“Notions of the End”

Notions of the end come willingly
at the hour of knowing
Greaters than the sum of minutes,
A kind of science instrumental in the limits,
Fractal fountains, residue of all points flowing
Naturally as when in a fresh encounter, a bolder plan,
A great announcement, the future itself arrives and even if it were
Already placed within his pantheon of gods, perception errs,
Perhaps not so much by deception as conveniently deferred, the elan
Of what it means to override possession and play the instrument:
The joy of it, the subtle stroke, the nimble, self-conscious act of doing
What must be done, the supra-natural ruing
Of identity–no hands, he stands–beyond what comes to pass as sacraments
To common passion. Remembrances and souvenirs remain to no avail.
This, my friend, is what it means to own the gift of mortal life and wail.

“The Primate’s Eyes”

The primate’s eyes, where the gaze at whom or from what womb’s
Grief’s expression’s etched in citrine? Vision’s gyre in darkest sapphire,
Ablaze, marooned in time for burial in creation, strings upon the lyre,
Horizontal beings taut across the vertical; gracious, shy, sagacious; rooms
Congested, from drought to flood and back in countless variations bootless
Here to ponder but in the moment, impossible to ignore, but, who?
And in this gesture or that glance whose blatant emerald kingdoms’ pool
And polyglot of crystals form patterned clots from earthly lesions, useless
To explore in less than eons on the continental shelf or lapis ocean floor.
Whose is it to the connect the dots, whose exponents, multiplied, sustain
Emotion in a single star-blown stare? Actuaries–the epitome of the lion’s main
The eagle’s wing, amazing grace in the ballet of a sloth intent on more
Than what he grasps–marry systems and in their perfect rhymes, tokens
Not that far from destinies that speak not until their Lord has spoken.

“Occam’s Rasor”

Occam’s rasor, perhaps, but what else is there
Between the stepping stones, the zeniths, the nadirs,
Putting aside the in-betweens, the shafts of spears,
The road less taken, that one trampled, the toxic air,
The steps that lead in either direction, the fare
Compared to destination, dreams that disappear.
Sooner or later, choice replaces every truth, the fears
That come when hybris meets hamartia? Tares
And thistles abound, the rent, the ashes, the cardinal numbers
Spread themselves among the ordinals and seem to sin no more.
Even so? What of these, the inevitable, the inescapable nemesis?
Step forward and discover the reason for the second step; the emphasis Is on the first? The second? A third? Awake, the final unction’s found in slumber; Asleep, the hours promise the penultimate hour, remembrances of the final door.

“To Mask”

To mask and yet to face rejection in the stump
From critical mass to that same point at which
The thing desired no longer throws the switch
And victory in itself means nothing. Trumped
By circumstances, drowned by waste of what emerges
From the corners–smothering quotas in the day,
Declensions of dissembling strokes along the way–
These devour meaning and attention as audits surge
Like halos at the man left standing on the box.
Golden laurels placed so lightly on the brow
Of every passing braying ass and every holy cow allow
The novice need and possibly ambition in the days ahead:
What greater sorrow than achievement of the goal, a score
To end all scores long after winning matters anymore?

“Sonnet in Honour of the Feast of `Izzat’ or ‘Might’”

Bahá’ís throughout the world gather tonight and tomorrow within the First Day of the Month of `Izzat [Might]

“Sonnet in Honour of the Feast of `Izzat’

or ‘Might’”

Judge well, judge fairly, judge the might of any man,
Salutations there above it all, crowned, a name become a lyric,
A word in apposition to all legend; manipulated Pyrrhic
Hero, all ears offending, bending, ciphers in the sand,
Commanding others in a fleeting circumstance with undisputed fame
And powers granted for the sake of a specific hour, perhaps a day, gone,
Fossilised before the melody has reached the page when so easily as on
A clouded noxious day, his specious honour clots, his reign
Is turned to vapours. What remains of yesterday’s effaced from buildings,
as from his body, plaudits once ubiquitous, become but shadows of the sun,
A nothingness distilled from arbitrary fruits of moot achievement
here and there among the shades. No lasting shame nor is there blame,
No action, bold distraction, no final satisfaction spent upon itself in vain
From first to last is parsed so long as youth and strength sustain his every run
Through forgeries and fortunes. Judge this man when he is in the deepest well,
And buried sees his heaven while he knows he lives in hell.

“Someone Questions”

“Someone Questions”

Someone questions; in the soul who asks
A sense of limitless flight, as in a light cast against
A cosmic scrim, a naked form made indisposed, concupiscence
So well hedged in that even snakes and asps
Imagine kingdoms, place and calling. One seeks
Solace in the stars drawn loosely in the dawn in meadows where the lark
And scissortail fly with grace and prudence safe within the dark
And moonlit bosom of the either side of night. These may speak
In early evening mists as harbingers of loss or sparks for yet another day
For both are lost at first appearances of the other’s prescient rights.
Someone asks too many questions, standing stupid in astonishment–the slights
To similitude and approbation of the sun and blessings of the moon–
And while away their twilight hours in repetitious casting of the bones and runes,
Hers the scarlet crystals, his the blue,
Placated in the midnight for a time. Softly moving, flowing purples
Prove a longing in the hurried bower. Serried sentiments, interpreted
In their yearning  by a greater sight, a gilded purity, requests to know
A deeper joy in stations far above their own come as strident yellows,
Richest apricots, stealth in forest greens, and in their mirrors’ prisms others
In the rainbow’s richest hues. Truculence and degradation spawn another
Third, a half note difference that in the hour makes no sense. These fellow
Travellers pause but moments in this place and for all intents
And purposes yield to what they think has come pass. Conclusions
Mount in efforts to remember who it was did this to whom. Confusion
Circumvents the purpose of reunion when their synergies, delayed, are bent,
Distorting content, vanities and what they both have willed:
A blindness in the heart and mind and precious certitude is stilled.

“So Easy to Desire”

So easy to desire the miracle. But think
On this. Where’s the catch,  the marvellous demands
That come to mind; what promises can stand?
What tests in kind the price in days to come? She drinks
To fortune, progress, to better days, her Sadducees of success
Attracting millennia condensed within her brief bowl of seams
And hedges, these hems round all for whom and for what she dreams
Is her eternity. Something’s asked and something’s earned; divine redress
Requires questions in the hours to come, the latent moments of distress
And wonder, certain encounters in the looming longest night of nothingness,
Her nemesis in paeans, time and endless waiting. Rhymes are stress
Enough, these obstacles and all that stands while she lies flat; a wilderness,
The costs of hasty elevation of the Host trumps the urge to cheat the system:
Yet in living moments as they are is peace, and patience in itself is wisdom.

“The Whale’s Eye”

The whale’s eye, the elephant, the gaze of tenderness in magnitude; schools
Of jack and halibut, determined unities in seas so deadly, so submerged,
The albatross so elevated that only vague inadequacies emerge
To name their realm–Jet Stream, Gulf Stream–moving gravitas in spools
Payed out in skies and seas and threads
of all things lesser and greater in between.
Spied within the miniscule lens of a single spot,
The seeming millions merge as catalysts for the clot
And in an instant, a wondrous restoration, healing,
Growth, and reproduction or yet a dissolution of all parts
Unto death, itself. A familiar spirit in an alien world will gaze in disbelief
Or then again in helplessness as ocean’s depths are stained, relief
No longer found in plunging to the deeps; restrained, their denizens depart
And reappear with regularity in the stratosphere
and while the deeps declare
The silent matters of the universe enthralled,
we just stand and stare.

“I Might Have Said”

I might have said a kinder thing,
But in that moment, something came
To mind that raised a monument as its aim
And forgot the target; like the pebble in a classic sling
Shot, true but misaligned, by intention varied
In its course as its atomic weight; aimlessly, contention
Grown inward against itself, layered, an ingot of invention
While the season’s end comes forward wary
Of its purpose, self-possessed, perhaps, steeled in enterprise
Far above the nature of its own creation. The self apprised,
The archetype is compromised by its own admiration, surprised
By no less a thing than what it is, perfection, or the antidote to crisis;
More, but less than what it was. With nothing in exchange, love remains
Supreme within its station. While light and fire are both abused
a moment’s immortality is its only gain.