Poets

Our mansion's but a mountain,

Our cabin's naught but bay,

We slake our souls in darkness;

Beguiled by sky & vouvray-

Thus purified by moonlight

(that pagan mirth of trees!)

Enclaved in spade-leafed clover;

We reel on pliant knees-

Displaced aspects qualify

A morrow, seeded in seams,

Escape is affirmed liberation;

The future manifested in reams.

In You and Me

I follow you

To be young again
with energetic breathing
& urges to bravado
walking ledges
& breaking chains
attached
since the first rebellion

I follow you 
because you 

are a lost sheep
with all the gems
wandering
toward the purity 

of being real

& I follow you

because fiercely

I believe. 

Hindsight

Confined to certain words
With restrictions I had made
A serenade for springtime
From prisons in the shade

My mind had long been hampered
(a detriment from cold)
But the weight of change in feeling
Is a story to be told...

They dance on the edge of reality 

With dreams their eyes are fond

Their souls leave room for nothing else

-Love is a dangerous bond 

Susan

Promised to friendship

at least-

we claimed;

I'm here now, engaged

looking for love.

This much is confusing;

to think what will come

of seeing your face,

that feeling a million

miles won't erase,

my soul is amazed

but less amused.

Where only the great leap,

springing from passion

we attempted to touch

before parting, uncertain,

lingering in the echoes

of our last action

where applause

mounts the stage

and the eyes

leave by curtains

Always incomplete through change,

bathed by a light thru cracks in time,

somewhere, intertwined,

we remain;

upon the oaths we swore,

-we hang

Assignment to Change

Now go home and think about something 

You don't want to think about

But don't ever stop at that

Once your mind learns what real wisdom is

There is no turning back

There's something left inside of you

Ignored but fully intact

Find it, tear it out of you

Then you will honestly be unmatched

The universe expanding is only one truth

So don't get caught up in the miracle

You've got to pick apart something within

That science says isn't "empirical"

The outside shuts the child down

The system determines our functions

We've got to understand these simple factors

To grasp the deeper conjunctions

When you get down 

Take a step back 

Look closely and you will see

It's past the point of feeling pain

It's in "the enemy"

The enemy is who we are

As society sends us wayward

We're taught to hate our truest selves

Often excepting what we've heard

Well who are they to say what's "normal"?

And what's normality?

A weak man's way to satiate

His own reality 

Who taught us to listen and behave ourselves?

And who taught us to accept

These ways of living that fuel a world

That real human nature rejects?

And yet if we can get this far

To break the bounds at recess

We'll see their world from a distance and know

It tears self-love to pieces

So when you come to realize

The lies you bought were a craft

-A perfect blend of this and that

The smartest dealer's trap-

Don't get angry, just be brave

And question more than facts

Now go home and think about something

You don't want to think about

And don't ever stop at that 

I and I

You mark a beginning

You mark and end

And between you and you

Find God

Where from that point

Life arrives

And leaves back thru

Our world is held

In a loop like a pod

Where space expands

Pulled apart with the stars

Which thru fire and light we came

Where time sighs by our thighs like dunes

And water on the branch

-In the wind-

Shakes like flames

Where statue dogs by tombs wait patiently

Forever for their masters to awake, to arise

Where fadeless Atlantis

In boundless waters stirring

Appears in cells of granite

That flake from those eyes

All the vanity, and waiting

All the emptyness, evident

In our infamous cities of Brain

So falls axis to axis

Stardust to stardust

The Heart away

From multifarious pains

Where buildings of the many

Toss up from their species

Mixed airs of delicacy & gloom

Thru which- minutes-intricate

Clockwise travel 

Within walls of urbanity & ruin

Subjectively we feel by

Our bodies to know by

Or else life is vanquished

From on that which we trod-

But no;

I mark a beginning

I mark an end

And between I and I

Find God

A Universe Within

Although I've never had you

I went away from you today

My mind was simply led astray

I swore you'd never leave my mind

-I guess ideals are hard to find

But now the house has gone to sleep

Violin songs play with you in me, deep 

And when I return it's to you love,

A love that "overthrows life"

Overturns stones

Where under me the paradise 

Lost & overgrown

Now lives forever in night

Shaking off time like tendril vines

Sifting off to you like moonlight

Deep inside, our darkest fights

Left to dusty encampments alone

Were only the shed cells of midnight

Falling in sleep

To nothingness, gone 

Turnstiles admit 

No fool to your dance! 

Statues inside me 

Crumble or advance;

From lifeless moods 

That moved only by chance-

To the peace that inhabits

Every atom of your glance! 

O' universe of light

Expanding beyond the walls 

Of the finite

-not far from inside of your soul tonight

Inside 

In a sacred nothingness 

You reside

Where sometimes

Imagination will imply;

Without you the rain would cease

And all of my fields would die   

Clarity

To no longer grieve

Seemed possible, I believe

But a twisted admission

Of you into my mind-

This I'd never expected to find

-Yet a muse so true!; 

No glamor

No conditional cues

Or insecurites raised 

of what I couldn't do

But time brought him 

Cutting attention in two

Now disbelief spells 

What is painfully true

Framed in a heartbeat 

Static, unclear

Before me you lie

Disabled by tears

Fraught with ambivalence

Stung, without clues

Before us you stand

Unable to choose

With Clarity's 

Dreams 

Caught 

Pacing 

Thoughts collide

To no longer grieve; 

A dream in sleep

A drug inside. 

Modern Language 2

Between blue lines

We dined

Letters rose up

Like bluffs of pine

Rent with a river

Of wine

A golden age

Passed away

Peak perceptions

Washed away

Arrive at truth

Thru a cable of grief 

Modern Language

Lighters that play Bach

Shakespeare on 

Fast-food eves 

The end of the world

Is the rushing of speech

Slashing sentences 

Severing the poetry 

Of real now

& of real poets;

Let me speak!  

Daybreak

The overwhelming misery

Of a spirit brought down by

So-called love

Was pleasure

Never happy

Now musing in agony

Perplexing Heart's beating 

Needlessly

Nearly dancing with

While weeping for

Infinity's unrealized

Maybes 

Exhausted 

To a final tear

After Reading Vonnegut

Sweet Mother Night

What can we say?

Thorough indifference 

Carries us forward

Beyond reach 

Instruction: Pause

Instruction: Obey 

Orders

Fail to stir

What matters

Moving forward

From rehearsals

With a gut feeling

Like a stone

In the dire misery 

Of digestion

Hypotheses of Sadness

the New

Platonic 

Friendship 

dies-

she sees 

that happenstance

inflects

our meeting 

which in turn implies

assigning zero meaning;

circumstantially: DENIED.  

Circumscribed

     mediated &

jaded

with mutually negating hindsight 

implicating memories 

like negatives

in light  

disguising assumptions

restraining 

    overcompensating

 missing 

or dismissing

a notion fraught 

with fields of insight:

The 'Stranger' is a

Nonexistent Entity

Approach them with empathy

As when bodies with Souls

travel bravely with Love

to Worlds next door 

with selfless effort to surmise;

beyond antics  

and actually

beyond personality;

The World, written in their Eyes.  

Adieu

He meets a "stranger"

& his world unfolds 

Like the hands of a wild creature

Heron-blue eventide of April

His birthday 

Can't divide

Heartbreak from Hope

 Guiding signs manifest

and disappear 

like rope

Surfacing half submerged on a

World of slippery slopes... 

Unguarded Heart in the Great Society;

Siding with dreams 

That subvert anxiety

Thru ineffable filters 

He anticipates

Waits

And strolls... 

Thru cemeteries silent

but the echos of trains

Thru abandoned chapels crumbling 

with microcosmic strain 

Thru alleyways of bine 

Breaking pavement wet with rain;

Halifax

Empty at night 

New Blooms

Of possibility  

In the penetrating Light 

Figurate waves of warmth 

Intricate shadows 

Shades of pastel

-the passive integration

of another summer's love

Poetic attempts invigilate 

Pervasions of summer's essence

That escalate in urban ruins

& collude in  

Political presence...

His thoughts & his degree 

Could never sever 

Surprise 

From a Future of

Omnipotent signals 

Or their cadence of disconsolate sighs

Moments

at long last

retire the final try

to a pane that mediates

and frames

perception's shifting eye;

The felicitous collision

of structure & rain

succeeds the

throne of language 

to explain

what he can't explain

as he folds back in

from whence he came;

Ensconced 

in Rainfall

in Nightfall 

in Modicums of Improbable Empathy   

April's Fool...

agitates   

those most loved

illiterate of boundaries

holding up Heart

-or so he tries-

like a beacon

of an organ

complicated

for relating 

(backfires bursting-

Semantic Trains of Language:

Platonic Strain... 

Breaks

Squealing

he's

fumbling for words

at the pace

of something fleeing 

supposedly drama

not as in Art 

but cliché

describes 

what I said 

on my birthday...

the Christian is a freak: 

in my world 

she is 'sister'

that night 

she was a best friend

receding. 

No More Romance

I love you for everything you are

And can be

But cannot remove myself

From the self-imposed status

Of a satellite

To worlds that love

In flesh and blood

 

To the city

From a distance

 

Where you are

I cannot come

To entertain you there

Past one thriving night

To my stand alone song

So take a piece of me, please

And be gone

Be gone!