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 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 pitch.

                                       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 have 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,
For 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?

Words for the Lion's Gate 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 cross 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.

Words for the Lion's Gate 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?

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.

A Singular Cricket in the Heart of Things

The crickets were created

     To carry a thought,

As I, who hears their song,

     Was created.

I leap into their heads as they

     Jump onto the grass,

To see, know, experience

     What they are.

They are a part of me now

     As my spirit grows

To oversee the neighborhood

     Like an electric bulb

With thoughts of love brought from the moon

     And Jupiter,

The languid palms, the cool August laughter

     Next to beach fires.

But there is a voice with a cry

     That echoes and recoils,

For it denies what I know

     And who I am,

And I want to cup my ears in disbelief

     With my hands,

For the alien has gotten in

     And I am lonely

Again, smaller than the eyes in

     Darkness hiding

From a world that only turns at a distance,

     Impossible to understand.

Butane at Sunset

The high tide swirls with such urgency.

My knees may sink into the present

But the past is all I can see:

The blues of what I might have done differently,

The reds and golds of how neither of us heard,

And suffered for not being understood,

The darkness encroaching of what was never said,

And how in the white foam it came anyway.

A Pause at the Lighthouse

Like an endless memory

There are moments of peace.

Even on this rocky coast

With its dismal grey

There are grasses in the summer.

There are moments

When the shore becomes the sky,

When the light becomes more

Than this spinning Jenny

Spreading nowhere

But a reply

That seems to come

Within,

From a non-existent center,

A momento of completion 

In the continual swirl of

Rain against wind,

Ship against ocean,

Toy against children ...

The two of us, here,

Can never agree,

Yet we spend all our days

Together,

Still looking for the universal

In the common sea.

The Ripples from the Golden Lake

Only when you're alone

     Are you together

And only when you're together

     Can you be alone.

This paradox is not unique to you.

Each individual cell contains

     The whole universe

No less than the universe contains

     Each individual cell.

Every polarity is only this:

The perspective of

     The only one

Against its other left behind

     Within the unity.

One can never be free

From what you are

     And what you're not.

All that you touch and reveal

     Is counteracted completely

By the very thing that values your singularity.

Does this help you see 

     Resistance as your authority,

The unresolved wrong as what completes

     Your right,

Unrequited desire the thing that satisfies?

An Obsolete Catharsis

There are only so many sorrows
     You haven't heard before.
The thumb-strummed low string walks
     Stumbling the garish night
On the bones of the broken
     Sharer of folk-song poison
We always enjoy, clapping and cajoling
     As the dark doors close
Without transcendence or meaning,
     For the darkness within
Finds redemption in the distance,
     Where the suffering can be seen,
As if its being consists of wandering,
     A friend who might drop in
At anytime, to remind you of what or where
     You might have been,
Pulling on your string with his chords
     And a jug of wind.

They pass through so silently,
     These troubadours, almost lost
Amid the noise of conquest and surrender
     On either side of the glass,
To walk unseen with the other drunks
     Down the dark illumined docks,
Where the sea's another theory
     For the way we feel right now,
Deserted by a moon we once believed we had become,
     And run out once again of illusions.
Though the shimmering had resumed,
     It was already gone.
You won't even notice it missing,
     With the guitar, in the morning.

Reflections on the Hometown Celebrity

The world it gives you pearls
Before it gives you swine.
Too much light is chaos;
If all we knew was heaven,
How could this be
Anything?

But there is a great creation
Overrides us like a dome.
It's a theory, like the moon,
Until talked about as real
And fractioned in our usual
Politesse.

The neighbor has a soulful sound.
It turns out that it's Mingus.
And the levels
Where these things are to be shelved
Are confused
Again.

For the tasty notes are doled out
From undisclosed locations;
We can share what we have noticed,
What has come out of machines,
We can even call it
Balinese

And strip it to its delineations
As connoisseurs of what we understand,
Now worthy of comparison
To the others who, without a body,
Have filled somehow
Our memories.

You know the names.
They're plastered everywhere,
But someone we don't know
Always has the silver pass
To get us in the dankest
Caverns.

They are always going ahead of us
In experience
What will run inevitable as current.
But how do we know these
Discoverers were not
Themselves spun?

Who's to say how the words
On everyone's lips
Were formed?
Or why we all so easily, in our video facsimiles,
Assume the same poses
Of seduction?

We follow
The voices we know,
The jokes we might tell,
The smile that we seem to understand,
For we are the children
They gesture for,

To bring them the phone
And the coppers we'd collected
And hear again their stories
Of their dark, most painful sojourns
And victories no less believable
For being earned,

And a moral always hidden
Like a magician's prestige,
The preacher's detail
That buckles the knee.
How have they obtained
Such authorities?

Have you seen them on your streets?
Could they entertain
The merchandise-sniffing
Neighbors, the drunken bloviators
And envious listeners
With that?

It's impossible to fathom how
They came to speak
For so many,
Telling ancient stories
With familiar thrust
Of jaw.

It's an alternate world
But we wear it
As our own
Out of boredom
And desire to fit in
To the suit.

You want, put out like fruit,
To be liked by them!
Was that because you found out
That they want you,
Alone among a million fans,
To like them?

What led them to this particular
Craving for adulation?
With eyes that only see
The hole you fill.
What would you do to realize
An impossible dream?

What we don't know
Would destroy them in our eyes,
For they've wasted our pity
When they would need it most,
For the things to be forgiven when
They were invisible.

The Altars

The black cult that ate its servants' souls
Seemed, somehow, to them, of the light.
It spoke of truths unknown to erring men,
Gave a wider reference of forgiveness
With fruits, statuettes and lamps,
Gilded unread books, and one clear
Memorable lesson: You are home.

Its explanations were as weapons to the pious
As they brooked no opposition or resistance,
Though they seemed to wave everyone through
With munificent hand.
                                            It was laughable
To the devils on the outside, but we are all
Endowed with the great gift to oh-so-easily
Turn anything we seek into the truth,
Oh and so much rides upon the illusion
Of seeing reality as we want it to be,
We'll act out the martyr without the slightest clue
We've been the oppressor too, and that, in fact,
Is what wounds, for the ones who say "fuck you"
Complete us more than any lover could,
For it gives us a reason to be separate,
As eccentric and free as a thought.

That is why the doors shut tight
And only a low hum and incense escape.
The smiles inside burst with love,
The thoughts are all of heaven,
The words have been honed like a strip of pine:
We are lost
And want to do this all again.

Complicity for the Milk-Carton Children

The trace was deliberately placed
To keep us in longing
Even grief
Without memory.
There was only the fall
And nothing before it,
Though it was our world
And it was all we knew
— Yet impossible now
To conjure;
Every model
Draws shadows.
The mirror is the darkness
Of the pond,
Not the endlessness
Reflected.

And in that mirror
Where would be the sky
Is an idol:
Fragmented, trapped, withdrawn
Under the skin of
Safety
As masks we wear
That we call other faces.
How the ripples bend
To merge them into one
And better resemble
What we want to look back:
Healed, powerful, free,
An alchemical transmutation
Of soul
Into simulacrum.

What is this tortured blood
We crave
In the chalice we can't reach?
How brazenly what is lacking
Is substituted,
The energy of destruction
For the patient spirit.
Can we let the faces — each one
An obligation that holds
A truth that's really ours — go?
Can we let them all dissolve
And turn our gaze
To what we cannot see,
What grows in the dark,
The effervescent frailty of seed
Not the tangible souvenir of bone?