“Asking Nothing”

Asking nothing, pride itself knows no shame
But that it is not easily offended
By its authors, lasting aeons never once rescinded
As they bear hard against themselves with holy arrogance. Abel’s fame
Was no more great in folly than in triumph; blame,
The greater satisfaction, feeds upon itself, suspended
High above its frozen haven’s wasted heaven, extended
Low and lower than the expectations of his brother, Cain:
“Why,” then, “art thou wroth?” is heard with “What hast thou done?”
And in that instant, seconds into centuries cast their burdens
Leaving only fools to gather and surmise how long it’s been
Since innocence so easily spent itself pursuing means to every end.
If we breathe, we cannot be more anxious than the moon and sun,
And stars whose certain execution and anastrophe scribbles embroidered patterns equal to the physics of a nano-drop, as well, the roaring war of infinitives bound in verses primed that rhyme with energy and matter in the greater cosmic run.

“Sonnet in Honour of the Feast of ‘Ilm’ or `Knowledge'”

Bahá’ís throughout the world gather this evening after sunset or tomorrow before sunset to celebrate the first Day of the Bahá’í Month of ‘Ilm [Knowledge]…

What he knows is what he tells himself,
What Êblis whispers to him, what unfolds
Within; which is to say there’s no Golden
Ratio beside what’s stored so neatly on the shelves;
Which is to say that knowledge forms his selves
In all there is, all that can
Be earned, and later learned; which is to say this man’s
Passions’ orison’s once removed from childhood’s saturated wealth
Is innocence abused, its light’s defused,  dissolving into ruins at the edge
Of his own mother’s womb to repeat the keys and chords of Cain.  His test,
A recurring scream; his dreams in ruins, the colony is resettled. Let it rest.
And cease the plaintiff cry for more when the ore and samples’ core
survives the crucibles’ age-old pledges.
Light resolves to virtue, fire to vice; what, then, but God’s own spittle
Can be so disparate from heaven…or in the end can the Golden Calf from hell achieve so very little?

“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.

“Mirage”

“Mirage”

The mirage moves comfort
When truths in volumes fail,
As winds in doldrums seduce forgotten sails,
The mousse, the whipped cream of the sort
That fattens the appetite in consumption
But flattens with rapidity in use
As its natural abuse argues justification and excuse
To to reign but seconds only while crude absorption
Reconnoiters seamless swift returns to the predetermined mark
The very limit of experience hat fickle fascination claims
Is wisdom albeit relentless common sense and reason wanes
And interests drain as the catalyst of desire departs.
What more do fools expect from denial and delusion
Than that instincts greed define what spirits call illusion?
Their mouths are never closed, their policies and words
Like noxious clouds forever block internal securities
In external declarations of truths whose missions are  insecurities.
These, the foam and refuse, the gathering curds
Of failures gleaned from mother’s milk, exacerbate  the many coloured quilt
Of blessed existence, provide the nourishment for fellows
In the hydræ of ancient deadly causes, a bellows
For pernicious anaemia, the fires of self-destruction, deceptive silks
In Chinese red and imperial yellow glory in what otherwise is so easily tainted.
Eyes though sightless, ears though blocked,
Rudiments and remnants, plaque and pittance locked
Away for timed released by those whose painted
Images rehearsed by those who know no peace,
Whose appetites are not satisfied will never cease.

Yes, of course, there were the mysteries and questions in the mind, if not, the heart of Cain.  In those few seconds of lucidity with his brother before his passing, Cain was asked, “Why?”  And Cain replied, “what was so precious about your sacrifice to Him.  Was it so different from my own?”  Abel whispered. “There was no difference, my brother; why are you so wroth?”  “He asked the same of me.  How was I to bear the weight?  What would you have done?” Abel whispered, I would have asked what I could do to make my sacrifice acceptable.”  Cain’s reaction was the first premise of history;  it was Abel’s last.

“Just Another Evening’s Fast”

Just another evening’s fast,
By chance, a simple dinner, happenstance within the seams
And lining of sidling sibling intercourse that satisfies or possibly redeems
The thing that leaves its fossils free for future scavengers, no past
To contemplate, a coroner’s delight from the proceeds of a centrifuge.
Cleverness of movement mounts in moments somehow cleft
And processed as lesions in the lard of what’s been left
To marinate or age. Discharge, wastes from the deluge
Along the banquet boards, but dammed provide
A watershed, the simple servant to all cardinal sins
To celebrate with sufficient zeal a subtrahend
That will not be outgrown nor decompose and cannot break its stride
With backdoor vipers or ill-used garden snakes. At harm’s length
Visitations of the witnesses can only grow in strength.