SONG OF THE SUFFERING (To hear a melody composed for this poem, go to The Music of Sean Damon.)When I look down, I see the ocean When I look up, I see the clouds Closing my eyes, I hear the people Singing their last song before they die Remember days of sun and flowers Remember nights of myriad stars And then the earth shuddered her great shell And brought a whole nation tumbling to her knees I sing a yesterday song in mourning for my lost home I cry in sad remembrance, remembrance of my love I scream in rage, furious at my god Who wrecked my world, slaughtering my people Without warning, without a sign But only death to poor suffering people Who simply tried to make a happier world In the midst of strife without relief So now I call out, cry out for grace— Some mercy, please, Before all of us die
THE SKULL IN THE SKYBehold the skull in the sky not a playful bloom of cumulonimbus but a phantasm of poison gas percolating into pallid fumes devoid of any molecules of life and saturated with caustic toxins rising from drums of industry and war behold the sardonic toothless grin eyesockets become black holes smoke streaming from its nasal gashes Harken to the reverberating noise sounding from the empty brain pan like a distant desperate human voice hollow and howling as a desert wind if we turn our backs on the image and hold a mirror before our eyes we can see its fractured face staring mysteriously back at us as if reflecting ourselves in the glass move as we may at random it follows us round the globe riveting us to ourselves labeling us to our actions the sightless skull does not see yet knows everything we do and we adore it as our progeny for we created it in our image we are the sculptors of the skull the tools of our sin fashioned its face our ravenous desire sustains its demeanor in the stratosphere surrounding our home we know its meaning for our lives we know but deny its bald-faced design for all who continue to conjure toxic artifacts as emblems of our lives but we do not heed the persistence the insistence of the skull instead we contrive its monstrosity and fall to adoring it by our wicked deeds while telling ourselves we are the sacred brood of a god who made us in splendor Beware the warning of the skull for it prophesizes disastrous events we should foresee and attempt to flee but we fail to see ourselves in the bone we are obscured by self-enhancement behavior that we identify as humane as if humanity were the essence of ethics pathetic is the world we have made sorrow should be our mantra yet the skull has no sympathy for tears even if we cared to shed them on earth that sustains us despite our wanton evil the skull does not speak or move but the skull knows our future as our past and foretells our inevitable doom
TO THE ARTISTJudge the treasure of your life not by what others think or say from remote and narrow angles outside the circle of your light but value your days in the sun by the goodness you give and the beauty you bestow an elegant gesture and refrain reveal more the luster of the spirit that illumines a path for everyone who walks the dark ways of this world than the thrills of affluence or applause thrive to your own driving rhythm and the sinuous melody of your mind in the face of threatening storms or even amidst an illusory calm especially in the doldrums of despair dance on the pinnacle of your ideas to the musings of your own mentality for the value of the well used moment is worth more to you and all of us than any actions of the madding mob the world is become a paltry place amassed with arrogance and greed where the solitary wizard of art walks alone among the multitude with eyes on the horizon to sight hope resplendent in the morning sun that rouses the mind and lightens the heart listen to the constant bell beyond vision that tolls for those to find the way as it sounds in harmony with the wind so heed the summons to the sacred task and fix your gaze on the farthest star until you are the dust of your beginning
RETREATSince the world is rushing to madness I retreat to a monastery of the mind where I conjure images to suit my fancy a private place for selected memories a personal place for endearing dreams where great invisible walls surround me and my imagination drowns monstrosity where time is measured by sun and moon and the only clock is the beat of my heart When ugliness invades from human horror like waste leaking from a shattered sewer I close my eyes to picture the possibilities an endless cinema upon a spherical screen a virtual surreality far beyond the world of machinations and demonstrations There I practice a rhapsody of prayer not invoking some mystical spirit invented by primitive beings afraid of natural events as deities formed from forces of life and death or reflected in the face floating on a still pond instead I meditate on moments left to me for art to hang upon the monument to beauty that the glow may lend a glint of goodness for my sake and the benefit of other souls who trudge from cry to sigh in a sullied scene full of things made by man meaning nothing but ruins of commerce and relics of greed To think is to be an entity of singular value for thought is blessed by dawning light and mindful of the advent of certain night where heaven is oblivion and hell for devils to haunt the structure of damnation Now I am the creator of my own world where crushing tentacles cannot reach and I am free despite the manacles of flesh for history is my book as nature my teacher the cosmos my sacred liturgy to guide me out of the chaos humanity engenders as a perverse parasitic pestilence before my clock ticks down to silent stillness and turns off the spectral lights in my mind I must keep the flame of ideas alive to the last flickering spark of hope where devastation by wanton brethren cannot destroy my view of eternal life although I will not see too distant days I pray in the glow of each soothing sunset that I may wake to another golden dawn and keep my struggle to dwell in grace reveling in the radiance of every sunrise
BEWARE THE OGREMarching athwart the land in grand strides its footfalls quake the ground and wave the water in its wake a barren span stretches from pole to pole the rumbling of its steps echoes off the mountainsides cascading sweat pours into pristine streams fetid fumes taint the clean veil of air we hear it coming and see a trail of ruin but we do not fear its terrible presence rather we commemorate it in legend and myth but the story is a tale told by fools who think stupendous size qualifies for greatness while the monster crushes every thing on the planet in a headlong rush to reach the end of nowhere we applaud it as a creation of our superior mind and nourish it to even greater magnitude until its huge feet plow craters in the terrain or flatten peaks into avalanches of death or it tears up trees by their desperate roots to build sprawling mansions in the clouds tiny people gather in crowds to cheer its deeds as it devours the land on which they stand the only known heaven spinning in sparkling space it eats more than Earth can provide to nourish its notoriety and swells like a giant parasite engorged with blood about to burst and blow a toxic soup high and wide enough to erase the clouds and stain the orb with black we feed the ogre to make it grow and spread and reach for size to us is everything important in our world and the monster represents our best guess on how to coexist while dominating every other being for domination is the status we value most superiority the rule, the way to greatness regardless of who or what it costs we care nothing for others except to exercise power for the sake of power so we admire the beast in our midst like no force of nature moving on the globe we pray to the ogre for blessings on our kind we play with the ogre to captivate its mind we love the ogre as the ogre loves us for we created the fiend the ogre is ourselves
THE WATCHMANWhen the watchman warns of the coming storm we do not heed his words but swarm to a mound of baubles and cheer ourselves over amounts of things we are collecting at the expense of other lives Darkening clouds hang upon the horizon and blot the sun so we fail to know of dawn or dusk across the land for we sit with heads sunk into sand that swirls and shifts into shapes resembling reactionary heroes and imaginary gods we envision kaleidoscopic images in perpetual motion that delude us into confusing cinema with life our minds are rife with fantasies of futuristic paradise where sunshine drips with everlasting joy The watchman knows we are living any chance for heaven while dwelling now on this blessed Earth but we see not what he sees, hear not what he hears instead we race the way the wind blows pretending we will the path we choose yet oblivious to the dangers lurking in the dark strangers to one another we act as if the shadows on the walls are entertainment for our pleasure projected by those we name as leaders because they talk loud, fast, and promise deeds to make the rotten world we inhabit a great and glorious fruit hanging on a tree of universal knowledge and endless life The watchman sees our fantasy and tries to signal signs of impending calamity he tries to tell us everything he knows but we ignore him, mock him, or deride him and if he persists in telling the truth we will destroy him then the lighthouse will be deserted another age of darkness will fall upon our kind the coming storm will catch us unaware and while screaming for a savior to deliver us from evil we will be swept into a forgotten dream Listen to the watchman, for the watchman knows.
EVERGREEN (To hear a melody composed for this poem, go to The Music of Sean Damon.)Reaching for a star the evergreen grows tall and shelters hidden treasures great and small. Droplets of rainbow hang on the feathered ends of bowing limbs where brightness suspends the faces of family reflected in the glow of charity and the kiss of winter snow. O Evergreen! O Evergreen! Shining in the night-- how beautiful the sight! The flowers of summer hold no candles to you that turns December gray to red and green and blue. O Evergreen! O Evergreen! Gleaming in the night-- how beautiful the sight!
GRAINS OF SANDI cry the loss of wild and savage lands when time known only by the phasing sun and moon when birth and death balanced life on Earth when water was clean as reflected sky when the silent breath of trees and seas filled the pure blown planetary lungs sustaining the passage of living things and humans belonged to the grand design One day as I was strolling a pristine shore a white dividing line of lacey foam I saw an eagle in a hunting sweep and caught a glimpse of ancient days between swarming sea and teeming terrain all beneath a feather-filled heaven— paradise would never be more real during or after my small existence Climbing up a densely wooded hill I found a rocky ledge facing north and spied a tribe of simple people with all their generations gathered to fish, dig for roots, and harvest fruit they blended so well in their world just like the bear, the beaver, and the cat that I would momentarily lose them in patterns of stone or leaf or shade As I observed these peaceful happy folk toiling at their daily fruitful tasks I spied a band of raiders attack them pirates of the land they plundered and killed the men, women, and children at will like any ancient predatory horde but stopped short of wiping out the tribe and left a score to gather slaughtered ones perhaps to ensure booty for future forays the scene reminded me of wild animals that leave fruit on trees or prey in fields to guarantee their own survival As I sat on that verdant coastal hill sighing for the destruction of life I gazed into the great sweep of light and lost a balanced sense of time and space the planet seemed to rotate so fast I fell into a surrealistic swoon prismaticolors flashed across my vision beyond any earthly rainbow by day or waving boreal spectacle at night I thought I was hallucinating or that my mind was finally blown by too many years of toxicity But when the apparition became a cinematic aspect of visual delight I lay upon a clump of spring grass and let the flow of animated rays coalesce around me into images historic in design and dramatic in form for their representation of the past it was an epic motion picture in the sky with an infinite three-dimensional span of unknown depth and fine perspective where people dead replayed their lives in ordinary places where they dwelt as if existence were an endless tale created by a deity for the sake of every human being to enjoy despite the driving force of nature As I watched the panorama unfold I witnessed the history of humanity form the first day they set foot on this land I saw explorers seeking good fortune on shores known only to the indigene where life depends upon ability to live off the land like other animals but the novices vanished in a few seasons with only bones to mark their presence I saw the first europeans step ashore on stony beaches where wind and wave drowned their pious words of prayer and signaled to them a prophecy of strife
GRAVUREWhen desperate for a name I carved a poem on a birch tree for all the world to see cutting fast into the alban flesh I watched it bleed around my words steaming from the flaming knife forged from lifelong thoughts and feelings honed by ever-grinding passion I engraved a blast of free-form prosody deep beneath the papered bark to imprint lines I had to write upon the stalwart core but in my haste to make myself a famous man with words as plentiful as leaves I cut too far around the slender trunk and fixed a girdle there of death as if I were an executioner of trees so when I knew the birch had died I went back to meditate upon the grave of what I had to say in life but found the tree still there a skeleton yet standing vestigial of my act of God I stood before that barren cross to laugh and weep at what I had done this son of man for all his posturing on the podium of art is simply but a monster at heart like all the rest who savage trees and other holy things now when wind and fire and rain have broken, burned, and buried her old bones and snow has hid my crime beneath its innocence like hair sheltering my sinful head I will go again to where I carved that poem kneel upon the frozen ground and beg forgiveness from the spirits of the grove if left by chance to spring the green when all we images of God have quit the wood gone to space in ships to find more pristine spheres or left among the few remaining sapiens to scratch a meager living out of bloody sand and look for monumental stones on which to carve new words
If you stop running long enoughIf you stop running long enough to look and listen, you will sense a storm forming in apparent calm that lies between the twin transparent towers of supernal fantasy and mind-bending illusion. If you watch closely the flickering flame, you will see the monster in the exhaust of pride.
VAN GOGHonce in a century of solar cycles a flame flashes out of the night to burn bright enough to enlighten the dim path from birth to death a flame so fierce it cannot last yet momentarily survives to show an array of absolute and pure beauty passed from the fingertip of God to the fingertip of an immortal man despite the endless evil of humanity one great and glorious man in a million shows the rest of us the course to redemption a tortured soul of the cold dark north who found a way to create joy amid the misery we make of the world he found the way through pain by seeing the suffering of others as his own transcending the anguish in his mind and touching ordinary images to life with the colors of the cosmos gold was in his emerald eyes as the perfect pigment of the star the everlasting universal hue captured in his fevered mind transmitted through his graceful hand to make holy icons of art sacred windows on the common events that lie seldom noticed in our lives Vincent you were victorious in your fervent strife you ignited the spirit of the flower consecrated the soil of human toil and rendered reflections of your being with colors struck off the core of genius known only to a few blessed ones who have briefly walked our world then vanished into their magnificent work
FOCUS ON THE CROCUSAs the horror of humanity infects the planet like an endless plague of parasites feeding off its sacred bounty and toxic waste displaces elemental earth with carcinogenic compounds I focus on the crocus breaking through tormented soil its dauntless leaves reaching for the light in an attitude of prayer its hue-blessed blossoms rare bursts of joy among the drapes of sadness closing on the last act of this tragedy we like to call civilization where the crocus and its kind offer a vision of eternal possibilities
BEYOND THE BLACKLet us close our mouths, listen, and open our eyes to see the storm coming before it sweeps us all away for we talk too much to hear the screams of warning and we close our eyes to the sky laden with poisoned air to the fumy clouds draping Earth with the final curtain we fail to sense the shifting wind blowing into our faces fail to catch the stench of flesh rotten with waste as machines reflect the intrigues of our calculative minds and a ghastly fallout drifts around our arrogant brows like a profane halo flashed from the heat of burning souls I am no mad prophet descended from antiquity I can see and hear and feel no more sharply than you if you stop your headlong rush enough to heed the advent of an Armageddon of our own design you will hear a terrible cry from the tearing of dreams into tiny shreds of pain sparkling like grains of pale sand bleached and barren of hope and joy in a world caustic from the gas of spirits amassed in a frenzy of fashion I am no seer but I can sense the closing of the circle as an imperceptible blink in the eternal cycle of change so in this opening let us try our hand and eye at finding a place in harmony with the band of earthly things that sing the union song of synchronized life and death or we are not long for this gem whirling like a seed in space but we divorce ourselves from the family of the sun and moon and wander from scheme to scheme to dominate our world we heed not the swirling storm that gathers beyond the black let us drop the things we carry and stop the din of gossip where great ideas go undiscovered amid our heap of artifacts imagine what can be for all of us then make an art of life
THE COLOR OF OUR TIMEBlack is the color of our time not the presence of all hues but the utter absence of light not the pigment of our flesh but the black hole of our souls that drains all luminous life till nothing remains with us but reflections of a glory that could have been honor yet fizzled like a damp match in a raging storm of acid rain black is the color of our flag whipped to shreds and threads by wind rushing from our mouths a profane anthem without melody shouted off walls around us crackling the air with cacophony so loud we cannot see to think about the monochrome mentality that sucks away enlightenment to leave a residue of nothing black is the color of our silence as we march in lockstep toward the inevitable edge and fall through a nightmare asleep with no chance of morning
THE DARK CENTERWhen grand clouds gather over the mountains rising from the tidal shore I want to take wing and fly into their ethereal mist gain the summit of their height roll over slowly show my breast like an eagle to the sun then dive into the dark center of an ancient forest unknown to the hewing hands of humanity where I can disappear into the sanctity of myth
STROKESfrost glistens on the black bough white peaks reflect the dawn light pink petals gather for a song ~~~ clouds adorn the lofty crest snow cloaks its pyramidal slopes as the mountain quietly smolders
TO THE SEAWhen civilization becomes toxic I drift down to the ocean like refuse in a river with the debris of humanity threatening my dream and I crawl onto the beach to feel the wind and spray on my flesh naked among castled fragments of land I feel the heaving of that great blue womb reminiscent of the moment before time when glory began in the serenity between storms there by the sea before the fading of the light I envision the day Sun made love to Earth proving the ray of cosmic energy from the farthest star to the smallest orb spinning in a pellucid pool and I am reborn
EVERYONE LOVES A MELODYMany love a summer day others love the snow lots of us love a child at play and some love to know that dinner will be served without a table reserved but if day or night dark or bright cold or hot happy or sad hungry or not bestselling book in a quiet nook a movie good or bad rhapsody or threnody everyone loves a melody absolutely all of us on Earth love a melody from birth whether song of tears or mirth everyone loves a melody
IF I BELIEVED IN GHOSTSIf I believed in ghosts I'd watch for you every night and wait till you appeared in my darkened room in my deepest gloom I wouldn't let you out of sight even though I feared you could never love me you would never love me the way you did before when we were both alive in the bright of day when we were both on fire and life was only play if I could catch your spirit in the howling hosts I'd never set you free again if I believed in ghosts
CHRISTMAS SONGWhenever summer falls into autumn I feel the death of things around me as harbingers of my inevitable destiny and the darkening days of December freeze in me the fate of frost where hope is covered with sadness like a leaden air and memories seen in icy pools as only snapshots of life but when upon an evergreen I come while walking in the chilly woods bedecked with berries brilliant as embers glowing in a familiar hearth sudden joy lifts my gaze from gravity and thaws a smile deep within my sorrow for there amid the darkening season a pillar of prayer points into the sky reminding me of another destiny the promissory note of good news heard in a wildbird cry the sigh at winter solstice becomes less plaintive when glimpsed as sunshine to break through the darkest days of January that month of death cannot a curse upon me cast as always threatened because the breath of Aprilight is scented in the pines of Christmas tide and turns into epiphany when everything seems lost it costs me nothing to see the forest green even payment is a promise of the spring so ring the steeple bells every hour throughout the dying days their tolling is not funereal but accompaniment to pending birth so cheer the advent of the flower a power elegant enough to melt suspended animation beneath the cemetery of snow and make the meaning of the Earth a prophecy fulfilled in brighter times
FLAMES FLARE AT MY FEETflames flare at my feet when I hear a rifle crack and see a bird fall
INTERMISSIONSWhen you're rosiness turns blue you don't tell me yet I know your dawn has turned to dusk for I can see the sundown in your eyes. Then it's time for me to bring flowers in the best way I can-- simple words upon a page by which I conjure up the gladness I have for knowing you and the gratitude for your being alive. 2 It seems only yesterday when I was in that hollow place where you may be now and I could have sworn to all the powers in which I believe that I could never climb back to the high ground again. But some small bird of good news swooped into my low caught me by the collar and carried me to a hill top awash in summer light where I wait to fly with you. 3 When I missed a step the other day and nearly fell from something very like a cliff you caught my hand with kind words accompanying a graceful move worthy of a pas de deux-- a brief spontaneous ballet between friends for which I bow in thankfulness
ATONE POEMIn life I've known a lot of pain and caused a lot in friends but while I waken with the sun I'll strive to make amends. I'll pay for any harm I've caused by putting words together in ways that make living good, in wild or balmy weather. Wounds can leave deep scars that change the shape of age; so the greatest penance I can do is to bleed upon the page. I sing a contrite rhapsody of a sincere and simple kind to fan the embers of remorse but keep the joy in mind. To perpetuate the joy when sorrow grips the soul enables us throughout our lives and makes worthwhile the goal.
TESTAMENTNature is my God Art my religion and I a priest of the Earth this sanctuary of sanity where all born beneath the star thrive in air and sea and land as living gratitude for creation bless me in my strife anoint me in my life of agony and joy for the glory of God is manifest in my work the word and the image and the action myriad moments in temporal light delightful beyond any fantasy of paradise give me God the power to emblazon on the mind of man the sense to see companions on the rock to hear comrades in the trees to find compatriots in sea and air all fair fellows of the world
OUR TIME IN THE SUNThis universal flower this galaxy blooms and reblooms from starbirth to supernova where planets explode and expand equilibrious orbits around a star swinging like ornaments in the void symmetrical designs of an Artist divine as every sphere flies farther and farther in widening circles each one bears life and flourishes for eons till gradually spinning away from the heat and light in flight becoming vacuous and dry and cold Mercury to Venus to Earth to Mars to Jupiter to Saturn to Neptune to Pluto they unfold on their way to oblivion now the Third Orb is taking its turn in the mellow medium of the cosmic gyre its time and place in the sun for untold seasons a rolling blue heaven of water and wind suspended between the twin hells of ice and fire the planet that bore us in the warm shoals of salty seas to swim and run and fly entities spun off the master matrix a chorus of creation in harmony with the spheres from this whorl around a cosmic luminary we can see the way from birth through being to death a breath wherein life is what we do between glimmer and flash and the fecund beauty of this dynamic globe a vision of true religion all we need to know so worry not about the end for it is but foreshadowing an outer orbit where darkness and cold dominate the world but only for as long as a dreamless sleep lasts then a gleam appears in the void and spheres explode like a perennial Spring to redecorate the sky with another world where god dies and is reborn
COYOTE!Yes you are the coy one I know but do not know you O ancient spirit of the wild in that shaggy coat on those spindly legs your eyes, ears, nose alert to every flash every tick every scent in the air you stare at me from your prevalence that place overlooking the maternal sea you watch me in my monstrosity to see a movement in my eyes to hear a click from my machinations you know the horror that comes from my kind the blind hatred that terrorizes your terrain but you do not know our fear of you the reason for our cruelty you do not know how your presence frightens us because we see you as the enemy like all that threaten our fantasy of dominion yet little do we know that you guarantee our existence for if you thrive we thrive if you die we die but our destruction would be nothing to you except losing the easy pickings of our waste for you have been here for eons and you are a spirit aloof the proof that life endures
your howl echoes the wind the cry of the whale and the buzz of the honey bee although you run at the sight of me at the sound of my infernal machine at the scent of my fouled flesh I smile at the sight of you at the soothing quiet in your territory at the wild fragrance of your province and as you run and become one with the chaparral I long to join you in the hunt my nature leaps to follow you darting through manzanita rushing to leap granite and crags and calamity thrilling to being alive on this grand sphere yet I must be still and watch you disappear from view but not from vision
I laugh at your cry I would wane at your death and though I dwell on the verge of chaos I still see you standing there high on the Earth
O Indomitable One I hear your plaintive song on the seaborn air I remember your vigilant eyes and I revere you till I sleep forever O Coyote you are the wild wonder of the world
TIGER, TIGERWhere is that beast with face of fire where those golden eyes of desire burning brightly through the forest blazing night and day where the fang where the claw that rip the weakened flesh where the purifying strife the primal balance struck between life & death that test of strength before the dark where the stark asymmetry that flashes among the trees on limbs of muscled heat reminding all who walk the land that time is told in heartbeats and power is with the bright
now the deer is multiplying with the ease of luxury to reproduce in weakness around a patch of grass it comes to pass the fearful jaws of God's design have been locked by the murderous machinations of man and that huge rumbling roar like thunder from the continental skies has been silenced as flat as desiccated hides or body parts to please a wanton race
that gorgeous Asian flame is disappearing into the mist of memory now only vestiges in stockade zoos and pictures on plaster walls remind us of your renown because another wonder created in the glory of God's mentality is fading from the land where rapacious inhumanity tramples into dust all the various vitality that makes this beloved Earth the perfect place for death & birth as guarantees for life
Tiger, Tiger where will all the fire go when your great flame goes dark what will Nature's Spirit do when life & death no longer weigh around the world when swarms of peopled pestilence trample flowers underfoot topple trees for firewood and render golden cats into robes of vanity superstitious talismans and soup for insanity
Tiger, Tiger your face is full of terror your flame is fading faster than the glow of culture limned in ages past aghast I am at losing you the holy spirit of the night and day what shall become of thee
O Tiger, Tiger if you should disappear and no longer see the rising sun what shall become of me?
PAEAN FOR MOTHER TERESAHow can one find the tranquility for composing lines out of profound feelings when the Mother of Love has died? How can the loss of her life ever be endured since an infinite space the place left by her leaving only proves the gap widening among us? She taught us love not the sentimental delusion we fancy not the pretended doting of family but the mind-searing gut-grinding heart-crunching generosity for the most rejected and neglected of people. Charity. How easy a word! So often spat like a bad joke or dripped by hypocrites on the steps to power but she salvaged that precious word among the jetsam of our progress she planted it with her tiny hands upon the festering flesh of the forgotten she raised it Lazarus-like from sick and mangled bones among the stones she cultivated the word in a garden of contemporary terror and by her saintly hands it bloomed amid the stricken of society and it was good
she spread it among the filthy streets like flowers for a festival for too brief a span of years she lived and died among the forlorn as do we all but she knew them she knew their unbearable suffering the horrifying anguish in their aimless eyes and she touched them with her magnanimous hands and she soothed their trembling limbs and she bathed their diseased bodies and she fed them and she nursed them till they fell back into the oblivion whence they came whence we all came and they are we for we live with the destitute poor despite our weight and wealth despite our grandiose strutting on this stage we too lie there among the miserable their hearts beating as ours their bodies craving as ours their minds fearful as ours they dying as we are dying yet by tending to them in their morbid misery with the tiny mortal instrument of her grand immortal soul the greatest of the great cared for the poorest of the poor the sore and the sick reflecting from the mirror of humanity
she reached round the world with her mothering arms she embraced you and me with her holy charms though we are the lonely though we are the lost though we too are the wretched who suffer the sins of our kind she cared for us all for too few days in this woeful world we lay in the lap of her love. She was our pieta.
THE BIRD, THE RAINBOW, AND I (To hear a melody composed for this poem, go to The Music of Sean Damon.)If I were a bird so airy and bright, and you beckoned to me, I'd land on your hand, if I were a bird so cheerful and light.
If I were a bow arching the sky, and you became sad, I'd color the gray, were I a rainbow painting the sky.
But you see what I am and should take me so. If you want something else go fish in the stars. You know what I am-- then just take me so.
BLESSED ONE (To hear a melody composed for this poem, go to The Music of Sean Damon.)I think of you when sunlight glances off the quavering sea; I think of you when the moon dances upon a glassy stream.
I see you when the morning light unveils the sylvan hills, but also in the darkest night when everything is still.
I hear you as the ocean waves cheer up the rocky shore and in the middle of woodland naves with wilderness my lore.
You are with me everywhere, however far away. No matter how I'm fraught with care, you sanctify my days.
MUSIC IN MARIA (To hear a melody composed for this poem, go to The Music of Sean Damon.)There's music in Maria's name, a tune I've always known, a melody in memory, heard since I was born.
It comforts me in misery-- the joy of life it seems. Even when I'm sleeping I hear it in my dreams.
When uttered in a quiet way her name is more than prayer; when sung in harmony it's all that I can bear.
There's music in her lovely name-- a holy aria. I sing it to the heavens: Thank God for Maria!
TO KEATSWhen people speak of ghosts adrift across the panorama of the mind I scoff at their credulity and gloat in my intelligence for only fools could think they see a wisp where body might have been this mattered life but a blink a wink reflected off a tiny sphere that disappears eternally into the roiling stream at best a memory at worst a dream yet as the autumn leaves turn brown and whirl around me lonely in a chilling wind I think of one melancholy soul who haunts me through each passing year not to frighten but enlighten to the truth of all I need believe the spectre of a glory in the eye or in the hand of man and the song of this immortal bard the spirit that ingratiates the lark incorporates the word into a faith echoes in the dark to brighten deathly silence and intimidate the sadness with a rhyme a line a precious grave glowing off the tablature enraptured by the magic of his voice upon a page the music in a phrase I listen for the harmony inside created by a psychic flow between imaginations I listen with my soul attached and watch a mystery enfold with art the ritual poet priest and beauty grace inherent in the feast at least I have gained a rationale for hope at most a goal in life having lived enough to know those wondrous works of that young man too soon to die so long to live who scaled Parnassus between the mount of Shakespeare and the crest of Yeats to sing into the sky to sing to light the very heavens and spark a cosmic shower illuminating centuries of night
SHADOW OF THE WOLFWhat this we do against the wolf this murdering madness this monstrous zeal to blast them into dark oblivion why do we conjure such a wickedness there in those wiley hunters no different in their way of striving from thousands of other fang & claw kinds that catch and kill and tear the tender flesh why do we fear and hate and murder those eaters of the eaten while we too run abreast of them to dominate the fields of prey
I say we see in those bright looks those cunning minds that harmonize survival a shadow of ourselves long denied inside of costumes custom made to bless our fantasies believing deities of such imagining must favor fools who claim to be born godlike though sprung from slime as vulgar as any found along the teeming seam of sea and sand electrified by a meteoric sky where all the brothersisters of the sun and moon have risen to glorify the world I see in them in those resilient masters of the chase a race of roving bands that ran across tundras and savannahs to catch and kill and tear the tender flesh and built some golden towers with manipulative minds to monumentalize humanity with grandeur and with grace
but covered imcompletely by our artful clothes the nature of the wolf lies within us lurking with its burning eyes to seize a moment to survive for we are just the beast at heart pretending to be spirits meant for heaven and any shadow of the monster in our souls reminds us of our equanimity with all alive despite our dreaming in form of prayer the wolf recalls in haunting howls that Eden yet exists on Earth where we no more than they deserve what we can make of paradise
AN ACT OF CHARITYI always thought love was simply felt a warm flow along the heart like a mother's soothing hand upon a sigh and when a pretty face smiled at me I thought that delicious pain was love as only gods could know then ice would quickly melt as the madness of romance flashed out of a vernal sky and fired up the fantasy of mind to blind me to the truth of beauty
but now too late for youth I find that love is more a giving than a taking a gentle yet constant ray of light which may delight or merely reassure a dying life that someone cares about the pain like bending to the ground even if it hurts even if the world displays a mocking face to help a wounded bird
the race of humankind is both blessed and cursed beyond all others on this puzzling course of cosmic links by having mental eyes to see around the center of a moment to where an act of charity can help a fellow in the fields of strife to know in life some peace if but a glimpse between the dawn and the dark
hark to what the heart can do for them instead of they to do for you love is more than merely feeling good at what a mother or a lover does by nature when the tide is still love is but a strain of self turning out to touch another soul with kindness generating heat in place of cold a breasted beat evolving into song for all to sing
COMPLAINT TO LESBIAIn gathering flowers while you may your preference for pistils flies in the face of April and verifies a cruelty an act of terror to the heart devastating the history of the wild rose that sweet flower of life meant for men-women its tender petals pulsing toward the opposite pole where Apollo meets Aurora across the shining sky
all the flowers of the field depend upon that good old connexion to yield the fruit to manifest the cosmic destiny do not let your genes languish in a dessicated pool in keeping with that cursed kin who perish without proper offspring doing well for zero growth but could be hell yet you an angel of the light because of your delight in the sheen of life why then sacrifice your glorious gender upon a butting bed when progeny to save us all could come from fruitful penetration
I hear the howling wind or is it a lover wailing on a lonely hill
turning in upon yourself will kill the rose stop the song and tear the golden tower down renown is but an echo in a vacant room so dance before me in your gauzy gown your terpsicore will raise applause and a million poles to fly your fragrant flag
O please no hag with hags should you become but step with me in passions pas de deux where we become a holy one of matching hemispheres to spin harmoniously through nights of light and days of yang in yin the human race is won like others round the sun by male to female conjuring wake to sleep of works in living art to magnify humanity so stop the inward turning and spiral out to meet the truly gay where cross and arrow consort to make the Earth a world
TO MIMIIf love at first is sighted through the eyes as some believe and many have since English Will wrote to ladies dark as mystery but bright enough to make divine a mere man then I when looking into your fair lights could only in reflected beauty shine and be abreathed with incandescent thoughts of memories and dreams in dormancy
if love-- but here I falter in my foolish flight for I a poor man given up to art and love and all that Nature offers us without the wealth of things or a name of worldly fame now I do merely make these humble words a simply sung reality to break the spell of ghost or fantasy that may inhibit who we are
so let us speak beyond the seen look upon our feelings faced to find a harmony of mind amid the noisy kind and know the quiet goodness in our souls
LINES ON A CARCASSLying like a log across the beach at first it seemed but driftwood so I started not to care yet around it horror hung in atmosphere of death then I would see the hint of rotten flesh the air confirming fear but curiosity adamant I stepped upwind to look closely at the huge corpse of a living thing long and thick as a redwood trunk though tapered to a torpedo shape as if a rusted artifact of war finally stormed ashore having decades rolled along the crystalline floor of silent seas
the simile struck me to the heart when I perceived three oozing bullet holes bored into the suntaut flesh man made orifices that made no sense except to signify the race for total domination for it must have been a mammal of the ocean though flippers now only sad little bones where limbs of liquid speed had flown a sealion probably a male by its massive neck traced with stringy fur once glorious a royal action of the coastal surf and rocky isles that fought duels mounted mates and sired pups year to year to keep its kind abreast of the great tug-o-war of life but this majestic mavin of the fin invested forest had lost the struggle to the master race when fishing for a livelihood became condemned by riflefire when burning lead sank that magnificent craft of God and a smoking trawler growled back to port its belly stuffed with fish
see the travesty of Darwin here excuses why the world is going to hell as we pile lox onto points of toast while sipping bubbles of nepenthe and talk to friends of prices high and low how slow we are to see the end of all the misery we cause to brothersisters of the landairsea our greatest tragedy may be the closing of our eyes to events fore & aft to hide the desperation we will feel amid our starving billions not for want of food because we can easily invent to eat substitutes for the wild but we cannot reinvent a balanced world and what may be preserved in artifice cannot be grown on missing trees or extracted from barren seas for to know the spirit of life beside ourselves we need to believe and practice a religion more that heeds the Way of Earth than human pride echoed from the sky before we find our own kind rotting headless carcasses beached upon an alien shore
TO MARIAYou ask for words to signify the beginning of knowing our magnetic hemispheres sparking in the shadows of uncertainty like light glancing off glass in unfamiliar rooms
to show you of my heart and mind I oblige your thoughtful request embedded as a jewel in the matrix of our flesh and blood an alarming notion that wakes me from this demiurge to attend to the balancing between us an equilibrium needed for the matching of a pair the making of a whole
the act is not to create myself to gratify your eyes but to be a natural man on the way of my becoming while bearing nothing else than truth as I seek to know who you are
to squeeze the essence of myself to stain this page with indelibility I strain to make visible the secret of the mystery that you may see the circuitry the pattern of my being before these letters disappear into the sanctums of our memories and we go on in other ways to find and touch the centers of our lives
I reply with words neither sentimental nor sublime to satisfy your curiosity to find a way beyond the flesh and meet your soul with mine to know if we can make a sphere of our own that gives more meaning to time
TO JULIAJewel of Russian Jewery gleaming off the highest steps of culture enduring history through calm and storm brilliant in the crown of civilization dear as creatures of the air I sit and stare in my graying state at your maturing youth and long to mingle with your mind and accidentally graze your golden hair like the tattered wings of a migratory monarch glancing off the petals of a flower The hour late for such romantic fantasies but I regardless of my stiffening melt into the basic shape of life when face to face with your warming light bright as sunshine on the frosty autumn Earth soothing as the glow of art no power born can bend me from your eyes for forces far beyond these pitiful human ways turn me toward you as if to manufacture meaning from the simple fact that you are here a graceful act played upon this dreadful stage leaving feminine footprints on this pallid page remnants for an aging faun to fondle in yon imagining a would-be tryst for love and truth far beyond the potency of a poor old poet straining to reach a rising star
COURTSHIPTo impress women of beauty some men build their bodies to look like ancient heroes others build towers in the air most drive machines like tame mythic beasts and many keep treasures to dazzle female minds to win women of grace all men strut like warriors as if to save a castle from barbarian hordes we act upon our animality at its greatest power so I a simple man encode my primate call in simple words on a page
FOOTSTEPSThe strong iambus drives the language like a drum; trochees halt and go as if the end uncertain, but the anapest tumbles along with no thought of a moment in time; dactyls reverse the downbeat to detain the momentum, then the spondees and the pyrrhics with their long couples of matched beats go in great strides till they reach the last rhyme.
HUMANKINDWe are but animals in this world of living things not gods yet as some would so desire for the breach between sea and sky leaves little room for error though we think mistakes prelimn success scars can mar the face of beauty alter vision and cripple sporting kings
let us not build statues to ourselves but dignify our heritage with tributes to the future far beyond the importance of you or me our kind can be sanctified with endless acts of love planted in the Earth and in the hearts of children like seeds from fruit ripened in the sun a deity truly known
PHOENIXI see a chaos coming periodic as the birth and death of a star I see the great orb shifting to right herself under blankets of pain layer upon layer of evil waste of a decadentribe
I see a slow silent horror spreading across the face of the Earth deaf to prayer too late for done deeds the Mother's festering flesh diseased like teeming shoals of a perverted estuary
I see the great veil of life turning brown the shield torn apart an eye of God glaring at us wandering in & out of the maze learning nothing of the design and so fascinated by our own beating hearts we fail to keep in tune
I see ashes in the sand where once a golden tower stood and people climbed the marble stairs to seek the signs of eternity but now stone and bone are dust unblessed by any rain and the only hope for humankind glows beneath a gray powder of dismay
I see the embers of this hope smoulder beneath a thick fall of sin as radiant coals flicker with purifying fire struggling to be born like a fetus of magma fusing into a great bird whirling in a flash of wings flaming out of the cauterized decay to signal with a lyrical cry the rebirth of humanity
I see the storm the ash the embryonic bird and I pray
DEMIURGEHow deny the force within me driving unto you these imaginings of God and the rose channeled into throbbing flesh
how restrain this elemental urge to find in your dark mystery that magnetic feast pulling me into you holding till night opens like a flower
how ignore this wondrous magnitude cycling our great pulsing body into an infinitude of living spheres lest I were to end this surging strife and with a long last cry forfeit my life
LOVESONG IN THE DARKMaria goes upon a lyric air beatified by beauty she passes here and there unbidden and unspeaking like a phantasmic bird sailing across the northern sky for the yearnings of every lonely man to weave a melody unheard yet infinite as light shining through the universe the hackneyed ray of hope that luminates the night as long as life begins again and death is not an end to possibilities of love she comes in body but goes in mind a memory of promises prophesied by goddesses of wisdom and rebirth too important not to keep she stays in the periphery perhaps out of reach but not so long as never and not so brief as now on each step to see another day I hold her close as life itself yet never in my arms for she cannot be with me despite my desire persistent as waves upon the sand despite her charm consistent as the opening of flowers I know her as illusion tantalizing with her liquid lure to seem the embodiment of love but only the delusion in the striving of a desperate soul climbing out of a stagnant well beatific as Beatrice Maria plays the same role the only difference being that I would seek her anyplace to try by complementary grace to make a paradise of hell
SALMON SONGAll hope for life on Earth rides with those great leaps that mercurial spirit flashing with mighty lashing to find the once pure source hidden from everything but the eye of God they strive from a single cell toward absolute beauty to quicken those opalescent spheres with a primitive kiss that echoes through eons then they die in the bliss of genesis the circle complete but more than death befalls those silverspirits denied the goal of their resolute striving their vital part in the grand struggle to rise from magmaic mud to touch the tip of the cosmic mind and more than death is nevermore a notion of might have been lost in the fading of memory when once forgotten no wish can be granted no magic potion can rouse the fish from the pictured page where it lies in state with the bird the bear and the butterfly thrusting from beginning to end their magnificent bodies agleam with desire they sail in undulant rhyme drive the end to another beginning and drag us all behind in a wake of wonder to witness a ritual sublime be it requiem or rhapsody
SIMPLE WORDSTo impress women of beauty some men build their bodies to look like ancient heroes others build towers in the air most drive machines like tame mythic beasts and many keep treasures to dazzle female minds to win women of grace all men strut like warriors as if to save a castle from barbarian hordes we act upon our animality at its greatest power so I a simple man encode my primate call in simple words on a page
DIRGEWhen I die I will wander into the wild and cry one last time for the soul of our kind I will find a cliff on the ocean with mountains to the east I will sit on a slab of granite and lean against a great tree from where I can see the eagle, salmon, and whale I will be alone with my death for no one can help me as well as the Earth in my final sacrifice I will offer my bones to the land my eyes to the air my blood to the sea I will fast and drink the rain and wait till snow blankets my body then fall asleep to the night wind and dream no more forever I will be dormant until the perennial Spring when I shall be reborn to this sacred sphere you will not see me then as I was before but I will be here I will always be here strong as the sea loyal as the light lasting as life itself and the meaning of my words will stay on your mind till you join me in eternity
THE FOLLY OF HUMAN VANITYWe make our marks on Earth like footprints in the sand until the flowing tide removes every trace of man.
PSALM 9When time for me to go I'll fly to a southern sea find a coral beauty mark on the shining face on which to contemplate my life and leave the world to pass its fancy caught in technicalities Athwart the grace that turns the wheel I'll keep my aged flesh away from points of science I'll think about the beauty we made forget the waste we wrought with brains too big for instinct too small for real heroics The truth is in our deeds Stalwart still of heart I'll build a boat upon a quiet beach buy a bottle of wine salute the light from dawn to dusk while laughing through the day till drops of joy blur the shards of sorrow then sail away into that good night where waves will carry me home
SONNET 10Yes, Iris, you're a bow between the rains, a warming glow reflected in your name to raise the vision skyward over clouds along an equatorial curve that curls into a singular line of beauty and coincides into a perfect sphere. Brightened by the sunlight in your eyes, a prism blossoms from your smile and sprays away with color all sadness and pain, infusing things with sweetness and delight like grace from gods forgotten in the race to catch the frozen coins of vanity. O what a joy for me so worn to find in you a covenant of my own kind!
SONNET 15When I in sleep remake the soul of you, as a flesh appearing image I can feel, belief in ghosts means more to me than all the magic spirits in the air to be adored or feared. Memories of love and hate create these visions haunting me like some beloved witch who turned to swine in my esteem the hope I left behind. Now, bereft of you I mix the two in real or imaginary time: to dream, for dreams are all that I am left of hope for immortality. Going beyond this ball means little lest I cleave to thought and things of beauty, whether stones or bones or airs or wings or even ghosts.
PRAYERWe are but animals in this world of living things not gods as some would so believe the breach between sea and sky leaves little room for error though we know mistakes prelude success scars can mar the face of beauty alter vision and cripple sporting kings let us not build statues to ourselves but dignify our heritage with tributes to the future far beyond the importance of you or me our kind can be sanctified with endless acts of love planted in the Earth and in the hearts of children like seeds from fruit ripened in the sun
THE TIME OF THE FLOWERNow is the time of the flower bright in its golden hour when spheres and attendant rings encircle what winter brings to warm them with godly light born between day and night to incubate a force of green thriving where the dead had been now the hemisphere has spun into a rondo with sun drawing juice up leg and tree defying death and gravity now the wonder of the world becomes an embryo unfurled-- out of mystery out of time out of reason out of rhyme Memories of sadness pass with the greening of the grass and dreams of futures are renewed in a skyclearing mood-- to laugh to tear the clouds apart and let the light into a heart O winter but a sleeping space in the running of the race a harbinger of death decreed for which life is guaranteed for nothing dies but is reborn just as certain as the morn so if I need to believe in tomorrow for reprieve I’ll find a flower in the May to reaffirm the world today Now the answer to the doom is but to find a life in bloom
SALUTATIONYou do not know my name my face means nothing to you but the voice you hear you may want to heed for I find in your eyes the words I speak no mystery clouds the air between your lips and mine I am the dummy to your hidden tongue because you dare not let the world know your state of mind I stand before you as yourself in the mirror yet no distortion here nor perversion nor deviance from the norm for the edge defines the center and to the heart of things we fly like neutrinos gone awry colliding seldom except for love or hate or transactions in free trade whether I walk away to live and die today or stay to sing another line will not change the meaning of the words you look to me to say and if I should disappear upon a wayward air another singer will appear to carry on the song that beats within your breast echoes off the walls we build between ourselves and hums along the lines of thought running here to there
SING WITH ME THE EARTH (To hear a melody composed for this poem, go to The Music of Sean Damon.)Sing with me the Earth in a voice to cry the wilderness and celebrate a mass let us find a pool of blue and watch the clouds blow by catch the sparkling of a star in the shuddering of the sea let us tarry long enough to spy the highest bird on air and the lowest life aground our kinship lies between where dominion dwells for everything and equality abounds the symmetry in flowers reflects the particles of things and matrices are wound into the patterns of the sky invisible to all but ever-searching eyes attending to the harmony where beauty in a major key echoes for eternity off the cosmic circle a song not for taking but partaking in the paradise music plays within sing with me the air we breathe as veils that wind the Earth sing with me the teaming seas and rumbles underground lightning shocks and mountains blowing fire sheltering trees for eagles on a spire savanna cats wildwood glades dewdrops on a stone beasts of prey beasts of grass and all those unknown living things that thrive in secret shades there we were before the eye of god appeared and here we are and will as long as heaven is the word for the sharing of this world and hell is made synonymous for doing as we please O sing the Earth with me rising with the sun hold now the pulse of life in every breath of air let each moment between full moons be the answer to a prayer
THE CAGED HEARTCages we can see or not see but always feel along the heart as the captive female bird flutters to be free with the free male hovering to be caught she sings to him and he to her virtuosos in duet oblivious to the dawn or dusk they would seize the now and make together that great flower of feathers that small storm or warm echoing off the farthest curves of the cosmos shaping the magic in a sphere she would fly the cage to make a cage around their unity then flight for them would be nothing more than a dance in rhythm with the blood to bring the grain and rain and the sunshine to seed I know the cage I built the cage within and without so when the bird struggles to be free I know the effort as vanity for the force of love encloses even the spirits of the bold commanding them to know the way and organize their lives we cannot escape our cages the universe as open space the ultimate illusion the more room we have to fly the ever-widening gyre but the coil is magnetized beyond imagination the limits to our lives mean life for every generation so sing until the sky turns blue and leap in exultation the joy is there within the cage as much as in midair yet loneliness can kill the soul in or out of cages so I shall set her free to find her mate to wrap themselves in simple love as threads of airy thinness spinning their looping circles into a golden orb enclosing them at heart in constantly tuned chords invisible to all
THE FLOWER IN THE STARSWings holding me aloft I descend to her florid matter spread my trembling limbs upon the velvet corolla and plunge for nectar ascending to my rising vigor she exposes a cosmic bloom bursting with golden pollen like sylph dust around a pullulating pattern ecstatic to make a milky way
TO A SPAWNYour dark mystery draws me like a salmon out of season booming upstream I remember not the home but the origin of it all and drive my ragged body battered by monumental falls along the one way travail to you shimmering as a warm pool shining as an opulent orb beckoning for that crimson moment when we burst from the wilderness to swim again
TREESBeckoning souls to climb into the sky they reach from ancient memory when spirits filled the wood and died upon the flower they make the air a paradise an elevated solitude in towers of the golden bough where alone becomes enjoy they orchestrate a livelihood of things a synchrony of wings upon a veil of deity as fantasies and dreams inspired by the holiness of living the magic in a simple word born of old imaginings bearing up the world god to god they grow age to age titans over time their strength is fundamental as elemental Earth steady in the sun they grant us immortality answering our prayers yet commonly ignored as peaks and clouds and leaves of grass and moon swollen seas trunks that stand for victory against the pull of turn roots equilibrating limbs celebrating leaves unto the light and dew upon the dark they wear the seasons gracefully renewing changing days while commemorating shade for fellows from the ark begin to end begin again the force around a ring perpetuating everything is manifest by nothing more than the power of the trees
TO A SUICIDEWhen you leaped from life for the last time I knew no more than hope for a lover's kiss bouquets became floral fantasies the romance of rain turned from tears to the acid fallout of pain unfelt on the flesh but throbbing in a hollow breast hiding from the search of strangers I scratch cuneiforms on limestone walls refusing to open my eyes to find the light fearing to open my fingers and touch the pulse of another loving hand
A LONELY WINGfog freezes on the trees the moon draws blood with the ebbing tide insipid air surrounds me the vacuum left since you died pictures words memories fade from mind as the sun descends beyond the invisible sea only music carries me day to day like a lonely wing upon a warm and soothing wind the melody sets me free the melody I sing
BUTTERFLIESwhen at a moment of beauty in mind looking for the secret of the sun I spied a medallion in the air near perfect minion of the fifth day fluttering like a message from God a lyrichrome silence too spirited to be a leaf more animosaic of memory imprinting a dream but blood flooded the vision and mindless I hurtled longing to net the quiet grace of the thing then stoppedead in my claw that great pulse played off the heliochord of creation quietly the spirit lost itself drifting out of view like the vapors of a tidepool on a luneless night the winged corpse would lie in state if best naptholenic under glass if worst dropped as twisted leaves left to rot forgotten on the ground now days and nights pass wingless scales tip to serve us in gold we progress to colonize the planet willing waste as artifacts while memories of beauty remain mausoleumed for musers to come and go no one seems to notice our bodies joining the wings and leaves into the rounding Earth anybody seen any butterflies blithely hovering over our graves
FROM A TREE IN THE GRASSSomething about the trunk of a tree growing in a sweet grassy lee that makes me want to rest my bones among some well-placed stones, as if I had found a chair waiting for one who'd like to share the panorama of Earth and sky with wild animals born to fly, with them that crawl on limb or leaf, with those inside a barken sheaf; and let my worldly worries drift away through the changes of an April day. At times like these we need to flee the crowd to find the consolation in a cloud.
GAIALet us go forth and stand upon the mountain climb the stairs of learning to see the future in the past let us mount our veiled goddess and kneel across her hemispheres in gratitude for grace given without demand rich the golden land deep the fertile sea broad the shining sky where destiny depends upon her seasoned hymns in harmony with God but discord in our temples we pray for inhumanity with satellites of vanity we play at games notorious for handfuls of sand let us go forth and listen to her song let us climb the stairs of learning to know the rhythm of her turning O Gaia thou art the heart of our beginning and the end of our becoming thou shalt have dominion in the symphony of stars Gaia Gaia Gaia let us hold you in our arms in the center of our minds to know your cycle spinning to feel your rhythm rolling to keep a candle burning for the honor of our home
HALL OF MIRRORSNo humanity in these palatial stores no Byzantium here the glitter of refracted gold pales the faces of those who wander as fools to find an ounce of joy at a mannequin hand and flock to the call of the wizards of wealth and trance to visions of things dancing in pools of glass embedded in brass for the glory of mercantile kings
SONG OF AN OLD HUNTERBy those deaths something of my soul was lost with the losing of theirs to shape a ghost that haunts me day to dreams no playful sprite sprung from fanciful stories but a monstrous mortal sin miscarried by memories as long as I live I cannot redeem myself by deed or prayer nor even if my bones hung upon a craven tree I was not born for dominion as many would have us believe but caretaker to this seaborn world and I forsook my destiny unable to raise the dead wantonly destroyed I only hope this brief lament may be memorialized by you that someday will give life to sons who would play the game of red and black upon the fields of green and blue
TO MOTHERHOODWho in sacrifice stands behind thee strong as a tree watchful as a beacon silently believing in our choice of chance call her Mary Mary Mary when redemption took the shape of a lamb three women of love shared that name like the litany of a fool lamenting the naked bones of innocence hung upon a stony hill as all are born the sons of man we long for the cradle of pious limbs from the moment we sucklife at the mind of god to the moment we lie limp in the arms of love oblivious to any but the circle of things knowing this the in between is but a warmwave on which we swim relating shores of memory to shores of dream
VOLCANOHear the murmuring miasma the borborygmal rumor listen to the rumbling roar trembling primordial plasma erupting cataclysmic horror at corruption on her heaving core fearstruck masses bow to kiss the ass of a golden baal parblind masses bend to follow their blown deadends braindead masses deafen to the cries of their own ken O Sacred Sphere your oracle rumbles below infernal stew roiling to regurgitate the message No she shrugs her cloudraped shoulders turns slowly through the seasons then vomits stygianspray all upon our feat of clay listen to the rumbling to the rumor the roar
VERNALISIn balance now the night the day set to the solar clockworks the true cosmic new year bells anew: that sunstruck angelus of the red, yellow, blue Halleluya-- she swells again! Makes little difference what we say what we do universal power pushes through all monuments raised in vain to build anew out of egg and seed. Halleluya-- she swells again!
TO LOVESeek royalty within a golden soul ascendant to the image of paradise waste no will upon mask, raiment, or word ignore a coldeye and commit to the light trust only noble deeds for not the singer but the magician of the music makes us know the truth We are saved less by the color and taste of the apple than by the integrity of its core-- even to the spirit of the seed adamant inside the earth Love greatness of spirit then virtue will be your wine art your bread and life your song
BLESS MEAs one frosted by too many solitary nights I warm to your sweetness delight in your rubied hands thrill to the splendor in your eyes Your mind dallies with sunlight and flowers upon your lips I stand rapt before your beauty and race to caress the tips of your dreams for the music you stir within my scarred breast turns discord to harmony anguish to joy in concert with the nuance of a pagan prayer Bless me with your essence that I may find you in or out of rhyme and project images of faith onto ancient walls with lights of sacred sympathy
PORTAL