'Twas the season for sneezing  
and all through the house  
not a creature was quiet --  
not even the mouse.

With tiny-sized sniffles  
and paws he should clean,  
a sick little mousekin  
completed the scene:

A family of ill ones  
all tucked in their beds,  
sipping coughsyrup cocktails  
to lighten their heads,

But the poor baby mouse  
had nothing to take:  
his chest was all stuffed,  
his nose and eyes ached.

So under the floorboards  
he crawled here and there,  
searching for aspirin  
or things he could share;

Maybe a tissue,  
a coughdrop to lick...  
anything people might  
take when they're sick.

"If it works for others,  
then maybe for me!  
I'd try anything now,  
even Vitamin C!"

He searched and he hunted  
this way and that  
his aching head tired,  
his hair full of mats,

Till at last he sighed  
and gave up his quest,  
tucking his tail  
for a brief moment's rest.

When who should appear  
but a girl and her sniffles;  
carrying handfuls of Kleenex  
all wadded in fistfuls;

She noticed the mouse  
and begin to shout!  
but the sight of his plight  
kept the cry from her mouth.

They startled each other  
and stared eye to eye:  
the mouse in his corner  
the girl on her side;

"Oh dear little mouse,  
what's happened to you?  
It looks to my eyes  
like you're sick with the flu!"

His eyes were too runny  
to blink in response,  
so he wiggled his whiskers  
and twitched his tail once.

She patted his head  
and said, "My dear, it's alright!"  
You can cozy with me  
for the rest of the night!

So they slept in her bed  
that girl and her mouse,  
and no one else stirred  
all through the house.

Things that crack,  
that snap,  
that break with a crunch:

White, hard,  
smooth to the touch...

Perhaps I'm not thinking  
of eggshells.

Gently against the breeze --  
a soft whisper --  
her hand comes down upon my face.  
With eyes like the incandescent sun,  
burning heat straight into my root,  
I find a connection there  
that lasts until the morning's dawn.

Pale evening and a lone, bright star;  
or Venus, and the memory of loving.

Nighttime -- a quiet footstep.  
Through the rustling grass I see her amber skin,  
and my heart forgets the world...

When I remembered to write again,  
it was too late.

Her lips had whispered in my ears,  
but what they said...

It would need a kiss to tell it again.

If I speak of sadness and sorrowful weeping,  
lachrymose wandering,  
clutching at my heart --  
perhaps I refer to the beauty of its reality.

Or loneliness.  Although empty beyond thought,  
vacant like the winter, without warmth,  
a terrible disease of struggling --  
yet is it a real thing, an honest thing.

Such purities burn away  
the heavy sackcloth  
that hides the face of beauty.

The city is strung with lights,  
pearls of white, yellow,  
glowing brilliantly  
as the sun sinks  
in the western hills.

Lying on my side,  
watching the city fall to sleep,  
my thoughts wander across the ocean,  
wondering if your smiling eyes  
wouldn't dazzle me the more.

Perhaps, before my tears dry?  
Without that moisture, my heart's clay  
may never survive the fall.

My heart has bent itself into the shape of a crescent moon,  
leaning gently: the unconcerned shape of a smile.

I laze in the full deep of night,  
sprawling like a cat who remembers kittenhood;

Softly the dreams whisper in,  
and the maiden-form of sleep surrounds me.

My body is an easy target, stretched out full,  
baring to the night-world my secrets of manhood.

I see the colors of you and me,  
and hear the laughter of unremembered thoughts;

I feel textures that speak of love and dearness,  
and dialog with a concourse of shifting images.

Their words are as the light of the sun,  
and they speak with the wisdom of a child's laughter, winsome:

I don't recall the message, or the meaning, only --  
I feel it in the afterglow of waking, like body-knowledge:

The distance between you and me is a dream.

Do you feel the holy pain  
scratching at your heart?  
With a hard, rasping finger --  
He beckons you.

It needles -- till we beg for more --  
it sounds the lovers' wail,  
who crucify their hearts  
for a taste of Resurrection.

So pass round the cup!  
full and bittersweet,  
regaling us with tales  
till we lose our trepidation.

For each is a wanderer  
on this trail of night;  
and painful to the eye  
are its first rays of Light.

I have waited so long for a companion,  
with whom, hand in hand,  
we could sit by the ocean  
and unravel the experiences we've each had with life --

Not our everyday encounters,  
but real life

Come!  Come!  Be with me.

I want to hear our voices carry us  
into the darkest recesses of the night.

That night, when my head was back,  
counting stars in the awesome blackness of the sky,

I remember you wondered at my strangeness --  
why I waited so long to leave.

Perhaps love isn't a thing common  
  to a child's heart,  
but what I knew then, I still know now:

The rest is up to you.

The cloud, the blue, the sun;  
warm light  
delightful peace --  
a gentle breeze from the west.

In the branches  
where the wind blows  
and daylight fights the shadows  
I found you.

Your head tilted back  
admiring the clouds  
in deep repose of thinking;  
I wondered,

What thought-strewn sea  
surges up?  
What white-clead breakers  
bear down  
and crash upon that brow?

Such storms within  
to counterpoint  
the tranquil skies above.

I meant to send you a rose today;  
but the distance was too great.

But not for words.

And I began to wonder:  
  how many letters before I match  
  the softness of a petal's touch?  
  How many thoughts, mulled together,  
  can conjure up the image  
  of lilies, waving in the spring?

I know your heart is fertile,  
and its soil ready for the seed...  
Would not a single, quiet glance,  
suffice to set the rendezvous?

Then here it is:  
  be mine.  
I think the silence says the rest.

I reach my hand to touch her hair,  
and find a hundred white kittens purring to my touch.  
Her scent is the fragrance of spring, of love,  
and her body, a hallmark of womanhood;  
with eyes that watch me behind a guise of olive green  
daring the sun to compete with their warmth...

But have I forgotten?

Did I mention my unawareness of these things  
  the moment her heart utters words unspoken?

She is a spirit yearning to be free from that gilded cage,  
with the anxious pacing of a tigress behind bars,  
impatient of the crude forms of expression  
  that the body confines us to,  
though it be wondrous to look upon.

Thus, this is she, a divine mixture of high and low,  
of spirit and flesh, of fault and talent;  
at one moment uplifting me to the clouds,  
at another, thrusting me into the sea, the churning sea...

This is she, my beloved,  
  the emblem of my True Beloved.  
In her embrace I find my heart is not conflicted,  
for I know now that a single kiss can reach them both.

I've found in my life  
that not many like me --  
as they adored the better ones --  
but the one who did  
cared enough for all the world.

The day rose upon a sheltered rock,  
Round, simple and plain,  
And after I heard what I heard on that rock  
My life I will never regain.

Here I write, adrift on a sea  
Of blood that's poured from my heart.  
I find no peace, I know no joy  
Whenever I find I'm apart

From she, my dream that can never be lived,  
My star in the darkest of night,  
Who guides me into the meadow of love,  
Who shows me the path to delight.

My sun, my day, my life and my hope --  
That one I can never describe:  
Perhaps the thing that captures it best  
Is the soul-stirring breath of a sigh.

And my love:  
That day  
I learned new places to sigh from.

Soft light scatters in an empty room,  
and silence, layered thick on pale gray,  
is broken by a stirring whisper.

Roaming deserts, castiing dune upon dune --  
and barren, dry, incapable of life --  
are touched by the bloom of a desert flower.

Still lakes, that cast their magic spell,  
bring hush to the valley and forest all around;  
now a stone falls, and the dance of life resumes.

The great heavens, whose stars attend their place in time  
and guide travelers by their constant role,  
become backdrop to a streak of light -- proving even the heavens are playful.

And me, in my somber life, where parched soil suffices for a heart:  
you are the spring rain, the fertile wind, the end to my interminable winter --  
you brought life, where hope of life had been lost.

Silence. Cold thoughts.  
The procession of phantoms in a dark world of dreams.  
I am summoning memories, trying to reflect,  
seeking understanding in the vapors and steams.

The cauldron boils and demons writhe --  
everything readies to pierce through the veil.  
My thinking submits to the mysteries of old;  
my consciousness cracks -- I am beyond the pale.

Too late for memories of the world and its woes;  
too late for hope and the sadness it knows.  
The spell is unleashed and the time is at hand:  
now witness the power I have at command!

Choice at my left hand, Fate to my right;  
I look at them both  
  and see the mysteries of night...

May true thoughts, like dawn's rosy fingers,  
catch the tears your heart cannot hold back;  
and with them, water those furrows, long-planted,  
whose blooms accompany us through Life.

Pain, my dear friend, is the sun's blazing love:  
endurance alone can prove its healthy gift.  
And yet, as the clouds gather and cover us,  
so pleasure and hope reprieve of constant grief.

Stronger, hardier, we ache toward a sky unreachable,  
grasping at nothing our fingers can touch.  
Yet I feel it within me: the blossom coming forth,  
invisible to all, but known to the Gardener's Plan.

One day -- ah, what day? -- these thorns so obstructing,  
will shrink invisible next to a glorious Truth:  
Oh Color! I cannot command you, or bid you hence,  
you are the fruit of my Beloved's kiss;

And yet, if I obey and heed your grand Design,  
one day, some eye will feel your touch through me.

A pen-painted picture  
the mind my canvas  
images of you, a recollection  
of moments stretched into hours.  
How can writing tell the ways of it?

My soul walks on and on,  
forever, forever,  
wandering.

Then a light dawns.  
I see it is you.  
I am cheered.

If it's the sun,  
my chariot of wax is waiting.

If it's the moon,  
I know a cow to take me there.

If it's the stars,  
perhaps Hollywood will do.

If it's me,  
I see much change in your future...

All of life is a question.  
The reality of life is a question.  
And each moment, every event  
awaits our response.

I do not mean that particular events --  
this or that occurrence -- is a question.  
I mean the whole range of life  
is a query.

When you look out at life,  
it looks back at you with wondering eyes.  
How will you answer?  
What will you answer?

Are you the answer?

It is also like a door:  
a door with a keyhole in the shape of a question.  
The right answer unlocks the door;  
the right answer enters the other side.

We are, in fact, that answer  
but our meaning remains unformed.  
So life waits, and asks;  
it keeps asking all the days of our lives.

And our answer has no form.  
To say it did, we would have to be something else  
capable of giving that answer.  
But we are the answer.

So in a sense, the question and the answer  
circle about one another;  
and each waits for the other  
to the make the first move.

Question and answer:  
they seem like two things, but are not.  
They could be called one thing,  
but they are not.

Without the answer,  
there would be no question;  
without the question,  
there would be no answer.

They are each the reality of the other.

And this reality lives.  
In a dance of wholeness,  
in the interplay of one state against the other,  
time is seen to unfold.

So we interact; we see each other.  
We have intimate communion --  
as if life were the mirror  
in which we saw ourselves.

The drawn out Moment of anticipation;  
the continual asking;  
the parade of the same Present  
in a million forms:

It thrives, it yearns;  
it begs the two to join--  
and yet is coy, coquette.  
It enjoys the distance.

They are like lovers.

And this question and answer,  
are destined to meet;  
they find happiness  
in the fulfillment of one another.

How to answer?  
You are the answer.  
It is only this fact  
that must be understood.

Which is to say: Understood.

Otherwise  
life keeps on looking,  
keeps on seeking,  
the fragrance of its mate.

Until these bare essences  
join,  
they remain forever unsatisfied --  
unasked and unanswered.

Ask the lover for a drop of wisdom  
and he will cry out tears unearthly wise;

He will tell you happiness is impossible --  
that his life is not his to live...

For when She tosses her flowing hair  
oceans crash on sandy shores  
and he is flung on rocks again and again.

Her eyelashes move in a simple motion  
covering and revealing whole worlds to his view --  
yet remain forbidden to explore.

Her voice cannot be pictured here;  
such blasphemy is not allowed.

The lover's silence is his deepest testimony.  
His crying agony, the wails of pain,  
the moaning that denies all existence --  
can be heard so clearly  
from his heart that speaks no sound.

A soul can laugh a hundred times  
  never hearing the joke.  
He sees the painting in the artist's mind.  
In each pen he reads a book.  
To him, autumn is trees falling on the ground,  
and spring is when children are born.

At a single word he hears the speech.  
After a sentence he closes the book.  
Each second winds up the day -- yesterday --  
chasing its tail in fiery, golden circles  
  amidst the clouds.

As past and future grow intimate  
  before his seeing eyes,  
he draws up the sofreh of Time,  
binds it in knots of perception,  
and makes it into a ball, a fist,  
a point.

Only when I think I have something  
can I fear losing it.  
Only when I think I know something  
can I doubt knowing it.

For having and not having are absolutes,  
as is knowing and not knowing.  
Any feeling of need to think on it --  
is its own answer.

Don't try to know what you don't;  
don't extend the concept of possession.  
In your own hands, right now,  
is the only fact:  
and what your heart is sure of,  
right now  
is the only knowledge.

Her tongue is a jagged knife --  
It saws me.  
It cuts the little bits  
that seem too big.

Why does she need my single world  
  mosaic?  
So many motley tiles  
that won't fit neatly.

She breaks it up --  
so we breakup --  
but I still can't  
find the pieces.

In the town of Normal  
it is all facades.  
There is much of what "should be"  
and little of what is.  
They are very busy there.  
Terribly busy.  
Always an affront if I visit  
unoccupied.  
Facade faces in facade windows,  
with a ready word  
for every traveller's need.

Each day I commute through Normal.  
I ride the express train  
that hurtles on its tracks.  
At the stations, people don't get on;  
they try to hold on,  
to stop the train,  
maybe grab an arm and leg  
and pull you off.  
That it runs at all, that train,  
is its implacable, fury force of locomotion.  
No station facade can hold it back.  
It charges through, heedless, a holy terror,  
an unborn child of speed  
in every pregnant moment.

Sometimes, a person gets on.  
They stare in wide-eyed, deepening wonder  
at the scenes that pass us by.  
The hinterlands, the back-country:  
there's nothing like it in Normal.  
So they sit amazed,  
they gasp and cry.  
And I do the same,  
to welcome them.

A clap of light shatters the sky  
into blazing cracks that vanish.  
Then drops chasing drops:  
the whole world is wet.  
A gooey fog creeps everywhere  
and coldly starts to gel...  
Maybe if I'd some fiery wand  
I would venter to step  
outside.

Into the receding dark, we each must slip away.  
There is no clock made but holds this promise  
tucked between its hands.

And when night comes, whose day we did not meet;  
when others toast their glasses,  
but too much dust hides the sound  
from buried ears,

What do we tell the encroaching oblivion?  
of chances lost, of tales untold,  
and places never seen?

There comes in the end the final death;  
when even those who remember us pass on,  
and all our works and words  
are but waves upon the shore.

Began a weblog today for the purpose of publishing poems and essays as they are written. The rest of the pages are still being converted, so the links above will take you to the old content.

Journal from the summer

A journal of my trips this summer to Spain and Italy has been compiled into a book titled A Time Abroad. So far, I have little idea on how this would get published, but if you are interested it can be downloaded as a PDF file.

The more foolish I know myself to be  
the wiser I seem.  
For then my words are not fully mine.  
I take the breath, but He exhales.  
I man the tiller, but He sends me  
in discourses of gale and wonder  
throughout the wide yards of the sea.

Halloween is over.  
The grey trees  
have shed every leaf.

Now there are branches, alone,  
scratching at the sky.  
They scatter the moonlight  
and make it seem empty, colder.

Defrocked by winter,  
they bare their secrets  
to the wind and sun.

I seek someone, but who is she?  
Or rather, who is She?

In the faces that go by, not a one --  
only inklings.

Then other times,  
when my heart and my eyes are clear,  
I stop, to dream unholy dreams.

And in such a dream  
my lover speaks to me:  
she makes the wind to be her voice.

Her eyes, like stars in the night sky,  
her hair a black moonlight  
that brushes my cheeks.

For she is that sky,  
that pale and somber moon.  
I call out to her in yearning pleas  
and through my open door she comes.

Today they have all left me:  
the everyday words we use with one another,  
the everyday thoughts---the worries forever.

I can feel the dreams inside me  
struggling to find their way,

Looking for the words to write  
that will brush the clouds from the sun.

Then the spring of hope begins  
and eyes shine with fire and storm...

Still, no one notices, and the crowds walk by.  
But a process has begun  
that one day might bloom

Into the kind of words I'm looking for  
to write, to express  
how many of these dreams are of you.

Sometimes,  
I'm very quiet --

Like the breeze at midday,  
the stillness of a pond  
  waiting for the rains,  
frogs, patient to begin  
  their croaking at night,  
the sound of sleepy children,  
the twilight dimming,  
a thoughtful moon behind grey clouds,  
an amber sunset,  
the calling of ocean waves,  
fond memories of childhood,  
a kitten, resting at night,  
the whisper of a flame,  
the moment of a symphony's last note...  
the silence.

If these things can be,  
it explains why.

Seek truth where it may be found:  
No one asks if the sun is shining;  
no one ponders if the band still plays;  
no one questions the firmness of the ground.

Plato's company shuffled from the cave,  
and found the fact of light is blinding.  
To a thirsty man, water is the proof;  
to the hungry, food is their book of Revelation.

Not theories can warm the coldness of the night;  
brilliant thoughts won't compete with a single Ray.  
Ask the lover for this or that proof --  
he will bleed to show you the way.

What do I learn  
from the burning  
of a woman's gaze  
that turns my soul to ash?

Only that:  
ash floats finely  
on the winter breeze,  
lifting its way to heaven...

While other souls,  
content and warm,  
deny the pain and gift  
of spirit's leaven.

I cannot touch what I long to hold,  
for those arms would not be His arms.

O Maker of arms! and Granter of wishes!  
Let me feel Your unseen touch around me;

then the sight of all that pretty skin  
will recall me to your embrace.

I lost myself to tomorrow.  
The days landed like little birds  
and carried my life away.

I'd lit a candle so tomorrow could find me --  
since the night was restless and dreamless --  
but I'd used the hours of my life to feed the flame.

I ate bread and meat to keep my strength up,  
to be ready when He came.  
But my own flesh is all I had for food.

I never made it till dawn.  
I'd stoked the fire with my last few bones,  
and used my skin to build a shelter.

When He found me, there was nothing left.  
The little birds had taken it all away.  
I'd lost myself waiting for tomorrow.

Landing after so long a flight  
turning on the hot water  
washing the stains of travel...

The bed welcomes like a lover,  
the clean sheets embrace me,  
the pillow's constant touch is a kiss.

I left another continent tonight,  
adding its fair memories  
to the book of my heart's history.

What the soul knows cannot be said --  
  yet is known.  
Look for it, whenever words falter  
or voice loses its tone.