Straw music plays like alms
across the strip-tease valleys --
If I but knew knew how much
they loved me.
The urge to cease
came through the mountain leaps
As it came in the golden blonde's
arms of sleep;
The urge to live
beyond each moment
Is the same as to know no moments
you are in.
The thought of closeness
missed
Cannot but bring
the distance,
The thing that you regret
and never lost,
Even in the fall to
oneness,
As if oblivion is not enough
to prove
It all resolves to nothing's
sweets of love
Without someone to share it,
as a prop,
To find what's locked within oneself,
the thing that never stopped
And never can
stop ticking
On the clock that
doesn't exist,
Just dreams where we measure
how far we're separated
And how many connections
await
-- We could not handle it otherwise,
the confusion of the limitless,
The job much bigger than we know,
to shed the skin of consciousness.
The bird voice that is far away
becomes our mystery
Until we speak from the other side
to ears that can't perceive,
But in that there’s a call to that
which moves us to our knees,
They call it faith, the open moment,
the golden memory,
And all we see is part of it, here,
the distortion of eyes and ear,
The dirt of commerce that we share,
what persists, in numinal air,
A call to service,
to the invisible,
What holds us from a distance
in a shell
Still burgeoning and turning
in the swell,
To embrace what we barely know
in the sadness of farewell.
