Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Grange Hall

Figure it out some day how
To stop wasting near
Misses notes never sent
Obliged and discontinued the
Grange hall cascades atop the rise of
A green hill verdant even in healing
Solstice ride in solitude solicitous
To the point of one another;
Some day figure it out some might say
Don’t bother
Who wastes time on a space as open flanked
By streams and their running as this;
Flanked by a town that died and emptied
Itself left itself barren and exposed; flanked by
A highway that falters on alert to various
Instigations in the back of the car divert
Therefore the near misses the wastreling
Purposeful flocks flew by whenever he
Walks he sees things no one else could
See he enrages their talks de la Falaise their
Simmering submerges their discontinuity
Whenever he dies and passes on a space
As open as the field where the grange hall
Lies cascades atop the rise of a
Green hill verdant he says less and less he
Dies and passes on a space where the
Grange hall lies.

Thursday, December 15, 2011

Fortunate

Fortunate soul growing neither
In night shade nor quite enough to
Allow no rhyme
Nor
Reason on behalf of
His shame,
His holy hand in fear.
Understand, this isn’t unique
To certain departed wilderness
Lives to certain
Elements of heart ache
Nor
Disdain; this is fortunate enough
To emphasize exactly how
Much a very small deadly
Dream could go on rummaging
The troubles of a compassion
That didn’t know how
To end.
On a bridge throughout a sandy
Marsh across a lake of mortal
Sins he swung along a
Curse nobody disappoints
A garden of
Diminishment and
Heightened unconvincing
Lies, in height
And in splendor does the
Beauty of her heart
Dwell, fortunate enough to
Lash one more time his admiring
Vesper resolutions his interest
Accruing flight across the
Heavens.

Wednesday, December 7, 2011

Sacredness and Light

Sacredness and light fill the oracles
Of every halfmoon rescuer’s
Respite,
It was true the dogs and foxes cried
And split the night beyond the northbound
Houses block upon block;
So only noble staring courage came
Without a distant pale
Delight.
The yester years deliver drowning
Words and wounds and half-made
Smiles we never will remember;
The forward tears rescind our
Burdens they
Could scarcely bear
By way of visions fear
December.
Especially she captivates the
Shaking she denies
The need to
Break the stifled glory might;
The precedent resurges only once
Or twice a night instead of
Hiding sinking sliding out of
Sight.
So go without, decide what you must
Sign and verify; forsythia will not bloom
For five more months or more; hedges
Will not harbor blossoms hallowed
Out their colors
Layered row upon row;
Leave them now, their branches empty
Arms aside abandoned lulling fall
Of winter tide and evening quiet long
And wide.

Friday, November 11, 2011

Mirror Expectation

Across one sea and through
A hall of mirror expectation
Thorough-going trials which
Glimmer souls their duplication;
Deny the symbol at your peril,
Fly the angels’ punishment and rage
A smothered laugh and jails of
Sons who welter gold and
Silver on the page.

These friends of mine were once
A bothered staff of worn down
Weathered imitations; those faces
Frowned their curfew smiles and
Glimpsed a wall of lucid
Variation; each liquid glance along
The surface wavers any chance
Endeavor of the stars and
Moon among the clouds.

Ghosted streaks across the sky
Initiate the unity and trinity
Of matter; their harmless howls
Around the neighbor’s yard
Reflect the rift and wrack
Of fear and tatter; the painter’s
Brush denies his violet iris mirrors
In your eyes and souls may never
Doubt again they once deceived to flatter.     

Friday, October 14, 2011

She Thrones to the Countenance

Farewell forever she thrones to the countenance
Of outcomes mine with whiles and
Wherewithals she shakes the river
Bridge asunder;
Yearn forever blank and empty free from almost counted
            expectations;
The bluster best forgotten
Whelps her heavy crying
Paying then for jumps and hindrance left beside the crumbling gravel of the
            road;
Give a picture portal through the silence and
Her recognizing several ways to rake
The lock outside the door.

In vestments of skin and arabesque of sweat for
Trying infant’s rage the secret castle lots
Embodied through her final torrid
Trade in time and willful ways the
Tendency to mete her punishments to no other won’t let go;
After any whim and gesture strays beyond the
Crowned deliverance of her carpenter’s
Control forever goes her freedom thrones
To windows never shuttered never
Closed.

She frays the droning midnight bell she
Smiles beyond the towers dust begotten
Every slim eternal necklace brims beyond the sympathy
Engenders breaks and skimmed
ascendancies;
Needless to say whoever staked the
Claim removed the clouds and fevers reeked the habits and imagined
            alleys back behind the garden sold;
Never mind another distant breathing feral ghost
Inside another clearance kept the crawling painted wrinkles
daft beside his hand;
And any chance to somewhere crash the cymbals left the
Happenstance in many ways she couldn’t
Seek to perch around her house her waking pillow nights
Against her spoiling glove and severed thrones.

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

“I love those who yearn for the impossible.” –Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Consolatio

Rest and close your eyes, your
Grimly gathering finally eyes,
Water falling on Agamemnon’s
Scepter severed all their lies
Lay your royal head aside rest
And grow your fine familiar
Tries, for all the evening
Dance and sing is finished
All the hampered
Happenstance has afflicted
Narrow limbs and bones and
Coins against the skies.

You wouldn’t want it
Otherwise you came here
Knowing it were true that if
You troubled the branch
And beam the thoughts that
Melted through ambition
Any sorrow like unto your
Sorrow lonely words there
Wouldn’t be a doubt
A cause to follow through
The children hoarding
Games and painting songs and
Dances shout the summer’s
End the rain is falling on
Agamemnon’s head
Even as you rest and close
Your eyes, your grimly
Gathering finally eyes.

Thursday, September 15, 2011

“All men who have achieved great things have been great dreamers.”—Orison Swett Marden

Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Complex Knowing - Number 9

Very much so inconceivable
In the laughing days surrender
Clinging to him forsworn
Forgotten
Very nearly something must
Have happened instead
Of being relevant sundown
Stars began to reap.

Found out of nowhere indefinable
Under the veins and forcing
Patience prayer whether
Soon he would commence
Distraught
Blotted out the eastern
Scattered light as well
As pale impressions of the
Night the hunted relegated
Meanwhile versions of the
Statuary motions wrapped
Around his heart.

Anywhere would utterly
Swing the wide
And lightning forest
For fifteen days the
Bethnal green divided
Bright his gaze
His interrupted
Whispered out of sight
A compound mass of
Footsteps falling from
The tapered whirlwind
Stripped and locked.

Fortunate reminders fell
Between the realm of
Permanent distinction then
And wasn’t only the
Diffusion of receiving
So that nothing
Trestles dreamed
Illusion raised the brightly
Sunken down and tender
Courses fear could
No longer
Fail to bind him.

Saturday, July 30, 2011

Beholder

Now a new thing
Settle for something never
Anticipated
Step carefully and
Speak less and less.

Behind the back corner
Of the house
Where no one
Ever goes dust
Of a dry summer
Layered on the boards
Of a fence
Chrysanthemums bear
Their blossoms in
Shadow withdrawn

From the light and
Withering heat in their
Quiet corner where no
One ever goes nor
Sees them except me
In this one glancing
Moment quick gathering
Lavender and gold
Catching and holding on
Never to let go.

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit. Napoleon Hill

Thursday, June 23, 2011

Even the Sun Must Die

Unknown firebrands suppose to him the ways
We could not be, except for public discourse
On Saint-Emilion Val de
Loire Grand Cru and shoreless marches
Through the requisites and objects of
Our nailing cross.
Open fashion lapsed the
Comprehending boulevard and schemes
Around the gaunt and farewell fleeting
Hour failing to be lost, imagine
That she would not go and
Would not harbor barrels
Further than the sideslip
Fortunate Eglise de
Poinchy.
For every Coteaux
D’Ancenis
There are a thousand million
Brusque defenders of the
Law, a ten part eight
Part worry stone to drag
Us to the depths. Even the sun
Must die some day they
Tell us, ringing the remarkable
Dearth of desperation
Underneath our fabled hammer
Toss, for now it must do
For what they could not
Recompense is that our eyes
Are wild with joy and
Even though the sun will
Die will suffer and shrink
Into a disparate auctioned
Dross our eyes will still
Be there to witness
Cold extinction and only
Then and therefore will it rise
Again anew.

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

“Each bird must sing with his own throat.”  Henrik Ibsen

Saturday, June 4, 2011

Octave

Nearer now than never was the note
Ascending through the stages
Whenever up the downward hope
Begins the lurches through the pages
Homeward bound and tuning trope
For ever was the marvel open
Heaven in the eye abounds and
Completes the steps unto the ages.

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart. And try to love the questions themselves.” —Rainer Maria Rilke

Thursday, May 5, 2011

Genuflect and Shield Me

Genuflect and shield me
From instruments and doubts that silk
Beyond the hemlock indecision,
Prosper me and rejoice
Over my wakeful inside
Outs and secret
Time
When
Nothing matters except the downward
Shiny figures weeping in the joys of
Thy deeper nightward watch.
Intensity and separateness have
Haunted all our days, and did
We not fear the clouds
And reckoning when the sea had
Gathered itself together.
Only once was the ghost of teaching
Children harried on the stone and
Oozed upon the witless
Spendthrift
Sages
Who
Incorporate the paradise offending
And swaggering their own invincible
Invective. In the secret time when
Nothing matters come with me to
Eden leave behind the strange
Instructed longings for
Calumny, take to the burning
Sea and wishful instead for the
Selfsame misread star and
Bleeding, never mind the farewell
Stop the vicarage houses veils
The blissful enter into
Oblivion and trail their
Final visions on a
Separate
Rhyme
Which
Insinuates the forever rock of
Mourning.

Friday, April 15, 2011

“None of these things made me feel at all cast down. It was as though they happened to someone else, and I merely watched them.” —Way of a Pilgrim

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

“If we differentiate things according to their differences, everything is different from the other. If we consider things similar according to their points of similarity, there is nothing which is not the same.” —Kuo Hsiang

Sunday, April 3, 2011

Benediction

Say the words you
Want me to say,
Whisper them into
My ear, the right words,
The holy words, the words
You want me to hear.
Cast away the present tense
The parting child constrains,

Build and forge the dying
Cause, the onward human
Breed, the wearing thin

Abrasion night in silent serpent
Creed, the mother’s fight against
Her chance decline, whose

Dominion liveth for ever,
Hold fast unto these righteous
Words and dole them out

According to their need.
Say the words you
Want me to say,
Tell me what we must
Do, to flail the ways
That come between us,
And fulfill their partial meanings
Until no empty cup remains.

Monday, March 28, 2011

Thursday, March 24, 2011

“I know but one freedom and that is the freedom of the mind.” —Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Friday, March 18, 2011

“Wherever thou seest a great end, be sure of a great beginning. Where a monstrous and painful destruction appalls thy mind, console it with the certainty of a large and great creation. God is there not only in the still small voice, but in the fire and in the whirlwind.” —Sri Aurobindo

Saturday, March 12, 2011

Occam's Razor

Thus he and his conscious
Body were worthy
To walk this
Earth
To simplify,
Simplify
And go on pausing slothful
Missions, go around
Erecting thrift and farms and
Cash box priests and voices
Calling out when the land
Beneath
Them composed of judgment if
Ye seek him if ye forsake him,
Which they have wrought upon the
Earth
The land beneath them
Yearning to liquefy
Masonry fire on water, the abundance
Pointing across his face, shifting
To simplify, to
Justify.

If only he and his
Conscious body were able to
Try a little bit harder to
Do a bit more, if only
Carrion plentiful borne by
Waves of plummeting fires, shaking
Graves the price of his calling,
But simplicity is not the only
Elegance and chaos stretches
Beyond the lust for
Ease,
The error in his conscious
Body flexed against the
Onslaught silently
Surging against his knees
Bare feet and arms carved up
And smashed against the
Toothpick buildings and
Flooding trees,
To simplify and justify, and
Seek to call a treason for his
Voluptuous life he
Will forsake you.

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

“Heaven arms with Love those it would not see destroyed.” —Lao Tzu

Saturday, February 26, 2011

Janissaries

One thing only
Brothers and sons volunteered
Or taken away by
Force, one thing only
At Ampatuan, Maguidanao,
Andijan, Tucson Tripoli
and Cairo,
From the line between
A hunched and shielded

Mob and the
Brothers with swords machetes
And guns, the seraphs at
Luxor Acteal las abejas the
Janissaries in Cyprus
Brought with them only what

They had been taught
To do, the line between them,
Brothers and sons
Was punishment to whom
They were delivered was
Scattered to limbs and torn

Tortured buzzard wheeling in
The sky, was tangled
Doubt
And screaming jannisary
Srebrenica and villages of
Algeria
Hungerford Bogside Wounded
Knee, the blood flows just
The same from
Brothers and sons their women
And babes in arms at Wola and
Kalavryta and
No Gun Ri.

Friday, February 25, 2011

Thursday, February 24, 2011

Almost Forgotten

How it felt to be with you
Once
Together in a dreamscape
Standing near your temple
Holy legs the hymns
The sun converted not yet over,
Not yet gone,
The yard and the playing games,
Faster than the day could
Fathom, accomplished because
The overlooked necessity of
Traveling here and growing there
Could never compensate for
What
We had and what we lost.

Sunday, February 20, 2011

“I realized in this place that people feared silence more than anything else, that our tendency to talk arises from self-defense and is always based upon a reluctance to see something, a reluctance to confess something to oneself.”
—P.D. Ouspensky