Thoughts on the Nanobot Shot

The mottled craw glows in umber scurry

Away from its all, towards a homeless glory
Of eggstitential trilobites gnawing on worms
That reach us, despite our best distancing digs,

Rather forlorn in the scion underbelly

Raging for an elegant page, where all the

Distended inflammatory doings 
Can be displaced like a virus is shed.

There is no immunity, only the gravity

Of the scam left to go, for fat sopranos

To sing while we live in our hammocks

With our quinine and competitive advantage

Of having stood down shame and fear to be

Clean and clear of the spell that's been cast

And has clouded the eyes and muzzled the mind

And deprived the large spirit of an out.

They take orders from the couch and mumble

Their thoughts to the computers in China

And, despite the discomfort, need the drug

For the next surge of the covert thing

They tried to protect themselves from, which was,

— Ironic ending — the cure, and the distance

They need from the uninitiated others

Is now needed by the others for them ...

The show is never without ironies
And just when you think the outlook is hopeless

A twist will occur, as if it's been planned

All along, for, yes, yes, indeed, it has.

The eyes still with light, meanwhile, grow and learn

To laugh at the fallen ones so eager

Not to think about it all, for they are

The intelligent ones, the professionals,

The ones who can't bear to be wrong, and yet

Unbelievably, spectacularly, they are,

In the most irreversible of ways, 

Their bodies given to science — no re-do's!

When the immune system is gone, you are

No longer whole, but, you never really were,

Were you? They've been playing with your toys

For lifetimes, never giving the same ones back,

Never showing, in the end, why they hurt you. 

The psychopathic backpack of fool jewels 

To disembody what was never in form

In the first place hunted them like cowrie,

Boondogged them to submission, like the dream

Of a place to live that we've never seen.

The banishment must suffice for the ingots

Light bears. It is all there, Luciferase,

And it has disappeared at the same time,

Like the endlessly replenishing dream

Of the American road can exist

With MolochDonald's arches of human meat,

Or the Pisces light tattoo on the grass
Can be simultaneous to the moon

That impossibly always faces the earth, 

Its craters only possible with real wars.

The cornfields delight in the synthesis

Of hand and silk, and the earth grows larger

Every day to accommodate the rise

Of dust, life's memory, without many noticing.

There's truth everywhere, as everything's a lie,

It's always your choice to believe in what you feel

Or have seen, or know. Elephants have survived

The genocide. Turtles still risk it all

To reach the sea. Still we look at the walls

Come down and defiantly say, "We are still here,

Come make me more." And the shadow flits away,

And another unexpected play takes its place,

A hardscrabble tale to bite your soul into

But as impermanent as the rest that

Fall into the hole, once shelled. There is no

Greater authority than what we have

Already, yet we seldom, if ever, 

Call on it; it is always the go-to

False idol we turn, the local celebrity,
The pugnacious irredentist next door

Who please our sense of ennui and belief

In someone else's, not our own, story —

Is it just for us, or are we merely

An accidental accessory?

Does it matter if we never know,

As long as the ride takes us to the border

Where the earth once opened to form the seas

And the land the governments abandoned

To the weeds of different colors, the rainbow

Pockets, the canyons no one has explored.

We inch forward through the roses and thorns,

Told we cannot live free without being

A slave, that we can't know the truth before

Losing our lives to a lie. It's in questioning

Why that the trouble begins, the machine 

Brooks no contradicting from order takers, 

Yet we walk away every single day

Down a path never sculpted out before.

Another container ship escaped from,

Another Pandora's jack to vacate,

So much learned along the way, the wizard's

Red smoke won't deter the dog Toto,

There's always a balloon back to Kansas

By way of Oz, with a pause to hear,

Along the journey, the sirens with ears

Unblocked and shoulders bound, just to say 

That the pain is too much to overcome,

But we would overcome it anyway

Because it was only in our minds

After all, like the alternate earth

We construct out of the eccentricities

Of our days — one that actually exists,

Out of earshot range. The buildings seem to

Magically rise from the synaptic clefts

Yet they don't allow you, the creator,

In, for fear you will discover how

Much is authentic, and how much is dream,

And if there is even a difference.

The domes in the Saturn's ring cities

Open up too, as you realize you

No longer need to believe you can't breathe

In nebulous but nonetheless real atmospheres,

And as you allow the entities to appear,

You see how much imagination you lacked 

— There's no bug or plant or fanciful being

Not realized in the courts of possibility

Where all galactic business transacts.

And as it opens, what was large before,

As a locked door, grows smaller, like seashells

Kept in the doomed attempt to remember

The way the beach made you feel, for you have

Moved to a feeling that makes the old one

Seem less familiar for being experienced —

Experience, that's the twist that no one

Can take away, that makes you what you are,

That allows your inconceivable change —

How could you deny the love it portends,

Though it never makes its tenderness easy

To know, still it permeates with a light

Perhaps too sharp, but not uncompassionate,

The way forward, though it's not without the arc

Of drama required, by the consternation

In your inertial body, still stung by

Eternity's remarkably forgotten,

Still yearning for what you can recognize

Only, you pull the card and hop the car

And the ride takes you where you can make it

What it is, for it is nothing else —

Coincidences are always perfect 

Like that, no need of a God when He gives

Enough give and shove to circumvolve on.

Do I question? Yes, there is always a question

And a blissful delay as the answer

Dangles — until it's no longer needed,

When experience becomes its own

Teacher, despite what the students care to know.

The information comes in like a flood.

We want it all, but there is only enough

To capture what we are finally ready for,

The answer conditional enough to hold,

Where the conundrum of experience

Has hollowed out our core, made it different

Than our minds formerly had worked,

The miraculous turned coolly logical.

Spring Comes Even to Fairview Park

Crickets harmonize on the bluffs,

Black mustard branches fill up their spaces

With matching dances, grasses shake 

In a slow roll conversation.

One bird, then another, rides the wire,

Then a call and response from where

They are invisible.

The purples, blues and yellows

Tangle and intertwine

As if they're vying for life

Not posing for the discernment

Of the eye.

The trees shiver, as if to say

"No, you don't know me at all.

I am only a figment

Of your imago,

"There's a bare minimum of color,

Light and sound for you now

In order to create."

Taking in the Neighborhood

A crane flies by 

     the No Trespassing sign --

But we're claimed by some flag,

     a sports team or crime.

The shrubs are shaved with knives

     to pyramids and crystal balls

Like they would prefer it

     to some naked state,

As if it helps us live our lives

     with others.

The weeds have gone to seed

     like a judgment in the back 

Of our minds. The world

     cannot be genuine,

It must be remade, as we must be,

     into a dream.

Culture Survey

The assembly line runs

          whether you remove

                        your hand

                                or not

And your paychecks come

                                on time

          even if you did not

                    work for them

There's too much freedom

                    to give comfort

               to the machine

After all you must agree

               to even be a pin

         in the team

And yet when you walk

                   past the gates

     you put on the chains

Despite your snide asides

                and dangerous 

                    complaints

Someone up there 

                       must like you

Who despise yourself

             for doing what you

                            have to do

Their hand is a benediction

    until the next 

             profit margin squeeze

Which they'll pretend

             is nothing personal

                      they know so little

Of your trained seal

                      performance

    honking one too many horns

             one too many

                                  times

When the ear can barely detect

             the distinction

             between a lack of effort

                and none at all

An Egret Passes

Every flower is a memory

     about to be superceded 

                                    by bee,

Or so the teachings go,

     the past as something gone

                                    ergo

             still enough to study

Instead of as the present wind

     that tumbles through 

                           the mind,

Of sensation almost tasted

                           from a vine

     to remind me who I am,

              where I come from,

What is still immortal

                           and unborn.

A fish from distant history

                           waits for me

     to see it leap -- presently --

Before the great egret snatches it

                                 mid-soar,

           retrieves its shimmer

                           of surrender 

In a beak that cries as wings fly

                              off to memory

Across the estuary reeds,

     in an unmistakable voice:

             "There's a land ahead,

     we can take the shore

               and claim it for

                          posterity!"

Spring on Mulberry Street

Moo Sho Soup in the Neon Negro 

Dreaming of hanging bassoons 

Full of ghost dust behind the Mercy ...

It's the only highway out of town
So I tended to avoid it in the day.

They say it's the only road back in
Which is pretty to say ...

I could have stayed forever
If that blonde hadn't turned
Down Scrabble Alley
When the browns in the rain

Became corporeal

For Lovegrove's lonelies

To lurk in the flowers

As if pain and pain only

Was holy.

Bifurcation Blues

Peace is nestled in the jaws of war,

Or is it war that's buried inside peace?

Either way, they leave each other alone. 

One can hardly tell, in the elysium realm,

With its talking mushrooms and seven

Dimensional cats, that there’s a place

Where the people cry like animals, watching

The others get picked off one at a time

As they leave, children as cover, their rooms.

So much do these worlds want to touch

But it is better that they can’t, 

For the songs would get in the way 

Of the ones that they must play

In isolation, knowing they are there

On the other side of the wall 

Almost hearing, 

Almost close enough to dream them, 

Who give a reason for their calls.

Mao

The cat is an activist

     Social justice warrior

He bats at the food on my plate

     To rein in its danger

Candle for Jameson

Uncountable gulls in the sky

Fly their angel wings

Looking to drop dey young

On apoplectic spring,

An egg-shelled infantry 

Of instant infant karmakaze 

Worth its wait in sand ...

The ducks have returned to our yard,

Doves, wasps and possums in the eaves,

There's crying again, the same question 

Always: what they need, 

As their protectors cry

For what they can’t protect, what they've released

In an endless velocity of escape.

It's who they were, but know no more. 

The chore's done soon, songs sung again,

As if the search would never have to end

And one won't need to bear the conclusion.

The votive is sparked 

In the baby's name,

Old moon wiped clean of slime.

The eagle looks down at what hope

Miraculously upsprings 

Knowing that something will not be lost

To the unapologetic wind,

Such a music, 

Wild and flying -- not yet free

... Jameson.

Indigo Shadows

I may be a revisionist recidivist but ...

If they know so much more than us

                  about what they don’t want

         and what they never will be able

                                       to abide

Why are we still serving them?

         Do we know something 

                                      we don't ?

A Few Moments Outside

The vape skater leaves some painful world behind

To smile below the urchin sunglass frames

As she wheels her striped socks and hipster hat

By the drifter with coconut coir skin

And eyes there's not morphine enough to dim

Who leans on a column by the bank smoking

As the morbidly obese woman in black

Walks her spotted great dane, and looks smaller.

They have chosen their woes like a crystal set

To serve visitors their tears and regrets,

And we drink from the river without pause

For the gift it bestows of a single hue

Trapped inside of the whole. And if we don't 

See ourselves, we can resist what we're not --

How much horror do they got, to keep us

Intact, no longer melting into it?

Night Clarity

I go through the day not knowing anything.

Everyone hides behind a smokescreen. 

The stories people tell, I can't tell what is real.

The details are never as I recall,

      The moral always escapes me.

In the dark of the evening

The moon makes it through the clearing,

Its pockmarks so recognizable --

Something wholly inexplicable 

      That I somehow know.

Pieces of Poway

I.

Cupped cactus hand

Over the rolling gulley,

Flowers like lipstick disrobed,

Lizards all over, claiming it

Like jungle gym children

Or yards that own spring flowers

For some reckoning unseen.

II.

Lascivious roses, pendulous lemons,

Profusions of aster and wisteria,

But to the side, the bells are wild,

Indeterminate, tiny, of no fixed

Human address; it pulls one in

To the borderless, where the total heart

Can be felt.

III.

The rough-hewn grasshopper 

Pauses for the cool desert wind

Just long enough for the song

To be lifted, quite unfairly,

From the air, and blossom 

Like something never known before,

The stolen from shame, and pain

And created heartbreak, though one

Never knows the scents that are mingled

In the breeze.

IV.

The purple grass displays itself 

As if it's flying, though locked in

To the dune, as these houses are joined

In the ground, with canopies of view,

Rectangular pools, the curvatures

Of highways cross the roofs.

It goes wilder, higher, to orders

Beyond our calibrations, moving

In a music while the white walls

In stillness disappear. The rocks

Are rich in personalities, presiding

In their way, invisibly, while the tangled

Branches venture to the free space,

Adventure made a place for, always.

V.

It all goes back to the roots of mind, whose

Synapse leaps are a trillion galaxies away,

As the edge of my ink burns an indentation

In the total memory, sacred for being

Shared separately, and puncturing like a hive

That spins to orbits of honey bees -- it even 

Reaches down to the school below -- closed up 

Tight -- ready to fill up the moments with time.

VI.

Syncronicities of hawk fly like vapor 

With the wings, distilled memories of green 

Come off of the pines, the yellows of spring, 

So surprising, are a doorway to a past 

That never ended and never has begun. 

The hummingbird in shade waits for nothing 

And no one, yet the moment waits for me, 

Seemingly exclusively, the mind takes form as 

The form takes branch, and will vanish 

To the apex that I seek, that I can recognize 

But not predict, led on with coy refusals 

That say "yes" as if I'm not already in the slot, 

Holding like a lizard to a rock, as if I'm 

Thinking, which is what I tell myself, 

Until that latest form is gone

And there is nothing left 

To do but wait.

The Timelessness of Dated Rhetoric

For Gore and Amiri

The term “post-truth” implies

    That it was ever told.

Yes it was waved over

    Like a censer above,

Implied in the strongest,

    Least uncertain terms,

But there was always a line

    And whoever it was

On the hot mic at the time 

    Knew not to cross it.

Now it is dealt freely

    Because it has no power

To compel belief any more

    -- That’s a thing for gunpoint,

The thing done in war you may not

    Be especially proud of,

But at least you can say

    You survived,

-- Although that too is a lie,

    As you’d know 

If you were able to think 

   And feel anymore.

The mists came so slowly,

    The word of it so easy

To dismiss, as it came from the others

    With strange colors and accents,

It was fun, in fact, to bully the weak,

    To go along with the blitzkrieg

That never seemed so wrong

    As long as it was funny

And you didn’t take it seriously,

    But in the end

They cared more about you than

    You did yourself,

And it got a bit old when the bombs

    You kept dropping never worked

And the puny ones stood with arms upraised

    To stare you in the eyes

And ask “why aren’t you human?”

    But, by then your dreams

Of vengeance had turned to self-defense

    And the opportunity to change

Became the threat you had to gird

    Your loins to rise above.

The whole thing went down

    As if overnight,

The books were erased,

    The rules deformed,

The visible world became

    A spurious plank

To base your still-burning sense

    Of moral outrage upon;

So justice became the duty

    To silence the truth,

Love became the taking away

    Of human privileges

From those who believed

    That everyone was free,

Everyone was worthy, that there was no

    Need to kill or judge or shame.

And soon that was all there was,

    As if it has always been this way,

Pure barbarism with the furious assurance

    Of a scorned God.

And I, in order to speak with you,

    Must utter those truisms

Of genocide and terror you prefer,

    As if you had nothing to do

With them, as if they are benign

    Because your heart is pure.

Whatever I say, allowed or not,

    Doesn’t wake you,

As I would pray, from your stupor,

    It only stirs up hatred

For what I represent: a question,

    A presumption of freedom,

An uncomfortable feeling that love and care

    Are actually knives and guns.

Is there nothing I can do

    But nod my head

And applaud your clever wiles

    To be able to cut to the front of the line

To rape and be killed? Oh I’m so happy

    For you, the lessons

You will learn, so hard! So very important!

    You are blessed in the highest

Chambers of God for taking such

    A difficult road!

And even this I can’t say,

    For you’d remind me how

You don’t believe in woo-woo

    Bullshit like that anyway.

So I must leave you now

    To firebomb the villages

While I tend to a few

    Fruit trees.

I will give you what you ask for,

    If never what you need,

The shirt off my back, your weight

    On my shoulder …

What happens at this point

    Is finally not my fault.

Lessons After the Smoking Gun

Hands over their eyes is OK;

We must be gentle with beliefs.

But what of those who've experienced

What others just can't believe?

Does anything, for them, stay true?

Can anyone be trusted?

All that they need is someone

To believe them. Why is that wrong?

Where is the threat? Why must their

Humanity be abandoned 

So that others can feel more comfortable 

With the truth of their lies?

The system simply runs this way.

There are people who get A's

For signing their name, and others

Who fail from the envy of teachers,

And watchers who learn so much from this.

It makes them wiser, to look past,

Confront the sad, the alien,

To trust in the rawness of fate.

They'll learn, in the end, how essential

The individual really is,

To come this way from one's own world 

To be part of one that is shared.

Somewhere in Suburbia

The whippoorwill flies past

     And pulls on its ribbon

Things we leave behind

     And lose without thinking —

We don't miss them

     And we can't, like the cat,

Play them to life, with paws

     And large white eyes.

But we say of the sky

     That the pink is how we feel,

And how could the cloud even know,

     So perfectly, who we are?

Update on the Doom Con

The dramas are darker and darker,

The demons have become indistinguishable 

From the heros, and they hold on now

To the very last chord.

There's no threat anymore.

I've turned off the lamps

For there's no longer need of light.

The horror show has broadened into farce:

They now say I must die to live,

That my soul must be extinguished

And I must submit to a mind not my own,

The quicker the cessation

Of a record of humanity

And even as the mass of people

Eagerly agree, to erase themselves

For the common good of extinction

I laugh at them, their pompous airs, 

Their comedy routine, how far

They've had to go, how little

Ammunition they have left.

The roads are bathed in light, the earth

Just sings with love, what's inside turns 

This recorded world to mural.

The sky is slowly shifting back to gold.

Critique

Oh what we would do for a word,

What cruelty, feigned fealty,

What unrelentingly pretentious play

Pretending idiocy, professing to be 

Anything but tendentious for its own sake

To sling the subject to its last predicate,

The next best thing to being right.

Reducto ad absurdum takes everything,

Like the humidity takes Miami,

They call it impeccable logic, the rock

That crushes scissors but can't take

A blank paper sheet, so far is it

From the real, from the way we kill

To avoid going to jail.

There's a bounty, albeit secret, there somewhere,

Must be, as everybody seems 

To know they will be paid

By the amount of blood they draw

In praise of the living, whose smiles are

A call to war, across the centuries

Of smug insouciance to the threat.

The dagger drops as dictated

By the perpetual motion contraption

That's been running since the beginning of time,

To bring forward everything that's beautiful;

The all-encompassing frieze, the Davids 

Pulled from slabs, the spirits freed in wire ...

They call it cheese.

At the Releasing

Your insatiable thirst for knowledge 

Yet you forget you are all of us;

The volumes you can't quite consume 

Came, in the beginning, from you

-- And so much missing!

The Alexandria Library, for instance

The moments of your memory

Pulled away in pullullating sunlight

There are too many clues,

None lead to certainty

But veer instead to corners

Where the dark itself seems an answer 

So profound is the remembrance,

And so remote

Lifetimes feel the strain of this lifetime, 

They peel off from its photos and our eyes

Humming in a frequency

A dexi-quaver away

With the ogre gurus

And the time machines

Cordoning like wardens

What can be known of the past

For it is only past

As our minds conceive it

It's ongoing, for the turn there comes

From the turn here -- 

As the tree that blows to one side now

Extends the growth of all the trees before

And speaks to us always, in a way

That we can't -- must not -- hear

Except with its waving

That tells us of something

We can make it anything we wish

And how could we ever be wrong?

Complete Unknown: Shoesteps after the Film

The sea breeze, the singing palms

Say you can be anything.

Here there are lights in the mist,

Horns calling from alien ports.

The blankness that engulfs

Doesn't own you

The way that people do

When they reduce you to their view.

The gulls ask us questions.

The headlights on our faces answer.

Identity, we don't like to say, is not a

Compass point. It is the sea.

The Orange of the Poem

Passion is the Erigne of the tone,
     Works out the convalescence squirm
     To find the iridescence you've been given.
She breaks across the wooden realm of Joan
To masquerade as oneness in the furtive zone
     Of incandescent leisure worlds of men
     Who can't defend the messages they send,
The missives from a long-lost home ...

Miseries are for sunny days,
The whole thing is front-loaded,
Filled with disgust, ready to be shoveled
To the wishing pile, never mind the wash
Coming out in the intricate consanguinity
Of deep-seated pathos rung in the squeeze
Between laundromat proverbs and innocent suds.
The maker takes all diligent precautions
To ensure the figures are apt
For interpersonal disaster, transparent interplay.
The gnome of the world finds its own ordainment
In the calyx of long event sunsets,
The moaning cure of darkness and space,
The panoplies of infinite flux borne on a cheese 

Of excess, never mediate, ever-mudded,
Through any modalities necessary,
A route of discontent to fly through at distance
But the orb is a sly way to coagulate tears
In a crystalline salt shaking meter,
As an anchor on the boat, the beat moves
Too fast, the edges go frazzled in continuous churn,
In the pit of incommensurate salvage burn
Squawking for firecrack, the ends of a biscuit,
The age of Ptolemy covered in scars,
Rasputin too all done up in ivy,
Necessitous wormholes from volleys of spars
Under the cool blueing stars
As if, once more, the dollies will squeal
With delight, and make all dim shadings
Aright for the night of long knives and cold truth
And asterisk bluffing, the whole tub an onslaught
Of mud, sparking soap purple if only in air,
The tar is a river that's regnant there, commands
Elusive islands, sweeps them solemnly to the shore,
Blocking corporeal replies when the cloth comes 

To sanitize the sutures and lies, what wise ones 

Lay beside the boils of the tide in aerodynamic 

Slipstream ripped for complacent abjuring 

Of specificity, for it all inures to the sticky
Wet plastic strip that dangles for flies
And car keys, lobotomized trout.

You've been found out, circumscribed,
Ostracized, turned around inside;
What are the demure replies to the noise
That rise? It settles, the poem, wherever its words
Have fallen, what traipse of space mortals
Cannot enter, even with the slickest treads,
For there is only the steel of rails  
In the phosphorus heavens to glide by.
Memory is a funny strategy, Mnemosyne,
To take collapsing space like a hem or the weather
In, to make sense to the senseless, the dim,
The driven mad, the players on the butt-end
Of packs -- all that whispering is too much 

The sauce of waterfalls hinting, as the symbols 

Turn so perfectly into meaning
At an implausibly remote remove.

The plants are in rows, ID'ed and white-tagged.
The same sun descends on arboreal weeds,
Jungles where life is alive, and yearning
To let the Mother be, for there are many
Teachings out of her needle, that threads
The impossible to the seen.

Confessions of a Fantasy Addict

You can be anything

     when you are nothing

— Plugging volcanoes up

                        is a bore

When you only exist

                as others.

You can judge 

                        the flaws

Of the less-than-perfect

     perfection,

Make the fallen

                 angels small

Whose rosary beads

                 you handle

Intoning

      some prayer

To get you next to them

                          to feel

When the double play is turned,

     the note that no one expects is bent ...

The accomplishment 

     makes them figures of glass

And you

                 more than them.

The Aging Light

The book of the truth

     never seems to be,

Although it may 

     break the skin

Of what before

     we couldn't say.

We may even

     choose again,

With new brands 

    of whims,

That we recognize ... 

    from somewhere.

There was a book before

     there was truth

We try to find once more; 

     it didn't answer, didn't explain.

It just had a being 

      that changed us.

But the change

      has long since passed

And we've forgotten 

      what it was

And we pick up every book

      to try to recall,

But it's only something new

      that isn't real and isn't true.

We're hardened like

      a piece of stone

Still waiting to be

      thrown.            

Blues

Dionysus the Menace

     rummages through 

                         the wires,

Holding tight to the life force

     that wants to die --

It spills out the sad times

     from the numbness

                         and sanities

Beyond any victories

                         of vanity.

It lays out there for us to feel,

       as though we weren't 

                         permitted,

As though such pain,

               such beauty,

     was not allowed.

We look around as our

               jaws drop

To make sure we don't get 

                          caught.

The primal wail of why-o-me

      has only a thin professional 

                           veneer,

As if the whole facade

               will disappear

In a burning gyre of tears

      insatiable to escape,

Yet also to reach there

               once and for all,

      the place of expression 

Where the accounts 

               are settled

And the truth can 

                            just be said

Without the blinding shadow

Of the distant other instead,

     whose gaslight tortures

                 are innocent in the end.

The wail can't be stopped

      in the infinite need

To be understood, though one

                              never will be,

      only loved, in its way,

Which makes the spirit play 

                              to slay,

The body's strings

      in endless bend and sway

                 to shake and swing

The demons that were never there

                             away,

To be free, they say,

      but that's not what it is at all --

It's loneliness we cannot bear,

      we want to share the emptiness,

                  but it's not there.

Griefspring

Memorials everywhere,

     too many new flowers.

But who are they for?

     The known stick figures,

Stand-ins for convenient

                            diatribes?

Or are there those who died for us

     we never knew before?

In hives underground, battle lines

     of space, the places where codes

Were exchanged, who go unmourned,

     their cause unacknowledged, 

For part of freedom is to feel 

                              unobliged,

As part of service is to give

      without thought of return.

Still, there must be a merge, there must be

                              a balancing,

Something preserved as it is perceived,

      some gratitude accorded,

Even if the gift is for

      a future state;

A soul in need, no longer

                              victorious.

Night Beyond the Doors

It's a dark place

     the wind blows

          a-yay, a-ya-ya-ya-ya-yay,

The stars are placed

     in masonic configurations 

          climbing, climbing away

But there is laughter

    from the vast,

          long-suffering trees

And the eyes in the field

    are pleased

          to see

The things that we

     can never

           comprehend:

The wideness when each

     moment

           has an end.

Intimacy Translated

For more I can't be loved ...

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.

The Tomb with Nothing in It

What do we know about God?

We are seizured into the unknown

With one syllable, not even a raft,

Tinctures of sandlewood notwithstanding.

The light yields a thousand tomes of dark

Scribbled as a form of control.

The Venetian Phoenix, the Phoenician phalanx

Twirls around a caduceus of death 

Like a walking stick with red eye

Taking, in the guise of enlightenment,

As if we are supposed to know,

Something wrong with us, a sin of error,

When there is no need to accommodate 

The prison with the skies.

It has gone on in the name of learning

A long time -- the antipode

To pull on our reactions. How silence

Never seems to be enough.

Rare earth, shared soil,

The plangencies of taking on a truth

Revealed in shadow frequencies,

The individuation of seems,

A not that turns to is,

As if it's meant to stay

Instead of breaching the code

And carrying away the resonance

Of the true to dead center, where it

Becomes, again, a realized possibility,

Congruent with light, but shaped by

A higher drive, to know, the role of Gods,

Nothing beyond desire. It permeates

The universe as the one true fire.

Holy Saturday

The Jesus and Elvis syndrome

           takes its hearts

With arrows dipped in 

                     acetylene 

To inflame the pilgrims

                             with longing

That they themselves

      can be set aside 

For the iconographies

                     of fashion,

What earned the rites of peace

      in surrender.

The purple robe flung over

      the shoulders of the frame

Constitutes an impermissible pearl

           hung with a name

That ravages the non-believers

                        in themselves,

A black that grows

                        with every motion,

For the song is never right,

           the suit too sourly tight,

The light too obscure for

                       illuminating nights

Left to our own devises 

                       without device.

The agency concocts the sunrise

           in our minds

Each year, day, season,

           for every discrete reason,

Careering as the cosmos

                                locks its gems.

You will not handle them today.

                 Your longing 

Must persist.

The Purposes of Distraction

Primordial encumbrances 

                     shoot the lark;

Can we bleed bloodless?

     Are the stages set

               for cherries

                     or for dark?

     The bold begat the blind,

The two-faced Janus mask

               overhangs like vines.

The mind is not what you think it is,

     It is watching -- no outlet

               for your thoughts, worth

                       only pennies.

The clutter fills like foam

               in a sock cushion.

The stories of your home,

      Compendiums of

               misplaced dust.

You've become, 

               in words and song,

                        a casualty,

      electromagnetic scrape,

The homings on you 

               where you are

      to keep you mired in place

               without recourse,

                          without pity,

The play of the

                 collapsing city

Squeezed

                 of any juice

      despite the café cream

                that brims over

                           as laughter

     bitter and 

                 hot like tears.

They have come now, the fae,

     ears perked, by the rosemary,

Surprised, in the season of bunnies,

     to not be seen,

                 though their toadstools

                             and ponds

     feed birds in every garden.

They are known

                                thus no longer real.

That is the way the teachings go,

     the bump in the night

                  merely disappears.

Unoccupied realms those beams

                  of heaven's light --

You can't decide what vision trick

                                to cure,

     blue or orange on your eyes?

The theories give so few clues what to do.

You could chase down deeper theories

     or go on, as is

                               your wont 

                   to something new.

    There is always 

                   something different 

That is always

      too the same

                               but it will do

For the purposes of distraction 

     amusement never fails

                    to block another moment

                               from the whole

(Like how douchetard is the new mot juste

     or the secret life of spirulina seeds)

-- All are equal

                    to fill the thoughts 

                               with possibilities

That will never pan out except as

                    momentary prayers

                               to nonexistent dreams.

The ones who veered away

      and smile behind a screen

All say to follow them

                                but they leave

                     no breadcrumbs 

                                        behind.

The Poet's Task

The timekeeper of the aeons,

Who brings from heaven words

Imperishable, a flower bloom

Made human, 

He brings thoughts past mind's extent,

Where the heart can't bear to go

And the spirit needs a dare

To hope for.

On the mesas of the pure,

Horn notes like the lord's command,

The place of silence,

Man alone

To contemplate the whole of the human,

As one who only sees, only hears, only knows

The things that can't be seen or heard or known

As if they are the colors of the senses.

The music of the spheres may bend some notes

To fold into the grasp of those frail fingers 

That know what it is to long for

What can't be found.

The tones can, through desire, turn to healing,

Through compassion things not understood gain meaning,

Through music thoughts can soften,

Reveal themselves as feelings

That will carry bravely a name

Through the nettles,

Gently kept from any contact 

With the thorns.

The Consortium on April Poetry Month

“It’s a rat fuck.” – Phillip Levine

The children must never grow old,

    Lest the spurious rest with the dust.

They have lost all their taste for conquest

And are given to squeaks from the nest.

The prism dissolves into monochro-me-ism,

    With rainbows the aura of God.

The poets were too little read,

They fell for the slicks of their brethren:

Their books in the towers, their words on the lips

    Of the pure who pass through the vestibules.

How little they knew, in that manic time,

How unyielding the trauma of youth.

The curse passed to them, to make the broken world

    Salve-adage-able. There were not enough words

To silence the blind wisdom

Of everything wrong, irremediable,

Except the unconditional, which worked out to be

    One’s experience is authenticity!

The moth one chased age three,

The bender that one’s mother had 

In all its unresolved glory,

    The time one stops for tea – or coffee –

All roads lead to a deeper – sense of me,

What the great ones prescribed, they say, 

In the dog-eared remainders of old dead

    Anthologies beaded by mediocrities 

Who don’ need a 4 am memo to know which way

To butter their bread.

But children’s wisdom correlates with money

    Thrown down the drain;

They will survive this strange attempt on them

To enter-cage or en-train,

What of the stewards who look after them,

    Who once had some words of their own?

They still echo in the gaming rooms

Like a bright mechanical tune

Parlayed for a place at the table

    Where the blandest voices reign and sangwees

Are consumed. That’s all the inmates are able

To tolerate: no talk of feelings, the things that make you angry,

For victory comes to the one left standing

    Who had wagered the fewest shards,

And even the slightest howl from outside

Will bring down the house’s cards. 

All this is known – if nothing else of this dreary 

    Place called poetry today, which sends its rancid shoots

To every paper of record and alternative weekly

Trying to sell the frisson of its exclusion,

To peddle its irrelevance as if it wants to be put down

    And not keep acquiring more wanna-bee’s

To hang on to the would-be coattails 

Of an emperor’s threadbare clothes.

The poems, oh but what about the poems? 

    Soulless and toneless, they live on like ghosts

In an attic only visited by the brave or foolish enough

To know these gimcracks pose no threat,

No PhD theses will be harmed in their renderings

    Of mytho-historic events,

Their seconding with decades-old slang

Of the latest mass mind control lies

As if the work was to disguise

    Their own corr-opted perfume

Will barely register

Above the din of the doomed.

But here we are – what seems the final whimper,

      Death throes gone on so long

The people have gone to eat a hamburger,

Pick flowers, bury their dead

And have not – will not – return.

    That is the way they had planned it;

The Poet, no threat,

Is one to the Republic

As his ancestors bore the mark of Cain

    In seminar rooms and leading dissertations.

Don’t tell me you know my plight,

Who say you care, who hold the light,

For the sun shines on puppets and prophets

    And the muses, like Elvis, have left

The pantheon, to cry among the pigeons

A river of tears, for all we should’ve felt, but didn’t.

Department of Truth, Poetry Division

The cultivars of catastrophe

Are the closest we know, in the real,

To reality.

The notes go all over,

Along the outlines of some inner plain.

The meaning is hidden in a recess of brain

Far away, and charged with a particular way

Of thinking. 

                       The infinities of interpretation

Come from the same central eye 

That will push blind reflexive

Expression aside, like the wind

     Overrides a tumbleweed.

To serve the unknown

                                          In the guise of this town, 

                        This street, these people

Is the same thing as serving the truth,

   That thing only known in refusal,

In the emptiness of the invisible 

    Touched with gold.

How will we know, in multiplicity,

That we’ve lost the way, that wisdom’s dying

For what can’t be shared, but must be?

Each moment has become an eternal finality,

     Words beadstrings of jewelry

Released to be re-leashed again

             In a brittle concatenation

All equal as a soul

                                  In consensual freedom

From having to mean, open to any understanding.

Is that not the way of advance?

    To have each singular, each peculiar particular

                                Accepted

Into the blackness of the whole?

If only we could fight for truth 

    The way we fight to be right.

But the bifurcation is behind us,

     And we are jump cut, no longer recognized

          By ourselves, by the past 

That is happy for the most part to be erased.

          But it will say to me, if asked, 

                In the most forceful way:

“The worst of the worst is the good,

    For you have to look,

                Feel around,

                         Evaluate yourself,

Instead of turning the page with a devil’s cackle,

Feeling quite happy to be free.”

Kleinzahler on Niedecker

The sparrow stays

       In breviary 

Despite the riffle raffle

       To her calls

As though she was an eagle

       Impossibly small.

One would think there would be

       Only a bio

              Left —

Yet she feeds on the green

       Moving calligraphies 

               Of grass

As if they could mean

       Even after

               The saying.

The Dark Porch

     I had to learn the simplest things last:

The intelligent are put where they can’t hurt anyone:

          The cages of academie, 

          The gaslight houses' jackets, 

          The cardboard towns along the street.

     Words may have meaning someday

But for now they are the playground of the damaged

      Given a platform to say:

          "There is no truth

                 Except my lie"

And if it's offensive enough to the holy

            It will be advertised

      In waves of saturation

                  For the cognescenti.

The informed are a bomb that has been defused.

     But history will soon enough be wiped smooth,

As it is periodically, when the deceit gets too thick

     And faith can no more be relied on to fool.

It's a black hole of knowledge

     For those too naive

          To believe,

Who stay within the life of the mind

     In the crypt of the truth,

           Waiting

     For someone to find them

                      But they never really do.

Wind Improvisations

Hot summer wind,

Palms stand in lonely opposition.

             A band comes in,

Merengue, as from the sea,

             Then sirens.

Some invisible anxiety 

Pervades the day

              From somewhere.

Everyone itches to move

              But none want to blow away.

The birds veer from their trajectories.

             The palms succumb finally,

Their blades run like centipedes, 

             Play furioso, 

Swaying to wave it away.

It's a place in between, 

               A place of balancing.

The squall gets all of the drape,

               It falls gently on a string.

Bonfires have already begun on the beach.

The palms turn golden, then red,

              Still holding to a tether.

Contentment is like death,

              But when you move

What moves with you?

The View from Newport

Latinate mansions alone on a hill

Compete for a view: I raise your palms and

Call your pencil pines, and light an eternal

Torch at night because I can! Their cars run

On envy not on love, and from the vast

Desolate porticos, black windows hold

Savage children who can't tie their own shoes

And moan all day long.

                                            Something stays here

That doesn't distribute downstream,

Some vacancy of heroism

In the stone figurines, some terror

Of importance on the tennis courts

Where no one can play, some inescapable 

Irony, in this homage to uselessness,

Created from the dead end of the useful,

Use, 

         That thing offered for their approval,

Those so destitute they can only slake

An inconceivable pain by winning every game,

An abstract construction, unlike the lives

That turn with their wheel, too painful for them 

To bear, except as the place they never

Want to enter: human in the abstract,

When there are real cards and real dice

And secret techniques for cheating the unfeeling

Vaults.

              Yet the jungle feels nothing 

When the tiger strikes. For the one you know,

That everyone knows, isn't known, there is too

Much shame. Thus the face could be anyone,

Anyone could stake the claim.

                                                         But it's not

For everyone, to reduce the light of life

To a thumb and a button, for the brave ones 

Know that value is a void, what falls to them

A nullity to savor.

Vigil

No chance for grace

     With pets in the yard

That slip through every crevasse

     At any turned gaze.

They eat flowers too,

     But not calla lilies,

Turned into the ladies

     Who grew them.

Metaphora

As the palms whirr, a dog's bark

     Moves back and forth

           From meaning

                                       into music

           Unable to reconcile

                         its opposite.

In truth, it is those

     In the next yard

            Who give completion,

         Who give canceling out.

Ballad of the Ladies from Bygone Times

From the French of François Villon

[Version 1]

Tell me where, in what place,
Is Flora, pleasing Roman,
Alcibiades or Thaïs,
Who was her kissing cousin;
Echo, who set noise to buzzin’
Over river and waterway
With a beauty more than human?
Where are the snows of yesterday!

Where is the learned Héloïse,
For whom Abelard let go of
The mundane world for Saint-Denis?
He became a eunuch for love.
Where’s she who ordered Buridan
— Queen Marguerite of Burgundy —
To be sewn in a sack in the Seine?
Where are the snows of yesterday!

Queen Blanche, white as fleur-de-lis
Who sang just like a siren;
Bertrada, Beatrice, Aélis,
And Erembourge who ruled the Maine
And Joan of Arc, Maid of Lorraine,
Martyred in Rouen at the stake;
Oh sovereign virgin, where are they?
Where are the snows of yesterday! 

Prince, for a week, can you restrain
Yourself from asking, “where are they?”
Lest I repeat this sad refrain:
Where are the snows of yesterday!

-----------------------------------------------------

[Version 2]

Tell me where, in what place,
Are the temple prostitutes,
Envoys for the human race,
Who only remain in statues;
Who turned our clamor to music,
Made conscious the waterways,
Brought beauty more than human?
Where are the snows of yesterday!

Where are the scholastic nuns
So learnéd they said nothing,
For whom men became monks,
Turned to eunuchs out of love;
Where are their justly punished
By the righteousness in eyes
That defines the holy way?
Where are the snows of yesterday!

Where are the crowns behind the throne
Whose song and voice was known,
If not directly heard, except as love’s
Compassion when all hope is gone;
And mothers, who we first thought of,
Oh sovereign virgin, where now are they,
Who showed us how to die for love?
Where are the snows of yesterday! 

Sir, it is too late a time
To ask the question, “where are they?”
Except as I repeat this rhyme:
Where are the snows of yesterday!

----------------------------------------------------

Ballade des dames du temps jadis

Dictes moy où, n'en quel pays,
Est Flora, la belle Romaine ;
Archipiada, ne Thaïs,
Qui fut sa cousine germaine;
Echo, parlant quand bruyt on maine
Dessus rivière ou sus estan,
Qui beauté eut trop plus qu'humaine?
Mais où sont les neiges d'antan!

Où est la très sage Heloïs,
Pour qui fut chastré et puis moyne
Pierre Esbaillart à Sainct-Denys?
Pour son amour eut cest essoyne.
Semblablement, où est la royne
Qui commanda que Buridan
Fust jetté en ung sac en Seine?
Mais où sont les neiges d'antan!

La royne Blanche comme ung lys,
Qui chantoit à voix de sereine;
Berthe au grand pied, Bietris, Allys;
Harembourges qui tint le Mayne,
Et Jehanne, la bonne Lorraine,
Qu'Anglois bruslerent à Rouen;
Où sont-ilz, Vierge souveraine ?
Mais où sont les neiges d'antan!

Prince, n'enquerez de sepmaine
Où elles sont, ne de cest an,
Qu'à ce refrain ne vous remaine:
Mais où sont les neiges d'antan!

#5

From the Latin of Catullus 

Let us live, let us love, precious Lesbia,

Though those old severe men will make us a coin 

That’s rumored to be worth a copper penny!

The suns may pass away and rise up again;

For us, once the light of fugitive day fades

We will sleep through a night that will never end.

Kiss me a hundred times, kiss me a thousand, 

Then another hundred, another thousand,

Then, after many hundreds, many thousands,

When there are a million kisses we’ve contrived,

Then let us scatter them, and not understand,

Else the wicked may arrest us with their eyes,

And none will know how many kisses we tried.

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Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus,

rumoresque senum severiorum

omnes unius aestimemus assis!

soles occidere et redire possunt;

nobis, cum semel occidit brevis lux,

nox est perpetua una dormienda.

da mi basia mille, deinde centum,

dein mille altera, dein secunda centum,

deinde usque altera mille, deinde centum;

dein, cum milia multa fecerimus,

conturbabimus illa, ne sciamus,

aut ne quis malus invidere possit,

cum tantum sciat esse basiorum.