Breeze

Long coolness-es prolong these late afternoons,
Giving yellow light to make mellow of evenings;
A softness and a song of the mists of memories.


What seemed but newly formed in blue mornings,
Love that spun to form a turning axle of the world
In a golden dawn, when we had nothing but time,
Our pockets empty, 'cept for talent and ambition;


They talk of it and they speak of it but they know
Nothing of it: The cause that carries us forward;
The breeze that sweeps into whirlwind of power.

Heat

The gabardine of sorrows was worn and frayed;
What shade there is was narrow and was spare,
Pruned to give solace in shadow of gray somber.


High window and a burning sill let a still light in;
Mote-filled spotlight falls an oblong on the floor,
Spilled there in twisting shaft of obscene white.


Under this heat men die beneath the same sun.

City-Scape

Clouds, dirty and blue, preview coming storms.


With hook on block high upon wide shoulders,
We have made of ourselves stevedores of art.


Raw egg and stout is good breakfast for the City,
Down with fifth of whiskey on a table for guests.


The romance of a yellow warming of the sun
On brick walls resounds strains in the street.


Rain comes unexpectantly and unannounced. 


A small pattering of drops smooths the heat
To smoke the pavements in hisses of steam.  


Life at best is but the briefest of enchantments,
Spaces filled between the cradle and the grave;


Empty of all reason, and savage within its boast
Of meaning and its many religions of conformity.


A hard rain washes away all traces of our sins.

Acquaintances

No more tomorrows; that time has past.
I'm become acquainted with the wind.
Wind has made acquaintance with me.


This is nation for passage of strangers,
Of nodding heads and no word spoken,
Of the sideways glance and the snicker:


The white wine of indifference is served
Cold and chill.

Red upon the Green

Crimson shadows creep across the face
Of an emerald sun, red upon the green,
As the apricot sky floats copper clouds
To sail over a planet of silver and gold:


Invasion!

Mimesis

It has shown itself to be of something else,
Other form entirely; of that spectral music
Of the long expectancy come home at last.


The past is forever denied to us, a foreign
Land; that strange country alive in regret,
But sweetened as it is by passage of time.


Soft thoughts pervade on a summer's day
To give shrewd promise of high tomorrow;
Hot breeze, forcing a mimesis of memory:


Of new hope.

Twi-Lights

Summer wore her white moon glow
With a simple woven gown of night;
Sweat of dreams encased in pearls:
Twi-Lights.

Midnight Face

A sculptured cruelty carved in stone,
Midnight face, a darkening severity,
With storms creased upon its brow;
Somber in its death mask of repose:


Lincoln.

To Sail In Space

A hard religion is it that steers the green gaze of
Peace towards space; towards that travel by the
Smooth sail of worlds sounding distant harmony.
But still, to sail in space is to see the Face of God,
Stark and bold, far across the ocean sea of stars.

Boxes of Glass

Transparent things that live in boxes of glass.
Boxes of Glass. They live in big boxes of glass.


In dreams they'll remember twilight worlds,
Spaces of moving shadow glimpsed on cliffs;
Of still silences and of glances cold and bold.


Boxes of glass. They live in big boxes of glass.
Transparent things that live in boxes of glass.


Calm monitors of skies serve as only company,
Laser hues of brightest blue bath softest faces;
No lines of experience are carved in character.


Transparent things that live in boxes of glass.
Boxes of glass. They live in big boxes of glass.


No cares save clouds of memory follow them,
Dent impressions of dampness and of storm;
Ghosts plagued by the forgotten glory of Art.


Boxes of glass. They live in big boxes of glass.
Transparent things that live in boxes of glass.


Spotless minds are shores of every sweet desire,
Sunlit landscapes of delight and meadows of joy;
Of running tinkles of streams in green horizons.


Far from boxes of glass. From big boxes of glass.

Rainbows

Bespoken rainbows are true commerce of the air.
Brave temerity, their stately quietness pervades
An sending light. This theater was done for you;
Bought and paid for, to spy golden illumination.

Corridors of Power

Cypresses expanding into corridors of power,

Long avenue of tall trees, matching distance,
Arrogance and desire; to illustrate and show:

Ambition.

Notes

Too long in the waiting and too slow in the coming;
Such a sweet anarchy is love, soft notes of nihilism:


Only the dead remain famous and possess renown.
Those still living share an obscurity, a false identity,
Inside mechanical existence; martyred by celebrity.

Calm as night-seas asleep beneath the moon of gold,
Remain unknown and doze in your peace of solitude.

Signs

Sudden sincerity, a small movement of soul,
Silent apprehensions, smothered by kisses,
Danger signs of non-intentional discovery;


Sun-shower tears.

Tulips

Stems stirred in soft breezes,
Tawny red and ruddy yellow,
Dark golds in orange collars;
Chalices, on long stems, hang


True-Lips.

Spring Descending

The authority of Spring is held in hawks circling.
What seems that bright enchantment of wings
Hide talons sharping night in their cruel grasp;
Desperate climb and drop, descending death.

Gravity

Slag and sag and twist of space,
The dip and ditch of gravity sets; 
Drags, distorts, and follows on
The disturbance of dimension.


Row upon row, the crosses grow.


When the rich decide to play at war,
It's the poor of the world who'll die.

Black Tea

Flush with boiling waters the empty pot.


In vapor, which past perfidy will evaporate?
What heated whisper shall slowly dissipate?


Sizzle and escape of steam in the crock.

Rains of Fire

In cursive sickles of falling flames,
Rains of fire welcome the napalm
Mornings; starts of long, whiskey
Days, waiting upon night-dreads
Of dimmers of lights; those dark
Bringers of delusion and illusion,
Who dye black the stage of life.

Rope

Strung twirled, gives to rope a sisal strength,
Binding it into a winding solidarity of strands.


The floor of heaven, so swirled in stars inlaid,
Winks dark-ling lights above the turning Earth.


Into that mystic reverie of stars and strands,
Stuns suspended some strange connections;


Dark, light, earth and heaven, seem entwined;
For these are days that spark such memories:


Recollection of places and of faces juxtaposed
Against a background theme of twisting times.

Blue Sun

Sown unseen by some wintry wind off the sea,
Making a mean, moaning, wandering melody; 
In brown blowing fields, the wild barley moves.


Occasional ripples, long and slow, pass smooth
Over ground, ghosts of torn, tortured breezes;
Each passing cloud making an edge of darkness.


An inscription of monotony sits under a blue sun.

Marathon

In this so short a life of trouble,
By a mumble of time distorted,
By a distance blurred by years;


To sing another's melody,
To cover another's song,
Seems a waste of effort,
Seems a waste of tears.


We're long-limbed shining ones,
Who've refused caterpillar lives;
To stagger moment to moment.


We're built for the long run; for


Marathon.

Changes

Shirring sounds from oaks of scarlet
And from chestnuts green, precede;
Coming into view are changes new.


Fierce imagining, threnody of groan;
Waking from a long extinguishment
Of desire, Spring has sprung again.


Season of buds, butterflies and bees.

Congress

Chinks and edges show through
Lumber of the nation, a disjoint
Of fitting, and from these holes
A bothering rasp of mosquitoes
Is heard; hiss of madding voices.


Congress


Sits a boil upon the backside of


Commerce.

Celebration

In plain occasion, lacking rich celebration,
Silence stammers to a soft-voiced Spring;
Stutter of anticipation, of new beginning.


It brings waking from Winter's deep sleep;
From hibernation of desire, from the coma
Of ambition.  Action is granted a possibility.


A green fecundity forces buds from twigs,
Its sap pushing forth, an emerald stream;
Not content until it lifts its head into a leaf.


Tipped to life, crowding to be hooded born
In bloom, shoots shudder into tumescence;
Brightening of bough, sweating into flower. 

Sown in Suns

The school of night is best studied in a silence,
A curriculum of contemplation, of meditation;
As the thrown rug of heaven is sown in suns
And is woven within a tapestry of spun lights,
A chorus of colors spread in vast assemblies.


Attached by a thin slender thread of gravity,
A justification of arcs and tangents underlies
This plenitude of stars: the hidden equations.


Attend the intercourse of torches of evening,
Of far fairy worlds of blazing incandescence,
In awe; in a quiet, with bold astonished eyes.

Party Politics

A curse and a condemnation befalls them
From the public they were sworn to serve;
Still they continue in the enmity unabated.


So sure are they of their own importance,
They have not noticed their constituents
Long ago deserted and abandoned them.


So they dialog with themselves, a congress
Of gnats; every argument delivered with a 
Smirk, a discourse of banality, of innuendo.


Spit sarcasm sprays small spumes of wit,
Foam topping crashing waves of ridicule;
Pulled under, the currents of anger swirl.


Hatred stalls with it the entire body politic,
Sails the ship-of-state to strand on shoals;
Stranding its passengers on passage home. 

Origins

The naming of a thing is its beginning;
Its signifying assignment makes it so.


Name thy-Self into existence.  To do so, say:
This now is who I am, and not another; not
Employee of that, nor even follower of this.
Sunder oaths and ties.  Fierce be and bold.


Be not a foolish adherent of a faith.  Nor just
Some resident of such a country.  But be at wild
And at liberty.  State your name; never your
Number.  Break the binding bonds of destiny.


Small men are obeisant and obey the times;
Great men are defiant and make their times.

Colony

We are each planet for others, a colony.
Leaves that fall in Autumn are as mulch
For trees sprouting in the Spring.  White
Water crashing salt-stained rock raises
Mists of flung spray filled with sea lives
Born in waves spun onto sandy shores.


Day unto night and night into day again,
A great sadness overcomes us for them
Gone; weighted presences from our past.
To render to spirits solace for their death,
Whistle cantrips of joy to those departed.
Pipe to vanish by cheerful plangent sound.

Spells

Magician me with such enchantments.
Fine spells spill out from play of music.
Banish misfortune.  Shorten the long
Face of worry. Summer is at canter
In pipe and chanter; the gallop season
Of lemon-pink dawns riding in on song.

Doubt

An assassin of doubt steals quiet in the night.
Arrives at scarlet hours, in between midnight
And dawn; times of paleness, of blank dread.


Knowledge hides great sorrow; for knowing
Wisdom will make for worlds of lamentation.
Only ignorance is ever satiated; but curiosity
Devours; eats at everything; assimilates all.


The moving clouds shadow upon the moon.
Black woods of mourning fill deepness dark;
Northern wind blowing ice crystals in the air.

Oligarchy

Bend the knee but once, bad habit is made.
Consign those few to the slums of history
Who would dare to try to tyrant over you.

Reconciliation

Surely the wine of love serves music of sad melodies,
Composed of old songs celebrating bygone days:
Sweet enmities should be surrended in embrace.


Luster red, foliage of late autumns, bidding trees
Farewell in bitter parting; give an apt comparison:
Love and leaf, both crushed beneath heel of time.


Chained concatenations, rueful rosaries of slights,
Broken promises, cycles of lies; caught, captured,
Reduced to glib fabrication and smooth invention.


At ending, sigh of reconciliation, smile of redemption;
None of it really mattered.  A loveliness lives on to fill
The heart. The sound of things happening is enough.

Conflagration

Freedom is prairie fire; a fierce conflagration,
A flashing sound, that crackling of mesquite;
Hopping, jumping, flame, from field to fields.
It's yearning incandescence; a wanted light, 
Flaring far in despot lands to topple tyrants.

Helmet

Set onto the skies at night, a diamond ring of stars.
Caps and gowns; letters and degrees, soon perish,
Extinguished by their dimness and by their vapidity; 
But the helmet of honor sits upon the head forever:
Some leave behind a radiance; some few, a glory.

Lamentation

Summer's melody lies silent and unsung in Winter's grave.
My heart lies buried beneath it, under a white more white
Than white; a napkin of new snow covering depths below.


This be our glacier season; a slow grinding of ice mountains,
Scouring down canyons of the soul, sunken valleys of tears;
Deep crease of lamentation, rutted by the sorrow of despair.

Mist

A shroud of cloud crawls along the glistening grounds;
Bestowing them, granting them, deep covering of mist.
Fields that once did shimmer in sunlight die in shadow.


But comes the burning sun again, beauty is renewed.


Too like pulsings of the Sun are throbbings of desire.
New love coughs consuming flares, ovening old loves
To mold besotted new, devouring lost objects of lust.


Nothing new becomes born without burning the old.

Night Wind

An evening wind from far off the Sea is blowing.
Twilight twinkles, bleaching black skies in violet.


Now

Moving out front, and bowing low before a backdrop of stars,
Dressed to splendor; why it's our very own bright companion:


Moon.

Shiver

Azure and a cobalt hue, the sky,
Absent cloud, shivers in nudity.


Such clarity beams lines of sight.
Earth to Heaven, long laser links
To stars, outside a bowl of blue;
Stating an arrogance delivered:


Declaimed declaration. For now,
Here abide.  Prepared to travel.

Futility

There you are where you were;

Nothing is changed whatsoever.
A futility of fear floods America,
Filled to a frozen despondency.


Cornered under a charcoal sky,
Barred violet and darker gray,
Thundering; sending siren call,
Rumbling and complaining airs,


An endless iteration, a repetition
Of that old same hope; of at last:
This be the time; this be the man,
Echo a looping theme of despair.


Best to sail beneath a black flag,
As pirates all.  Or as a privateer
With letters of mark; loyal only
To the holy brotherhood of Art. 

Dance of Death

The legless grow new limbs and dance.
The sightless, sudden are given vision.
Armless stretch, reach way out, grasp
At rings; to ride carousels of the grave.


Purple poplars turned to copper and gold,
High-waisted trees; in Fall, their trousers
Of yellow leaves, twinkling in the breeze,
Swayed-wide, are pulled down in Autumn.


Thrumming dim, white winds of Winter:
Branches thwacking in shuddering cold,
Timid twitching with each blasting gasp;
Din of naked rubbing, twig against twig.


Smeared sun; bare, weak, pans boughs.
So nearly night, glimmering somberness
Open up death's imperium: nothingness.
Swallow day into maws of forgetfulness.


Heat and light hold together.  Join now
With an annealing of fire.  Annihilate all
Of life's desires. Link elbows. Slow step.
High hop! Jump the ditches of mortality.

Aorta

Weakened avenues of blood,
Arteries clogged and choked,
Blocked barricades; so caked
In fat, they've lost elasticity:
Shriveled, shrink, tighten, die.


Stillness and silence made this separation
A division; thick barrier between thought
And action, dead-end closure for defeat.


Seeming different, but is everywhere the same,
Deep slush of indecision stops aorta of the soul.

Grey Speckled Bird

By the sea, behind a stump of rock,
A hidden nest. Big waves crash in.
An undertow sucks out relentless,
Gravel rattling through the cracks;
In it a grey speckled bird calls out.

The Craft

The craft consists of precise expression of emotion
Transformed into common vernacular of the street.


So


What was felt, suppressed and feared stated aloud,
Is made acceptable by art and softened articulation.

Crystal Clear

Send a letter, scented in verbena,
On lavender paper. Make it short:
No.

Red Moon Rising

Midnight-rider, you far traveler,
Speed under this Moon of Blood.
Roll your bike's bars far forward.
Hammer down.  Know these big
Spaces and wide eastern plains
Were shortened to grey gardens
Long ago.  Escape that red Moon
Rising in the East and head West.


What's heard here is awful sound
Of little mosquito men sucking life
From independence; foul brokers
Of subjugation, they're who've made
Submission virtue. Flee to declare
Your soul free from all of them.
Ride hard away and seek out
West a Montana of the Mind.

Short-Sellers

So soon comes night. For you devourers of pricing
Are in the meanest occupation, employing device
For fixing worth and for the speculation of value;
Stunted libels: this shorting against advancement.


Night-travelers, you wallowers in the deep workings
Of adversity, takers of advantage of those troubled
By debt and default. You'll be a cause of recessions
And depression; all done for gain and spiteful profit.


Live in dark night.  No Moon nor Sun shines for you.

Acorn

Sealed securely within its copper setting,
Burred cone flared slim to burrow down,
Flanges of tiny serrated teeth screwing;
Dies; is buried. By death is born an oak.

The Coming Storm

Bands of pink and purple slotted throughout with black
Show contours of crevices and crevasses in the clouds:
Thundering herd of roiling, boiling, blue-white, coming
To unfurl ominous flags of animosity, stripes and stars;
In lightning barred, advancing across the sodden plane.

Hologram

Broken lights, beamed in splitting parallel lines;
Twined accelerations, slowed into a stimulatory.


Bifurcation comes together, united in single spasm;
A twining stimulation that produces coherent sight:


Our universe floats unaided imprinted on The Mind.

Sources

Not from the poor and not from the dispossessed,
Nor the displaced, the homeless and the indigent;
But from the educated elite, does terrorism come.


Too often, public education is deceptive instruction;
A propaganda, propagated for a deceitful purpose:
To enslave minds of youth to be servants of State.


One objective of education is sophisticated expression.
It's never a fawning sycophancy of supinely deferring
To the trite phrases and the tired speech of politicians.

Sword and Shield

Your Jesus and Jehovah and your Allah too,
Whimpering deities, beggars for obeisance;
These are not the gods for men born free.


There's a thunder in the hills, steps of old gods.
I hear their foot-falls, and they resonate in me.


Credit and debit, you who've ledgered your bleak
Lives away; you shall not speak for we hard men.
We've our own voice and it shouts harsh and loud.


They that cover heads in the presence of the Sun
Cannot know what they're swaying or praying to.


After a long imposed silence, a prolonged absence;
Just a memory, a fading hope, barely remembered 
Of what happened when we lived in caves of cliffs.


Smothering, sucking, light-less caverns, robbed of air
When the fire-rocks fell from out of blackening skies.


Stones of Heaven, catapulting down, tumbled at Man
By an angry Sun; beginning an inception of a religion,
Of trembling awe and fear, a sword and shield of God.

Keeled

The world tips sideways and is upset;
Bottom-keeled, drawing sails in seas.


An amazement awaits us; a surprise,
And the world becomes amusement,


When things are seen upside-down.

Sleety Days

Sleety days, slippery and wet, December brings
An abdication; a rest, a taking back of ambition.


For modern sensibilities, sheared of long desires;
Betrayed by banks, by governments, by church:
Bureaucrats are ferrets sharpening their teeth.


Speculators and grafters, those users of others,
Control the courts and the high offices of state; 
Only misfortune and misery are sole employed:


Sleety days have come again to a sleazy nation.

Frost

With morning frost is a coming of the folding within,
A compression, an inwards sliding of the Self inside;
A carapace forms against the chill, cocooning cares.


The Sun shorts itself; limits its light in colder months,
And Nature lessens with it: Winter is a small season;
Ivy turning to a brittle, bitter burgundy on the walls.


Whole world is folding itself in flannel now for Winter.

Piercing Wind

Late Autumn's piercing wind angles to penetrate
Every eave and tiny opening in house and heart;
Sharpening cold that whimpers Winter's coming.


Gray conquering blue, over coat of chilling cloud
Intimidates the cowering sky, threatening snow;
Dew crackles into frost as the grass grows hard. 


In this slated space, slack time before an avalanche
Of Fate dams up our drown world in frozen destiny;
Vow to make history, not be one on whom it's made.

Marble Halls

Last night I dreamt I dwelt in marble halls;
White columns deep veined red and green,
Stained yellow with age to a soft shimmer.


Soaring impression of freely floating suspension.


Groin of iron girdles the mellowed masonry;
Unseen ugliness firms integrity of structure,
Gray rays of steel bending flawless surface.


Satin stone leans upon metal beneath for strength.

Horn of Winter

The trains of winter horn warnings inconsolable;
They whistle plurals in doubling sign of dangers,
Torn voices divided into plaintive sheets of pain.


Winds of winter bear complaint of heavy sinking shapes;
Of cold mud and bones and of slogging boots of soldiers,
Mission unknown, pledging to uncomprehending deaths.


Sails of winter heavy-bellied with unknown destinies;
Bow of providence plowing beneath waves of chance,
Traveling on, fighting on, sailing on, to what grim port?

Medals and Ribbons

Medals and ribbons are smeared across the chests of uniforms
In praise of war.  The salary for killing is paid in gaudy badges.


A pride of patches across the breast makes of no man a knight
If the cause he serves and those deeds he does have no glory.


America was begun in refusal; in the statement of shouted No.
Laughter at the ridiculous crown of regency primed its origins. 


To speak truth to power has always been the province of poets;
Not of soldiers.  We swear allegiance to nothing but our own art.


Poetry forms an island nation, separate and distinct from others.
Soldiers obey, poets can't and won't; that's the real shield of life.

Afterward

Neither red nor blue, something in between;
A purple mist descends, transcending grasses
That lay below into soft shades of silvery gray;
A patchwork of shadows humped against trees.


Wars between the children of Moses and Muhammad
Have made many graves and ghosts.  They lie there.


Together.

Patriots of Bureaucracy

They were long dead long before they died.
Empty houses with darken windows drawn.
Boarded storefronts amongst silent streets.


Speak against power and be done with life.
You high officials, the dark veil of your laws
Gravities the heart; binds it down in statute.


Black letters enacted throttles enterprise;
Chokes commerce, and strangles synergy.
Bureaucrats ride us with their regulations.


These are patriots of particulars; critics of
Citizens, living lives of consensus and debt.
Resist. Barricade them in any way you can.

Drones

Once we were explorers of oceans and rivers:
Oars dipped into waters beneath a copper sky; 
Back-push of strokes on fan-splayed paddles;
Skulls pulling forwards, lapping of the waves.


But now our only adventures are all electronic:
Distant vistas brought close by one-way tunnels, 
An internet of social sets, and of safe romances;
Viewed but not visited, spied but never touched.


Here is the land of avatar and symbiont:
Wasting away with every new-born day,
Despiration usurps: overthrows knowledge,
Rules and laws, leaving nothing to fight for.


Starving, the sole commodity still available
To trade is despair; here dictators assume
Robes of priests and guns become the tools
Of barter.  Violence is left the only mediator,
A supreme court, in the settling of disputes.


Distance makes men cruel, robbing them of
Feeling; murdering drones from far away.
Philosophy ought not to trump humanity; 
Far better always to be kind than right.

Streets

Stretched sideways into a slow slide,
A descending curve, thinned at its end,
Scarfing notes drum sidewalks of the city.


Pearl grey pavements tap to the high heels
Of desire pounding riffs from hurried steps.


Resounding in the blurred morning: Streets.

Autumn Leaves

Crush that crisp dyed leaf curled beneath the heel.
Splinter its colors; prism them and parse them out
To spell sensuous yesterdays trampled underfoot.


Dampen it in Fall's rains; spin it with wintry winds
So the thin spine of its veins is sickened and dies;
Danger swirls of destruction, dissolved to shreds.


Autumn leave.  Let the cold of coming Winter in.

Tent of Stars

Turned to red low, oil fired light
Of a kerosene lamp sheds gold
Into the bent canopy of its top.


Sitting at opened flap, stare above
A-swim with suns in that vastness;
Seas of space, streams of beams.


Rivers of delight, flooding,
Blanketing night to sleep;
Floating in a tent of stars.

Day Dream

To save ourselves, we've made ourselves invisible,
Deliberately hid away our talents and our abilities,
For poverty has come from diminishment of days;
Herds of humanity thunder towards cliffs of war.

Infinity

The name for God is number;
Not a single digit or decimal,
But a ratio and a relationship
Of what is and of what's not:
Infinity

Celebrity

Bound and fettered as they are;
Yet still think themselves at liberty
While a forest of eyes constrains,
Closes in, to capture their freedom;
They'll not notice they're in prison.


Those who parade their identities.


Subtract, empty the void within
From which all sacred numbers
Flow, and the greater cavern
Of identity is left a wasteland;
Desolate, devoid of limitation.


Nothing of Self remains to see.