Night-Light

In the late night more hard rain is come again.
Shade pulled down upon the window pane,
Slapping wind cascades to a roaring thunder.


The black sun of mourning rises with that rain;
Rays, so cold from its burning, this slanting rain,
Heard drumming, drumming the window pane.


A twisted darkness wrung in hammering pain;
Long evenings spent alone listening to rain;
Night-light, sole companion, sharing the shame.

The Isles

Thousands fell then.  More thousands start to flee
The stars falling from the sky, thunderbolts of rock.


What compounds the cries of the dying is their anger;
Remorse at having taken no action, at ignoring warning.


That world falls away, dissolved into a dream of destruction;
The efforts of millenniums disappeared in dusts of desolation.


All that remains from the shards of civilization are our stories;
Tales told in verse of The Coming, crossing seas to The Isles.

Pagan

Sweet revenge is it to usurp;
To use, the imposed language
Of an oppressor so as to best him;
To prove the falseness of his claim.


When their songs got worse, so did
The people; these small-minded men,
Saluters of flags and rags. They who took
Our speech from us perverted our religion.


Those that crab sideways through their lives;
Their souls as dark and somber as their clothes,
Have forgotten us but we have not forgotten them.
Our time has come; for we, at long last, are awake.

The Green Man

The Wearing of the Green.

Ethics are like clothes.
If you can't live in them;
If you can't sleep in them;
If you can't fight in them,
Don't wear them: DagDa.

Twilight

Strange is the sizing of the setting Sun.
Blooming, swelling, great bellied beast;
Pregnant in its slinking, sliding decline.


Even when gone, its image is left
Seared on the eye; the negative
Of light, a burning ball of blurring
Blue, where before was scarlet.


In the twilight of the aging mind,
Dwindling in each passing sunset,
Strong afterimages still remain.

Release

Were we not pursued by ghosts;
Hunted, haunted, by our past;
Kept handcuffed  by memory,
We could accomplish anything.


Tethered to this mundane world;
Wings clipped by ten thousand
Taxing regulations to prevent
Our soaring flight to freedom,


We lose the gloss of luster and
Decay.  What's left for us to see
Are bars that bind this prison;
Not the space that lies beyond.


As birds in cages shall we sing
Of lost liberties and the theft
Of all aspiration. Nothing now
Is left but a waiting for release:


To fly.  

Spring to Space

Enough of weary winter, bring us warm Sun.


Some small movement, the slightest quiver,
Gives notice of changes still yet to come.


We come to heaven not ourselves alone;
But in the company of many multitudes.


Those who've gone before, ghosts of ancestors
Past, pursue us to assure us, in this our dream


To vault into the void; to spring into space.


Man wasn't meant to live here cramped
Upon the thin skin of one single planet;


But to explore and to seek unborn worlds.

Bealtaine

Art is sordid life's solitary defense.
Nature survives through a suicide;
By it's own occasional self-murder.

They who carry fire in their hearts
Most often bring it far in the dark,
Stolen away from suspicious eyes.

Ashes from deep memories, stirred
To glow by remembrance of beauty;
Embers kindled by the spark of Art:

Bealtaine. 

Query

The easy answer; the facile response
Shall not suffice.  For, see the fate
Fickle destiny has forced upon us.


Those who lack all magic prosper
While they of genius subsist
Abjectly in servile poverty.


The wise are vilified while witless,
Shallow fools are made celebrities;
Their sarcasm is considered sense.


The worse have the most children.
The best are barren and childless.
The world is filled with mediocrity.


That we should have come to this;
We who had such hope when young;
Now fallen down to such complacency,
Sits on us: condemnation and disgrace.

Memory

A pause and then a sigh and suddenly
Day changes to a melody of night.
The saffron sheen of streetlights
Flood amber into alleys of the city.

Ambient hues; hints of blue at corners
Color fast-fading musk of twilight balm
With after-images of this red sunset:
Evening submerges in turquoise night.

Unknowing

Dark, dank and desolate is the swamp of uncertainty.
It seems but shadows may enter
Into this valley of despondency.


Voices lifted from this abyss implore for clemency.
For surcease from the suffering;
From the terror of unknowing. 

They sink in sloth.  A slave in chains of gold is still a slave.
For their souls were won by ease;
Not strife.  Worn down by servile bow.

They practiced no art save that of careful conformity.
For this they were condemned
Never to stand in the glory of the sun;


To gaze forever forlorn at a cloud before the moon.

Being

Through Me pours life.


Neither concealed nor hidden
But in plain sight
Is emergence of existence.


Existence is.  It struggles
Not to Be.  It is revealed
In the standing light of noon.


Not birth; not death, can stop
Opening of this flower.
Womb; cause of all that is:


The She. 

Death

In silence does the hammer of the heart skip pounding.
To ghosts we ourselves must still appear as ghosts,
Spirits distraught, direction-less and lost.


Conceived in lust and born in error,
Humanity could hardly hope for eternity.
That which we are; we are
Although aspiring to angelic height.


That which we would be; that which
We would have been, is done; was
Finished with our end.  And yet


Nothing in our lives so honors us
As this acceptance of that fate
Which lies ahead for all those
Who are made of flesh:


Death.

Illusion

The edge of time cuts a fine line
Between what was and what will be
And we who believe that we be free
Are caged in the prison of the present
Now.