If you want to learn to sing
learn to breathe below the neck
let the air fill your belly
do not tense the throat and chest

when you let loose the sound
if it buzzes only in your head
it will sound small and strained
if you do not feel the vibrations

through your toes, it is not singing
before you exhale through your open mouth
remember, once your jaw is dropped
your Eustachian tubes will crimp

so be sure to listen long and hard
first - do not rush into the first note
leave aside your theatrics and gesticulations
there is time later for that circus

to sing is not to entertain, but to fill
believe in the song, do not choose lightly
for singing is sustained speech
and the overtones will echo long after

you pause for breath
do not try to own the song
just let it carry you
do not try to add anything

just try not to take too much away.
Now: inhale deeply and begin.

Everything that draws breath will some day stop;
No eternal life past the here and now
will cause anything to live forever.
Each new day brings another to an end.

The sun is not infinitely shining;
like us, it too requires a fuel supply.
There is no take without returning give,
though some fight against this equal exchange -

saying, they were gone too soon (or rather,
they did not get to take nearly enough);
some think they deserve much more than others
(though their payment is the same, maybe less).
If you want to live, seek for balance now;
but remember, no one has exact change.

31 MAR 2003

For the first time in my life, I have discovered a poem that perfectly describes my experience with Truth (god, goddess, the infinite, the universe, or whatever you wish to call it):

The song that I came to sing remains unsung to this day.

I have spent my days in stringing and unstringing my instrument.

The time has not come true, the words have not been rightly set; only there is the agony of wishing in my heart.

The blossom has not yet opened; only the wind is sighing by.

I have not seen its face, nor have I listened to its voice; only I have heard its gentle footsteps from the road before my house.

The livelong day has passed in spreading its seat on the floor; but the lamp has not been lit and I cannot ask it into my house.

I live in the hope of meeting with it; but this meeting is not yet.

-- Rabindranath Tagore, from Gitanjali, 1911

Perfection is not perfect actions in a perfect world, but rather, appropriate actions in an imperfect one.

"Tell me if anything has ever been achieved; tell me." -- Leonardo da Vinci, Notebooks

No winding caravans, trailing behind
the despoiling route of a conqueror,
have had to slow in their lumbering tracks
to scatter their spoor against detection,

hiding the broken lances and spent shells
that might make their way through the sifted sand
to the silt bed of Mother Euphrates
before their blood-smeared edges have been dulled

and baked away by the blistering wind.
Never have heavy-foot heroes trod here
and found their imprint even the next day.

In this place, time is a meaningless farce;
no lasting triumph can be long achieved.
The faceless dunes know no empire builders.

Beyond this edge of the world there exist
no monsters; no great devouring evil
ruminates out in this barren wasteland.
Only its scored skeletal shards remain,

crumpled into obscurity and dust
now lost to the infinite sagacity
of endless sand, the edge of an hourglass
whose shattered fragments mark the worn ends

of some desolate, clutching foothold
desperately proclaimed civilization
by the collectors of temporal might.

In this place, strength is a fleeting shadow;
no permanent kingdom can be maintained.
The shifting desert has no memory.

25 MAR 2003

NOTES: "...You will give a reddish tinge to the faces, the figures, the air, the musketeers, and those around them, and this red glow will fade the farther it is from its source...Arrows will be flying in all directions, falling down, flying straight ahead, filling the air, and bullets from firearms will leave a trail of smoke behind them...If you show a man who has fallen to the ground, reproduce his skid marks in the dust, which has been transformed into bloody mud. And all around on the slippery ground you will show the marks where men and horses have trampled it in passing. A horse will b e dragging behind it the body of its dead rider, leaving traces of the corpse's blood behind it in the dust and mud. Make the vanquished look pale and panic-stricken, their eyebrows raised high or knitted in grief, their faces stricken with painful lines...Men fleeing in rout will be crying out with open mouths. Have all kinds of weapons lying underfoot: broken shields, lances, stumps of swords, and other such things...The dying will be grinding their teeth, their eyeballs rolling heavenward as they beat their bodies with their fists and twist their limbs. You could show a warrior disarmed and knocked to the ground, turning on his foe, biting and scratching him in cruel and bitter revenge; there could also be a riderless horse galloping away into the enemy lines, mane flying in the wind, causing great injury with its hooves. Or perhaps some wounded man, lying on the ground and trying to protect himself with his shield, while his enemy bends over him to deal the fatal blow. Or a pile of men lying on the corpse of a horse. Several of the victors are leaving the field; they will move away from the melee, wiping their hands over their eyes and cheeks to remove the thick layer of mud caused by their eyes watering on account of the dust...Take care not to leave a single flat area that is not trampled and saturated with blood." -- Leonardo da Vinci, notes for the sketches of "The Battle of Anghiari", MS 2038, Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, 30v; 31r.

"Apart from Poussin's Massacre of the Innocents, Goya's Tres de Mayo, and Picasso's Guernica, there has probably been no picture in the history of art as violent, brutal, and terrible as The Battle of Anghiari...Unfortunately, only traces of the painting remain - in the lines quoted above, in a few of Leonardo's sketches (in Windsor Castle and the British Library), and in partial copies of the fresco by Raphael and Michelangelo." -- Serge Bramly, Leonardo: The Artist and the Man

The Second Coming

TURNING and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

-- William Butler Yeats

Ozymandias

I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read,
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed,
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

-Percy Bysshe Shelley

Someone, please explain the appeal of Celine Dion. While you're at it, convince me that she is to Las Vegas in the 21st century what Elvis was to the Strip in the 1960's/70's. And then, try to help me overcome my disgust with anyone who didn't flinch while listening to Celine warbling through a Stevie Wonder cover, pondering her youth as a "nappy headed baby boy".

Yes, I know she is the highest selling female artist of all time. But we all know that sales don't prove you are any good, they just mean you are well marketed.

First off, and of course, these are only my opinions, she is NOT an entertainer. She's not funny, she can't dance, is not sexy, sensual or alluring. And the Mary Martin haircut doesn't help, either. She looks like an anorexic Enya trying to be all things to all people - but she's not Liza, Barbara, Aretha, Judy Garland, Frank Sinatra, Maria Callas or even Joel Grey. And she DEFINITELY isn't Elvis. That comparison to me is insulting. She sounds particularly stupid trying to be funky. And I have never liked her over-the-top oh won't someone hand me a torch caterwauling. Her voice, which I have NEVER liked, sounded thin, whiny and grating at its BEST in the live broadcast the other night.

And interestingly enough, she didn't speak a word of French during her show's US television debut. Wonder why? Are they serving Freedom Fries at Caesar's Palace, too?

The Cirque de Soleil parts were of course overdone, as well. But that's to be expected. To be honest, I also expected Celine to be one of the clowns onstage - and I was not disappointed. Three years and $95 million for that pile of crap show?

And you know what's really irritating? No one, not a single reviewer of this monstrous catastrophe, seemed to be put off, bored and/or nauseated by the experience. Which means, of course, that I must be the only person in the world whose bullshit detector is still working properly.

Only five degrees to the north or south,
shifted just slightly from this present course
(here where the still air hangs in the mouth
and even expelled shows no sign of force)

and the trip would have been much different,
without all this vain waiting on the wind,
sitting drenched in sweat, no course apparent,
sails limp and useless as light to the blind.

At the horizon the edge of the sea
is flat and motionless; it does not stir
nor show signs of life in its murky deep.

The paralyzed air tastes stale, hard to breathe;
reason's vision, exhausted, seems to blur
as towards a foul darkness the hours creep.

24 MAR 2003

THE SINGLE clenched fist lifted and ready, Or the open asking hand held out and waiting. Choose: For we meet by one or the other. -- Carl Sandburg, Choose, 1916

Neither my acts or words will stop this war;
when you believe diplomacy has failed
and only destructive force is a sure
way, the coffin has already been nailed.

Besides, if you define terrorism
as the use of force, fear and coercion
to get your voice past the endless schism
where no one will listen to your version

then who is the terrorist, anyway?
America is showing it will not
talk or listen, so what choice has the world?

Without an ear, there is nothing to say.
I still will think it is an evil plot
and keep my hand stretched out, fingers uncurled.

19 MAR 2003

I just wanted to eat today
So I wrote this song about happiness
I just wanted to change the world
So I wrote a letter to my congressman

Don't believe he was in
I think I've got a file
In the office of the man
Representing the state of denial

I just wanted some criticism
So I asked you about your happiness
I just wanted to change your mind
So I asked I question that I shouldn't have, I suppose

Don't believe I said that
Wow, that was unexpected
In the middle of a thought
From a mind that had been neglected

What do you want me to be?
What do you want to believe?
No matter what is the matter, you see
You can be like everyone else,
or you can be happy.

I just wanted to smile today
So I read a book about happiness
I just wanted to understand
So I had to look myself up in the dictionary

Don't believe what I found
I guess I've got a definition
In the middle of the page
Right between satisfied and sedition

I just wanted to laugh today
So I bought a book about happiness
I just wanted to comprehend
So I bought a subscription to a magazine

Don't believe what I read
It says you take your chances
In the middle of the night
When the stars shine upon your dances

What do you want me to be?
What do you want to believe?
"No matter what" is the matter, you see
You can be like everyone else,
Or you can be happy.

1993

"There is a class that controls a country that is stupid and does not realize anything and never can. That is why we have this war." -- Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms

There at the edge of a wide green meadow,
set back just out of sight of a side road
under the cloak of an old oak's shadow,
where the bramble vines creep out from the wood

and the fragrant wildflowers show their blooms
at the mouth of a hidden flowing spring,
their petals daubed with splashes of color
and with the delicate mist of the dew,

with the short, sweet chirping of the sparrows
echoing through the low hanging branches,
and the soft murmured droning of the bees
rising and falling with their passing flight

I shall sit on the back porch and listen
to the last falling drops of this spring rain
and watch, as the water starts to recede,
soaking into the planted beds and pots,

thinking of time as a season of change,
and each moment a small drop in the sea
that takes in all things in its churning wake
and leaves each of us just where we should be.

14 MAR 2003

for LJ user ferahga

Where in this crazy world do I begin?
It's curious, how these things come to pass;
sometimes, the line you tread is oh so thin,
but you don't see it, and you fall on your ass.

Because the heart heals, and it soon forgets;
it holds like an old bulldog, tenacious,
to possibilities the mind regrets,
and blind, looks for hope in a flirtatious

gesture, a look in a wandering eye.
And although the wise mind knows it a whim,
it lets the heart fool it time and again.

They say if you love it, free it. They lie,
if they say when he goes, you'll forget him;
more likely, you'll stay dry out in the rain.

10 MAR 2003

For the bi-polar artist the two modes
are work and sleep versus work without sleep;
sometimes, a creative thought explodes
in a big bang, and other times, it creeps

up and catches you there quite by surprise.
Each mode has both a good side and a bad -
after a night with the muse your tired eyes
ache, and your thoughts careen and twist like mad;

while slower epiphanies will get lost
in the confusion of the everyday.
Of course, the plan with sleep keeps you stronger

and ultimately has a lower cost;
you have to manage how much you can pay
with care - so the candle will last longer.

09 MAR 2003

for LJ user ravengirl

Most people rise in organizations
through political postures and moving
up slowly, not causing much sensation.
They never reach the top roost by proving

their superiors wrong, or by doing
too much of anything except smiling
and just pretending not to be screwing
things up. This load of bullshit keeps piling

under them until they are running things.
Do not get me wrong, some do know their stuff
and are truly a joy to work under;

but usually, their incompetence brings
more work to your desk. It can be so tough
biting your tongue and staring in wonder.

09 MAR 2003

for LJ user draggingmuppets

When I worked for my dad, he used to say
that a paycheck was its own incentive;
well, I guess one can look at it that way,
but I prefer something more inventive.

Sure, I like what I do enough at times
to work extra hours and not complain;
but my sense of great inequity climbs
and I find dealing with others a pain.

Fulfilled? I suppose. There's cash in the bank,
some bright business cards displaying my name,
and occasional bits of gratitude.

But don't expect me to profusely thank
you for trifles; work is work, just the same,
at times rewarding - that's my attitude.

09 MAR 2003

Through no fault of my own (bad lines of code,
or an LJ glitch beyond my control)
you fast assumed that I purposely showed
you the door, reduced your once leading role

to a bit player, just another friend.
But my dear bean, that is just not the case;
no matter much I may tease and pretend
that my life is not lit up by your face,

or refer to you as the great McGrew,
the queen of idle deedling and such,
please, please remember this one simple thing:

I have not ever loved like I love you.
There is nothing else that means quite so much
as the great magic to my life you bring.

09 MAR 2003

for LJ user cathla143

I found I knew you, and then you were gone;
they seem too brief, the paths that we wandered,
and though in my memory you live on
it feels like so many days were squandered.

The things that I should have said, I never
spoke; so much has been left here unresolved.
Had I guessed by such a fragile tether
we were bound - if I had been less involved

in the rest of life, teeming around us,
perhaps I would have noticed the faint signs
that we two had so little precious time.

But now, it is too late to make a fuss;
I carry on with just parts left behind,
and the brief glimpse of love that you made mine.

08 MAR 2003

for LJ user flirtykatiegurl

Each circle shared is a chance for new growth;
in the union of two souls a life is born,
and for those who truly respect their troth
a precious and delicate bond is formed.

Great adventure lies on the path ahead;
draw fresh your own maps as you travel,
and where once was one, are now two instead,
sharing strands that the world can't unravel.

Find pleasure and joy and Music to sing
(for you now have all the means to duet)
and seek happiness for the both of you;

Together, you'll face what the future brings
(and the best has not even happened yet);
just believe, and your love makes dreams come true.

08 MAR 2003

for Ed Book

This one may be the hardest to write yet,
because words are not what make a thing so;
and sometimes, it is easy to forget
this fact, and think the world cannot just go

on praying (which is an action, surely,
yet times require a much more active verb),
but will seek for solutions based purely
on a desire to stop this mad, absurd

denial of our shared humanity.
Too many sit and bewail these harsh times,
still do not speak against our sickened state;

one definition of insanity
is helping the heartless and mean to climb,
waking only when it is far too late.

08 MAR 2003

for LJ user indiancutie

Along its brown muddy banks, the Ganges
traces the lifeline of an ancient palm;
the left hand of Brahma, whose phalanges
grasp the waking world in a dreaming calm;

there is nothing his breath does not touch,
and no one lies outside his healing hand.
Yet, despite this, small differences make much
division throughout these old, sacred lands.

Gandhi saw this vision too - no fist curled
to fight - but sadly found too many blind
to the cloud of maya Vishnu floats,

holding fast the mad fabric of this world,
yet biding us to seek within to find
the jewel in the heart of the lotus.

08 MAR 2003

for LJ user sara_wolfe

Beware the Kraken, great beast of the seas
that brings grown sailors as one to their knees;
it strikes without warning at things afloat
and makes kindling from the grandest of boats.

Its tentacles latch to our darkest dreams,
and wretch our bright ship's planks loose at the seams;
the craft that we trust our treasures to keep,
it pulls from the surface down to the deep.

The crest of its beak fills our hearts with gloom
when it surfaces; and its cold mad eye
looks upon us and sneers, as if to say,

"You neglect me and my kind to your doom."
At such times, even the warm sunlit sky
brings no comfort or happiness our way.

08 MAR 2003

for LJ user nutmeggie

True power isn't intimidation
nor does it manifest itself by fear;
lashing out doesn't help a situation,
nor make a solution any more clear.

Might has never really made a cause right,
only forced gentler souls to be slaves
and pushed trust and reason far out of sight.
It is no great thing, yet we name brutes brave

who resist tender feelings and can strike
without mercy or any sense of shame.
If they can dominate, hold all the cards,

then we cower as they take what they like,
never holding our own culture to blame
while we build more prisons and new graveyards.

08 MAR 2003

for Pietro

In a comedy of errors, mistakes
are often seen as lessons of great worth,
and the small things, the accidents of birth
can determine where the plot line takes

us. Sometimes, when two paths must separate
we find that our sense of the counterpoint
is lost, and the whole world is out of joint.
At these times, we are prone to question fate,

and in the stillness of our darkest hours,
to pine for the wild chaos of the storm
that two travelers weathered together.

Ah, sweet love! There are no earthly powers
that harnessed, will keep your heart safe and warm
while tramping after such fragile treasure.

08 MAR 2003

for LJ user stormispirit

Get used to it - you will never be right.
She will find, no matter how you try,
some notion of yours to quickly defy
and will long to be out of your keen sight.

You must learn the fine art of compromise
(and dread her acting like Veruca Salt
when she lacks and finds you to be at fault)
and though her taste in friends you criticize,

bite your tongue and simply stand there and smile.
One day she will marvel at your good sense,
and wonder how you got to be so cool.

Until then, and it may seem a long while,
she will trust only her experience.
Be patient while she learns at that school.

08 MAR 2003

for LJ user anoisblue

If through the brambles you carefully file,
deep in the dark wood a clearing is found.
Away from the outside bustle and sound,
hidden 'neath the canopy a long while,

there a still pool of cool water waits,
its surface a clear and sparkling mirror.
Look deep in its midst - the world is clearer,
and your trouble and worry it negates.

Leave your clothes on a flat rock at its shore,
and slip down through the ferns and the damp moss
'til your body is wrapped in its soft blue,

letting its silken caress melt your core,
slowly dissolving your sad sense of loss
and leaving behind only what is true.

08 MAR 2003

for LJ user seamusd

They may pass restrictions on public shows
of affection as spring weather appears;
even as the snow melts and the ice floes
recede, their frozen hearts play on our fears,

telling the world only of love's dangers,
insisting it be explored only in private,
so that we live our whole lives as strangers.
Yet even a child sees madness in that

when spying a pair of ducks romancing,
an amorous splashing there in the pond,
their green and brown feathers merged in sunlight.

It is only the universe dancing,
which reminds us to sometimes look beyond
our limited sense of morals and right.

08 MAR 2003

for Pietro

Even the high road floods in times like these,
and one who distains those who learn to swim
still pretends the water lapping at their knees
won't soon splash up to soil their halo's brim.

Never mind that humanity may drown
in the low-lying stretches of maya
if you have your feet upon some holy ground
that surely won't sink into the playa.

Oh, you who can read the signs in the skies,
what good are your sensible boots and cloak
while your brother stands naked and shivers?

For the rain does not mind your poor disguise,
and often chooses whom it will to soak;
Those who share their lifeboats, it delivers.

08 MAR 2003

for poet dan

Ground into a powder, that massive horn
is much prized as an aphrodisiac;
but the pale creature to whom it is born
uses it for a different attack.

Against the backdrop of the setting sun
his silhouette stark in the growing gloom,
there is little from which he turns to run;
The lesser veldt denizens all make room,

knowing well he is quite easily riled.
He knows his only enemy is time,
a slow, creeping foe that rarely fights fair.

To that great challenge, he is reconciled -
a battle with a primordial slime
that swallows whole all things without a care.

07 MAR 2003

for LJ user ldy

For those who praise abstinence, the big bang
seems quite an obscene and vulgar notion -
that the entire world would just simply hang
together, making circular motions

without a divine rudder seems absurd.
But the cosmos doesn't need approval;
it did just fine before the written word,
coping with addition and removal

of all kinds of humorless parasites
with a simple shrug and a hearty laugh,
finding beauty in each new thing in turn,

never bothering with property rights,
only possibilities, knowing half
would gladly sing along, or want to learn.

07 MAR 2003

for Verian Thomas

There are times when new growth is a bad thing.
When that dark shadow creeps into your life,
touching healthy cells with its withering
hand, defying the surgeon's careful knife

as it gains momentum and saps your strength,
the possibility of loss is real;
You start measuring time in smaller lengths,
and hope that at the end, you can still feel

good enough to laugh, and somehow cheat death,
sense the hair growing back under your wig
and feel warm sun on your radiated bones.

Then you use all your courage to draw breath,
thinking, "Those other things I thought so big,
how very small they all seem to have grown."

07 MAR 2003

for LJ user stephanielynch

Bending down to touch the path at my feet,
do you shed your warm tears for me and mine,
letting the bitter salt blend with the sweet
fragrance of the surrounding oak and pine?

What sad piper lays down his head to sleep
beneath the stretching limbs of your embrace,
while dreams of a troubled, maddened world keep
the lines of sorrow etched in his still face?

Amidst the green strands of your falling hair
is a tenuous fortress that protects
the heart throughout these mysterious times.

Are you mourning those who seem lost, out there,
those heart-sick souls society neglects?
Do you shed those warm tears for me and mine?

07 MAR 2003

for LJ user estersin

I won't march in your drunken green parades,
nor think of your name when I spy clover;
I'm tired of these cruel lies and the charades -
it won't be my eyes your wool pulls over.

For I am of the breed of snakes you fought
and drove from Erin's shores in ignorance,
when with a blessing of my blood you brought
your cursed words of sin to my Beltane dance.

You stole my history, my country's soul,
and yet, your patriarchal leaders boast
that somehow you redeemed our sacred isle.

May your eyes be lain with live, burning coal;
in the Hell you created may you roast.
I shall think of that scene in March, and smile.

07 MAR 2003

for LJ user dougs

Maybe it gets a bit harder to rise
At dawn after a few pints late at night,
And those few pounds get harder to disguise,
Making a climb up the stairs no delight.

Maybe your ears aren't as sharp as they were,
yet some echoes you never can forget;
so many things fade away in a blur,
except her voice's sound the day you met.

The new ways of youth seem so strange and wild,
And you think often of different times -
When the world was young and full of verve,

And could not fathom you with a grandchild;
Each passing year seems more and more sublime,
As like our memories, we are preserved.

07 MAR 2003

for LJ user gurdonark

You could hear it through the night at Minton's,
winding around some old tune of the man's,
pushing the envelope, sound just hinting
at more changes than the ear could stand,

biting back at the harsh words and small talk
about equality. The cool was birthed
by black coffee, while its parents walked
the streets seeking a rhythm, now unearthed

and tracing its roots to the motherland.
Emancipation was not just a word
for politicians and the poor Negro,

true liberation was there at hand,
bopping those few notes between Satch and Bird,
making it real by saying it was so.

06 MAR 2003

for LJ user nix_7c0

You may think it a bit of lunacy,
but great minds spend a lot of time talking
of single theories, some conspiracy
that runs the universe. Some, like Hawking

claim it's a beneficent force, with plans
like Cambridge, to only improve the world;
others propose a much more sober stance:
like seeking behind pi the oyster's pearl.

Sometimes it seems, though, like dear old Isaac
we're only waiting for the obvious.
Sounds like just luck, that hard apple falling -

while of our velocity we can track
just speed; the direction is devious
and fights being named a divine calling.

06 MAR 2003

Just sitting here listening to Richie Havens and the song that got Lou Gossett Jr. out of a run-down single room apartment (he wrote Handsome Johnny) ...

I understand that Mother Culture is whispering constantly in our ears that the day before yesterday is old news, that nothing good was discovered or done before the glorious today that is our modern world. And I understand that free love has a price that most are not willing to pay. And I understand, like in the Sufi teaching story, that this culture is like a new water supply that makes you forget, and only those who have hoarded the old water remember the way it was before - and to avoid alienation and aloneness, they too start drinking of the new water, and thereby lose the past as well ...

But I don't understand why, if there were so many who had such great realizations, why they didn't actually form a new society. Why they (when they "grew up") bought into this one, thinking that a program against stupidity would take the place of a culture wherein stupidity is not encouraged. Where have all the flowers gone? Were they only annuals?

So for forty days and nights sacrifice
you get a taste of dying to the flesh
a process wherein you learn the great price
of your worldly pleasures, and so refresh

your tired soul through purging and denial,
by setting aside one foolish notion
and grasping at another - a trial
of faith, making of it great commotion,

saying, "look at me, I'm so penitent."
The universe never fills the left hand
without emptying the right - no big deal,

OK? Remember that your life is spent
with a mouth full of much obliged and
a hand full of gimme - and "no" for real.

06 MAR 2003

"I have measured out my life in coffee spoons ..." The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, T. S. Eliot

Little by little, life goes on
Minute after minute, and then it's gone
A brief bit of essence to work upon
Like a fog lingering on the lawn

Little by little, life it grows
Hour by hour, it never slows
And into the river of time it flows
Like the petals that fall from a fading rose

Little by little, life measures out
Second to second, through faith and doubt
A small chance to see what it's all about
Like an interstate over a rural route

Little by little, life passes by
Morning to evening the hours fly
A slice of the infinite before your eye
Like birds flying south in a winter sky

Little by little, life goes on
Day after day it moves, then it's gone
A miniscule fragment of hither and yon
Like a few fleeting flashes before the dawn

Little by little, life comes and goes
Measured in ounces that ebb and flow
A drop from the river for all we know
Like fast melting pieces of falling snow

Little by little, life goes so fast
Each grain of sand fills an hourglass
An tiny oasis on which we're cast
Like desert birds, making each dewdrop last

Little by little, life ends too soon
Only so many suns and full moons
A short time to learn so many new tunes
Like emptying the ocean by coffee spoon.

03 MAR 2003

How many times do I need to reach out,
without reaching, into the universe
that waits, patiently, through my doubt
and some overwhelming sense, a perverse

need to communicate? In my weak hands
no infinite secrets are ever revealed,
and the world's inscrutable veil still stands,
despite how fervently I have appealed.

So what is the point of this mad charade,
that leaves my soul drained and gasping for air,
smothered by the weight of some unseen muse,

and what difference have my words even made?
Have they reached anyone at all out there,
some other seekers willing to share clues?

04 MAR 2003

So the old world is gone, let a new one replace it

The world is already dead; that figment
of existence that you knew in the past,
the places well-remembered, those fond scenes
where the history of an ancient folk

(all the hungry babies and curious
children, rebellious teens and then
struggling examples of the working class,
disillusioned prophets and vain playboys,
cross-makers, judges and even martyrs
to the illusions of eternity
constructed and destroyed in an eye's blink -
in short, those former faded selves of yours
that hide, like skeletons in your closet)

built its quartz sand tableau on the seashore,
where the omnipresent ocean of time
could roughly lick at its crumbling edges
like a ravenous kitten at its cream.

Let the future begin, all you must do is face it

What is there to remember of the world
that does not, in an instant's too brief span
fizzle into so much escaping gas
and mingle with the eternal present

(and if held back too long, builds up pressure
in the decanting glass of your reason,
becoming a most volatile mixture
susceptible, if only shaken by mistake,
to expand with a great destructive force
and end both the experiment and the
brief tenure of the experimenter)?

For each moment is past in the second you waste it

The world is already dead; it has changed
its morphology and become a new
thing, its outline no longer familiar
to those legion of erudite scholars

who seek in vain to catalog its form
and function, to quantify its effects
by narrowing down to a single thing
its primary cause (and to then posit,

through some process of elimination,
a purpose for existence that can be
pounded into pabulum for the masses,
without a consensus of the entire
organism on the truth of that goal).

And yesterday's wine is dissolved, once you taste it

What is it about our sad illusions,
of our past, that we do not carry as
part of the present self? We do not need
to imprison the world in our own cage,

forcing it to pace the same length and width,
keeping both it and ourselves from moving
beyond these walls, beyond the small, frail life
we imagine is defined so clearly

(but in truth is so much more than we can
fathom, so much more than any can know).

The world must evolve, and with it, we too,
traveling forward at the speed of now,
blind and feeble feeling for the path that
lies ahead, a few small steps further on,
past the pale edge of our frantic searchlights.

Let the old world evolve, let the new world erase it

The world you think you know is dead, like a
religion is a spiritual way that
no longer catches a fire in the heart,
but burns brightly only on the kindling
of evolution.

For the past is the wind, all you can do is chase it

03 MAR 2003

Fast, how fast the time goes by! It seems like
last year was a but a moment or two, then
fell off into some gaping chasm. I
tell you, it was only mere seconds of

fleeting shadow, no more than a soft heart's
beating, and it was gone - only a small
flitting through the space of my life, barely
fitting in the palm of my reaching hand.

Now and then it seems the seconds drag on,
their exquisite patience fragile like a
rose, to be cherished and released again.

How does the universe see it? Does it
care about these few sparks of stuff wrapped in
clothes, soon to be wisps of nothing once more?

The entire essence of life seems stuck fast
sometimes; for example, there were times last
year when under my intent gaze, hours fell
away, and the science I used to tell

one day from the next, in some wild fleeting
surprise at finding my heart still beating,
turned into a pale chimera, flitting
off across the pond. It is quite fitting

that it is unclear and wrapped in mist now,
almost as if it were never quite there,
like the faint glimpse of a faded rose;

Much of that span, I could not tell you how
I lived it; but somehow I learned to care
about the world beyond time's simple clothes.

02 MAR 2003

There are a couple of tricks in this pair of sonnets ... can you catch them?

It takes but a moment of deliberate breath,
a fleeting few seconds of intentional movement,
and the fragile cocoon of this world is shattered,
its tiny fragments of coherency thrown out

into a wild, mad self-righteous cacophony
of filled-in spaces that constant, reverberates
right through the still marrow of your inner being,
wretching the blissful absence of sound from your ears,

taking your carefully balanced sense of feeling
and leaving in its place, a dulling void of noise.
In that small space of time before the roar begins,
before the crystallized shards of the absolute

are pulverized by the onslaught of a whisper,
as you watch, mesmerized by your soft exhaling
(not meaning to unleash its harsh, destructive force
but still fascinated by the devastation),

if you focus on the fraction of an instant
as the entire process of creation is stopped
and the wheel is set again in new commotion,
you can hear the hidden voice of the universe.

01 MAR 2003

There is a world out there in printed words
that I encounter on some occasions,
filled with notions that seem very absurd,
using the bold language of persuasion

to convince me to ignore reality
and buy into the illusions they sell,
offering options that appear to be
so great, so exciting. What they don't tell

you is what you have to give in exchange:
suspend your logic and sense of reason,
and you too can join in the mad charade.

The thing that puzzles me, the oddest, strange
part, is the need to upgrade each season;
So that's how lasting happiness is made.

01 MAR 2003