Hope is not wishes beating wishes
breaking on the shore so many
rocks eaten by Kronos
nor is it too practiced prayer
benefiting no one.
Can you hear the word
moaned imploring a thousand years ago
somewhere in northern Germany?
“Hoffen… ”
Hope is the clash of seasons
warring to stabilize this thrashing
twirling ball where all of life
aims for eternity.
Hope is the rain
on bright new leaves
and the girl in the red dress
walking.
.
you say christ,
you say allah,
you say nothing at all,
and yet we speak again and again
of that which eludes our call
with fingers aimed about a center,
no two, the same, to see
idols erode and start to splinter
when our i’s peer upon Thee
OK, listen up.
I don’t want to have to write this
Same goddamn poem again and again
There are other things to do
Of much greater
Unimportance.
I have pushed and pushed
Like a mother giving birth timelessly
To the same ugly breech born baby
Blue from lack of air
Tearing at my flesh
Over
And over.
Crept and cried at the door
Of experience
Rarely realizing that both sides
Were the same.
Awakened from fantastical dreams
But failed to harvest the crop
Letting weeds grow instead
Go to seed
Milkweed and mullein
The more beautiful to me
For their striving.
If you want to know
Man’s future
Ask the crows.
As for me,
Society has no hold
Nor will I bow
To a king.
I reserve my allegiance
For those I have supped with
By the fire.
I have been out dancing
With the stars
In the far field.
To come back to the messy world
Of anxious inconsolable humanity
Requires a concentration
That evades me.
I play
Like a child
With pretty stones.
What do you suggest
My fair friend?
I have helped the stranger
Hurt those I loved
Addressed the room
And hidden my face
While alone.
Sat at sumptuous tables,
The next night dined
On beans and bone.
Left lovers in the dark
For the solitude of sky,
Played at dice and darts
Against the grim angels themselves.
Listened to fools repeat themselves.
Sat at the feet of purported masters,
Smiled at the joke.
Some of us spoke to small folk
On the mountain.
So what would you have me do?
The leaf will always fall
Until the tree
Is gone.
Please don’t misunderstand.
I hope to live
Until the spirit can’t be summoned
By a sunset or the moon
Or a woman’s round bottom
Or a whiff of skunk on the breeze at dusk.
These are no suicide notes.
Selfishly or not of course
Is all perspective,
Just another word for
Distance from the object
Affectioned or reviled.
No two orbits
The same.
The air is cold outside tonight
Only a few more days until spring
Wraps green arms around us all.
My father the sun
Accepts again our offerings,
Our faces raised,
Our throats exposed.
Watching her sleep
My heart and mind
Made sad love.
But stop a moment and listen.
When I pass,
And I will pass,
I hope to walk away quickly with a wave
Over my shoulder
And no long goodbyes.
We had years for this
And for that,
Now we have only
What we have always claimed.
This moment.
There is to be no culmination
Of thought no
Do-over-wrought
Manifesto
No word-wracked
Xplanatations.
We will either see each other later
Or we won’t.
If you say yes, I will
Go along with you
And not even mention
The evidence.
The fly on my sandwich
Saw god’s face, multiplied,
Yet like me, lived.
So listen.
Close your eyes,
Hold in breath,
Push your soul
Through the top of your head
And feel the silver pour.
Even now tears wet my face
But not for losses incurred
Nor my many failings of both
Flesh and spirit.
I have just wasted too much
Damned life with a pen
Or my dick in my hand.
To finally write a two-word poem.
Ineffable.
Unutterable.
deep into sleep, i see electric sheep leap,
vaulting voltage, my dreamscape c.d.
a magnetic surge, the blood, voltaic,
varicose throughout my dense circuitry.
the drone and humming of my static rhythms
drawl out the remote and muted void
with fine-tuned arithmetic algorithms
to mask what my senses strive to avoid.
feedback advances the strangest of dances,
chattering teeth cast an electric mayhem,
the cybernetic shimmy, fused of mind and matter
hardwired into my delicate brainstem
thus welded with organic computations,
i print out a litany of mechanical sensations
till my metal skin exudes a glorious radiation
of bright colors and aural permutations
synonyms for calculated are ‘conscious’ and ‘premeditated’
our distant cousins, the ape, means to cut and paste, thus duplicated
as intelligent mechanisms of information processing,
i swim upstream the river entropy towards my singular salvation.
and then i wake up.
goaded the horse into a gallop
with a cliched carrot and a kick,
leaned into the wind with eyes
trained on the horizon and the
mane (heh) idea began to formulate.
these puzzles, juxtaposed, the
vertical alignment set, the axes
in four dimensions, it’s all numbers
and equations and mathematical concepts
linked to a genetic makeup, shaken
and stirred by the social contract.
your mores, my mores, i’ll take some more
the merrier we go round.
look between the lines the answer
is always there- you just have
to know what you are looking for
and yes, bono, i know, i know, etc..etc…
the start is the beginning
a journey with a single
step right up and win a prize
if you can guess
correctly (and therein lies the rub)
how we roll, where the music plays,
the calliope churning, the
lights of the bazaar, the smell of
field and humanity.
which is witch and who is who?
enter the clowns, the court jester,
the soothsayers, and let them
spin their yarns and tell their tales
as you are lost in the cacophony
of excessive symphonic and
optical overload, static, static, static.
we drown ourselves in the
prescription of the day,
seeking happiness, seeking
relief, seeking that cozy
leather recliner chair next
to god in the big
living room in the sky.
my sins are somehow
greater than your sins
because i don’t go to church
and someone, somewhere
is really trying to keep score.
look for the moment to
make yourself heard
the time to make your move.
peace can only be found
in the breath, the heartbeat,
the dying of the light.
it’s the quiet you crave
the peace of the night,
the moon and the stars,
the simple smell of pine boughs
burning, the camaraderie of friends,
the taste of life once again
on the tip of your tongue.
but we- HAH!
we are never content to sip
solely from the nectar of
tranquil cups.
so we ride the horses that brought us here
and we endeavor to persevere, this zen
koan, this enigma, this
nut we are dying to crack, forgetting
that all things are rendered unto
dust by time and the creator.
these things we will
hide in the meaning of the way
as tomorrow unfolds
like a mizzen
upon the sea.
i gathered a cup of sunflower seeds
to feed the birds of February
and when i walked out back
to where the feeder hangs from the old pine tree
i noticed
there were two dead baby birds lying on the ground
i did not know birds had babies in winter
it was a shock to me
so i scooped them up
(after i filled the feeder with seed)
in the same cup
and threw them in the neighbor’s yard
something – or someone – will eat their tender bodies
and find it a delicacy
i didn’t know birds had babies in winter
distilled my piss and vinegar
and hid it in a secret place
remembering who, what, when, and where
helps me to save a space.
these rhymes i cannot lose
unlike all my lovely pens
we trade glory for hyperbole
and miss the point in the end
who are you
who am i
somewhere i lost my mind
who are you
who am i
somewhere lost in time
a good morning sunshine
a simple walk on the beach
before we know it this is gone
the endless summer out of reach
confused i search for knowledge
study texts for some insight
chase icons for their wisdom
against the dying of the light
who are you
who am i
somewhere i lost my mind
who are you
who am i
somewhere i lost in time
so i live and i breathe
with the desire to carry on
listen to the wind cry
and hear that same old song
but maybe its the fine wine
in that secret place i keep
and i sup from the bottle
to prove i’m not asleep
who are you
who am i
somewhere lost in time
who are you
who am i
how about another time?
nuggets of joy
filter down
through the master’s mustax
as we sit rapt
and cloaked
next time
I’ll choose better
when picking a teacher
The twentieth century saw an astounding increase in the United States in the ability to market perceived need to the masses through radio, television and then the internet. Few are unaffected by the powerful draw of keeping up with the Lopezes or the Trans or sometimes even the Smiths. Children are immersed from earliest age in a media-driven consumer culture that insists on presenting product as parity. “If they have it, I must have it”. Not a unique thought, but something that has long troubled me.
In that we are a largely immigrant nation depending on just how far back you go, otherwise a completely immigrant nation, one might expect tremendous cultural diversity, and with it constant innovation. This has been a hallmark of America’s short history, but seems to have gone into hibernation for the past several years. If not hibernation, then subsumed by the corporate created and media driven desire for sameness.
We have grown fat and lazy even as we bitch. Skills that were critical for thousands of years are being lost in two generations. How many people do you know that can actually grow their own food, clothe themselves, and provide shelter from their climate. Mass transit helped to create overpopulation through expanding physical boundaries just as mass communication helps allow a better industrial worker class by insuring that the same information is evenly programmed into them. The American Dream.
Periodically we are challenged in this country to reinvent ourselves and often for good reason. We tend to latch onto whatever works at a given time and ride until she drops, and then ride a little longer on the carcass. It appears that we may be near such a point. In this Christmas season, historic this year for political and economic reasons, let us hope, and if we pray, pray for a survivable storm, one that prunes rather than takes the tree to the ground. Of course if the tree should fall completely, we could all use the firewood assuming we could figure out how to cut it.
