We are wanderers all In the shapeshifting dunes of our days Seeking amidst the sandstorms The sight of a sheltered course So we sift our pasts to cast our futures And grind lenses to focus our lives. Most are less than original But each has its own eccentricities Fitted for one eye, one terrain; No lens is universal, and no path.
Most of us hide our quirks of vision From others, and even from ourselves Lest some fatal slip should betray us And hew to some hard line or other Packed by souls of similar stripe Who confuse the safety of numbers With the security of a way well chosen And who, fearing the very existence Of the walkers of other ways As challenges to their own the wisdom of their own decisions Strive to herd those they must consider misled Back to the 'proper' route, or failing that Seek to end their journeys.
But some crazed few of us Too honest for our own damned good Craft our lenses from every gritty grain Of the wide beach of experience Fusing them carefully in insight's crucible Until they crystallize clean and true And then we wave them radiantly Before the wandering world.
These folks or followed, or killed, or both. Poets and messiahs are the glaziers Of living visions, and well wrought lenses May powerfully concentrate the common gaze Promising pathfinding clarity. But- remember this: Art is metaphor, and metaphors are chameleons. They are colored by our journeys As surely as they shape them. Empty and aimless are those who lack lenses If such pathless ones exist But stumbling blind are those who Given the lenses of others Wear them as if they were windowpanes And polish them not with their lives.
The Soothsmith's Song
I shall blast the bellows of hours past Smelting ores of pain and joy, belief and desire Of both baser and rarer mettle And work to craft my Hammersongs. Clarity is a kiln-pane, to be seen through, not seen. The white-hot moments when shapes are beaten Illumine by their intensity; The subtly wrought point stings like serpents' truth. And I shall be the soothsmith And forge facsimile lives And drive my spikes deep That, cleaving to contrary hooves They may yet hold fast my intentions.
Mine is not the alchemist's Art. I do not blend, but bind and blend A weighty matter with clumsy tools. Quicksilver flees the casting pour Forsaking pig slag, should the solve lack fervour. Then should one rather render anew Than palm dross arcs riven at a glance. Still the pure issue must be fashioned. A handcramp of anvilling follows With heat and hammer precisely applied And clear eye and caring ear Seeking clean line and true ring. Neglect is measured in a stricken gait: The misshapen shoe curses its maker
Foundations
(1) What Is
We are aware. While we live we cannot help it. We're aware of ourselves (more or less) Of others in varying degrees of closeness and estrangement And of our common world. Awareness is by necessity relation, not identity. While we live, we cannot be the ones we love Or be the world, or even be the selves We deceive ourselves to be while self-conceiving. The pointing finger cannot be the moon to which it points. While we live, we can never be finished, never arrive. Besides, what could become of us if we achieved such desires? Growth is by necessity in relation And the dust-reunion will come soon enough. But that a single hand can't clap Does not make two fan empty air. We are with those we love, in a common world And spend our lives becoming ourselves with them. Be grateful. Be glad.
(2) What Can Be
Love is NOT the Law; Care is the Law. We care for those whom we despise. Adversaries are perversely precious to us. We care for whomever makes a difference in our lives One way or another. Care encompasses both hate and love And is opposed only by indifference. The hard part is to transfigure all care into love. When few succeed at this inner task they are oppressed For most are unchanged, and take advantage of the loving. But when many subscribe to the calling of loving care They can save themselves and our common world By treating each other with kindness And our shared home with reverence. Love is not the Reality Love is the Ideal And we touch whatever Divine there may be By striving for that Ideal Ceaselessly.
The Tempest
A man was sitting upon a chair In a red rut shotgun shed Chin on palm and a thousand mile stare hearing voices inside his head. "TRY and ignore us!" the voices cried As the thunderheads mushroomed dark and wide "We will NOT be bottled here up inside." As the cannon boomed o'erhead.
"We know your soul's triumphs and despairs" As the wind-whipped rafters moaned "And the depths of the good and the evil there" As foundations creaked and groaned. "We know all the things that you've never tried" As dark torrents drenched the world outside "And the dreams from which your hopes have dried And where lost years have blown."
"You know we know and you know we care" As the lightning fell all aground "Because we're you!" And though thunder blared The little man heard not a sound. And though blast and brilliance raged through the blind O'ershadowed they were by his raging mind As his thoughts of things lost, and left behind Spun him wond'ring round and round.
May Eve
Belly swells seek the moontanned shore. They pound and roll, surge and fold Crashing in the Dreamtime And the Planter rises full with promise As the greening rite begins... Firelit bodies flicker Clad in the painting glow. Spinning like latitudes They circle round the blaze As musky dewdrops well from within And weave with the sweat of the dance.
The Chosen run laughing, hand in hand From the rampant beach to the dune-crest Their pulses wax and quicken In rhythm with the rising keen And drumbeats sound the call to growing In duet with distant thunder. Moisture permeates the air Stirred by a swirling breeze And lightning freezes silhouettes of writhing As the old song once again ascsnds to the scudding clouds And blends creschending with the wanton waves.
The tribe rejoice as Earth and Sky conjoin And blessedness bedrenches their workings. The season will bloom bountiful and good And Harvest shall shine upon hallowed fields Ripe with the fruits of the Mother.
Pastoral Counseling
Her weeping is a tiny, tinny sound Crawling from the fallen receiver. Precautions have failed us. We have A Situation to address. She Came to me for consolation A troubled teen unable to Handle her desires: nor I mine. Her flesh was firm and ripe And mine weak. I have betrayed faith, flock, family And the trust they and this girlchild Placed in me. Unable to Bear this revelation spreading further I choose my sole recourse, to betray anew And to embrace iniquity and Lie with abomination. I lift the receiver and speak to her In practiced tones, both balming and commanding. Go to the clinic, I tell her; I'll pay for it. And shiver as ghost nails Rake my back like a lover's clutches: A dead hare crossing the grave of my convictions.
Autumn Evening
Keening birds flit through fireleaf falls Flowing toward catfish a-dimpling Their pebbly rings in a geode pool Of shadow-mossed and polished violet. Faltering mold-breeze, sunset-awed Chills yet the breath and fingertips As indigo clouds' furred bellies burn And a dim crescent crowns the newborn night
The Fundamentals
"Abortion is murder!", the witch-burners bray As they kneel on their hard wooden floors to pray That all the damned heathens will see the light And be saved from Hell's bondage by bonfire bright And Cain's crosses glowing in southern night.
Our mothers and sisters and daughters and wives Are reduced to receptacles, their whole lives Possessed by one purpose: to nurture cells More worthy of life, for they might be male Like Jesus - thus wombs are warped into jails.
Poor Eve is the pattern primordial, damned By gender, as race consigned sons of Ham To servitude, their God-burned cross their coal Complexion, and if one should flee their fold Love says, "Scourge the body to save the soul."
If knowledge of ethics is primal sin Then 'teaching all nations' commits again The error, but teach they must, for their bane Is difference; they're driven to all souls train For Heaven, where all seraphs sing the same.
I cannot write sufficiently left Nor can I write sufficiently right I cannot write sufficiently black Sufficiently brown, red, yellow or white. I cannot write sufficiently straight Nor can I write sufficiently gay I can neither write sufficiently male Nor sufficiently as a woman may.
Neither can I write religiously Enough to fervent fanatics woo Nor write as secular or profane As atheists would have me do. I cannot write sufficiently old Nor can I write sufficiently young To satisfy sundry acolytes Who label all writ as pure or dung.
Try as I might, strive as I may I cannot manage any of these To the level of pristine purity Sufficient to zealous fringes please. But neither can I bear to still The need to speak with tongue and pen For I still have my own words to say That will not be constrained within.
I can only endeavor to write as me From the innermost depths my gifts may plumb And hope that it speaks universally Or at least makes a smidgen of sense to some. For we all share commonalities In the deepest wells which nourish our souls A common fount that feeds us all And joins us as links in a human whole.
It is as if we all are trees Grown different, but anchored in common earth: Our limbs sway wild in the variant breeze But our roots intertwine in our shared birth.
Author
Logged
