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.

“When it is darkest, men see the stars.” —Emerson

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.

“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

“One reason for writing, of course, is that no one’s written what you want to read.” —Philip Larkin

Complex Knowing - Number 5

Booze sipping in light shade

Pale write noting derision

Palliative,

Stoned arido colombard

Pays d’oc la baume,

The afternoon slips away

Detested.

All angles and bones, all

Pale skin dreaming of ways

To work painting Egon

Irrevocable touch of

Unconsciousness,

Oracle eyes brown and

Immutable

Bedroom changing, involved to sell the oil

And pay your debts, pressed fast

Hard against the glass. Light

Slips away, winter does her mouth

Flickers a smile takes

Possession.

And granted, there is no more

Of this, but there is always knowing adult

Needful consolation, doorknob closing

Against the acrostics against

The span of attention.

“I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. I am free.” —Nikos Kazantzakis

“Another way to reach zero is to expand, expand, to infinitely expand. That is also zero. Zero and the infinite are the same.” —Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev

Frozen

Miles thick once the ice

Pressed down and flattened the

Earth, shoved trees and

Dirt and boulders into valleys,

Gouged river beds, left lakes

The size of seas. Now, a shining

Silver coating, curtain fallen

From the sky,

Binds the land an inch or two at

Most, enough to castigate

The weary world of cars and

Loans and hospitals,

And satisfaction cheap enough

For all to strive.

Locked in place, attention

Drifts across the frozen

Sheets of ice towards the

Sun, which witnesses the brief

Disaster and seeks the shortest

Distance sealed away and shut

From any eye.

“When nothing is sure, everything is possible.” –Margaret Drabble

Tide Pool Night

Every evening over by the wisher well he

Walked his well-wept dog and

Sang his radius of self-encompassed

Feeling.

His thoughts eclipsed the jug he

Fetched, and burst the close diameter of

Meaning.

With best intent he climbed the hill he

Stalked the greening of each day,

He juggled forth his flimsy life, his

House

His carpet wounds, his balance book and

Best

Advice, and yet his loose-hung limbs

Rescinded, gave him away, and kept him

Glinting through the noonday still. And

When the tide pulled in, the rocks

Exposed beyond the wayward

Sticks and mud, the sandy strewn

With broken shells and sabbaths

Conquered by the

Load,

The ruined vesicles of animals

That shrunk and dried upon the shore,

That midnight creeping inward

Thick, astonished him and drunk the

Seeping

Life from him and

Left him nothing further to

Explore.

“Any story that succeeds in evoking that felt sense of participating in larger and more meaningful patterns of truth than our own individual comfort or discomfort is, by definition, a ‘sacred narrative,’ and will have a tendency to attract adherents who take it literally.” –Jeremy Taylor

Standing Still

In a double traveled year they ruined the presence

Duty business of a friend who stands, shoulders

Taught and striding still, supports the burden,

Who looks into the past without a shadow

Without a doubt, they look with wonder at

The hallowed wailing ground that is before

Them and he stands still, impetuous

And imperious, embracing morning desolate

And delicate in all its resounding scorn and

Glory.

Instead of lurching and leaping from one

Thing to the next, in happenstance he

Resonates, he leaves his feet upon the

Solid ground, the harvest ground,

Whereupon the grimly definite reapers

Watch, the timely chalky fine keepers of

The cost elaborate and whirl about the

Spot, he stands in place and his eyes observe

The vanity and increase and all the swallowed

Up destruction reach above the mountain

Fields, above the starry semblance of the sky

Above, he stands in one space and everything

Else unfolds itself around him, initiates and

Elaborates into all it was ever destined to

Become.

“There is no need to seek truth, only stop having views.” –Seng T’san