Bahá’ís throughout the world gather today within the First Day of the Month of Sharaf [Honour]

“Sonnet In Honour of the Feast of Sharaf”

Not that what is in my soul is pure, nor are my eyes
In proper shielded, buttressed against what should not be seen;
No, my thoughts are not so secluded from my dreams;
These, the ears, are not immune from bablings of bathos on the sly.
My hands are placed firmly where they should not be
Nor to my taste my food as it should be. All
That modesty and honour require are no more; nor is the call
Of truth without duplicity the centre of my heart’s sincerity.
These infectious imperfections gain erection every day before my face
As each hour with yet another hour blasphemes with  uniform joy in their gray
Glories with ceremony in a plethora of follies strewn
throughout my hours’ providential tally of remaining rainy days.
I am never far from falling short of all my own metaphors, the similes and grace
Of He who created me and the cynosure of they who didn’t…yet I continue on
That He remains the Melody of Virtue and I am become the lyric of its song.

“I Was Informed”

“I Was Informed”

I was informed we’d arrived at Sometime Station
Some late grey hour, but was I convinced?
Shadows’ shallows hid pertinent details tight behind the lids and since
I was not awake there was no stirring; no? then perhaps a little indigestion.
I somehow missed what seemed so clearly plain
To the passengers but nothing rhymed with what was printed
On the programme. The brochure gave me hints
And vague suggestions listing attributes and mundane
Tips on what the locals do and how one clothes
The outer skin and where to cast the eyes,
But when I briefly set the door ajar and opened windows
  A judicious crack, I found nothing there resembled tips and innuendoes
That the guidebook said were there, nor what I’d seen in skies
Above my dreams and hopes, nothing close to inspiration:
Pilgrims best travel light and in their flight they forfeit anticipation.

“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.

“So Great a Silence”

“So Great the Veins of Silence”

So great the veins of silence on the streets in this year’s dying
Days; a fresh upon fresh blanket of winter’s dews shrouding
Trees and sidewalks, weighting rooftops, goading gables. Clouding
Clotted skies both day and night show no respite. Incense of Abraxas plowing
Down liturgical calendars, disguised, the last uncertain week of this last
Uncertain year; there’ll be no other.  The funeral’s banquet’s not yet finished,
But come now impertinence in  wedding caterers as the neo-looming skittish
Markets address themselves to not so certain promises profit, and as the past
May be the mirror of the future, Hamlet’s wondering
At his own wonder in the thought so universally voiced,
“Can we really stand another year with the same old invoice?”
That it should come to this! Denial’s simple rites, the blundering,
Sundering ties to all that virtue knows in favour of what is known, flaunted
ignorance of both at once even to the gates of Pergamos and Ephesus:
Have John’s missives not arrived?
Are there no prisons, and still no workhouses?

 

“What’s the Ordre of the Day?”

“What’s the Ordre of the Day?”

What’s the ordre of the day? The laundry?

A trip downstairs to gather bagels in the morning’s light,

Across the street for vegetables from lands where armies clash by night?

The pharmacy awaits―its monthly maw is open―yawning,

Leaving me with hymns of thanksgiving for insurance

And of course the curse á tous les professeurs du côté français

Who voted out the dental plan, which means we all must pay.

Oh, well, I can’t complain these days. There is the firm assurance

That retirement is good until I croak, and croaking’s not that far away.

I might have done the deed this year, but something in me holds

That I’ve at least another year in me; silver this year, next year, gold.

There is in living more than simply doing laundry in the list of things today.

So what’s the sweat, and what’s another crate of eggs and milk and bread?

Another spring, another year, and some few miles to go before I’m dead.

“And In the Timing”

“And In the Timing”

And in the timing looking toward the left or right

I am arrested on a cliff, bereft

Of reckoning what is left

In me beyond the trappings of a simple light

And memories catalogued, together bound

In burgundies and beige, and with the odd in olive green,

The velvets of their spines lean this way, seen

Like houses on a narrow Upstate Albany block; I’ve found

It so, conveniently I guess. There is no slight adherence

Here to regimen, no lesser well-warn track to rhyme

With hours or days as I would have them, nothing timed

In what I spy within the closet or the dreadlocks of my clock, but clearance

And permission to proceed through standing weeds my gentle paces

As if bound by who it is I am, and nothing more than what my bulk displaces.

“Split Infinitive”

Split infinitive, the cleaver cannot leave a mark;

Whither here or there, I can

Say nothing of it save that in such spaces weightlessness demands

Safe passage through the night, and dawn, the every morn as sparks

In the extremities reveal mere likenesses of divinity, an excess so easily payed

Out as if ‘twere planned or ready bought, a largesse in signs

And light diffused. Humanity’s the excuse, the very line

Drawn in sands that separate here from there as if in an arcade

Where emotion speaks for intelligence and former lovers find a place

To hide within the withered phallus, the wilted orchid for just a little while.

Who will look upon obscenity as a mask of travesty whose caustic smile

Cannot pass the lips nor wisdoms register results within the mind? Efface

From memory the protocols of inertia in the game and such a stench is discerned

That cannot in the end be seen where more than innocence is burned.

 

“Take Nothing”

“Take Nothing”

Take nothing from nothing lightly.

His own sprites, infants

Of Providence from voids, nurtured, cradled, reborn as instants

Above the need of time’s pieces, time beside itself, timed slightly

To the skyward―Fate and Destiny merely fashions, statements in spatial nights

Of fire.  Engines of the commonweal may not easily be ignored

As antipathy gainsays grace and sue the flowers of “Might”

And “Maybe” as with all other litigants in the pond.

The cultured and the coarse and those who are not born

In affirmation’s garlands are worthy vesitutures but wisely worn

For what and who they were not what they are, held well beyond

Distractions the eye; reality rarely takes a mistress.

All that is cannot be penned and has no vested interests.

“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.