“There Is a Precious Barrier”

“There Is a Precious Barrier”

There is a precious barrier set between the seas,
Stations, precocious days, sanguine nights, scars
Of wonder on en route to the capitol; an insuperable bar
Between naïveté and rapacious needs,
She’s gone beyond her youth in yearning and its talisman.
A haven for the meek is found in peaceful ferial days
For the humble couched in populated reefs against the gaping jaws that lay
In wait in not-so-subtle receptacles deep within the communal abyss; the plan,
A final, mortal insult paced to trap some unsuspecting inland victim fast
Beneath those vast and vacant murderous eyes, smiles to celebrate a feast.
But what a blessing and a wisdom is expressed in both, the least
And greatest in the oceans of their own conscious beneficial pasts:
Plenipotentiaries of implosion are beautifully welcome in natural permutation
Of mortality in a single lifetime in whom immortality vies for equal penetration.

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“Blue Addresses Red”

“Blue Addresses Red”

Blue addresses Red, and Purple should reign,
But for hue and a quire of lesser gods
Come nothing from the ether but from odds
On conjecture; motivations enough for  further vain
Imagination conjuring copious tomes twice their equal: Red
affronts Yellow, nothing untoward in appearance nor rushed
Within a natural vision but nonetheless in pernicious light hushed
To placate the numbers, whose former hearts in warmer pigments fed
Producing towering sensations in the physic, yes! But wait—
The spirit and the mind, by nature ever in need, rewarded enter
Ever elder Purples, Greens, and Oranges,  or coy splinters
Of the three—and while these residues of former purity are late
They are more than welcome to the loving eye, secondary sequels,
Aunts and uncles to the genus who scheme and dream as equals.

…in short, these are not the only ones in peril;  we’re all of us deluded!…who’s aloof when all are naked?…

“I Shall Surely Walk”

“I Shall Surely Walk”

I shall surely walk along these paths long after you are gone;
And in my obscure passing you will see my face
And hesitate as does a wisdom before a monument; grace
You’ll find in pausing but no call to right the wrong
To minions and dominions of worth that walk
In humility with me through the earth. The greatest beast
Is not welcomed at the honoured feast
Of any kind among you; I am stalked
In safety, but what I am equals all you gain  by your guns,
Your greed, your everlasting arrogance that stuns
Justice and holds aloft as with a beacon what you did to Abel.
Where I am, thunder runs.
Within my dusts you’ll find that what it is you are, I am not. All history shuns
What you’re about and by default, so do I, and so the asp,
and so the holiness within the rusts of precious metals and the stones
Beneath your feet whose humble cries are one in glory with the sun
And all that is beyond your feeble senses, a perpetuity roused
to laud the numberless; a single Manifestation you can neither hide nor fathom.

“Situations”

“Situations”

Situations at the wishing may well be crude but demand an answer;
Primed from who it is does what to whom and who will surely lose
When Monday’s powers, profits and dominions in the refuse
Fall to Thursday’s victors.  And what was that woman doing at the well? Panzers
For Tuesday’s pounce surprise Wednesday’s pansies in pots once the steppes
Exhaust their rhetoric of chickens and the odd reclusive mongoose.
Culture’s lichens wither in her vast domains and fireflies loosed
Will taunt their former captors in the galleys put to bed while the people slept
And all the while they scan for even greater news. Rest assured
That if their wish were granted crosses would be twisted; someone wins
But someone loses all he has. Surmising spring will witness sins
Of the many vices turned to holy virtues’ within the haunted soul of Perseus
As he gazes at her reflection, someone tonight is not at all  happy with her lot.
Lebensraum is only paradise to them that’s lost to them that’s got.

…scupture by Dorothy Grostern…

“Nods to Season’s End”

“Nods to Season’s End”

Nods to season’s end in sight and something’s changed; he has
Fond remembrance in his veins and what remains of velvet skin,
Elastic reach, and exultation ever on the rebound, that once mighty fin
Bent perhaps to one side at times with the tides. Of course, he’ll come in last
Again, with no more north to his days, why wouldn’t his dorsal sag–
One of many signals. What was wont to win against the odds
In all his winds; savage waves have always been his simple treasures. The pods
Have someday left, or has he merely turned left? He leans retrograde and lags
 Finding pleasures in arenas, nearby bays, or just beyond the nets
Where all lessers still pay for what gains they find. Yes, his presence draws
But he cannot make a living this way. There comes that sundry sudden pause
Too many, and he’s trapped within an unforgiving inlet,
Or soon will be. He’ll not heed the signs, he cannot feel the warming;
Friends and family call to him but he can not hear the warning.
Above his seas are joys, the residue of being; happiness in the lark
And beaver, minions in the termite mound and anthill,
Cartographers of great cats and so much prey in the cathedrals
Of the grasslands and savannahs. What, then? If within this arc
By consummation is meant the nadir or the zenith of the flesh,
These accolades surely were and are the goal
Within the womb where division furthers nothing in the soul
Save loose-formed armour sewn to suit the coming dawns and dusks. The mesh
And weapons of the mighty tusk or needlework of poets for the faint of heart
Bring peace, but bliss? No, by God! No lasting joy accrues without the proceeds,
No finer path but what leads to families and winters left behind, and what meagre
Lights for journey become moot where there is no luminary. These lands depart
From substance and ephemeral change—the placeless placed—is never traced
And all that isn’t’s put to simple use from atavistic memory or puerile waste.

…wood sculpture at top by Cody Mathias, photograph at bottom by John Hyde…

“She Knows She Knows So Little”

“She Knows She Knows So Little”

She knows she knows so little and even fewer see,
Or should the inverse be to serve the world; magnified,
Then, be the sight, and keener still, the diligence and pursuit, the urge to fly,
To float intentions and the mere suggestion of abstracts launched in fleets
As questions never fail to rise; but of course, in this world there is no rest;
There’s always more. Questions spawning questions will
Suffice in futures’ nests and past residuals the contexts for still
Small voices just as bells from Hell will drown a lion’s roaring texts.
There are, of course, as always ready answers, waxed and chloroformed,
For sale in the offing here; she merely asks, her interrogatives seine
For truths that skim the natural foam of oceans or  knead the stains
Of cold cognition as yeasts will burn in turn
to breads of thought more easily absorbed.
Within a single glyph, a cliff from which her past visions shrink and scorn;
If not from this ship, then yet another barque of endless thought is born.

…drawing at top by Elia Vzquez-daz-Belloso;

painting at bottom by Steve Mills…

“And So the Thirteenth Year”

“And So the Thirteenth Year”

And so the Thirteenth Year has risen. Once again
I see the many-signed horizons change, but not so the pun
Celestial; what comforts are guaranteed in the constant run
Of sun and moon throughout translucent images in the reigns
Of single days. These rules ride aloof above the change
Of negatives within my finite train, my sometime home, the living corpse
That casts reflections of my shadow, or so it seems; no horse
Owns less. As I am weaned from Babylon, divisible and rearranged—
Its thousand eyes around this common phantom’s dream
Among the billions—creatures certain of their differences in days
And nights exist but only quietly remain beneath my skies amazed
That what has always been there, seen
Across my ceiling, yes! is not at all remote.
The constant conflict of years has risen once again and smiles
As what’s about to be is simply all that’s left posterity in the miles.

“I See Them Every Saturday Night”

I see them every Saturday night, they love to come;
They all have solid education, many two or three
Degrees, and they’re here from China on their knees
To shrines of possibilities in futures in the lives they’ve now begun,
With the English Corner hopes for children, children’s children, something near
The same degree of self-determination through the language that so marked
The former European emigration several centuries past; the common spark
Was something more than simple hunger, shedding fear,
And living in a world apart from numbers, but the view
That individual sovereignty is not at all a revolution
But the healthy outcome of a nation with such expectations
As the Chinese now enjoy the weeds of thriving screens. The clue?
The key? The catalyst? That moment not so long ago when in an evening’s stand,
A single youth withstood a tank, and something solid hit the fragile Chinese fan.

“Yet Another Bowl of Dust”

“Yet Another Bowl”

Yet another bowl of dust, another breath, another seed,
A shoot begets roots  at once ancient yet new, the turning
Of just another page, yes, perhaps, Esau’s recurring yearning,
Then, yields to hopes no longer feasible as the urgency and need
For bounty and attraction to unconditional surrender
Ceases, replaced by the babble of the tragic twins–Epiphany and Pathos.
Dubious laurels, these burgeoning virgin promises are clothed
As they always are with delicate buds, the natural down of softest tender
Affections, prayer beads that mark the days and yet again, another year;
Where to from here?
New and unexpected tears
Will dominate moralities; nations still fear
One another’s cry as helicopters
write the story beneath their crumbling walls,
Medallions for the latest arch of triumph raised before a final call

“It’s There “

It’s there, now, melding nocturnal odours. The diners’ lucidities compete, grey,
The city; meretricious azure lightning strikes, incessant rhythms howl,
Leaning anywhere but here; unctuous dogs bay at scintillating moons, scowls
Bring out the worst in alley cats that prey
On mice that prey on nothing, or just a little cheese, say.
Depend upon it. Humid hunger breeds neon needs; sway,
A lady’s shape at the pole and there’s no reason left to stay,
They all begin to pray, and then, of course, they’ll prey
Again, and, lo! The answers come but never see the light of day,
And once again, they’re off to just another corner, just another ploy;
Another boy, his knife; the cats, their claws; the dogs, their bones: simple joys.
And not too very far from home; someone bolts, the nosegay
Tossed behind, to appointments better left unmentioned; yes, so naturally odd.
They will forget themselves, these creatures, yesterday; these boys, their gods.

…drawing at bottom by Olga Melamory Larionova…