October 2003 Archives

I picture you running, with arms wide,  
in a field of waving, golden fingers  
that tickle at your feet.

The streaming of your hair  
is a dab of night  
in the otherwise brightness of the day.

And there are no sounds  
but the gentle whispers  
of wind in the rustling grass;  
one bird, calling from the sky;  
and the blood of your pounding heart  
racing to catch up.

There are no storm-clouds -- no worries of the day --  
pressing with their heavy, humid weight:  
  so many drops waiting to fall!

Into this landscape of peace and calm  
may your soul roam  
whenever it seeks respite from the day,

Hair flying, wind rushing,  
only the bluebells, cupping their ears,  
to hear your laughter...

Such places are not just imagination:  
If God is the highest form of love,  
and even I can want it for you,  
it must be there.

Why they make a nest of my stomach, I'll never know.  
But they have such beautiful colors, such rhythms!  
I forgive them.

Only let my caller call,  
so that her voice may set them free.

The waters are not blue,  
but they are still.  
And the whitish field outside  
is still a living green in my memory.

As I write you, I find

That my sigh has grown forgiving,  
and my heart, fond of quiet --

For my mind has ceased living,  
and in dying, now dreams.

A calm wind rises up,  
carrying rose petals in a lazy spiral,  
touching you in places  
too intimate for words to picture.

Are my thoughts that wind?  
and fond memories the roses  
that shed petals in long sighs  
of remembrance, adoration and longing?

The image is frail glass, blown gossamer  
over a canvas of gentle nature;  
let no words intrude -- lest the silence break  
and shatter the peace in a weeping of broken glass.

Sometimes, a person just wants to remember  
what it feels like to be in love;

to feel the sun shining on their face,  
to have an inspiration,  
to have you -- if only in their dreams for a while.

It's like cherishing a memory:  
all the details are there,  
only requital is missing.

Leave me to sleep  
so that I never wake again.

The sky becomes violet  
the gentle sun wearies  
my eyes weep quietly  
I am home.

The dark colors of the horizon  
the soft sands of the beach  
the lullaby waves  
welcome me home.

Take me to the land of dreams  
the shores of the isle Naught  
leaving the world behind  
for everlasting sleep.

Ideas should be like clouds:  
there one day, gone the next,  
always returning.  
Causing us to wonder,  
to find intriguing shapes  
soon burnt away by the sun.  
No matter how many we see,  
each one is different.  
Some provide a moment's shade,  
others rain the bounties of heaven.  
They connect without seams --  
innumerable, yet one in substance.  
Never impeding flight,  
sometimes touching the earth,  
obscuring, yet informative.  
And when their time is up,  
they are gone.

Forgive me if my words aren't to your liking,  
but don't forgive me if I use them poorly.

Skill should never answer to opinion,  
nor skill be mistreated by the poetaster's hand.

Poetry is one of the most difficult things to write  
exactly because it seems so easy.

Its lack of rules, and that excess of freedom,  
demands utmost patience on the part of her lovers...

She provides a banquet feast  
by creating nothing from loaves and fish.

In the maelstroms of heat and fancy,  
her one, cool word is a thousand wisdoms expressed;  
a treatise of eloquence to the minds of the initiated.

For the greatest of mysteries stands back to back  
with common observation:  
How something, little more than a play of words, really,

Can bring hearts to the point of transformation,  
and return souls to the awful silence of their first day.

One perfect tear, falling into the ocean waves.  
The sky is black, the earth is black,  
my heart is black.

Amidst the coiling serpents, the turgid waves,  
my tear is devoured,  
seeming sweet to the briny fathoms of the sea.

Then more tears come  
as her memory grips my heart  
  and squeezes,  
forcing out a running liquid from my eyes.

Now I stand to leave, and notice the dawn.  
All is a cast of gold:  
a limitless wealth on the horizon.

As it should be, when I wake from this fated life.

I was awed by life.

And here I sit,  
silent,  
lost in that awe.

A tree with its leaves shining;  
the sky, a gradient blue;  
pure white clouds fading in the sun:  
a moment to appreciate.

It may only be the view outside my window,  
but who painted it?  
thrilling my heart as any painter might --

Striking awe into a being  
now silent.

When the foggy tides  
surge upon the land,  
filling in the spaces  
of the grey-bricked cities  
and the meadows of green,  
and the anodyne hills,  
pluming everywhere like smoke  
from a Great Father's pipe...

Then it seems like  
a sea upon the sea,  
with buoys that flash red  
where the skyscrapers dreamed;  
and perhaps a poet or two  
watching from his fog beach  
musing at the millions  
who've become fish, unawares.

Silence

allows me to think,  
  to feel,  
  to dream,  
  to wonder,  
  to realize,  
  to awaken,  
  to know.

I watch your eyes  
play silently in the light --  
what else is there?

Alone, the night too black --  
did a tear grace my upturned face?  
or the mistake of a passing cloud.

Forgetful, I wander through memories  
of friends, loves, joys gone by;  
but the night is so cold, and morning far away...

Questions hurt, too sore questions,  
rubbing raw at my heart's cage;  
then a new moon rises, invisible, yet powerfully fey;

But strength finds no home in me, no hope!  
A sigh is all I have left to give  
as the night's wind carries my last tear away.

The sun was a lover's heart:  
fiery, ardent, trapped in its own heat.

Its rays touched my cheek but softly --  
with only a timid kiss.

The insistent wind was too much for anything,  
too much for life.

My bones filled up with a chill that weighed me down,  
and my spirit ached for the days of summer.

Perhaps we don't choose the course of the seasons;  
perhaps all are subject to bitterness hiding the sweet.

If only life were a thing made to order,  
poems such as this would never exist.

To make your way anywhere,  
seek out the heart's sparrow.  
His cage is gilt of gold or green --  
perhaps red, from human love,  
or purple, from religion.

His cry is constant, though fainter than silence;  
his longing deeper than depth has knowledge of.  
In every hidden desire, he is there:  
showing you in dreams of vision  
what eyes may never see:  
crossing boundaries of both time and space,  
explaining the past, comprehending the future.

At this moment,  
tell him what your heart desires  
and your life will follow.

For time is a funny thing:  
we think we have none of it, but we do;  
we think we have much of it, but we don't.

A poet never knows which way  
  his pen will go, his mind will go;  
the canvas of the soul  
heeds his worded strokes --  
but the image remains unseen.

Just as we speak from feeling,  
making full sentences  
  not knowing them beforehand,

there is a vastness, unfilled,  
begging for that single drop...  
whose echoes  
are the shape of my words on paper.

What she doesn't know  
is that I couldn't eat, couldn't sleep;  
couldn't work because of her,  
couldn't concentrate.

Not that I'm lazy, or disinterested;  
but so utterly in a different world  
that life seems mysterious to me.

Waiting for the tips of trees  
to bow at your arrival...  
waiting.

Waiting for the sun's light  
to reflect your longing gaze...  
waiting.

Waiting for the phone to ring --  
a letter, a foot-fall...  
waiting.

Waiting in a depth of silence  
that drowns my expectations...  
waiting.

Waiting for the moon to shine,  
but not so bright  
as that face near mine...  
waiting.

Waiting for you, if you haven't understood --  
waiting for you.

A cowboy buries hands in jean pockets,  
a white gazebo shelters hopeful prayers.  
The noon sun draws all eyes closed.

Ice cream melts more quickly  
the younger the hand that holds it.

There are no poems in me today.  
The weary world is calling, "sleep,"  
and I, having followed the lure,  
found only a siren too tired to keep me.

There are no poems in me afterward.  
When after wondering what this feeling this,  
I never quite complete the thought,  
and lose the sense of why it was  
I ever felt it in the first place.

There were no poems in me then.  
Because what I wrote was hardly more than words.  
When you try too hard to force meaning from desire,  
a certain poverty overcomes you,  
which you promise to recover some future day  
only to marvel at how distant the "future" stays.

Finally, I haven't a poem for you today.  
Only these words that search always,  
and remind me to think,  
and keep me safe,  
when the arms of the weary world surround me.

Liberate me from the woe,  
the travesty of life,  
that describes my everyday pursuits.  
Everyone so eager,  
as if they saw victory around the bend.

Yesterday, I met my manager on the street,  
jobless,  
and the human being he once was  
was no longer there.

Vacant like a seashell  
gathering the sea's wind.  
What had he lost  
but that anxiety of working life  
which I realize now defined him?

Thus, liberate me:  
Liberate the boring, tedious,  
jobless me.  
So that it may break from lethargy,  
escape the death of atrophy,  
and perhaps one day  
my life will find its meaning.

Leave me alone --  
to walk through the streets  
  unhurried, unhindered,  
placing each foot deliberately;  
feeling the weight of my body  
as it rocks back and forth.

Kids thirst to get through school  
  and find a job.  
What a useless waste!  
if one doesn't understand why he does it.

The world doesn't encourage  
time off to think about these things.  
They'd prefer to notice the parachute  
ten thousand feet from the valley floor  
and falling...

Have you ever known a smile to catch fire?  
to smolder in the kindling of a man's heart  
to provoke daring tongues of flame  
and by puffs of darkling smoke  
betray the heat that gathers  
of a moment's quiet admiration?

I should call your mouth an oyster  
for all the pearls it reveals;  
and your beaming face: some far-off star,  
that sailors, in their wandering night  
might set sail for  
and guide their journey home.

And your smile is so much like the dawn  
that on the horizon of your lovely face  
summons all the bright glories of day.

One evening, like any other,  
I happened to notice the sky.

Whatever I was doing, I had forgotten her;  
my eyes, so eager for beauty, had looked away.

But that next moment...  
who can tell what I saw?  
Even my own memory is imperfect:

It was a lake of fire,  
held by its glowing heat  
over a sea like rolling steel;  
it was a river of luminous wine  
poured in a furnace of bright warmth.

The sea itself lapped, like a man half-asleep,  
dreamily curling, and uncurling, onto the shore...

The darker the evening, the warmer its light --  
  a candle's flame.  
It whispers to the eyes,  
conjures the heart's nostalgia,  
breathes smoke like a child dragon:  
  a candle's flame.

When the orchid candle weeps beside you,  
and its tears of purple rain a stinging, hot sweetness,  
you will then see the shape of my heart's longing:

  Forlorn, desperate in a wilderness of absence,  
  weeping its waxen tears  
  and longing to find the way home.

Come, lead me home,  
to where that eager light is shining even now.

Happiness is a flowing warmth that  
  binds us, heart to heart;  
and the wings that I'd forgotten  
  you've unfolded and made strong.

Up, to heights where even eagles  
  cannot dare to soar,  
I fly now, carried on a breeze  
  of memories that shall never fade.

Always, angel of my heart, always  
  is the promise that I make.  
Let time watch us fade into mortal dust  
  while ever my heart is soaring.

I am caught.  
The strands of your hair  
have woven a net about me.  
Your eyes -- two phantom lights --  
have lured me from the path;  
your smile's fair beacon  
led my vessel to the rocks,  
and the fineness of your gait  
has left me breathless.

A tender suffering, you once taught me --  
your eyes the lesson, your smile the book;

It was a tale unlike the songs of heaven  
that the choir boys whisper in their nook;

Of sweet death you then instructed me,  
and the truth of longing's demise:

That to love another One so deeply  
is a pain only union can deny...

I plead to your beauty: end my pain.  
My skin is a door  
and your fingers, each a key.  
This house, wherein heaven dwells,  
awaits your soft caress...  
Awaken me.

Although sleep calls to me with a sweet voice,  
I cannot answer.  
To close my eyes, and weep soft tears with Her  
  in form of dreams  
would need a readiness to awaken  
I cannot master.

Tease me not, my Love,  
by your soft caresses  
in shape of pillows and thread.  
I know the land you call me to:  
is it not for mortals to tread?

My eyes close gently now  
on world and wondering both;  
perhaps these words, from a pensive heart,  
may find you, and keep you,  
and bind you to me in troth.

My sadness falls in sweetened drops  
for thought of you provokes them;

If not these tears, I had not known,  
what form of love evokes them;

My heart is stilled, its fires gone --  
it waits your Hand to stoke them...

Now listen close and hear my pains:  
I'd no such joy, till you awoke them.

There is a wilderness underfoot  
and I hear the branches crunching...  
Somewhere, the deer are watching me,  
in soft, silent contemplation.

There is a shore nearby;  
the hush of waves draws closer.  
It leaves me wondering only:  
when will my pilgrimage end?

Along the way, in this exile,  
sunlight survives through the branches  
In muted forms that cast a glow upon the trees.  
And the mosses, they point me north.

Here and there there are clearings;  
and once even I found my way to a spring.

They tell me a City lies beyond,  
just at the edge of the blue and the green,  
on fine sands where forest leads to ocean.

I trek on, ever watchful.  
It could be I am just around the bend.

To spread my seed into a woman  
is like being buried in satin cloth.

I like to feel her breasts under a soft sweater,  
smell that indelible fragrance  
which seems to mean: a loving woman.

And then to feel her lips,  
her biting at my neck,  
the fine strands of her hair  
against my eyelashes...

I want to lean into her, warm and open,  
and see the sparkle of her eyes  
  in understanding.

She whispers something -- anything --  
her voice is a hush;  
it's a throaty quality I long to explore...

Then a moment like no other:  
a warm, narcotic sea.

I cannot hold back;  
but I do return, in memory,  
often and again.

I see you wearing ringlets, in a pretty dress;  
your skirt is more the shape than the cloth.  
And your tiny blouse expertly contains  
what my longing wishes free...

You are beautiful, my dear -- let none say otherwise.  
I write you poems, but it's not enough;  
I would rather feel your curves  
than this smooth, white paper under my fingers.

Not wizards  
can best the enchantment  
of a pretty girl.  
Her long, smooth legs are divine;  
the flow of her hair is magic;  
her waves of blonde  
are more welcome to me  
than sunrise.

Something about the tightness of her body  
constricts me also --  
holds my heart in an unseen hand --  
the way witches of old were famed for.

Maybe all this talk of warlocks and wonder  
are but metaphors for a woman's charm;

For indeed, I can say,  
in just the meeting of your eyes,  
was all the power and effect  
that spells are known for.

There is a silence that waits for sound.

As a color, it resembles the grey  
  just before dawn.

As a smell, it's like a hint of smoke  
  when the fire is still a mystery.

If pictured, I would see it  
  when I expect to see other things.

And as a person...

I am that person.  
The lock is waiting to be turned,  
the fruit to ripen,  
the song to reach its final note...

What sound will it take?  
What if that, too,  
had the form of a someone?

My heart is telling me stories,  
day after day,  
of a person I've never met.

And if I pause to hear what's not said,  
it's startling  
the picture that emerges.

Love is a land outside of place and time  
where the moments are sweet eternities  
but those forevers are gone too fast.

The doorways to that region can be found  
in a pair of eyes, a smile, or those times  
when thoughts and words remain unneeded.

Those who journey there go hand in hand,  
holding tight as they cross between the worlds;  
for love is a land outside place and time:

So it matters not the where and when,  
but the heart who helped you believe it.

Without consent, my heart accepted your religion,  
at whose temple it sings canticles of praise;

I send these verses with much affection;  
I write for you these humble bouquets.

The sight of your body has consumed me in fire,  
and your eyes doused me by their limpid pools;

Fear not, if madness is apparent in these lines:  
all love's poetry is the province of fools.

I yearn for worship, this is why I write --  
perhaps words can mollify love's fire;

These greetings are from the battlefield of love;  
forgive me if it seems too much, too dire.

Your lips, your neck... your face like the moon,  
and eyes that bear the radiance of dawn!

In the places where games of love are played,  
your body is a queen that fells this pawn.

Through all the walks and pain of life,  
souls long for what they cannot feel;

Then one day, in this world's unreality,  
I beheld in you the figure of the Real.

  My Beloved is the Message, full of Light;  
  and your beauty, its bearer, noon-day bright.

The stomach informs the hungry of his goal;  
and thirst gives understanding of the lake;

Your grace, your figure, your lovely form --  
are answer to the questions manhood makes.

Happiness is the real real.  
It is the fire in the dark of night --  
the sound of the Loved One's name.  
Consider it the endless blue  
when the last cloud has gone.

And that blue, that emanation:  
whence comes the light?  
That you may know:  
the soul is the looking  
and the feeling  
of the forms of the Looked Upon.

You carry within you,  
by the signature of your own reality,  
full knowledge of the beginning and end.

When these two purposes --  
Hoped For, and hope --  
find their harmony,  
then happiness gives reason for it all.

Pure, unwritten;  
not theories or words.  
Until you know it  
without reference to knowledge,  
life must remain a mystery.

If I were flame itself  
and all the seas heaped upon me;  
yet, undimmed, a spark would remain  
to show my Love that I had been.

Even the sun must leave us,  
and bow before the greying times  
between worlds of night and day;

Then even the night must leave us  
when colors return, the dew is gone,  
and beauty takes the breath of eyes away.

And all must endure parting,  
a given sorrow, a condition of life:  
the ordained and chosen Way.

For if not good-bye, how hello?  
If not distance, how reunion?  
Without going, how to come and stay?

I drink the sweet poison,  
now turning my fingers numb,  
in order that, knowingly, I may say:

Everything divided must rejoin --  
else the meaning of our separation  
would not give such cause to pray.

Your beauty is a thief  
that steals the breath from my lungs;  
a tryant who commands the motion of my eyes;  
like a fire loosed in a dry wood,  
or salt rubbed into a soldier's wound:  
your form is both the torment and the prize.

How can I call it good  
when all pain and heartache  
are its proof and sign?  
Yet somehow,  
that fire and salt have a sugar's taste;  
that thirst and burning, a savor like scented wine.

Love is indeed the true insanity!  
When all else is reduced to shambles,  
and the lover's heart, a place of ruin,  
he begs only for more of the same:  
a last glance, a parting word,  
the chance meeting of a pair of eyes...

Ruin me!  End me!  Destroy this fool some more!  
The mention of your beauty alone undoes me;  
and that undoing binds me again,  
and chains this Sisyphus to his poetic demise.

Is the sound of sorrow  
limited, like a voice's cry?

Or does the soul's suspiration  
heed no boundaries of space or time?

The winds of late have seemed  
to hold a deeper tone;

More than just the capping of waves  
along the rolling blue.

Was that your soft weeping I heard?  
or were those salty drops the ocean's own...