Poetry

An eternal hunger is poetry,
ever striving birth from dust
carried on cosmic winds
and settled on lover's hearts,
those ocean's waves beating joyous drums
to the flower's kiss
and whippoorwill's call.

Recovery Verses I - XV

I

On rabbit-trail paths
through scarring brier
thought's value seems diminished,
it's office grudgingly performed,
and actions deliberately chosen
lead to fells impassable.
I turn home now
no stranger to trials,
endurance now enabled,
not contented to lie still.
What ugly feast my foe celebrates,
he will not have me today;
Rapacious creditor?  Indeed!


II

Born to flirt
and write light verse
he grew more gray
each passing day.
Ever adroit with words
and quick to pursue
some bohemian triumph
that would never have occurred
of women to value,
his self just didn't fit, exactly,
as a shadow across broken ground
in late afternoon seems a caricature
of it's caster.
Nimble with objects, less so with lives,
those areas he found wanting
his God began to heal
in a most merciful act of Love,
deeming him complete,
a man.


III

Being as a mirror answers,
yet still a chimera
in the dense companion
that is my mind,
getting to know my character
for its more pleasant side,
I can forget, momentarily,
a season when I hurt me badly.
Totally forgiving?
Would that I were.
I plague me still
but no longer call me bonehead.


IV

Who, now seeing her so happy,
can imagine her so lost,
so confined within disquietude?
And as for him?
Why, he goes on, too,
relatively unfettered.
The brute of epic nightmare,
having paid homage
to convention and law
can think himself humanistic
and see, again,
the natural poetry
of every relationship.


V

In Retreat from Reason
more correctly thought as
full flight from reality
he sees the world populated
by grinning black dogs
and sensible white sheep.
Still, in that unending waste of delirium,
so long ago in the language of the wounded,
even there can lucidity make a place
and come to call
as a small, blue bird.


VI

The film of my mind's eye
records human behavior.
But my vision allows for
interpretation of motive.
So judge not,
not that you avoid judgment,
rather that we never look
at two people
or one person twice
in the same way.


VII

The body weakens with age
but the soul grows stronger
and while the viper bite of alcohol
may kill a man, survived
the experience may imbue his spirit
with wisdom, too.



VIII

This passion of our kind
For the process of finding out
Is a fact one can hardly doubt,
But I would rejoice in it more
If I knew more clearly what
We wanted the knowledge for,
Felt certain still that the mind
Is free to know or not.


IX

He abdicated life with relative ease,
dismissed friends, rejected loves,
and on return questions,
"Why no celebration?"


X

Dispassionately taking in everything
the eye behind my eyes
does not weep
          yet registers pain
does not judge
          while acknowledging evil
does not forget
          and fights to forgive.

XI

The addict does what addicts can,
things improbable for Man.
But one thing well beyond his reach,
the addict cannot master speech.
And on a subjugated plain,
among the desperate and slain,
he stalks his prize with hands on hips,
while drivel gushes from his lips.

XII

Through an upturned bottle
past the crystal ellipse,
the sky bloomed blood-red fire
while thundering in my skull
like screams in a dream
as the wind shreds trees.
Caught up in disease
I demanded of God,
"Burn me incandescent
right where I stand!"
He chose mercy and healing
instead.

XIII

Had you known me once
you might still know me now
though in a different light and life.
And this place is not
          where you know me from
though it should not surprise you
          to find me here, un-concealed.
I feel no longer guilt,
nor shame, unable to hate,
freely choosing now love.

XIV

I don't know, one day
          to the next
from where it will come
learning how to make it happen
          day by day, 24 hour increments
each period an emergency replete
          with its own urgency.
Powerlessness. I can't make it happen
learning now how to allow
life to unfold.

XV

Here am I
destroying my liver
and you walk about
as if nothing has happened?
This kombucha I keep
in a refrigerated heart
and sip from whenever
the compulsion fails to start
is nothing more than
an imagined hurt
a resentment no more delicious
than the dirt
I choose to feed it.

Making Love With You

Flowing together weightless
a kelp garden between the sheets
I dive back to re-discover you
now whispering, touch me,
the moon pulling a tide of emotion
pent-up power expressed in gasps
streaming through filtered rays
spears of light striking bodies
riding like gliders in slow motion.

With My Eyes Open

Dancing to your beauty
hearing in your words
the accents of every where
I no longer see you,
still I come back every now and then
maybe so I can go again
maybe so I can still dream
with my eyes open.

Recovery Verse 6

The film of my mind's eye
records human behavior.
But my vision allows for
interpretation of motive.
So judge not,
not that you avoid judgment,
rather that we never look
at two people
or one person twice
in the same way.

Viper Bit

The body weakens with age
but the soul grows stronger
and while the viper bite of alcohol
may kill a man, survived
the experience may imbue his spirit
with wisdom, too.

WWW

I don't like what I see in me
how the World Wide Web
became the Weird Wired Wonder,
a sticky-toxic snare
sucking joy from tactile experience
inexorably drawing me away
from my Gutenberg roots.
Quantity versus quality now rules
as capacity for concentration
          and contemplation
 fade  slowly to black.

Fishing, Talking, Drinking

Having spent the day fishing
and talking and drinking,
now at my table to write alone
I'd choose to walk in the dark
solitary under threatening clouds,
their undersides reflecting Seattle's lights,
illuminating those thoughts 
I'd rather conceal.

In the following dawn's breeze
a vague sensation of my hands,
my feet and this ink
drifting, as I drift
above the clouds, above this flesh
in my shoes now soaked by dew,
is not weighed but buoyed 
by a few friendships, a few shared beers
and understanding it matters not
if we drift aimlessly
or go straight.

Addict-Speak

The addict does what addicts can,
things improbable for Man.
But one thing well beyond his reach,
the addict cannot master speech.
And on a subjugated plain,
among the desperate and slain,
he stalks his prize with hands on hips,
while drivel gushes from his lips.

A Smile

Lips set in a perfect heart
delicately curved and
pressed shut as if
holding important news
in a mouth eager to laugh;
her smile is more an explosion.

Distant Silence

Distant
in this not quite silent dusk
a sound so faint
it may be only silence itself,
and while straining with 'bated breath
a drifting scent recalls memories
of a place I've never been
and a time for which
I have no words.
And in that very instant
of this lost mad world
I will hear time itself
hold it's breath
and listen for me.

Purpose

To what end art
or music or poetry
but to frame a moment
and simply see something
of that moment itself,
ineffably ordinary and peculiar;
her seamed and wrinkled face,
a silence broken to uneven lengths,
the exact expression of love -
and in that moment have revealed
something you hide from yourself,
an ability to remove the frame
and still see the beauty
of His magnificent creations

A Drowsy Place

Not quite awake, not really asleep,
caught somehow in-between
in a state where I cannot keep
my opaque glance
off the mirror of mystery,
how I am wedged
'twixt that world of innocence,
with it's fancy new nakedness
and all dressed up with wonder,
and another,
where all play for keeps -
guarded and self-conscious,
ready to sunder anyone who'd straddle,
bearing eyes filled with secrets
they sense everyone is on to.
And still I believe
the child's delight
and court justice's sagacity
are largely indistinguishable.

Fulfillment

Hatred, being a cage
of personal choosing,
is a consumptive disease,
an act of volition
in losing individual freedom and self,
while love, in all it's prerequisites
requires lovers lose themselves,
to find themselves,
to become themselves.

Angst

I'm never alone in my dreams
or in my poetry
where I open myself to your inspection
but care not about your approval
yet my nightmares
find a lone soul
gasping for air in seas of rejection
while life ring words
glance off my fingertips
just out of reach.
But that's not really alone,
just a scarier version
of togetherness.

I Hope

While the likelihood
of my writing anything
of great social
or theological import'
is small
I hope someday two people
or maybe three, will say
"Hell yeah! I feel that way."

In a Picture

Juxtaposed to her charms
I examine my image
as a note of currency
held to the light for watermark
my smile suspiciously pleased
to have been caught
in the presence of beauty
the look in my eyes
one of apprehension
that the moment
was other than real
and won't be repeated

Thought for Today

It occurs to me:
God has placed billions upon billions
of doors on this planet
through which love may enter.
I am one

After Forty Years

Childhood friends and best men,
girls who slipped away
          or maybe escaped
meeting again after decades,
eating and drinking together
their talk a sparkling glitter in a glass
any passing would observe;
their babies having babies,
vacations, careers, retirements, dreams
lived or abandoned in favor of expedience.
Snow forming on heads
yet thunder still in minds,
laughter for dessert
as they pace the halls of their lives
from separate rooms adding panels
to rich tapestries depicting the prime of life.