“Notions of the End”

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

…painting by Qiang Huang…

“I’ve Found No Time”

“I’ve Found No Time”

I’ve found no time to drink to you these days;
My skies are not so fullsome gray and nothing presses.
Gates are open, roads are cleared, the milk of guesses
Churned to butters; no delays,
No distractions, no rain checks, and all is well.
And while some sooner sunrise I’ll miss the summer breeze,
The longer play of light from dawn to dusk, the ease
Of minor clothing, still, the autumn spell
Of falling leaves, and promises of best
And better reasons through the seasons yet
To come are smiles. While the fall forgets,
Stiller riots and fomentation, revolutions in the colours
come as no surprise to solar guests:
The greens and yellows, pinks and fuchsias, indigos
And mauves will flee, as blackest soils one day taste my toes.

…photograph above by Todd Small…

“I Am Not”

I am not, but I am in the guise of a god;
My fellows are not, but they dwell in Olympus
Every fourth year and have for millennia compassed
This and other greater lesser boiling mountains in the sod,
These solid clots, the sovereign bloods of this blue planet; this, the present odd
Man out ubiquitous, conspicuous with singles, doubles, trebles, celestial hubris
That out from what it is comes naturally as a holy trust
An incubus of men and angels, and yet another surviving Ichabod
In all of us, and never far from genii; patience waiting in the knowing;
Yes, ingenuous, untried, ever tied to what becomes the untoward
And thus, the Ark now lost to Philistines, venture through the chorus
And the warning, the niggling dark and overbearing mighty forests
Of the childhood, the first in Sodom and last deep cut in Gomorrah, glowing
Still, yet knowing whence we came, we don’t look back, but ever forward.

“So Many Words”

“So Many Words”

So many words, at worst worn pride,
I will not hide;
Betrayal, trying pales,
I will not fail;
Tailings on the mountain hillsides, precious gems,
I have them;
While the river flows a man must think,
I will drink;
Fallow mists and clouds, nocturnal dusts depart,
I feel the stars;
Where the skies descend,
There I am;
And when we mourn the loss of summer, leaves are wet;
As years become but days, the autumn’s advent even so is set.
And so I’ve waited lifetimes
For the sound of footsteps,
The incidental brush against the skin,
The glance, the look,
Beholding what I took as Gospels for the moment;
. . . still.
You never spoke to me
While I have never ceased
To hear you.
Or if you did,
You were much too busy
In the business of distraction
To notice
What was manifest
Before your eyes.

“To Think On It”

…most of the following I wrote some time ago;  something about the last twelve months, however, has caused a revision…

…Faith will wither gracelessly
in the face of gentle certitude
Just as knowledge falters helplessly
in the presence of wisdom’s rectitude…

“To Think On It”

To think on it millions, treble double billion
On some crust of earth strive each day to breathe, somehow to strike a balance
Between tendered moments and cultured despair. The trip from phallus
To the womb and back again suffices sirens’ closest communion
In some myth of progress here–a world fixed among the countless there—
And while we stare, we hear no greater melody than our
Own fears within an inner ear. Such songs exceed the number of the flowers.
We know we are no better than symphonies in the air;
We hold to breath, each inhalation satisfies moments left to us
In some sweet hour knowing no delay, no passing thought is lust
The less for having nothing so concrete. No lasting trust
Will occupy the heart and mind, and while the engines’ thrust
We are rent from God knows where to not that far from where we began,
Stations crystallise as gems of endlessness from crusts of  life’s élan.

“I Found The Day’s Messiah”

“I Found The Day’s Messiah”

I found the day’s messiah breathing as if to pray;
No prayer, of course, no sign, no moon, no stars, silence—
Balm to souls and solace in a crisis
Of questions—so many hopes lay absurd, what they must say
Gives Animas to eternity and shields a simple fear, the terror
Of these days. I would not ask outright, “I have no words,” then,
Took flight so very tight in twilight when
From cancer and fallen branches—errors,
Really, to the whole—innocence conjures lasting alibis,
Sentinels that never come to rest, fruits of thought pressed
With violence enough to produce the wine—more from less,
Inebriation from what the old man once said. Patient sighs
Amongst the sparrows egg him on while sitting on a porch with me.
“Make peace with the Fathers,” says he, “from Sons of Adam flee.”

“Hatchling”

“Hatchling”

The implication here is from the ancient; flee, then, hatchling, see to it
In some sweeter novice, some slight discretion, some light elective. Festoon’t,
Then, the nowly constructed, bought in haste, a fine young cocoon,
In binding shrouds’ thrice millions iron-silken chits
That glitter, blind those bloodless tones with proper milk, drawn through
Finely fashioned sleuce and straw arranged beyond your knowledge long before
You ever had a name. I knew you well before you were. I, myself, have worn
The vice-connecting tethers and gaudy ribbons flowing loose—
A wandering, breathing hydra gorging—presaged fate, itself. Without your eyes
You’ll discover soon enough your middle and latter twenty doubled, twice
Again! and thoughts of me will be distant memories’ banquets summoned by
Exclusions festering in mirrored eyes of fond admirers (sound advice)
From your graceless passion-grasping salad days. Their winking votive candles
Fire all in be-all Vegas chapels with or without witnesses and guests
amid all those clinking glasses and clacking sandals

“Idyll of the Notes”

“Idyll of the Notes”

Idyll of the notes: strike the first, then close the second; together,
Hail propinquity, call a third to birth a melody:
From nothing more, strange grace.  Thoughts become celebrity
In congress with emotion in the progress—tethered,
Binding doubled, redoubled—repeated over time,
A saturated affair, approbation
With solemnities, an aspiration
Quickened within a rhyme
Of mere coincidence and proclivities; a leaning
Toward an accidental brilliance, plaudits gleaned
From union and fresh existence and what seem
At first but three streaks’ slight in plaited harmony gleaming,
Potential fugues’ intrinsic affinities drawn from thin air.
Purity of heart inspires the masterpiece and who bears its weight?
At once in lieu of action words foolishly assure themselves it’s not too late.
Without the chill of intellect, there can be no intensity, no heat;
Without emptiness, what, then, is required,
Nothing lacking; nothing is inspired,
Nothing dreamt if in the night there is no sleep.
No path; no looming future present if there is no past,
No memory, no hint of satisfaction where discomfort
Is not found; no unity displaces discord
Where envy or the trial of jealousy cannot last.
Where the comely courage of Perseus if
No Medusa, no Tiresias, no hindsight sorely missed;
No hint of blush in virgins, whose innocence is kissed
And gone for evermore. Richer the magnitude of precious gifts
If lovers prove untrue; the straight line lies and light will bend
Where eternities cannot be seen beyond the beginning and the end.

…art work at top by Paul Pinkman…

“That Message Comes Too Late”

“That Message Comes Too Late”

That message comes too late; the box long placed in escrow rusted
From disuse, and I with lungs too aged to bear perfumes and polish;
Meretricious meddling as grace notes in the prism admonish
All the senses, blur the lines of intuition but with gears so rarely dusted
The damn thing keeps on running just the same–behold! it
Must devour distraction, shed its excess in deflected rhyme
And, while the lotus blossom blooms but once, for a time
No one’s close enough to close in for the kill. I know it’s
Hour has come. I prefer to walk and leave the seasons
on the broken highway line.
The forced march rides blisters here and there
But these are welcome and with the sea breeze on the stairs,
The fields, the feel of billowing folds of shirt and pantaloons with brine
Scent heavy in the air, I follow sentinels, ambers of my memory like rocks
Strewn about the stream until I reach the shore I see. I pray
I cannot hear you now and as the Ocean lies before me friends,
I’ve little more to say.

…paintings by Andy Denzler…

“The Fence”

The fence will stay an anger, the rail a rage, their prodigals their means; stems
And stubble cannot flower; debris and refuse bleaches acrid soils and springs
Where humus rots and foils the seed. Here there are no iridescent wings
To scatter spores but breezes pay direction in syllables, their anthems
Murmur at the borders of the flush as Mammon’s glory fills the golden bowl.
There are no goals in wild abandon; gliding, gaily guiding
Prodigies of whim like children at the ready implied or hiding
Salt their sainted felons alike upon whatever waters howsoever stagnate, shoals
That readily receive the willing to perverted purpose. Colliding
Wills or volition at naught, all fortunes that survive are well aware,
Both true and false, on Whom or what the sterile and fertile stare:
Neither tarry long, they either are or are not there, abiding
In the moment, holding or withholding ground in what they fancy no one
Seeks to plant as no one tills the loam in time to greet the summer’s sun.