Moontime Dream

I turn from places shadow-filled
And cringe at calling whipporwills
Shun spiders on my windowsill
Mama had a moontime dream.

My crops lie rotting on the hill
For fear makes water of my will
As deep I dread the final chill
Mama had a moontime dream.

Last month she sprang awake and cried
"Next moon my poor man's gonna die!"
Now she just sits...and stares...and sighs
Mama had a moontime dream.

I mourn that I must pass away
But surely I shall die today
And there is nothing more to say
Mama had a moontime dream.

I hide my eyes from our young son.
How could I tell him our time's done?
Now, in the barn, I raise my gun:
Murdered by a moontime dream.


Epiphany

Lazers core my jelly bones
And my blood blanches
And thins to steaming water.
My jaw dislocates like a snake's.
My senses feel stapled to a pinwheel in a gale.
The bottom falls from my bucket stomach
And my skin crackles like sheet ice
Forsaking a strayed skater
As the nova truth vaporizes my eyes
And crisps the smoking sockets.


The Watermelon Theft


It was perfect. Dinner, a movie,
Furtive glances emboldened by their return
Insinuendo banter replacing careful conversation
Then drinks and tipsy dancing, close car embraces
And at the door, the inevitable “Nightcap?”
“Sure,” I smiled and deep-kissed.

Things moved more rapidly inside
Once the drinks were in hand
And the music was on.
The glasses were drained and put aside
By reluctantly freed appendages.
Then she began Heinz Ketchup talk
To build the moment.

“I need you deep down inside me
You make me want it so bad.”

The entry was superb;
Positioned to the proper vector
Of smooth sliding resistance.
Gasps and groans ensued as I deliciously slipped
To the hilt beneath her velvet tangle
Then in synchrony we moved
And seamlessly set a mutually pleasing rhythm
As if we’d been bedding for years.

Churning the butter of passion
With sighs interspersed like flecks on buttermilk
At the critical cresting moment
As she whimpered, clutched and writhed
I, with abandoned thrust
Nuzzled the edge of a diaphragm
And my climax was dampened;
My explosion paved with oil.

Don’t get me wrong, now;
She was great
And the worst I ever had was solid good
But - and I must speak carefully here –

It was as if you and your best friend
Had moonglow snuck into the watermelon patch
And shared the ripest and juiciest between you
Splitting halvsies from the ends
Only to discover
That the rat had paid the farmer in advance.


Technique


Learn –
To accept without desiring
To refuse without rejecting
To let be without leaving alone
To savor well each moment
Without being blinded to destiny

So should one paint the canvas of one’s life:
Don’t fail to raise your palette knife!
Flow free yet disciplined strokes with heartfelt hues
All the while forsaking jumble
And honoring the presence in absence
Frame all with fearless symmetry.

The Art is never finished:
The Craft never perfected.


Only Human


If I were Herne the Hunter, or satyr Pan divine
I’d melt through you until our spines
Like serpents met and intertwined
And penetrate you like a dart
Until I held your heaving heart
Caressed your soul and thrilled your mind
And your sweet love forever bind.
But I am only human; the best that I can do
Is give you all the human love it’s in my power to.
I’ll necklace you with kisses till you sprinkle me with sighs
And drink the lava torrents pouring from your searing eyes.
I’ll woo you with an ardor at once steady and intense
And lay my heart between your feet not asking recompense
And watch you as you’re sleeping, smiling your Goddess smile
And thank the Gods you granted me your favor for a while.
For I am only human, no avatar on high –
All I can do is try.


The Topography of Love


Love can’t let go
For true love can’t constrain.
Love can’t condemn
For true love harbors all.
Love can’t withhold
For true love lives to share.
Love can’t complete
For true love overflows.
Love can’t demand
For true love ever gives.

Love is a buffalo blanket
Warm beside a winter campfire
Love is a mellow sun
Beaming on a balmy afternoon.

Love is seeing the perfect Being whom one’s Beloved is
Shining in luminous eyes
And seeing reflected in that beholding
One’s own self transfigured
Into a being more radiant than one might hope to dream.

Love is when two people see each other
More clearly than they see themselves
It is when two souls touch
And revel in the touching.


Act of Worship

You open your temple’s twin barriers
And allow me to piously approach your sanctum.
I bow my head in obeisant adoration before you.
You gracefully deign to entertain
This zealous disciple’s humble presence.
The venerated altar appears before me,
Accepting of my anointings, and
I, the astonished acolyte, approach your outer gates
And apply my diligent ministrations.
You are well and truly pleased by the fervour of my devotions
And reveal your central shrine to my blessed gaze.
I prostrate myself in reverence before its holy sight
And offer my ardent oblations to your sacred icon.
Time disappears as I ecstatically attend you.
Then a glorious frenzied miracle happens
Which utterly awes and ennobles my soul.
Foundations shake and heavens shine
As you, O Divine and Blissful Goddess,
Consecrate and hallow my enraptured dedication
By offering up your numinous gift
Of wondrous and sublime transcendence.


Sabbatical

I am embarked upon a sabbatical
Inside my soul:
Struggling, striving,
Seeking answers to questions
For which no answers may exist
And solutions to problems
For which no solutions seem to work.
Help me, O Diophantus
To unravel my perplexing knots
And understand the labyrinths about me.

If Socrates could see our world today,
He might quaff the cup uncommanded
For the moralities
And the legalities
Seem never to cohere for us.

If Diogenes raised his lantern and sought today
Among only those who choose and decide,
He might journey forever unfinding.
Our black-robed patriarchs huddle together
Dispensing final justice;
Granted the sword of Solomon
Yet lacking the wisdom with which to wield it.
They float ominously overhead
Insubstantial and uncaring as the clouds
As they rain pain down upon us.

The bleak gray halls of the condemned are filled
With the victims of victimless crimes.
Truly one does not even own oneself
Any more.

We choose not those who judge us
But instead elect the choosers of them
And amidst the clutter
Of alternativeless choices
Somehow our interests are lost.
Laws are passed that benefit their passers
And grant their enforcers further power over us
And these laws are validated and interpreted
By those who owe their positions
To these passers and enforcers.

Our truths are gagging pablums fed to us
By ghouls who profit from blood and sensation
And we greedily suck their sick gruel down
And pay our dark spooners for it
And beg to swallow more.

Truly we are plastic people in a hard metal world.
We break before it bends
And then pretend
That the hurt isn’t hurting.

Heidegger once said that our essences
Were to be found within our existences
And that existence is in each case mine.
But when we peer inside our own abysses,
Seeking the solace of our core selves,
Dread Sartrian nothingness returns our gazes.
We seem to be fully as centerless
As the universe within which we reside.

Kant long ago proposed the notion
That concepts without percepts are empty
And that percepts lacking concepts are blind.
Perhaps, then, we are as blind as kittens born;
Coming only later to comprehend
That even when we join our abandoned hands,
We are merely forging sad and empty links
In forlorn chains of aloneness.

But where may we seek the balm of understanding?
To whom may we appeal for surcease from our pain?
What flocks do not stumblingly blunder bare moors these days,
Led by stricken shepherds?

Nietszche once opined
A hundred and more years gone by
That faith was not wanting to know.
It is much worse than that now.
Now, the faithful seems to be wanting to not know
And to be wanting no one else to know, either.

The sheep support their blind guides
In their demands that children be forbidden to learn
For they fear that those who know
Need no longer to either believe
Or to join their cash cowed bands
And pay them for the privilege
Of them telling us what and how
To believe and to do.

O Diophantus!
Will we never set ourselves or
Let ourselves be free?
Will we fashion our own strong chains
To bind our bodies
And manacle our minds
For the balance of our days?

Do not answer that question, Diophantus!
For I fear the face of the answer.


Adaptable One

I can spend long lingering languorous hours
Absorbed within the subtle nuances of your needs
Or I can take you like a Minotaur
Heaving and rutting as we writhe and scream
In a place transcending either pain or pleasure.
Both ways are good and right in their own measure
And many in between.


The Lesson

I used to think I couldn't cry
But thanks to you
I now know that's not true.
Unlike you
I cannot twist on spigot tears
At the drop of a convenience
But when my tears do fall
They're deeply felt
And truly meant.


Beautiful Broken One

She sits hunched over the bar,
Hellenic features hidden between her arms
Face flat on the counter
Drunk yet again.
The barmaid says not to bother her:
She's been that way since her husband and young son
Met a drunken driver on the road one night,
Leaving two dead beloveds
And one barely surviving,
Beautiful but broken thing.

She rouses herself
Fumbles for her car keys
And stumbles out the door...


Karma is a Chameleon

Grant us the strength to smash our sacred vessels
For they cruelly constrain our protean soulwine.
They were crafted by distant ancestors
To lend shape to their possibilities
Color to their failures and fruitions
Hope to their dearest dreams
Fear to their dread nightmares
And peace to their sad passings.
But in our present flux filled world
It is in shape shifting that we unseal
Identity and salvation.
If we can muster our courage
And quaff our own souls' powers with clear brave eyes
We may willfully transgress our hindering binds
And continually evolve into ourselves.
This is the strength I demand of myself
The icon-shattering strength
Of honest disillusionment
That only I can grant.

In truth I feel stronger already:
Stronger and more able to love.


To a Lost Hope

I’m sorry.
I sincerely apologize for
So rudely falling in love with you.
But please believe me when I say
That I didn’t mean it personally.
I’ll still be your friend
I can’t help but be
All you’ll let me be for you
And flash my brittle smile
At the appropriate moments.
You’ll know that it’s fake
And that inside I’m dying.
We know each other far too
Well for successful pretense.
Just please give me points for trying.
I wish you both the very best.
I can’t help wishing you the best
In all you do, say or choose
But (forgive my eyes for crying) I shall
Ever and always believe
That the best for you
Was me.


Wave Tectonics

The rippling level plain
Lies smooth beneath the breeze;
A placid azure field
Quiescently plateaued,
Beneath the sky ensealed.
Then hidden gears engage
And troughs and piles are born.
Ranges arise and roll
Where all had even lain
The deep firmament bows
In rough and tumble rows
As hidden forces rise
And gather into mounds
That crease once quiet seas.
The rounded tops of hills
Begin a sharpening hone.
The slopes grow more severe
Abraded borders loom
And rain their salty tears.
From weeping edge they spill
Upon the slanted flanks
Arrayed in marching ranks.
The kiss of frothy snow
Begins to bless the peaks
Expands to sheath high sides
And roils in ivory wreaths.
Foundations are forsook
As altitude is gained
And angle more severe
Begins to crack with strain
Beneath burgeoning cliffs
Heavy with overhang.
Then crashing in cascade
The cool dark colors blanch
In frenzied avalanche.
The greens and blues are frayed
And slopes and slants all tumble
And curl and fall and rumble
As, shattering, they stumble.
Then with a raucous roar
The fatal slide ensues:
The liquid mountain pours
Into its sandy tomb
And flatness on the shore.
Its water flees the earth
Returning to the sea
To gather in its womb
And wait for quickening tides
And dream of its rebirth.


Resonations

Our vision is trapped within narrow bands
It’s spectral range constrained by a single doubling:
So Listen!
Absorb all that your senses can provide,
Then integrate -
Letting your varied impressions seek common harmonics -
Before responding to izzes with oughts .
Inspiration must be diaphanously drawn
From the ocean of experience
Before it can rain its nurturing return.
Logic is a path, but desire is both source and destination.
Think.  Feel.  Neither alone will do.
Resonate.  Then create.

Monitor yourself as you monitor your world.
Love and hate and sadness and joy
May entrap as surely
As may chains or prisons or popular myths.
Assemble alternatives before choosing pursuits
And never permit your choices to be dictated by others:
Your first and final responsibility is to yourself
For you yourself are the one to whom
You primarily owe your responses.
Suck the juice from every day
As though it were your fruit’s final bite
For, eventually, and more often than not unbeknownst
One will be.

Neither blindly follow the blood red rectangle
Nor the whited sepulchre
Nor the golden minaret.
Gather their wheat, discard their chaff
And bow to nothing and to no one.
Only you can make your way.
Nor should you constrain other
For only they can create their paths

When conflicts between competing freedoms
Inevitably arise, resolve them
Via equal and proportional compromise,
But never compromise yourself.
Instead, make of yourself your own project –
A project to nurture, build and grow.
If you leave your self
A better self than the one you found,
A better world for all will surely follow.

Without reciprocal exchange
Love cannot breathe
Any more than can animals and plants
Unless they trade CO2 and oxygen between them.
And sans the sun of constant caring
Love’s leaves will cease to produce their nourishing sweetness
And will brown, wither, die and fall.

Finally, do not waste this certain life
By reducing it to an appendage
Or an afterthought
Of a believed-in next.
The presence or absence of the invisible
Is impossible to detect
And the shadow of a ghost
Is a most insubstantial thing.


Winter Day

Brown leaves skitter on hard-skinned snow
As black arms clack in a cold dry breeze.
The grey sky sheaths the sun's hidden glow
And drifts have stacked atop gnarled knees.

The pond is coated with a solid shield;
Its frigid wetness trapped below,
And the dark woods loom beyond bare fields;
Their fence posts cloaked round blanketed rows.

The firewood is split and piled in lumps
With a path well-trodden from fuel to door
And a wood-axe nestles its head in a stump;
With finger grooves well in handle worn.

The cabin is boxy and strongly built
Secure beneath its quiescent crown;
Its roof lies covered with a pallid quilt
That seems to bed the homestead down.

The chimney reels out a cheerful trail -
A sign of the toasty warmth within;
The windows are clad in silver veils
And crystals dangle from eaves of tin.

Its logs are sealed with chink and joint
Which bar the chill and contain the heat
That radiates from the cozy hearth
Into the den and through bare feet.


The Meantime

We should greedily grasp and squeeze
The pulsing throat of each new day
As though our last rattling
Breaths were to be drawn within it
And lost before the following dawn
And suck each succeeding hour within it dry
Of every rich drop of juice that it affords us
As if we were destined
For our pulses to weaken and wane
Slowing towards cessation
In sad and mournful synchrony
With the mortal setting
Of each soul's concluding sun.
For one day, we know not when
Most surely sooner than we would wish
And maybe before we would expect
This will indeed be the case.
In the final analysis
Being born is an event that will
Prove to be eventually fatal
For each of us
And all.

The enemy of our fully living our lives
Is the cruel and dreaded Meantime
And that sad and tedious detritus
With which we falsely feel
Compelled to occupy its span:
Those myriad and niggling little things
With which we wrongly feel
That we must first deal
Before we can begin upon, or can finish
Those things that we would
Most fervently desire to do instead.

This larcenous illusion steals away
Our precious and irreplaceable moments
Filling them with worthless flotsam
And leaving us with little
Or nothing to show for their passing
But an irretrievably wasted
Past within which we are
Forced to record their loss.

Instead we should inhabit
Each unrecoverable day
As if it pulled our closing curtain
And learn to roughly discard
The deceptive demands
That this insidious Meantime
Pretends to impose
By ourselves greedily feasting
Upon our own lives’ cornucopias
Rather than ceding their consumption
To the vicious ravages
Of this rapacious demon by default.

Then, instead of risking
Death’s stealthy arrival
Discovering that we had
Left far too many things undone
We might fulfill our numbered days
With treasured endeavors
Proud accomplishments
And the rewarding
Riches of experience.

In such a manner we should be able
To embrace our certain demises
Secure in the comforting knowledge
That we had truly and
Fully lived.


Easy advice to give:
So very hard to take.


Walking in Hurricanes

The wild power energy calls me
And its siren song will simply not be denied.
So, fool that I am, and slave to the electric thrill of experience
I doff a raincoat and dare to venture out into it.

The sky is solid gray and filled
With a wide variety of sailing debris.
The raindrops bury themselves like pellets shot into my face
And the gusts blast with such furious force
That I am at first battered staggering backwards
Before re-stabilizing my balance and pushing ahead
With their ferocious roaring filling my ringing ears.

I quickly realize that it would be even
More unwise for me to walk very far in such a fierce barrage
Than it was for me to brave this mad chaos in the first place
But still I wedge my crazy head-down way through the maelstrom
As far as the road, and the lamppost there.
Clinging to it as to an anchor, I am struck
By the temptation of an insanely dangerous
Yet somehow irresistible whim.

I grip the post as tightly as I can, relax my body
And let my limp legs blow from beneath me.
I am now horizontal: a human pennant
Being buffeted and blown about.
I hang there for a few hazardous seconds
Swinging and swaying in the hellish gale
Then strain to pull myself back to the safety of the pole
And, regaining tentative footing,
Make my precarious way back within my home.

I set up watch at my small and sole un-boarded window
And await the spectacle of the tempest’s full fury.
It is not long in arriving.
My house begins to shudder
And I hear my shingles ripping away overhead.
The cacophony of the wind becomes deafening:
A tsunami of angry air.
I am shocked to see my neighbor’s roof peel off
And terrified by the sound of my own joists groaning.
My lamppost is now bent flat upon the ground
Even before the front yard oak crashes down upon it.
Then an automobile surreally tumbles end-over-end down my road.

Suddenly, all falls quiet and calm
And the sun quite amazingly shines brightly down.
It dawns on me that the eye is passing over
So I once again proceed outside.

Pieces of houses and trees abound.
Destruction is huddled in tangled piles
And detritus is spread upon the ground.
The trees I have left standing are twisted things.
Their branches are denuded and snapped
And their trunks lean freakishly askew.
My car, sheltered inside my garage
Is the only undamaged vehicle I see.
Many of my shingles are torn or gone,
But my home has weathered the rampage well
When compared to the houses of my absent neighbors.
They were wise to leave
I was stupid to remain
And most lucky to still be alive.

Gradually, a rising din begins to sound
Intruding upon my shocked contemplations.
I glance up and see, approaching with fierce intensity
Another slate gray wall, impossibly high
Huge things moving sideways within it
And hurry back inside my dim home.
I will not leave it again until the storm fully passes.
If this hurricane wants me
It will have to come inside and get me.


Autumn in Spring

Gazing upon the morning dew which guilds the grass
I see between the new green shoots the older brown.
My mind returns to memories of previous frosts
And lingers there, bemused by visions swirling round.
The budding leaves become for me dead rattlings
Fallen and blown about a bleak and lifeless ground
And seeing nesting birds feed hungry hatchlings
I conjure up migrating flocks equator-bound.

And so I wonder what has caused this turn of mind
That seems to poison all viewed youth with its demise
My answer comes: it’s my own nearing fall I find
That’s coloring with decadence the season’s rise.
For well I know that coming warmth shall surely fade
And cold will follow, as a born thing surely dies
Strutting through growth and vigor in a sad parade
Then withering until with worms its carcass lies.


Almost Quiet

…faint susurrations from half-breath wind…
…a single call from a whippoorwill hen…
…clock softly ticking upon the shelf…
…a lone cricket chirping to itself…
…bare branches creaking conversation…
…a few dry leaves rustling affirmation…
…a crispy pop from a shattered ember…
…a drone from the fridge…and I remember…
…how full with flowers bare deserts may bloom…
…like blossoming sounds in a silent room…


Insignificant Crown

For fourteen billion years this universe has been.
So tells the tale of the red shift of microwaves:
That Big Bang echo which permeates its every space.
More than four billion years ago our own planet formed.
A billion years later life first appeared upon it.
Mutation and selection, competition and cooperation
All fused to evolve this teeming cauldron of life
Comprised by, among other things, us.

The typical adult human brain
Measures around ninety cubic inches
And weighs around three pounds.
Within it are contained tens of billions of neurons
Connected by many billions of dendritic limbs
By means of which they talk to one another.
Their branches, anchored in sturdy axon trunks
Twig into a thousand synaptic buds each
Which radiate out to touch the buds of other cells.

This mass of tightly convoluted flesh
Remains the single most intricate thing
Yet discovered in our universe;
It contains such complexity that it breaches recursive limits
Achieving both perception and self-reference.
Conscious awareness of both self and surroundings emerges
And these impressions are symbolized
And abstracted into linguistic concepts.
Thusly is mind born:
That dynamic becoming
Which is at once both within and peering into its world.
This tiny labyrinthine weave within the great vast universe
Possesses the capacity to apprehend and name
Not only its encompassing whole
But also itself.
It is truly a crown of cosmic creation
Blessing the brow upon which it rests
By means of its gifts of inner vision and cognition.

And yet, there are six billion humans living today.
Individual exceptionalism
Is drowned in a deluge of profusion.
We all huddle together
On the skin of our common home:
Just one of several planets
Circling one of many billions of stars
Tucked away inside the crook
Of one elbow of the Milky Way -
Itself one of many galaxies
Which form one of several superspirals
Contained within the immense wheel and span
Of a massive material reality
Which circumscribes such vast distances that light itself
Which travels a fifth of a million miles in a second
Would take billions of years to traverse it.

This ancient colossus cares not that we exist.
It cares not that eons ago
It birthed the conditions for our creation.
We mean nothing to it, nor does anything else.
We are merely unnoticed motes of being
Crowded masses of miniscule matter-clothed souls
Filmed across the surface of a still-cooling stone
Spun into a forgotten corner of this gigantic sphere.
And our glittering proud crown
Blanches and pales to nattering insignificance
By comparison with the greater oblivious order of thing.


The Storm and the Rain

I love lovemaking during storms
When lightning crackles and thunder rumbles
And gale winds squall against our eaves
As the two of us toss and roll and tumble
Fusing together in frolicking jumble
Filled with electric energy
Of towering frantic intensity
And seeking blessed ecstasy
Then we our frenzied dance perform
In synchrony as wild synergy
Of overwhelming immensity
Causes, cajoles us to transform
Into feral randy animals
A lusty minx and a bawdy bull
Romping and rutting insatiably
Fierce in our crazed reciprocity
Raucous and rowdy and wanton and free
Madly demanding relief and release
On furious quest for sensation’s surcease
We each the other’s body plumb
Engulfed within torrents of joy we succumb
And roiling rivers of tumult become
Until our craving banks brim full
And overflow and spill and flood
And all constraining bounds exceed
Then after our pent deluge has bloomed
With every wall within us breached
And our passion cascades and crashes and crumbles
Full ravished, enfolded, spent, pillaged, and plundered
And thoroughly each the other consumed
As the storm line passes and blows on
Its wind died down and its lightning gone
Then, lulled by the sound of the following rain
That patters our roof and rustles our panes
We spoon together, safe, snuggly, and warm
Then, satisfied, sated, drained, and reborn
Quenched of thirsts and shorn of hungers
We streak together on wings of slumber
Into sweet respite until the morn


Satan and the Seraphim

I think of you as my saving angel
But all you see’s the devil in me.
So let’s try our best to meet in the middle
And have a little earth ecstasy.

Now you might think that you’re filled with virtue
And I’m far beneath your cherubic view;
But I’m known to be a tempting seducer
And I’m gonna fire my charm up for you.

I picture you as sublime perfection
Just admit you also think that I’m hot.
You may think that we’ve got nothing in common
But attraction counts a Helluva lot.

I must admit that I’m sort of horny
And I have a lot of tail just for you.
But before you frown and point to your halo
Just admit you’ve got some tail for me too.

You’re a yummy piece of sugary candy
My special sweet Miss Divinity.
And I know you’d love to melt in my arms, Hon
And have a carnal cream jubilee.

The deeper that I sink down inside you
The higher that you’re going to rise
Please let me give you some of my warmth, Love
And sizzle your ethereal thighs.

I’ll have you shouting out Hallelujiahs
And singing in most sibilant tongues;
You’ll be soaring through the cosmic celestial
Before this boy is finished and done.

I’ll fly you to Cloud Nine on a rocket
And take your holy crown for a spin.
If you'll give me just one chance, Babe, to please you
You’ll never ever regret your sin.

Just spread those lovely wings that you’re wearing
And let this demon slip right inside.
If you'll give me just a taste of your Heaven
I can promise you a Paradise ride.