“I Withdraw”

I withdraw so easily, or waking, dream
So soon as labour in the day ill-advised
Through doors whether in and out with nothing analysed,
Nothing tasted, nothing binding. Early minutes’ quiet gleaned
From what I see, Rorschach patterns reckon ends bit off before
I’ve done the deed. Salutations to the daylight in the darkness
Knowing light my only threat. I seek no rest
And simply wave my rights before I hit the bathroom door.
Another matin ritual and by the time I see the streets
My spirits rise to the anthem of invasion. papers purchased an there
When no one hears me enter ( no one saw me leave;  no one’s left
Who remembers where I stood before it all–the cleft
Between the morning after and the afternoon before–the air,
The pavement, strokes of something like a sidewalk drawing note
That I arrived in time to beat the elect but somehow never voted.
Oh yes, of course, I hear the cymbal’s echo in my ear;
The thunder’s never quite altogether gone.
Lyrics never cease, each give rise to reprise and just another song.
The stride is altered, yes, of course, but never far from goals
I’ve set, and always from the “A” to the ubiquitous “B” the line
Is straight. It flows, it cannot fade. Consistency is there
And I am bound to find the wicket, purchased another ticket there
To picture in my mind; the Gate that lies beyond the mines
And booby traps I’ve laid, extensions of the singular;
Ignorance drawn, pleasure in life egregiously proffers
Its own demise where duplicity wreathes itself in the divine collective.  Offers,
Dogma for all occasion profits veiled within the insular.
The rock, itself, sees through all the aye’s
And knows its nay’s must always seek the public gaze, disguised.

“Peace, My Friend”

Peace, my friend in all this witness! Joy!

Of course the weight of chains

In the years’ galling links artfully forged constrict; the veins

And heart have nothing left to lose.  We must all too much, too often boil

As if in sacrifice for children in excess, their tender tendons bent

To stitch or reinforce the patches in the peoples’ fabric,

“Damn all youth, loose ends cannot be ignored!” will set the rubric’s

Not for satisfaction but for closure in a single day; still, while innocence is spent,

The heavens and the earth are in their whole

Are seen expendable; the antidote’s declined and not a single word is spoke.

But who has eyes or ears and whence the flaw? The axle’s broke

And raging torrents in the bowel cannot reach the soul.

As much for comforts of the crowd, humanities encompass pain

While even weightier, the angel living sing of joy and promises of rain.

“Diversions Mount”

Diversions mount, but decisions are determined
And timing in celestial spheres and signs
Are not paused for dilatory motives nor do the blind
So easily blot out the sun. Some there are who enter
Darkness seeking the mercurial stations of the tongue, the move
From where they are to where they divine they must
Be without so much as limb or wing but straight through the dust
To strike pavilions over what is not and never could be a truth. Note all who’ve
Owned a cause to glorify the effects of blows to obfuscate, to conceive a sure
Obstruction of all evidence, nothing more. “In My Father’s House
Are many mansions,” written plainly in orchestrated independent clauses;
The caveat in escrow, the final contract awaits the ink *and “If it were
Not so,” He would have writ the mystery of galaxies and stars
as when polemic balances mark the seasons’ endless cosmic scars.
Simplify the matter, choose the either, consult the ether, pick one,
Be, and it will be! An avizandum is no match for public exhibition
And the journey never really satisfies the abyss of timely erudition
Further than a fortnight nor the rule of planets beyond a single sun.
And if the moon’s the object in the search,
Winter’s clouds will override the story
If they speak at all in apostrophes of midnight glory
While the appetite for fear what must follow the zenith. Dirty shirts
And all the king’s fine laundry’s better left
Unwashed if the pawn neglects the very lint of ragged pockets. Socks
Are so easily separated, so inevitably lost forever. High tech stocks
And clever use of futures are stuff of much the same in strategies in what’s left
Of patience or detachment, or verisimilitude when the trend in toys is moot
or confidence in leisure time exacerbate so strange a shrinking;
Ships and stocks are never stronger than the thought of either sinking.

* John 14-1-9

“That Yearning’s Passed”

That yearning’s passed, I know
The peace from simplicity of relief;
The promise fulfilled, the passing of grief;
The outrageous gift of understanding’s flow
Of grace and bounty; plenitudes; slow
To mine own eyes, but quickened as when the wreath
Of outward stars surmounts all inward scars as the chief
Priests’ glower glows darkly through an ancient glass. In escrow,
Then, to points of no demand and nothing left to chance:
Greatest secrets born within are less than burdens
In the light and more than shelter can bestow;
Turn the blindest eye to life’s sweet afterglow
And take another look; let the foot another step, advance
Beyond the point of scripts for life’s inevitable diminishing returns.

“It Has Come To This”

It has come to this
That
Nothing
Desired
Has
Been mine
A minute
Before
It mattered not at all
Within my heart
And thus declined
To flattery
And
Nothing more!

“Sonnet in Honour of the Feast of Rahmat or “Mercy”

Bahá’ís throughout the world gather this evening after sunset within the First Day of the Month of Rahmat [Mercy] or tomorrow before sunset to celebrate the Bahá’í Month of Rahmat.

A softer mercy longer left behind at birth, kindness disinclined
To tarry long between the blessings of the newborn
Infant perhaps inaugurated by the midwife’s slap–torn,
The page of practice and illumination–and the last blinds
Closed to indicate the wake, a last reminder to the family in signs
Of honour toward another life both last and lasting worn
As armbands on the sleeve that say, “One must move on toward
The future, after all.” But, what of infants and invalids in lines
That stretch from all that’s passed to all that comes to pass?
Whither gone the wisdoms of Ptolemy and Newton, the trials
Between the Tennis Court Assembly and the emperor’s new clothes?
Who has heard the Last Trump or worse, whose knowledge grows
With every hour that if we’d seen the light from the crevasse
Rise from the right, swallowed on the left, the Mercy-Seat then is fully
Revealed, the journey concluded from the beginning to the last mile.

* On this plane, the traveler meeteth with many a trial and reverse. Now is he lifted up to heaven, now is he cast into the depths. As it hath been said: “Now Thou drawest me to the summit of glory, again Thou castest me into the lowest abyss.” The mystery treasured in this plane is divulged in the following holy verse from the Surih of THE CAVE: [1]

[1 Qur'an 18:16. This is a reference to the station of complete faith. The companions of the Cave are identified with early Christian martyrs.]

“And thou mightest have seen the sun when it arose, pass on the right of their cave, and when it set, leave them on the left, while they were in its spacious chamber. This is one of the signs of God. Guided indeed is he whom God guideth; but for him whom He misleadeth, thou shalt by no means find a patron.”

If a man could know what lieth hid in this one verse, it would suffice him. Wherefore, in praise of such as these, He hath said: “Men whom neither merchandise nor traffic beguile from the remembrance of God….”[1]

[1 Qur'an 24:37.]

This station conferreth the true standard of knowledge, and freeth man from tests. In this realm, to search after knowledge is irrelevant, for He hath said concerning the guidance of travelers on this plane, “Fear God, and God will instruct thee.” [1] And again: “Knowledge is a light which God casteth into the heart of whomsoever He willeth.” [2] –Baha’u'llah

[1 Qur'an 2:282.]

[2 Hadith.]

“Close the Books” [On the anniversary of my last day of classes in 2007]

“Close the Books”
[On the anniversary of my last day of classes in 2007]

Close the books, put away the notes,
The shipyard’s abandoned; desks and chairs have lost their rows
(The final cleaning crew arrives tonight!) and do you suppose
The office will be closed before the votes
Are in? Inevitable closing calamities. But by the clock
He sees the hours shifting toward the back
Of what was his room these many years; no lack
Of tomes and final papers, calculations, ever marking; the dry dock’s
There and oddly placed, order impertinent, his ship’s put in to port
And not a scintilla too soon, the wetted finger held aloft with storms
Approaching and heat stroke looming in the warmer
June-filled many-papered halls of what’s left in halls of lockers. Sort
The last class’s fillings, his room no longer root canals in light
And lighter proverbs of an erstwhile life; the tunnel’s end: his silent night.

“Alienation” by M

The following poem from M of strangebrew ,a site  on Stumbleupon.com worth more than a glance:

Alienation

Through windows I watch the world

Not longing for it

Removed, unmoved

I watch like a somber-eyed child

Robbed of childish wonder

My addiction to solitude a strange contradiction

To the desire of my silent heart

To be touched

M

“I Don’t Suppose I’ll Ever Know”

I don’t suppose I’ll ever know; she never told me.
I had no calling card; she had no address
Or if I had it with me, it was always less
That what she wrote to him and could never be
Disclosed. Of course, I looked for all the world; I seemed
To be forever browsing bookstores in more or less
Abandon even wonton dedication in the kind of eagerness
That only children presuppose is happiness or glee.
We were never there, you see, and I was ever
At the ready to believe in terms of passages that see her through
A time or two in something close to primacy, proximity
To what it was she never found in me—sublimity
Or something that she’d read in Keats and Shelly severed
In the end from Dover Beach and miles from Xanadu.

† William Butler Yeats [13 June 1865 – 28 January 1939]

‡ Percy Bysshe Shelley [4 August 1792 – 8 July 1822]

 

“This Earthly Vision”

“This Earthly Vision”

This earthly vision has no sequel–traces of blessed tealeaves,
I suppose–perhaps a some day catalyst for random thoughts in minutes
In the aftertaste, little more. My sometime friend, the spider spins his
Web and hopes but can depend on nothing more; his weave
Is carelessly placed in a vacant room where nothing flies,
And nothing’s gained–I do believe that no one knows
What spiders gain in being there. Flaming blue, the floes
On Northern Seas achieve as much for all the seals in mating season while It lies
To fate and sorry accident arranged or possibly ordained that in their time
The innocence of hapless polar bears sows ancient annual paths with dangers,
Weeds of freedom there among the jagged swords, the Arctic winter’s rage or
Where smelt and herring are the food of something even greater hidden, divine
And very much alive; all are victims. All are caught,
seduced by lethal circumstance within the tundra’s crystals’ crisis spread
Of rich absurdities and matchless ironies of living freely here among the dead.

“I Am No Other”

“I Am No Other”

I am no other, at once alone
A sea too vast, a cloud too bold
For liking what I feel. I’m told
Too much. Natural clones
Are strewn too close to shore and all in all
Too great a yield for one man’s soul
To taste while others merely marvel; still they’ve grown so old.
My own heeds nothing further than the plaintiff’s call
As I am here to witness what is fit and what’s amiss, nothing more,
No deeper core.  Immersed, stopped unawares, amazed at sights
Awash in waste and thoughtless wanderlust in flight
From all I’ve seen in just as many days as I ignore
The splendor in it all. I seine the inlet’s sound to seize
a hapless shrimp, a starfish, then again a mussel;
But, no! Another useless pearl whose oyster is deceased.