ever opening (beginning my studies)

BEGINNING my studies the first step pleas'd me so much,

The mere fact consciousness, these forms, the power of motion,

The least insect or animal, the senses, eyesight, love,

The first step I say awed me and pleas'd me so much,

I have hardly gone and hardly wish'd to go any farther,

But stop and loiter all the time to sing it in ecstatic songs.


'tis this one first step i adore
and this one, now this
as the stuff of magic swirls all 'round
(with certain impacts to startle awake
when all else fails!)

so tender the innocence, ever opening
ever-blooming mind, arising
permeates all of creation with dream
so vivid, the god's can only hold their bellies
laughing!

how can we but explode in wonder
with each dandelion seed
burst
aloft on breath of
dancing pines and singing wires

and if we, opening, find no bottom
top or sides, we ever open!
and free of deadly reason
ever opening, remain...

between the lines (when i read the book)

what is known
is naught but tracer, sparked through ocean
dark and vast primordial
clamping like skin to bone, the unknown
to imagination
which plops meagre stone across inland sea
into a semblance of knowing
barely coalescing before it crumbles behind
as we dreamwalk this plank

to the dancing-tune of Caesar's pirates
who hold truth hostage
and treasure even the innocent lies
for their value in spanning the mighty gulf
between pale descriptors, bound by words
whose virtue is only in forestalling
the endless silence
and just homage to the fullness of things....

future past (eidelons)

even now i feel this skin within my skin
this heaving whoosh and flow
restless, and barely contained
in corpuscle of blood and bone

soon enough, cold and putrid
this body will be, and food for hungry ghosts still
elaborating upon, articulating, and embellishing
their own sarcophagi

all pinnacles achieved, not for naught!
but clearly not forever
as we are not a hairsbreadth away
from breathlessness

even the tears will pool, only here
where rivers run, and stars fall
and life presses forth from within and within
a belly full of eidolon

now, trapped in skullbones
and swirled in the dreaming-keeps
my ghost stretches, yawns, nonplussed
pummeling and kicking walls

and wondering what film obscures her eyes
that she can't be free'd, to see this world
with unblemished sight, clear as death
this world emptied of significance

but to know that, is peril for
no man would hold himself so cheap
without a warrior's rise to keep
his accruals, in citadel and crown

all primed and pumped for life's endeavor
to give one's all, this king to conquer
to rise upon this lofty throne
and seat this future eidolon

to eat, consume, digest, excrete
this stuff of life, all mine to matter
battle-finger'd, clutching air
carving a claim on forever

but forever silence peers, unmoving
cold as polar sky, storm crackling
arcing spirit into skin
sweet and wild, from ghosts within

now trapped and tunneling, worm'd through flesh
so full-forgetting, forgetful yet
and truth's shade, she's such a nag!
golden key concealed in rags

muttering down the cellar stairs
spiders crawling in her hair
ghost-drums pound in hollow ear
a warning, beckoning you there...

wishing well

yes we do spin from the ether
from the merest seed of idea
all the plagues of man
virile and reconstituting
from slightest mention
the least transmission igniting like wildfire
the foul reach of authority

in this unruly garden
of murky swamps and brambles
the dead of many wars lay
hollow-eyes beseeching:
O' fair brethren, ye left standing!
Keep the Standard! Fight the Fight!
... for which they were but fodder and loam
incubating this splendid madness
so tenaciously incorporating, while
leeching blood from slumb'ring host
to explode like incubus through the dreamlands
clouds of locusts, clouds of lies
penning history with the blood
and damnation of fools

yet nested in the thorns are blooms
unsurpassed in time and grace
unequaled in spontaneity and grandeur
splashed upon the cosmos to pale the stars
lining the inside of god's laughing eye
as we storm all the gates of heaven and hell
even as we dream them into being
armed with only our Word
and our will be done, or be damned!

yet this is our claim and our glory
as we are ever unchanging becoming
put to the task of moving worlds
with naught but a whisper to guide us
through this garden of dragons and thieves
with forked tongue and sufficient desire
to lay waste to civilization
blackened seed to beguiling vine
truth is reduced to a dowdy stump
beneath a most vigorous pretense

oh! i see the danger, and the awesome power
of this tiny vector of madness!
spinning its stories
and working it's word into deed
and as the gun has no mercy, nor a murderous heart
the mind can only enchant itself, so willfully!
as the truth curls tightened in the bud
of the inner-eye, yet dreaming

nameless and good
this golden flick of potential
this nectar of the infinite
is so liberally bestowed!

innocent
we drink it down like poison
and dance with the very devil till dawn

but seasoned
we turn water into wine
become wiser with the wishing
and wish very, very, very well...

we'll ride the waves

only mind crashes mightier than the sea
sculling mortals on the reefs beyond the breakers
where the word pearls from the deeps
bursting worlds asunder and hearts aflame
with the sheer majesty of their passage
through the void

sails plumed on forgotten wind careening
lost in thought
lost in the ocean of you
running hot, like a current
disbursing mind like lava
through the unknowing dream of us
rich with nuance, ripe to unfold
from ripple to stream to torrent

it pours forth from the pages written
upon the wind and tides
that pound a drumbeat upon the hearts
stretched taut across the abyss
cutting deep through time and space
beyond the marked channels, arising
into realms dissolved of meaning
of such suchness we are cleaved and run aground
off the shores of forever

pondering silence, between the battle-lines...

i do feel myself tooled through words
that would press and probe the mettle of me
to stamp me with indelible tooth
in a loose cross-weave, like a gunny-sack
for hauling grain to the front line
across a battlefield full of grand stagings
lost in the splash and panache of history, which i see
pools like blood in the furrows

and i am made whole by the rending
gut-shot and impaled
it is only the ghost of me that loses her skin
while the essence, trapped in the castle-keep
is loosed to greet the smoldering dawn
to meet her demise, her final dissolution
into the boundlessness beyond
all fields of endeavor

and isn't it ever thus?
that we live and die by the word
as well as by the sword
and need the warriors who flick steel from their pens,
for the spewing of epics from roiling deeps
where heart and mind, body and soul
clash for supremacy
all thundrous proclamation
and armor-piercing diction
to quiver those boots mired in bedrock,
knowing only the mundane path
to ordinary victory and defeat
which passes ignobly between the lines
of unuttered truth, and freedom
those merest of glimmerings from the silence
between volleys of harsh retorts
and thundering lies....

song of self

i feel the roots of the earth climb into my veins
as i am claimed like a vine
into the fecund moulder of soil
and this happens even as i walk
as plasma exchanges through invisible lymph
clear as it is black, and deep as space

i cannot leave her, this mother of mine
though i may lay my body down beyond the milky way
this mother
permeates beyond all knowing

and my father, oh! he is in my walls
as we breathe each other, in concert
clear and cold, like winter sun
we are delight!

the light!

the one-eye, all seeing
this eagle has no mercy
all truth is flayed to marrow
and thrown to the mother
in the kitchen, stirring her
dark belly

and nowhere can i go beyond love
i look behind and within to hear only the wind
echoing some lost chimes of me
echoing lost sentiment through forgotten chambers
of a heart long since dismembered
and split asunder