The true ascetic does not ask for things
to compensate them for some perceived lack;
and yet, each vow of abstinence weaves strings
of favors that they fancy will attract

the warm benevolence of unseen might,
a glance from some divinity's kind eye,
although the chance of answer may be slight.
Their reasoning for getting no reply

is that their hearts still crave and are not pure,
despite a lifetime's sacrifice and pain,
and loneliness not many could endure.
Small wonder that they seem a bit insane;

it makes you wonder, what sort of a god,
when as a loving parent is beseeched
by needy children, fails to give. How odd
that it requires such effort just to reach

and in the darkness, hear that parent's voice.
How many caring mothers could deny
indulgence of their baby's whims? What choice
does any doting father have? To lie,

and say, "There's not enough for you, my dear,"
despite possessing infinite supply,
so much that it will never disappear?
No human parent acts this way. So why

not ask for everything you think you need,
including things that you could live without?
The list won't be so long the gods can't read
it, or not have the brains to sort it out.

Ask, cajole, demand, beg, plead and whine;
use all the tools in a child's repertoire,
A loving universe will think that's fine,
and likely grant your wishes, and much more.

29 JUN 2005

I have no cause to champion
that's worthy of a flag,
bedecked with symbols meant to stir
like-minded souls to arms;
no psycho-babbling sycophants
pore through my work to find
some mystic key that might unlock
their esoteric core.

if taken quickly, just skin deep,
there's no euphoric high
to titillate the rebel throng
who seek a new messiah.
My generation does not struggle,
nor is it oppressed
by more than its own aspirations,
which don't add to much.

We seek to decode messages,
enamored by their form
but not impressed by their content;
besides, who has the time
to contemplate some foolish scrawl?
Besides, as we all know,
all knowledge worth the knowing
was old news some years ago.

Our elders? They resent the way
we skulk around and wait
for them to die; we will inherit
naught but scornful pride.
The younger generation
we already do not like;
they simply fail to listen when
we outline our great plan.

In part, because there is no plan,
no underlying glyph
that seeks to make the parts a whole;
instead, we ask "What if
there is no point to anything,
no future, and no past;
therefore, there's no good reason
to build anything that lasts."

28 JUN 2005

The lines were drawn some time ago;
they framed the fallen corpse
where it was found to be expired
and removed, in due course.

Its owner left it vacant there,
having no further need
of its method of transport,
or ability to read.

One might imagine that the chalk
by now would be long gone,
what with the traffic in this place
and all the goings' on,

but there it is, as sharp and clean
as when it first was lain;
it's neither flaked away to dust
or been washed down the drain.

The permanence of some things
seems a little bit off whack;
for instance, the sidewalk beneath
the chalk, no longer black,

but softened to a misty grey,
is cracked beyond repair
and only held together
by the chalk line drawing there.

27 JUN 2005

She's waiting on the deputy
But he never comes
Got her finger on the trigger
Sucking silent on her thumb
And the ninety ninth caller
Has just been struck dumb
Like an old pair of stockings
He just turned to run

She's waiting on the postman
But he's just got advice
Got her hands on the counter
Stirring tea in her spice
And the TV show hostess
Is colder than ice
Like an old pair of shoes
She tries everything twice

She's waiting on the milkman
But he's running late
Got her lips on the coffee cup
Dripping stains on her plate
And the radio spokesman
Has just sealed his fate
Like an old book of matches
He scratches the slate

She's waiting on the saviour
But he never calls
Got her mind turned to worry
Her eyes on the walls
And the Jehovah's Witness
Sounds just like Lou Rawls
Like an old rusted needle
The pressure just falls

She's waiting on the preacher
But he's been sent home
Got her hair in her fingers
Pressing it to the phone
And the roving reporter
Is standing alone
Like an old saint at twilight
He's trying to get stoned.

1997

Wind blowing through a courtyard
Shattered windows turn their broken eyes on me
Blind, can't see the street because I'm crying
for my soul is in the gutter, trying to find release

Is there something on that wall?
Looks like some writing on it, it says
Just six more hours until the dawn
Then you can crawl back where you came from

Some sin, something I can't remember
Memory's the enemy shot down on these streets of love
Lost, in the battle, in the fighting
for my soul, an empty victory in a war that does not cease

Is that someone up ahead?
Looks like a friend of mine, who said
"You won't stay warm without the wine,"
and passed right back into oblivion

Oh won't you give me something for the pain
I can't stand another night out in the rain
Please don't call it charity, but help me just the same
While I'm waiting for the jury who are out right now
Dividing up the blame.

Spending my time searching for nothing
To add it to the nothing that I own
Spending my last dime on a bottle
So I won't spend this night alone

Wind, blowing cold against my body
Shuttered windows turn their sunken eyes on me
Blind, seeing nothing but the nothing
in my soul, an empty shadow where an angel used to be

Is that something up ahead?
Looks like a fire burning.
Pull up a chair and throw it in
It's six more hours until the morning

Oh won't you give me something for the pain
I can't stand another night out in the rain
Please don't call it charity, but help me just the same
While I'm waiting for the jury, who are out right now
Dividing up the blame.

You say I'm guilty
I say you're guilty
We're all guilty
If no one's guilty.

1991

Sometimes a phrase, or single word,
will prompt a poem. How absurd
to think that there is some great plan
on my part; so few understand

how unlike following a chart
this process is. There is no start
or end defined, no single grain
of sand that unlocks in the brain

the secrets of the universe.
A gift? More like a mummy's curse
that reaches from beyond the grave.
All one can hope is to be brave

enough to take the message down
before it slips back underground
into the psyche's fetid lair
(assuming that it comes from there).

It bubbles, like some sulphur gas
up through a molten, gray morasse
of hidden urges, secret wants,
and like a phantom limb, it haunts

the poet through their waking hours.
It begs, cajoles, and then devours
the retinue of conscious thought,
never elusive, unless sought

from the great void as one small word
or single phrase. See how absurd
it is to think the poet's craft
one honed on purpose. Yet some daft

professors praise as skill and art
the bull's-eye found by these rare darts,
and build great schools to analyze
what comes, if at all, by surprise.

24 JUN 2005

Stop all the clocks! The hours must halt
their slow and steady marching on;
let all lay fallow in default
until this fickle mood is gone.

Stop all the movement of the sun
and stars against a sombre sky;
let fall in finish what's begun
until this darkened thought goes by.

Stop wishing, stop your work commute,
leave off that endless exercise
until that dream that convolutes
and busies us lays down and dies.

Stop forward motion! Stop retreat!
Let all momentum slow and cease;
pretend, for once, the world's complete,
and does not need to be policed.

Stop watching! Look for no more signs
revealing subtle Divine thought
Let that watch halt; do not rewind
its mechanism. Let it rot.

Stop all the clocks! Keep time no more
inside each minute's careful cage;
let structure collapse on the floor,
and words escape the page.

Stop reading! Let the lines of text
begin to swim and blur to black;
throw out your plan for what is next.
That moment's gone. It won't be back.

24 JUN 2005

My once sweet voice, so innocent
and full of strength and power
is now reduced to rasp and hum,
its range half what it was.

It rumbles, where it once so glibly
glissed; the pure head tone
has sunk into my heavy chest
and breaks where it once slid.

Disuse, abuse and pure neglect
have left my instrument
(once proud and fearless,
capable of stratospheric feats)

dented and dusty, ill-repaired,
and painfully withdrawn.
It's clear unless I brush it off,
and soon, it will be gone.

23 JUN 2005

Each moment is a threshold
hinged upon an ancient door;
we swing between two rooms:
the future, and what's come before.

Experience, the lubricant
that smooths the rust and squeaks,
we start to use, and learn to hoard,
before we learn to speak.

One room is full of fantasy,
the other, hardened fact;
and though we glimpse both in the frame,
one isn't coming back.

Each motion scrapes the floorboards clean
of dust from either side,
and pushes it before us.
One day, we choose to decide

which room is where we want to live,
to dwell on history,
or venture into the unknown
and forge a destiny.

We spend our time, hung on this door,
our focus one small arc
that gives us merely glimpses of
what's out there in the dark:

for one, what holds the doorframe still,
what force compels these walls
to stand erect our entire lives,
while all around us falls?

And what if we should swing too hard,
as if it were a game
to make the quickest, loudest swing?
Is the oak door to blame

if loosened from its hinges,
it should let us hurl beyond
the simple, repetitious arc
we've come to depend on?

22 JUN 2005

for Pete Ham

Wouldn't know it from the weather,
but the summer's almost gone.
Those lazy early days have faded,
though the swelter lingers on;
and the memory of the schoolyard
has begun to slip away
as if lessons barely ended
prove you know something today

Wouldn't know it, 'cept the calendar
is near another page.
Each checkmark by a number
signifies another stage,
and another blue sky faded
slowly into dappled gray.
All the colors run together;
only darkness will remain.

At the crossroads of the seasons
you can only stand so long
before something calls you onward:
something yearning, something strong;
there is nothing left a body here to do,
except believe in a miracle or two.

Wouldn't know it from the weatherman,
but autumn's closing in.
Though the dog days are still coming,
they will grow weary and thin;
and the sunny joys of summer
that you thought were here to stay
will be covered in the green leaves
that you sit under today.

At the crossroads of the seasons
you pick your point of return;
and pretend your new direction shows
you things you need to learn.
But there is nothing much to do beyond just ride,
and believe you'll come out on the other side.

21 JUN 2005

If you've ever listened to much Badfinger, you know who Pete Ham was - lead singer, guitarist and primary songwriter for the group who wrote, among other things, Without You, which was much more successfully recorded by Harry Nilsson and recently again by Mariah Carey. He committed suicide in 1975.

My favorite song of his is called "Perfection":

There is no real perfection
There'll be no perfect day
Just love is our connection
The truth in what we say

There's no good revolution
Just power changing hands
There is no straight solution
Except to understand

So listen to my song, of life
You don't need a gun, or a knife
Successful conversation,
will take you very far

There is no real perfection
There'll be no perfect man
Just peace is our connection
For giving all you can

There's no good kind of killing
Just power taking life
It's all good blood that's spilling
To make a bigger knife

So listen to my song, of life
You don't need a gun, or a knife
Successful conversation,
can take you very far

(c) 1971 Pete Ham

Pollock's? No, but the artist aped his work

The art of living well, some pundits quip,
is equal parts audacity and luck;
while others posit a stiff upper lip
and careful breeding lift us from the muck.

The hedonist claims pleasure is the thing;
his polar opposite, the aesthete: prayer.
Each year a new philosophy that brings
the focus to some erstwhile, dormant layer.

I think there is no "art" to life at all.
A chimp can paint a Pollock, nonetheless;
and like a tortured artist, see his walls
as solid bars that shut out happiness.

There is some irony that humans spend
so much of their free time imagining
that their exalted rank must have some end
beyond the simple fact that is living.

The question I would pose to scientists
is whether when they put chimps in a room
to type out "War and Peace", they get them blitzed
before they start, and tell them, from the womb

that real chimps study law, or man machines,
and must resign themselves to apish rules;
how many, then, would live their lives in dreams
and fail the tests so valued by their schools?

20 JUN 2005

Again the axis ceases its slow spin,
and slides across the rachet to reverse;
the day and night become each other's twin,
and spheres align across the universe.

In this time, when the veil between the worlds
is thin and day admits its fleeting hold
on time and space, the fabric is uncurled,
and often there are wonders to behold.

Midsummer's Night --- when faeries hold their court,
and light the sky in firefly delight,
when what seems unreal masquerades, for sport,
as hard and fast reality. You might

believe on other days the world is so
wrapped in logic, that its soul is dead;
but in this moonlight, if you dance, you'll know
the world as it might be; and then, instead

of crying for the would and could have beens,
in vain lamenting your loss of control,
you might let go the world of only seems
and see, for once, the real, the true, the whole.

20 JUN 2005

CHORUS:

If far too often fate seems to be fixed
and all for nought, pray you remember this:
of our own choosing are these states of life,
both law and ruler from among us rise.

'Tis in our hands, that much of being free
oft comes to nil, and so our apathy
determines how our democratic state
enslaves us with its silent, civil chains.

So, those who would be wise kings, please take note:
the clever word defeats the sharpest sword;
for those who rule the soul confine the mind,
and conquer silently the heart and hand.

Democracy holds promise great, if freed,
where liberty and justice count for all;
and though expressive right may tax the taste,
the alternate means none may choose their fate:

To choose the gods that suit one's path and place,
may in the so-called pious cause alarm,
but free will gives this choice to each alone;
to interfere is to deny a right.

So tenuous is our hold on the truth,
that some may seek to have their will imposed,
and quench the fire in those who disagree,
while wand'ring lost themselves in faithless doubts.

Let not this trembling thought of fate unknown
breed trust in leaders boasting "sacred right",
or you may silence longing in the heart
for principle, and thus destroy the state.

So stories go, and mine presents a time,
not past, not present, but of both constructs;
A fictioned tale, perhaps, but warning, too,
that our existence faces likewise tests.

For words divine, when jumbled, may distort,
and so confuse the heart and harm the mind;
converting honest fears and hopeful dreams
to damning, pure and simple ignorance.

Maybe a lesson is here to be taught -
that facts can quickly be repressed and scorned,
and that which passes for blessed and devout
may be manipulated and ill-used.

Without a warning, liberties we love
that thrive on the most tenuous of threads
may be no longer granted us from birth,
but lost to mem'ry in chasms of time.

A time when reason, logic and defense,
along with independence and free will,
may lose their place in definition books,
and be unknown to us who live in chains.

from The Trial of Nesorna, Act I, Prologue: Chorus Monologue

1990, 2004

NEIGHBORHOOD:

Lissen up, lissen up, I got a story to tell
It might sell, it might not; if it don't, then oh well
but I'll get right to it, make it understood:
I'm your low-down, funky home neighborhood.

Think somethin's goin' on? Hell, I've been thinkin' for years,
and I'll be sittin' right here when the last smoke clears.
Get the point? I know every inch of this joint,
and every king of the hill you've ever tried to annoint.

You end up disappointed and ya'll come back here,
thinkin' you got the only definition of fear
but I was right here waiting, anticipating your hatin',
race-baitin', matin', creatin' and disintegratin'.

Lissen up, lissen up, now I'll say it again:
close up your mind against change, and you ain't got no friends.
Push comes to shove, and you know how the story ends
somebody dies; and it starts all over again.

So here's the story of a brother and an other:
two boys growin' up thinkin' they hated each other.
Who is the pusher, and who is the shover?
Just sit back and listen, and you might discover

somethin' real, somethin' to make you feel,
somethin' as hard as steel; but hold out 'til the final reel
before makin' your judgments about right or wrong
and judge the singers by the words of the songs;

because who is the weak, and who is the strong
when the river's still flowing, but the mountain is gone?

1992

I closed my eyes for just a wink,
it seemed, to find two hours past;
and in the space of that mere blink,
the sky, dull grey and overcast

had cleared into an inky blue.
The tepid post-rain afternoon
had settled, like the evening dew
that lurks beyond each near monsoon.

The stars were ringed with sweaty haze,
like Van Gogh bulbs against a cloth;
the cloying, heavy jasmine sweetness
filled the air like honeyed broth

and made the air so treacle thick
that it was hard to breathe it in,
while dirt and stone and grass and brick
were glazed with sweat, like my rough skin.

18 JUN 2005

The summer in New Orleans melts
ambition from your bones;
and inspires dreams of northern climes,
of much more temperate zones

where flowers last a day or two
before they start to wilt,
and the ground does not suck ravenous
at water where it's spilt,

where saunas are a novelty.
Here, one does not require
expensive redwood boxes built
just so you can perspire.

The air fights you at every breath;
it's thick, and wet and hot,
and lays to waste wrought iron,
turns all exposed wood to rot.

The oh-so-languid pace of winter
here gets slower still;
expect no summer revolutions
in this fetid swill.

17 JUN 2005

So many inspirations have escaped,
slipped through the cracks,
their golden finish tarnished
when confronted with the facts

Some let their fame get to them,
others watched it slip away,
often so caught up in business
that they never learned to play

Fashion changes oh so quickly,
and the new face on the scene
becomes a phantom overnight,
or yesterday's has been.

But some remain undaunted,
though their names have left the charts,
and try to carry on the quest
that first inspired their hearts.

His voice still pure and crystal sweet,
the song more poignant now:
for truly, no one is to blame,
despite it all, somehow.

16 JUN 2005

I've always been a Howard Jones fan. When he hit the scene in the early 1980's, I was a young singer, songwriter and multinstrumentalist looking for my own voice, my own way to communicate. In those days, it seemed there were so few pop stars who actually studied music, who went through the discipline to learn an instrument, to let the beauty of their voices, not the genius of production, carry their message. Howard Jones, to me, was worth listening to, if only for those factors; the further point that the songs he wrote and sang were positive messages, that spoke to the inner sadness and beauty of a world I was just coming to know, made him even more important. Just this evening, I saw him perform on the NBC Show "Hit Me Baby One More Time" --- and was once again transported, in tears, by the beauty of his voice, by his unassuming presence, by his lyrics. Thank you, Howard Jones. Sorry I lost track of you for all this time.

The clocks were running, so no one could catch them
I saw tennis games canceled because of no love
There were clowns on the corner who couldn't stop laughing
And birds who were dying because of their singing

The lights were all flashing, no one was offended
I saw trees who were leaving because of the summer
There were runners on First Avenue getting loaded
And bombs that were crying out to be exploded

The street was a madhouse, but no one committed
I saw signs that could speak but their spotlights were broken
There were children in diapers who cleaned their machine guns
And sitters who sat with their minds in the gutter

The trains were on time, but time wasn't complaining
I saw computers dying from bad information
There were traders who traded and traitors who tumbled
And weakness exhalted and chastity humbled

The people felt lazy, lazy felt molested
I saw elephants' memories and predators' patience
There foxes that talked and a donkey that listened
And 10,000 crows that were speaking of slavery

The cattle were lowing, and someone was singing
I saw miracles cast out and devils invited
I saw water that walked and some ice that was melting
And half of a dozen that wanted its other

The cupboards were bare, and their nakedness covered
I saw Cain and young Abel embrace one another
There was beef on the altar and bread on the table
And Adam and Eve were locked up in the basement

The guns were ablazing, and no one was cooking
I saw mothers and daughters in graveyards and churches
There was room at the inn, but no bright star was shining
And the prophets were raising their cash in the city.

1991

Grantland Rice (1880-1954) was a sportswriter for the New York Herald-Tribune. He was really one of the first, if not the first, famous sportscasters, immortalizing Knute Rockne's Notre Dame squad as the "Four Horsemen" of the apocalypse, among other things, and coining many a pithy stanza along the way (e.g., "There's no dearth of kindness in this world of ours; Only in our blindness we gather thorns for flowers."). I imagine that his colorful commentary was often repeated by those growing up in the first part of the 20th century, particularly by boys like my father (born in 1928, the same year as Mickey Mouse). Such things leave great impressions. My father, for example, until his death often repeated something of Rice's every now and again:

"When the one Great Scorer comes to score and writes against your name, He marks not whether you won or lost, but how you played the game."

In other words, it's the means that matter. Never the ends. That's a good thing to bear in mind.

So many look around the globe
and say, "How can I start
to help in what small way I can,
and find work with a heart?"

They look to spread their peace abroad,
and be more well received
than in their hometown neighborhoods,
if that can be believed.

If crime and hate and poverty
among the richly blessed
cannot be fought effectively,
what hope for all the rest?

If prisons, projects, trailerparks
and graveyards are the way
we bandage up our culture's wounds,
what right have we to say

that our approach, our medicines,
our governments, our laws
are useful or appropriate
to correct others' flaws?

If you would make a difference,
first, examine your own heart;
once your own house is in order,
then work down the block can start.

15 JUN 2005

Leaning out the doorway with a joint in my hand
Holding up the wall so the illusion can stand
The ground it never comes up on you just the way you plan
But it's all right, sometimes

Looking out the window through a crack in the glass
Waiting for the minutes in this hour to pass
Could be one more day and then I'm out on my ass
But it's all right, just fine

It don't get no easier with time
There's just so much here to occupy my mind
While I'm waiting for the imminent decline
Without a fight ... just one more night.

Giving it the gas so that the engine won't stall
Waiting in a line to make a long distance call
Makes you stand up straighter when your back's to the wall
But it's all right by me

Hanging in a backroom filled with rusty old nails
Wishing in the one hand and it just never fails
Could be a train a'coming you can tell by the rails
But it's all right, you'll see

Standing on the corner as the traffic goes by
Watching as the debutantes dissemble and cry
The future's never certain and you never know why
But it's all right, yeah, all right

Working on the road gang and I'm standing in the ditch
Waiting for the light to change, my finger on the switch
One more opportunity to hang around and bitch
But it's all right, no need to get uptight

It don't get much easier with time
There's just so much here to occupy my mind
While I'm trying to figure out the bottom line
You'll see I'm right ... it's just one more night.

Summer 1998

And here's the Real Audio demo.

If you would hear the gods gambol and laugh,
their rumbling chuckles echo through the land,
and tickle divine humor, pick a path
based on a well-conceived and thought out plan.

You need not start out on it. Not one bit
of progress is required, so long as all
your fervent hopes and dreams are tied to it
in theory. Say, for instance, in the fall

you'd hoped to fix the house up, rearrange
the furniture, or patch the bathroom tile.
No great ambition, nothing wild or strange;
yet at the gods' lips, a slow grinning smile

begins to form the moment you believe
the universe and you have found accord,
that fate and karma have dealt you reprieve
against those good deeds done, so long ignored.

With busyness you occupy your mind,
engaging one idea after the next,
until a peaceful moment, when you find
a chance to just relax and to reflect,

and there, under the silence, you can hear
the stifled guffaw of the universe;
then, suddenly, the truth becomes so clear:
you either laugh, as well, or things get worse.

14 JUN 2005

Won't you me the dance
out of reaching your space
into nothing close where longing
breeds its sorrow armor

(amour)?

Drum talks your babel tonguing
instinct-burnt incessancy;
naturalized immortalifications
reduced to venial chancery
in the cold light of reminder.

My number forgets itself
when not recalled;
soon, its once my tender memory
archived upon three days hence.

My legs are not broken,
won't you me the dance?

When music's beatless ardor
swells into itself, then poetic
gran plies split themselves

and we have only the panic
of this moment.

1994

Another one from the Memphis years.

It occurs to me that all poets at some point in their lives experience something of the profound, and the nature of this experience colors and informs their writing from that point forward. Robert Graves might have said it is the presence of the White Goddess that is that initiating profundity, that point at which the salmon in the stream bed of inspiration is first discovered, that instant when Taliesyn's finger is burnt gold by Cerridwen's foul potion of hyper-knowledge. James Joyce echoes this theme, in a way, through his constant obsession with epiphany. There is always a point in his writing at which key characters, in a moment of absolute clarity, realize that in order to be alive they must embrace a certain level of awareness to which their ignorant compatriots are blissfully unaware. That blinding moment of illumination is found in every poet's work at some juncture. What triggers it, of course, is different for each writer, but it always involves a painful awareness of the difference between mere commonplace angst and profound turmoil.

Interestingly enough, this grand profundity more often than not is expressed negatively. That is, it is communicated as a loss --- of innocence, of joy; or as the sense of something ponderous, weighty and sad --- a sense of isolation, of powerlessness, of triviality, of uselessness, of pointlessness. It is the rare writer that colors their illumination as a positive experience, as if ignorance of the reality of things is something worth losing, if exchanged for an awareness of one's true place in the universe. Perhaps that is because in order to communicate to those who have not had their own epiphany, one must appear to grieve as those without profound experience imagine grief to be, if only to establish some basis for communication. Never mind that the language of profundity, like the language of the acid trip, is meaningless outside its context, even to one who has made the journey and is now safe back at home.

And too, people who see the profound where others see simply the ordinary are often ostracized, ridiculed, and even institutionalized in order to maintain the fabric of society. We accept grief, loss, isolation, loneliness, powerlessness, and pointlessness as part of every day life --- so long as one does not wallow in it, nor force others to witness its impact on our neatly scrubbed, public faces. I suppose it's like agriculture, to some extent; we are pleased and proud as a culture that less than 5% of the population has to work directly with dirt in order to feed the rest of us. In a similar way, we are pleased and proud of that small number among us who serve as artists, poets, dancers, sculptors, musicians --- pleased that they are indeed only a small portion, whose dalliance in profundities siphons but a meager amount of gross national product from more practical, useful and ultimately controllable employment.

The sky was Maxfield Parrish blue
with some clouds daubed in for show,
a mix of mauve and lavender,
light gray and dirty yellow.

One could imagine, at the lake,
slyphs slipping from their homes
to sport with shy and tender mermaids
in the shorefront foam.

The problem, though, with Parrish,
is that the world is rarely found
as neat and tidy organized
as where his skies touched ground;

more likely, as I found today,
the glowing radiant sky
finds some rough, rude horizon
to dye purple, cloak and hide.

11 JUN 2005

Once I gilted lilies
in the hope of yet in spite and
even though and still because of it
there wasn't much of either then
(things unknown after this now, like
lips surrounding ashless breathing,
hands that seemed to fit too closely,
wanting but the need to truth
was what the why could not dissemble).

There upon the killing floor, where
something reading Phoenix papers
lost itself in time's fluxation,
two hands grasped for fallen control.

He who I am not could say in nothing
more than clever verse, which is not all
there is so purified in this
that my corruption cannot alter.

Once I gilted lilies
in the hope of yet in spite and
even though and never thought it would
was weak when once the moments tendered
(things unknown until this now, like
lips surrendered barely breathing,
hands that seemed to know your beauty,
knowing but the need for truth
was what the way could not discover).

There upon the killing floor, where
something, almost my religion,
lost itself in time's mad frustration,
two hands parted once in anguish.

I who am not he who could would ought
to be so good for you can say nothing
you find worth embracing; but, if anything
remains when other princes fall,
promise me what almost never happened.

Spring 1994

A note from 2005: An email from an old friend in Memphis got me thinking about the time I spent there, the places I haunted and the people to whom I gave a piece or two of my heart. This poem was written during that time, after an evening spent with someone (who knows who they are) during which certain things happened, and other things did not, neither set of which is good or bad, nor prevented or encouraged the rest of our lives from continuing, albeit along separate roads. It is a poem of might-have-beens that in retrospect might be just-as-wells. A poem of things I should have been able to say, but was unable to cut from their crazy poetic metaphor except to speak in Imagist parables. What we had, were deluded into thinking we did or did not have, or might have had ... well, that is another lifetime's story. You know who you are. Without your inspiration, it's doubtful that I would have been a poet in Memphis ... and now, I find myself a poet no matter where I go. Part of me that I recognize to be my true self I discovered in the process of trying to be part of your life. Thank you. I wish you nothing but happiness.

Against the entropy of time, no wall
is strong enough to stand and remain whole.
Though guaranteed a lifetime, it will fall,
reduced to dust and rubble; and the knoll

which it divides will also wear away,
in its old age succumb to wind and rain.
What seems a solid edifice today,
tomorrow is reduced to a sand grain.

Great mountains, bold ideas --- all degrade;
each second's thimbleful deepens their graves,
and every hour reduces their acclaim.

Despite what grand advances have been made.
time serves no kings, nor pities fools or slaves,
and treats beast, man and god the very same.

09 JUN 2005

At the far end of the canyon
where the road fades into dust,
and the remnants of old wagon trains
have dissolved into rust,

where the touch of high society
has left no lasting mark,
and no streetlight marks your way
if you're out walking in the dark,

where there's no hum from the engines
far off on the interstate,
and there's not much use for fences,
iron bars or cement grates,

where the flowers bloom through summer,
their scent filling the night air,
if you come when dusk is falling
chances are you'll find me there.

09 JUN 2005

Doctor, I am feeling ill; I've eaten all my young,
touring the coast of Africa,
going through the longboats
with a fine-tooth comb.

I'm a debutante at the Ball of Confusion,
filling fishbowls with the Water of Life,
burning the candle at either end
end of a switchblade knife.

Why do you keep following me
to take my pain away?
Don't give me, give me anything
Just go away; come back tomorrow.

Yesterday is so far gone; I'm somewhere in next week.
Hours melt like tiny raindrops,
running down the gutters
onto Lonely Street.

I'm a candidate for mass frustration,
filling canteens from the Fountain of Youth,
keeping my hair from turning gray
by pulling it out by the roots.

Why do you keep on bothering me?
Please take my pain away.
Don't give me, give me anything;
Just go away; don't come back tomorrow.

1985

There's just so much that you can take
as karmic payment for mistakes
before you start to wonder and
imagine that you understand
the link from cause to each effect:
that every action or neglect
results in a changed universe
that's neither better, nor is worse,
but different, needing different acts,
new myths to organize the facts,
revised agendas, maps and tools,
new visions, sages, holy fools,
and more important than the rest,
new meanings for both cursed and blessed.

On faith, we take for granted most
of our advantages, and coast
through life without imagining
much beyond what each new day brings,
and fail, too often, to observe
that most get just what they deserve,
or at least, just what their belief
embraces: joy, bliss, sorrow, grief.
Through all the trials, tests and strife
we must accept, to accept life,
one thing remains: those who feel blessed
are obligated to the rest.
To claim dominion of some kind
is to expect that dumb and blind
the world will simply bow and serve,
a sad fate that nothing deserves.

09 JUN 2005

The problem with your kind of thought, he said,
is that it often leads to idleness;
and what could be productive time, instead
is spent in useless ponder, more or less,

on how the world's become the way it is,
to what degree which species is to blame,
the perils posed to culture by big cities,
or which phenomena are rightly named.

Where science may concern itself with how,
you spin your wheels in seeking after why;
resulting in the loss of here and now
exchanged for some perfected by-and-by.

Philosophy may the sport of kings,
but in the end, it means little or nothing.

08 JUN 2005

Yes, I have been a hypocrite:
talked a good game, but never played;
and facing challenge, I have quit
the field and left teammates dismayed.

I've shouted sermons down the street
on practices I'd never tried
and often, told new folks I'd meet
colorful tales, most of them lies.

On politics, on love, on war
I've claimed my way the higher road,
poured salt in wounds I knew were sore
to prove some tenet of my code.

I've eschewed meat, when it was scarce,
naming some holy cause;
and when my vegan friends went home
found some steak bones to gnaw.

The pious route, the pilgrim's path?
I've seen it from afar.
When people stumbled, I have laughed,
and drove off in my car.

What talents given me, I've wasted,
just to watch them spoil;
and criticized what I'd not tasted
just to play the foil.

Yes, I have done my part to serve
some causes rather lame;
and later claimed not to deserve
my fair share of the blame.

Yet, through all this, I've never lied;
when asked, I'll say, "inhaled",
and honestly, each thing I've tried
to fudge about, I've failed.

I'm no great angel, I'll admit,
but have learned from my flaws;
and not been such a hypocrite
to think there should be laws

so everyone would act and live
the same way that I do;
to fight such thinking I would give
my life. How about you?

The hypocrite and martyr die
in differing degrees:
one in an instant, on their feet;
one lingers, on their knees.

08 JUN 2005

When history's sad lessons fail
to find their place in memory's halls
and social constructs name their grail
progress alone, foundations fall.

Progress to where, and at what cost?
The road to ruin remains paved,
while freedom's edifice is lost
and those who sheltered there, now slaves

caught in the rubble, cannot run
nor find the strength to turn away
the scavengers who've now begun
to feed on those still in their way.

The silent crowd, hushed by its fear
of losing face, of showing doubt
as these dark vultures draw more near,
seems to have lost the will to shout.

What use the rhetoric of peace
against such monstrous beasts of war?
What hope their wanton lust will cease
until dissent is heard no more?

When history's sad lessons fail
to teach those with the sense to learn
what good are tears? They cannot quench
the fire that at our bound feet burns.

The means will taint the noblest ends,
make even Heaven reek of Hell,
if you would call such demons friends
and name their course your own as well.

Spit back their speeches, do not drink
the wine of victory they swill;
each of their boasts, weigh out and think
before you share in their foul kill.

Before you join their path, be sure
it leads beyond the bonfire's glow;
and if they ask you for your vote,
remember that you can say no.

07 JUN 2005

What fools would try to wrest a nation's fate
from tyranny imposed by those with wealth
who presuppose as theirs the right to rule
because none dare to meet them face-to-face,
who in religion's name defy what gods
they claim to be the basis for their faith,
who with one hand extend a palm of peace
while with the other wield a bloody sword,
whose honeyed lips are smeared with coward's lies
that use base fears to turn opinion's tide,
who, like a playground bully, seek to shame
and paint as traitors those who harbor doubt,
who would eliminate honest debate,
denouncing it as indecision's tool,
who, having power, use it to improve
their own lot first, the ends worth any means,
who in the name of freedom, would oppress
the rights of those upon which their wealth feeds,
who would manipulate the public weal,
despite its better interests, to their goals?

Our founding fathers, probably. Despite their human failings.

"I gotta use words to talk to you." -- T.S. Eliot

What can I show you in mere words
requiring some shared frame,
a reference we both use to describe
a common ground only imagined
that in the vanity of hope we craft
of veiled illusions, archetypes
that may at best, sleep undiscovered,
buried in our separate egos?

What chance, if I fail to meet you
at some halfway point, by trying
just to tell you of my vision,
using concrete words we both know,
is there for our split subconscious
to agree on deeper symbols,
hidden glyphs or long lost mythos?

Yet you would insist that showing
best conveys intended meaning,
makes connection worth exploring
between minds that seek no merging.

Thus fails poetry.

05 JUN 2005

The voice you hear is not my voice; lost in the sound of your own making,
these words were new-forged long before the human throat began to hum,
and then began to form the shapes of bringing-into-being charms.

Before the echo of that utter, in the silence between seconds
where the space of breath expands beyond time and being
these words lived aeons and grew old awaiting tongues to speak their names.

The voice you hear is not my voice; it is the sound that throbs beneath
a single raindrop's spattering. It is your voice I hear;
and yet you have not mouth or tongue, nor one sigh's force to use.

04 JUN 2005

Back to the basics: down that trail
bringing us from the ocean's foam
where we shared space with fish and snail;
back past Europe, far beyond Rome,
before we started keeping track
or had the means to tally score.
If we would find the things we lack
we must devolve, then dig some more
distaining drills and modern tools,
pickaxes, shovels and backhoes;
tricks learned in engineering schools,
and physics, too; they must all go.

Bring nothing with you, pen nor phone
will serve you here in this dead zone;
no trail guides, blueprints, wires or cups ---
to walk this path, you must give up
all semblance to your modern self;
and all those volumes on your shelves:
pretend that they were never writ,
that all you know, the breadth of it,
spans just as far as your two arms
and runs the width of a small farm.

Back to the basics: eat and sleep,
hunt and be hunted, kill or die.
Turn back from hills that are too steep,
from rivers too deep or too wide.
Back to the basics: no free time,
no Broadway shows, no top shelf wines;
the Devil's in such modern stuff,
so give it back, and say, "Enough!"

Forget how far the human race
has come; at least, in any case,
deny yourself the benefit
of what you did not work to get
and take for granted your whole life:
to slice that bread, you'll need a knife.

03 JUN 2005

I was born, have grown old,
and someday I will die
In the shadow of greatness
named by other men.

In that murky darkness
I've been raised and schooled,
my dreams cast in contrast
against a great them.

My peers, likewise crippled
with fear, doubt and awe,
accept this dark prison,
this pinion-wing maw.

And those who would step beyond
what others cast,
and embrace light willingly,
must fight the past,

the spectres and echoes
of self-righteous souls
who built us these prisons
by seeking control

of urges and passions
that they themselves fought,
but knowing their power
thought it best to not

encourage such things.

3 JUN 2005

Each grain of sand that populates
the endless span of shore
seems to be some small answer,
yet implies that there is more
to knowing than to learn by rote
some formulas or rules;
and when compared to the wide ocean
leaves wise men as fools
who would describe their world without
first knowing who describes,
gathering in wild opinions
like a thief collecting bribes.

To grasp the edge of the unknown,
and feel its sharp lip's rasp
leaves only scars on seeking hands
that would some great truth grasp.
And truth? What sage would dare to dream
their vision broad enough
to take in what has breadth and depth
beyond man's feeble bluff?
What theories we may formulate,
imagining the range
of life to be within our limits
seems exceeding strange.

If time is our sole instrument
for judging deeds and such,
how sad that it be squandered
limping along on the crutch
of preconceived ideas, formed
in sterile beds of thought
assuming constancy the norm
that drives how we are taught.
What good a single grain of sand
if man is on the beach
and for the want of one small speck
thinks the sea out of reach?

2 JUN 2005

The endless poise of would-be suitors
waiting in the wings
who watch in silence for some signal
that Beauty's watchman brings

The darkened tower above the chasm
where maidservants kneel
in service to some kind of madness
Beauty seems to feel

The empty halls of empty armor
memories of campaigns
that sought to prove the end of fighting;
the hallowed hills refrain:

There is no use in wishful thinking;
time is much better spent
constructing moats of spider's webs
or building tissue tents.

The tuneless song of untrained cantors
humming in the halls
who write their programs for recital
on the crumbling walls

The lamplight study of the martyr,
dagger to his breast,
who writes in tears his testament
while visions manifest

The quiet hush of the new morning
creeping from the moor
that serves as a forged invitation,
turned back at the door

There is no point in dialogue
when ears are closed to sound;
let loose the time saved for such things,
let the great bells resound

1 JUN 2005

The fetid dark sits on the house
like a fat man at the bus stop,
sweat pooled on the plastic seat
too narrow for his sturdy frame,
and the night jasmine's heavy scent
assaults the senses, cloying sweet,
like the memory of his aftershave
after the bus has come and gone;
mixed with the bitter-sour sub-note
of endless folds of tortured flesh
chafed raw from polyester slacks
and trapped in nylon support hose.

Tonight the fat man's breathing slow,
his rough exhale hot sticky clouds;
frantic mosquitoes seek its source,
sensing the vast expanse it hides.
There in the candle's flicker flame
they hover in vampire patrols,
drawn by the jasmine scented stench
that seeps out with each shift or twitch.

1 JUN 2005