“They Address Themselves”

“They Address Themselves”

They address themselves only, their colours, fears that bleed
The default, the code, the sometime arbitrary bloods of red, white, or blue,
Hues of auspicious concern or trepidation; precaution reigns within the jewel
That holds the bending of the prism’s light,
setting  thralls in line—the mirror’s seed,
Immaculate and pure—the coronation of denial set upon an Attic steed,
The ancient plough of Cain’s bright logic on that fateful day, the crude
Supposal of some slight in God’s apparent oversight, as if God were rude
With no less than petulance and ingratitude than creation that feeds
Itself on sulphuric notions that once created, “`twere no request
Of ours for breath or life, and ërgo ours, and ours by right
To tax the Tax Collector, harvest tithes, and forget the usury of the loan,‘”
Trumpet this sustaining note as the universal moan
And cry, “Worship cause, deny effect, and give the workers straw
to sustain the Holy Ordres of the bricks and loyal to the cause recite:
“We’ll rise again; we’ll perogue the day; we hang, perhaps, tonight.“
Physics of the stream are moot in deltas as they reach the sea.
Everything’s aim’s to gain through truth and honesty,
And while we grope at times, we may never quite roll the stone
That blocks the entrance to the Sepulcher. From perfection to perfection
risking all we’re not alone.
There’s the rub, the same applies its rule for everyone who breathes
To live and not the other way around. As boiling lava seethes
From mounts, so, too, the will from time to time relieves itself, erupts, cools
And leaves future’s fortress astride or close beside the season’s rut. Fools
And angels build as well on sand as on a known caldera
Knowing safety’s but a syllable, a symbol, a chimæra
Of the mind.  Is it God or His Creation that thrives on anarchy and bedlam
And nothing more than light conversation on the price of eggs with Jerusalem
Within a stone’s toss of Hell, itself?  Who here’s merely waiting for a train
And humanity with no umbrella to protect its children from the evening rain?

…sculptures are by Richard MacDonald…

“A Single Digit’s Secret”

“A Single Digit’s Secret”

A single digit’s secret is the outward sign, then two; begin again.
All or nothing. Friction is the willing conversation of the elements,
Induction, intertwined interpolations, evidence
Of heat expressed in growth and progress focused on the aisle
Of things, the corner cut of crude credulity. But while
The sculptor and the marble are unknown
And evanescent,  potentials, crops and fruits are honed
From ancient sands and recipes, and what is sent
To press or put to bed defies both novelty and ingenuity.
The poet knows that cycles will repeat themselves precisely so.
What will be has always been while what is seen
Is simple resurrection but with a difference. A fresh line drawn renews it
In the repeat, and as immortal rumours couched in histories set
Themselves as precedents, external forces always hedge their bets.

Suppose such evolution the ablutions of time as revelation, but remember why
We migrate. All know, of course, or should, what land
We live in, what the borders to the dream, the strand
The stream of all the acts, the axioms sealed in wax. Try
Reason cupped in raw emotion in the Court of History, ours
To bend and cherish in or out of season in the time
It takes to be or not to be the first, the most;
Contenders in the briefest span, the feeble hours
Of victory. L’Chaim! A toast to fine
Lines drawn between the posse and the Law!

Repeat the gaze, Govinda, and if you see the flaw
In personal salvation, seek penetration in the heart, the mind,
The mass of critical foregathering in the fields between a brother’s
Affirmation and his sibling’s futile crops– annihilation harvested from seed,
An Abel standing tranquil in the eye of Cain’s infernal whining in the weeds.
But he has heard the most disturbing news that’s troubled
Recent waters on the pool of endless strife in Bathesda’s chronic pains,
Malignant vines, enlightened lines injected in the veins
And made to order on the thought of natural patterns formed of stubble,
Kneaded and redoubled, swaths of circles in the crops, alien to all he knows
And only hinted at in mild sporatic comic conversations
Minted in the teacups of  late night radio listeners, ejaculations
From the ever-ready savants hoarding hours in the climax and the show,
Recurring flights that leave the baffled masses in the night. Amongst review,
There comes a newer, fresher definition, the specious form and image
The natural spectre of the fiend that pays no homage
To the needs of Êblis, Cain, or any of his crew, but canters in the purview
That displaces all philosophy among the latter Philistines while Abel’s told
Rapacious angels suck the spirit nigh to death of any living soul.

“He’s Competent Enough”

“He’s Competent Enough”

He’s competent enough,
His purposes, deception; to lure, to entice;
His blessings’ victims savour His advice;
His beauteous summons–roughly
Marked beyond a phrase; everywhere
A preposition–redundant, simple superstition,
Hired, inspired, peerless in its erudition.
His words herald neither faith nor certitude, declare
His recusal from all beginnings which
Have no memory to ends that
Bear no fruit. His tapestries, exquisite,
Hung like Grendel’s arm upon the great oak door, each brilliant stitch
Hangs limpid there, its stench a hint of  the silent letter of blasphemy,
And all that raises Heorot here where mortals live and death is immortality……There is the stain of waiting in the atrium
For what came roaring in the autumn’s leaves and days.
That novel not begun, anticipation of some new light at dawn, a matineé
Not yet here but in the fringes of winter’s deeper last opprobrium
From those he knows he must leave. Pencil in all weighty schemes
And actions on consignment, back orders, slight
Delays festooned with orderly progression. Flights
Booked months or weeks in arrears, and in his head dreams
Bathing freely in the vanilla images of the nightly moon’s thought
That soon he will be free. These, but only natural conclusions
In one so penultimately close to actual lines of light’s diffusion
Of some cosmic credit, the long ignored desire of eternal spring. Supine,
He lies here wondering just what the summer’s fuss was all about,
And now when all is almost said and done, at dawn the flame goes out.

Painting by John Howe

Bahá’ís throughout the world gather this evening and tomorrow within the First Day of the Month of `Asmá [Names]

“Double Sonnet in Honour of the Feast of ‘Asmá [Names]“

Greatness, the gulf of differences between
Recipients of names and the manifestation of the same
In full blown vain imagining; objective oversight’s the flame,
At least the spark any given second. A constant stream,
The crown of transformation comes in time to weave
A gravity within the press of what is never really seen.
Within a name resides a hidden thread that only seems
The confirmation both of life and being—in bas relief
Or so The Buddha warned—that holds a lethal trust. Between the name
And its receipt abide the seeds of pernicious doubt and protestation,
Manifest but without form, no timely attestation,
More an emanation than anything in revelation. In every atom reigns
The distance and sweet velocities of change. The many tools
Of blind belief in Adam’s gift seek rest somewhere within reach of fools
Embracing blasphemy in luminous dichotomies, dilemma’s
Punctuation marks’ delusions born of natural sedition. Litanies–
The beads of faith and understanding–are crystals of epiphany
Drawn from rich deposits deep within the endgames of enigma
And paradox serving providence and the farce of perpetual plebiscites;
Their greatest honour, servitude in service
To unnatural homeostasis between justice and integrity, yearning
And the One for Whom all yearning stems to transcendental heights
Born in mortal time of He from Whom all virtues flow.
And when denial and prayer are in arrears,
When needs and resignation outweigh a sum of means;
Words gone bankrupt erupt and deeds are stripped of fat and lean,
As hopelessness finds redemption in an average skein of years,
With all that overwhelms the truth at sunrise
In redemption in the simple phrase, “I’m still alive!”