieze of time.

An Argosy of Misreading

The first thing that they teach at university

Is how deadly a passion for poems and what they mean

Can be, for mere poesy can only offer up

What the storyline will allow,

What takes the young ones out of the darkness 

Through whatever guile or treachery

Is available — The poem itself is but a vehicle 

That can be what it is on its own time,

When silence is the compensating gift.

The scholars wrap the poems inside their envelopes

That no students risk their moistened lips to seal.

The poets are superstitious. They think to touch

The stream as it glistens would change the course

Of rivers or make the sun slant to the east.

They could be shown as fools in keeping quiet for so long.

But those who would won't touch the stream

Because it's wet and goes a thousand directions

Right through one's fingers. And so there's nothing, really,

To say on what it is, and why it moves

To give anyone room to make improvements.

The scholars wrap the poems inside their envelopes

That students have no moisture left to seal.

It stands imperfectly eternal now, perpetually unwatched.

The thought of its gurgle is enough

To haunt the lips of wayward children

Through the silence they need, like seeds, to grow in.

Maybe, as the decades peel away, they'll discover

Smudge-marred lines and not remember what they meant,

What they never knew, but know somehow, now

They missed, in the days that have slipped through, gone,

So a grief matches up — oblique — with that of the poem.

September 12, 2020

After Auden 

I’m voyeur to the wars
For wholly unconscious people
Who flail behind their curtains
As they can’t bear to see how freely
The world built on illusion falls:
The frequency rises everywhere, like a drill,
As mind and machine mind seek cover equally.
The unreachable fear in others
Has become, somehow, my own.
The unmistakable color of fire
Haunts September’s griefs like ash.

The scholars on one side
Exhume the dust to nothingness,
The onslaught on the other
Dares 9-year-olds to fuck and kill police.
It’s not taken as a given now for some
Who see the hand behind it all
As if it is invisible no longer:
The evil done has become strangely innocent,
As the faces become traumas,
Older than the forces that compel
A mandatory veil.

What could Plato say?
He was occupied in trying to stop
The buggery of boys,
Explaining why the holiest
Are the ones who eat their children,
Kicking poets from the leaders's puppet shows.
What could the rational one now say
When the darkness has been driven away
In spite of so much pain
That needs so much assuaging
And to be turned into suffering again?

Does it matter, with the trees on fire,
That they never learned to see
How the rise to those majestic heights
Was to praise humanity?
Yet they take responsibility, in their way,
And step away to the threshold
And out of the dream:
And they won’t have to know
The cost, after all, of their being
Controlled,
The harm that was done.

They stay in their houses now,
Occasionally appear in slave masks,
Careful to evade any contact
Construable as human companionship.
The reasons why they do this
Are increasingly obscure
The more the voice they can’t bear
Not to listen to blares, lest they would see
They never did think for themselves,
And never really understood, and never really knew
What they wanted, beyond what they could.

The most obvious lies
Can be seamlessly turned into truth
By a heart that needs the disguise
Of a thousand eyes
Turned away from itself
And peering outward
Across the vast divide
What was taken through shame,
Incriminated into pain
And shaped into what one knows
As one’s being.

To be loved and not judged,
They walk into their day
On the eggshells they break
Along the way,
And proceed to pulverize
With self-condemning eyes
Whatever hope remains.
It is they who must wake up,
Whose survival depends on self-hatred,
Who must fall from the heights of no self-esteem
To be free.

There they are on the ledge,
Countering my every appeal,
Still needing to turn love to bile,
On the course the ancient trauma
Still weaves across their souls.
Am I strong enough to deny them
The solace of their pain,
The horror of their ignorance,
The conditionality of their hand?
How could it be that to walk away
Is the only truth to understand?

What could I say to the face
Of the indoctrination
That comes even through your lines
Repeated by schoolchildren
As if you are different, more wise
Than any other?
The jars are all sealed,
We containers of darkness and the universe,
Not knowing love without its lack,
Freedom without choices …
The strength it takes to turn away’s too much.

Apparition in Mohave

The gold bowl foothills give of themselves and take;

In the sun I almost believe that their grapes

Are for me, and that these bellows of valley

Have something in their smoke that I need.

The dessicated fields yield the strange scent of mint,

That twist where the whole scene makes sense,

As if I could climb on that ancient green Deere

And the doe eyes would not pull me in,

And I could begin to want things for myself

In all of my rustling with sticks

The wasp nests and bobcats sleeping.

I have stoked ineffable fires, in blind desire

To watch from the distance, with the dryness of tinder,

So the motions won't make of themselves a center

That lures me in with a peculiar rhetoric

Familiar enough to fix as my mirror:

The sage and gold grass, with horizons like home,

The one thing I've wanted, to be left alone.

Hot Day in Tehachapi

Where all the rivers meet, invisible now,

But word is carved in bone-dry canyons 

Resolute in their refusal to be anything but stone.

The hills, a white burn, have surrendered to sun, 

The overhanging summer oaks extend past Vance's kiln,

Beyond McVicar's and Grizzly Canyon.

The black pond picks up all the darkness of the sky,

Emerald algae blooming deep below the surface 

Crisscrossed by blue dragonflies, in surprise formations

That navigate across the sheet of debris,

To track what lies between, with the intangible radar

Of the mind of detection, at the guise of mosquito skeet.

They are everywhere, like heavenly spheres 

Refracted out of atmospheres in the globe below,

Transparent enough and ephemeral enough 

For us to need faith they exist, for the poem

Is drawn by hands unknown, for reasons unknowable,

And will not show itself, no matter how much absence we feel. 

The Love of the Moon

The ocean, for all we know, could keep on coming,

Commenting, as all that passes disappears,

Its sweet negation, so what is absent can seem real

In the sound of water splashing, like an answer

To the questions that we never knew to ask,

That still persist, in the voiceless will of wind.

We could say it finds itself, as it touches,

Again and again, on the shore, and that the shape

Of its argument never changes,

Though the layers unpeel in ever varying

Courses, of impenetrable transparence,

As if solving the most inexhaustible mysteries.

We can even sway along ‘til it dissolves in a spray

That suggests, in the raise of its valence,

The emergence of wings from an obscure violence,

But there’s only the moon, that stands between

Knowing and our will, the only truth worth pursuing:

To banish the thing that could make us wrong.

Academic Decompression II

     "They don't read us,

They think through us,

     As if we are

Tobacco for their pipes ..."

     The air turns crisp,

Paper turns to essay into text

     As the leaves 

Take on shadows ...

     They mean well,

Given livelihoods 

     To deify

Dead, impoverished poets ...

     Who have their own ideas

Of speaking what needs

     To be said

To somebody ...

     But not to me,

It's always them,

     The love in their eyes,

Who are all I can see.

Metaphors of Translation

"Treue in der Übersetzung des einzelnen Wortes kann fast nie den Sinn voll wiedergeben, den es im Original hat. Denn dieser erschöpft sich nach seiner dichterischen Bedeutung fürs Original nicht in dem Gemeinten, sondern gewinnt diese gerade dadurch, wie das Gemeinte an die Art des Meinens in dem bestimmten Worte gebunden ist. Man pflegt dies in der Formel auszudrücken, daß die Worte einen Gefühlston mit sich führen. Gar die Wörtlichkeit hinsichtlich der Syntax wirft jede Sinneswiedergabe vollends über den Haufen und droht geradenwegs ins Unverständliche zu führen." - Walter Benjamin

Did we break the jar when we touched it

Or merely disclose

What was already torn?

Was there something more

Than truth cleaved on the back of the truth

That came before, or something less?

The metaphor

Prompts a knowing,

A seeming to understand

Although it’s as hopeless

As structure

As the sand.

But it’s not what the cricket sings

As what we think is sung.

Ah! The possibility of reading

The hope of another

Disguised as the hope

Of meaning

Of which there is no end,

As slippery as the motives

And figures can be,

The sense is always clear enough

The truth will not escape

Such loose confederations of ropes,

For where will it go,

With its likenesses and tropes,

Lacking a home for exile?

There’s only this,

The irrevocable, forever past

The individual,

Always loosening its hold

On the one who watches itself

Disappear as the metaphor dissolves.

What relationship do we have

To allow such

Familiarity,

The kind we do not see

With families, fathers,

Long-lost friends?

What jar must be fit together

From afar? From what shared,

Ineffable source must it be drawn?

Is it bound to be defaced, even

A negation, exposed by its loss

In translation?

Do the figures inevitably revert

To abstraction, to the nonsense

Of their forms?

So much seems to be at stake

In not being able to convey

Enough across the gulf

(Which could be an abyss,

Or anything unrecoverable,

Depending on the language

And the whims of 

The mediator who strings 

The letters together

To make them mean

In another grammar

Of thinking)

To quell the fear

That without understanding

Nothing can be grasped.

But like a confidence man

Preying on this terror, words smooth

Over any dispute

With their well-worn store of truism,

Their agreeable tones,

As if all their circumlocutions

Lead to a center,

If one can only be patient

And wait for the elixir

Slipped in unnoticed

Without even touching,

The placebo of hope.

And so it is the rainbow

That words can’t catch

Eludes us

Like the dragonfly

That can’t be photographed, or

The moments absorbed into oblivion.

So spirit evades

Its effacement,

Its illusory definition

Where it would be lost

In the amber of a glyph,

A void waiting to be unearthed.

At the World In-Between

The blue bruise takes over the clouds

And fringes moving. All the wounds of the past

Lay exposed, unresolved. Rose fills the ebb

Wet as a salve, as the thoughts of the earth

Retreat to further swirls, line to line,

Positions conclude, conclusions waver,

Variations emerge. The past is dissolved

As if it is saved in the endless creation,

Not needing to be recalled.

The figures on the beach only know

They must heal, so they walk out into

The orange water fire, until the images

Pinned to their minds and called the real

Peel away like scrapbook yellow

In the gold of a new day, not yet born

Though thoughts of it wrinkle across the waves

Like a low sonar drone, that may be

A song as a moan, a poem as spoken

Instruction. But the ocean doesn't teach

As much as it leaves enough notes to steal.

Notes of blue, notes of orange, ever

Blending, never one, forever vying

But always rising as a sum beyond parts,

Even as the greys have turned to green,

In this in-between, where the drop of sun

Purifies the colors. The hues start to bend

Beyond any curve, at a frequency

That no longer serves — except as beauty,

Always beauty, what doesn't end.

Of Masks and Western Swing

Cab Calloway seems to emanate from the wind caves

Heigh-di-heigh-di-heigh-di-ho
As if he'd never unleashed his yodel on the world before.
And there we were, yearning to learn the Cowboy Cha-Cha
As we turned rawboned the switchbacks outside Lompoc,
As if it ever was a style, and the ten-gallon hats were realer
Than they appeared to us now, and spurs once de rigueur
To anyone but Mexican laborers.

                                                             There’s so little left
For a person to disappear into, and the dusty road promises
Only pockets of belonging: A few familiar flags
In half-full gravel lots, a scattering of cabins where
It’s safe to taste the vintages,

                                                      The holes in the wall
Where we yield the wheel, and our trust, in the lights
Of others, implied or real. They pose at tables,
As if no longer part of the earth, too vulnerable to love
And too stoically bereft of alternatives.

                                                                        So they give it over
To the county blue blush of the serpents who dance, even here,
The death of a thousand points of view: All of which go
There’s nothing you can do. 

                                                    Granted, the day was hot,
The fumes of a highway on fire forced strange and serpentine
Detours. But we know now that what goes on below,
Beneath a thousand feet of lime, is unspeakable, done for us,
In the name of control, so we can learn a dance
Of our own.

At Avila Beach

A pelican beats its wings like a drum

On the still skin of the ocean

That comes so gently in today,

As if its curls won't make a sound.

Even in the caves, the echo serves 

To slow, for all that people do not know,

All restless words inside its rush.

A lone crane glissandos on the glass,

Which moves like marks of punctuation 

Towards birds on their white island, flicking wings

The way a pianist shakes her fingers

After a strenuous barcarole.

Their beaks aim toward the sky;

What miracles can they dream of

Beyond the veil of infinite haze,

As close as heaven gets, most days?

The seaweed blossoms rise with the beat of tide

That sighs enough to cover every rock with froth.

On the bluffs an assembly line of bees

Shuttle lavender ambrosia to secret hives.

All that's missing is us, so unlike the things

That move across the day with the shadows.

But then the mermaid catches us

In the gauzy selkie eyes of seals

On distant rocks, refusing to let us

Pretend that we have disappeared.

They are keenly aware of how we see,

For they must not be alone in observing 

How the water turns slowly purple,

The white foam transforms into pearl,

The sun becomes a thing of beauty,

What everyone can be on any day.

Words for the Lion's Gate

I.
The crows are bringing codes
     In a rhythm of a breathing 
Earth that takes in light,
     Returning form 
                                 that glows as 
Prelude to an unknowable 
                                 growth—

The stillness of the Sphinx 
     Before the unrecorded 
                                pounce, 
For the prowl is only synapse 
           crackling,
Something to be heard,
     Like a soft meow
That says what you desire
           and nothing more.

Herr Ear, is there 
                              some wax 
     Of what you hear, 
Or is it in the realm 
     Of the invisible
                              —what we 
Have called silence?

The breathing resumes
     Without a trace
As the mind continues
     Without source 
                       or destination.

The dense form has lifted 
                             away
     But still that's all we see,
Albeit waving
     Like the frequency
Where it exists as something 
                             living.

     You can chase it 
Like a cat that flees,
     Forever hiding
So that we won't see
     It is an image only.

II.
Beautiful debris
Collects independently
                  of the hand
That gathers the thoughts
                     of shape
With pruner shears—

Patterns begat patterns,
                nature and man
Entwined in the same labyrinth
     Of ornate frame
                'round every thing
That seemingly must earn
                            its keep
     By being interesting,
Worthy of a position
                  in the living 
                            painting.

Somewhere in the barrens of the Nile
     An observatory of sorts
Awaits the desiccate mind
     To return like rain
To this child gone wild
                            with play,
And the caretakers overwhelmed
     With possibility,
Their being mere mesh
                   for more vine,

As the thought continues to move
                   further away
     From whatever has become
                   a center
                                temporarily 
In the pattern whose circumference is
     As wide as an eye.

Is it any wonder that the lion,
    Like anything of value,
                                          hides?

III.
A glitch in the forgiveness or permission
                                                simulation
And we are all as lions
     Taking what we desire
                            innocent of conscience
     As like a lover the universe yields 
                      
To the purity of our heart,
     The persistence 
                           of our play,
As if there was no distance
     Between what we love
                      and what is there.

But the bird only temporarily stands still
                                                 in mid-air.
Soon enough it flies again
     Like we believe it always will
And life goes on with merely a glimpse
                      of what might be

And we question, at a new remove,
                      who we are,
     What we are doing,
             what do they want,
These impossible, non-existent 
                      other humans.

The pharaohs have become blue and gold,
     Their faces immortal
              as they hold with a smile
                      their crosses to their heart.
But it's no longer possible
     To learn how to live from sarcophagi 

So we float from tome to tomb, 
                      roaming the rooms
     That stretch on
             it seems
                      to infinity
As part of an unrelenting plan

That the cat finds openings in
            with an instinct like creation,
Holes that are always there, seemingly part of
                       the fortification,
     Escape intrinsic
             to any control.

IV.
The belt of Giza, look up, is in the sky,
     Releasing from its points
Like a magnifying glass
                     on the faith
That held us
                                so completely that
When the paper conflagrated 
     And its words vaporized 
We thought we'd lost
                    who we were,

That thing apart and protected
                    by belief,
Our own individual universal
     That couldn't outlast
The lion's gaze, from its outline
                                in the sky
Across the night of the brightest star,
When what was ours
                    turned out not to be
                               what we are.

There's no courage, 
      The Lyran says,
                   in wisdom,
But in knowing there is none.
When the old ways 
                   are gone,
     The paths overgrown,
                  and none but brambles
                                 to home,
Who is fool enough to choose?

How deep are the roots to be pulled?
                                Which seeds
                  can be sown?
     What hands hold the magic
                  of the eye?
The energy of destruction
     Is the energy of love.
The light is blinding.
     The paw is soft.
                  Are you fearless enough?

V.
I suppose you'd want, right about now
                                                an example?
There's one right above
                                                comes to mind:
How the hieroglyphs said
                       it was the sun 
                                               that was worshiped
And it went down like an ancient game
                       of telephone
To the Babel of Religions we know
                                               and don't understand
                       today ...

When, in fact, the sun worships us! For we are
      The makers of sense,
                                              the keepers of law,
The consciousness of life,
                                              who still stayed
Like sprouts inside a jar, within the parameters
                      of the small.
How could light be denied
                                              to such souls,
How could the flow back and forth be disputed?
One keels, the other tacks, one energizes backs,
     One digs in dirt to plant—

Thus Homo Luminous becomes love,
                                             growing wings
                      at each abyss he is connecting
In a tapestry that shines in the sun
     As an offering of what
                                             came from him.
But the sun has someone else,
     The blue Sirian
                       known by Alexandrian priests.
He leaves us with the moon
     So we may know him by his absence,
                      unrepentant darkness.

The lion, bored with explanation,
                      has slept all day
                                             in golden light,
Gaining life as he
                      became illuminated.
     He will come out at night
                                             so we'll know
Things are there
                      even if they can't be seen,
Like the galaxies that pour
                                             new ambrosia
                      in our souls. 

VI.
It's only when you are not 
                             can you be.
It's a paradox, 
                             like the way 
The wish to unify 
                             with the one 
Turns you into something 
     Separate. 

There is a me
     On a beach far from the Nile 
Who builds pyramids in the sand
     As a kind of third-eye location scout,
                             and whose craven descent
Into acquiescence has turned him to
                             a graven image for others
     In the harvest of late afternoon ...

                             And there is a not me
Who speaks of Pele and Brigid
     And the lotus plant that blossoms as fire 
                             to rise with the Nile
For the royal Sirian lions of sovereignty,
     And who paints the scene so thoroughly
The others come like children from his brain,
                             not even questioning.

The one screams, because there are no words,
     The other repeats, because there's only words
Until what is created and heard, heard and created
                            circles in an infinite loop:
     As one feels wounds, the other is wounded.
The centrifuge invariably returns 
     To anode void
                            or cathode stone.

So the hierophant in the inner chamber
     Lets the reed flute blow every note 
                            the higher light sent to hear,
But the hearers find it disappears
     In the echoes they create of it
As it weaves around each memory they have,
     And the melodies reduce to patterns, 
                            the rhythms arguments,

Until the lion finally grabs the flute and plays
     Like no one's ever blown on it it before,
                            free of time and space,
Completely unpredictable, to get them to the place
     Where their galactic families can appear.
                            Another manner of mirror. 
Is there something more to see than what we
                            know we are?

VII.
You don't have to know what the trauma was
                                       to release it
As you don't have to know who you'll meet
     When you reach a higher frequency.

                                       On the larger palette
Time and space are mere tools to manipulate,
     Like egg tempura or umber fire clay,
To get the desired effect,
                                        a resonance
     Of what begins as a shiver,
                                        a need to represent.
And now the canvas is grander
     To hold the temples of crystal, 
                      the living buildings of light 
And semi-transparent beings in a rainbow
                      of unimaginable colors.

They have come from the dreamtime, the Sirians,
                      to show us how it's done.
They were a little too meddlesome
                                         the last time around.
     Still they hate themselves for what they has done,
Having to break the show down, and start again,
     Giving us, this time, some say in our own
                                         evolution,
As hard to watch, having been through it themselves,
                                         as it must have been,
     And as hard to withhold correction, corrected
                      themselves in ways we can't imagine.

     And now that they've come again
At this time when we can finally grow beyond them,
     They want us to ask them for help?
                     When nobody knows 
                                          how long it will take
Before they pull the experiment from our hands,
                     punch up the hypothesis,
                                         do the math,
Draw the conclusions 
                     they all along had planned.
     They just can't help themselves
                     and that's why we love them.

We have met many times like this
                                         before—
     They were strangers though
                      at the dark end of the bar.
But now the lion roars
                                         and we shake hands
     As if we didn't know each other,
                      the one who raised us 
Unrecognized, for the pain of being abandoned
                                         was too hard,
    As the thing we become to them too similar, 
                      unrecognizable.

VIII.
Sirius stares at us,
     Dares me to choose
Which stars, which galaxies
     Form synchronicities,
Constellate into clusters, lines,
     Patterns, networks, meanings.
There is a meteor! 
                                   Anything I like.

When everything is absence
     Anything can be a presence,
Can serve the void within,
     Which is the same void
On the other side, as marionette,
      A stand-in,
But that's OK.
                        It's a hologram anyway.

     They wouldn't be there
If I didn't need the stars so much
     To show me the way,
Appearing and disappearing as if by will.
     And I wouldn't need them at all
If I hadn't already learned what I needed, 
     If they weren't, 
                         In other words, silent.

Ah how the stream believes 
     In what it does
When it thinks of its role as
     Speaking with stones 
And serving the moss, until
     It is the ocean
And the world is not quite
                                    large enough.

Words for the Lion's Gate VIII

Sirius stares at me,

     Dares me to choose

Which stars, which galaxies

     Form synchronicities,

Constellate into clusters, lines,

     Patterns, networks, meanings.

There is a meteor! 

                                   Anything I like.

When everything is absence

     Anything can be a presence,

Can serve the void within,

     Which is the same void

On the other side, as marionette,

      A stand-in,

But that's OK.

                        It's a hologram anyway.

     They wouldn't be there

If I didn't need the stars so much

     To show me the way,

Appearing and disappearing as if by will.

     And I wouldn't need them at all

If I hadn't already learned what I needed, 

     If they weren't, 

                         In other words, silent.

Ah how the stream believes 

     In what it does

When it thinks of its role as

     Speaking with stones 

And serving the moss, until

     It is the ocean

And the world is not quite

                                    large enough.

Words for the Lion's Gate VII

You don't have to know what the trauma was

                                       to release it

As you don't have to know who you'll meet

     When you reach a higher frequency.

                                       On the larger palette

Time and space are mere tools to manipulate,

     Like egg tempura or umber fire clay,

To get the desired effect,

                                        a resonance

     Of what begins as a shiver,

                                        a need to represent.

And now the canvas is grander

     To hold the temples of crystal, 

                      the living buildings of light 

And semi-transparent beings in a rainbow

                      of unimaginable colors.

They have come from the dreamtime, the Sirians,

                      to show us how it's done.

They were a little too meddlesome

                                         the last time around.

     Still they hate themselves for what they has done,

Having to break the show down, and start again,

     Giving us, this time, some say in our own

                                         evolution,

As hard to watch, having been through it themselves,

                                         as it must have been,

     And as hard to withhold correction, corrected

                      themselves in ways we can't imagine.

     And now that they've come again

At this time when we can finally grow beyond them,

     They want us to ask them for help?

                     When nobody knows 

                                          how long it will take

Before they pull the experiment from our hands,

                     punch up the hypothesis,

                                         do the math,

Draw the conclusions 

                     they all along had planned.

     They just can't help themselves

                     and that's why we love them.

We have met many times like this

                                         before—

     They were strangers though

                      at the dark end of the bar.

But now the lion roars

                                         and we shake hands

     As if we didn't know each other,

                      the one who raised us 

Unrecognized, for the pain of being abandoned

                                         was too hard,

    As the thing we become to them too similar, 

                      unrecognizable.

Words for the Lion's Gate VI

It's only when you are not 

                             can you be.
It's a paradox, 

                             like the way 

The wish to unify 

                             with the one 

Turns you into something 

     Separate. 

There is a me

     On a beach far from the Nile 

Who builds pyramids in the sand

     As a kind of third-eye location scout,

                             and whose craven descent

Into acquiescence has turned him to

                             a graven image for others

     In the harvest of late afternoon ...

                             And there is a not me

Who speaks of Pele and Brigid

     And the lotus plant that blossoms as fire 

                             to rise with the Nile

For the royal Sirian lions of sovereignty,

     And who paints the scene so thoroughly

The others come like children from his brain,

                             not even questioning.

The one screams, because there are no words,

     The other repeats, because there's only words

Until what is created and heard, heard and created

                            circles in an infinite loop:

     As one feels wounds, the other is wounded.

The centrifuge invariably returns 

     To anode void

                            or cathode stone.

So the hierophant in the inner chamber

     Lets the reed flute blow every note 

                            the higher light sent to hear,

But the hearers find it disappears

     In the echoes they create of it

As it weaves around each memory they have,

     And the melodies reduce to patterns, 

                            the rhythms arguments,

Until the lion finally grabs the flute and plays

     Like no one's ever blown on it it before,

                            free of time and space,

Completely unpredictable, to get them to the place

     Where their galactic families can appear.

                            Another manner of mirror. 

Is there something more to see than what we

                            know we are?                      

Words for the Lion's Gate V

I suppose you'd want, right about now
                                                an example?
There's one right above
                                                comes to mind:
How the hieroglyphs said
                       it was the sun 
                                               that was worshiped
And it went down like an ancient game
                       of telephone
To the Babel of Religions we know
                                               and don't understand
                       today ...

When, in fact, the sun worships us! For we are
      The makers of sense,
                                              the keepers of law,
The consciousness of life,
                                              who still stayed
Like sprouts inside a jar, within the parameters
                      of the small.
How could light be denied
                                              to such souls,
How could the flow back and forth be disputed?
One keels, the other tacks, one energizes backs,
     One digs in dirt to plant—

Thus Homo luminous becomes love,
                                             growing wings
                      at each abyss he is connecting
In a tapestry that shines in the sun
     As an offering of what
                                             came from him.
But the sun has someone else,
     The blue Sirian
                       known by Alexandrian priests.
He leaves us with the moon
     So we may know him by his absence,
                      unrepentant darkness.

The lion, bored with explanation,
                      has slept all day
                                             in golden light,
Gaining life as he
                      became illuminated.
     He will come out at night
                                             so we'll know
Things are there
                      even if they can't be seen,
Like the galaxies that pour
                                             new ambrosia
                      in our souls. 

Words for the Lion's Gate IV

The belt of Giza, look up, is in the sky,

     Releasing from its points

Like a magnifying glass

                     on the faith

That held us

                                so completely that

When the paper conflagrated 

     And its words vaporized 

We thought we'd lost

                    who we were,

That thing apart and protected

                    by belief,

Our own individual universal

     That couldn't outlast

The lion's gaze, from its outline

                                in the sky

Across the night of the brightest star,

When what was ours

                    turned out not to be

     What we are.

There's no courage, 

      The Lyran says,

                   in wisdom,

But in knowing there is none.

When the old ways 

                   are gone,

     The paths overgrown,

                  and none but brambles

                                 to home,

Who is fool enough to choose?

How deep are the roots to be pulled?

                                Which seeds

                  can be sown?

     What hands hold the magic

                  of the eye?

The energy of destruction

     Is the energy of love.

The light is blinding.

     The paw is soft.

                  Are you fearless enough?