Let Us Return Home

Let us return Home, let us go back,
Useless is this reckoning of seeking and getting,
Delight permeates all of today.
From the blue ocean of death
Life is flowing like nectar.
In life there is death; in death there is life.
So where is fear, where is fear?
The birds in the sky are singing “No death, no death!”
Day and night the tide of Immortality
Is descending here on earth.

Falling

It smells of dust
as the gentle rain begins.
I can taste it growing in the damp air;
no sweetness, not now.
These tears falling, falling, falling

Loose Ends

Each human life an epic
and unrepeatable anecdote
is still but a sample size of one
and may in the end be the control
for a much wilder experiment
being conducted in the next room.



The role of being myself
fell to my understudy
sometime in my fifteenth year.
That gawky loner
for whom nothingness came easy
had spent his life in the wings
mouthing the lines unaware
the smallness of his perspective.

Why

While examining the why's
(I want to know the reasons
my writing has ceased)
I see a tendency to give up
trying to relate an experience
you can not relate to
whether through pity, or envy,
or simple forgiveness
and so it drifts away
from the volume of my life experience
and the memory seems out of place,
almost mythical,
wandering restless in the fog
no longer even looking
for a place to land.

Trying to Relate

While examining the why's
(I want to know the reasons
my writing has ceased)
I see a tendency to give up
trying to relate an experience
you can not comprehend;
whether through pity, or envy,
or simple forgiveness.
And so it drifts away
from the volume of my life experience
and the memory seems out of place,
almost mythical,
wandering restless in the fog
no longer even looking
for a place to land.

For Emmalyn

Consider one apple, fall's bounty
tucked into a bushel of them.
And though much like all the other apples
it is individual already, cover and core.

Now think of this day, one you'll not recall
owing entirely to your new-formed youth;
your next breath, that quick sip of air,
ordinary, yet not, because it is yours
and you matter.

And so you were born
without knowing the date,  or why,
but the particular joy surrounding your arrival
and the swelling of hearts drawn to you -
you'll not understand until new life
springs from you.

And you have the experience
of your first apple yet in store.

Untitled

What is left behind

when crossing a frontier? 

Pain and melancholy? 

The tears of loved ones
who see a search for forgiveness
in rheumy eyes?
At the precipice
I feel the world changing.
Or is it me?

The Storm Within

Though formless I am battered
tossed for long ages
torn within by raging forces
incomprehensible conflict unknown to me
dwelling in dimensions of madness
the blackness fighting to engulf
my shattered fragments of rainbow
whiteness of incredible intensity
writhing in this malignant gloom
I am lost

Fears

I acted out of old fears
and it left me fearful.
In the ensuing loneliness,
I became unsure, isolated, fatigued
.... Oh, I was so tired.
And at the end of the day
I brought you my fear.
Seeking relief I put it at your feet
and called it love.
It was not.
And neither was the beating
my spirit failed to endure
because of your fear.

Parsing Thoughts

Only a few birds are still speaking

the troubled ones, I think, 

as this dusk settles to dark 

and I am left
to look about aimlessly 

and emptily seeking what can be said

for purchase against the unsayable.

And as I might attack a block of ice 

with pick and mallet 

I prize apart the compressed, 

the mass of my obdurate brain,

picking loose the skein of thoughts 

before compressing them anew, condensing,

distilling phrases to word.

Fear

Anger

Pain

Sin

God

My tragic capacity for self-deception 

with the limitation of language,

a driven force required 

to overcome these mantras,

I now see my words a simple finger 

pointing to the moon,

not the moon itself 

and the mallet life's strongest force,

Love

Maybe

Too long have I slumbered
secure within the discomfort
of transferred fears,
the paralyzing gifts
that kept me in a box
unable to venture out,
unable to risk.

I've been hindered, I believe,
believing in the false realities
imposed by others,
my inability to fulfill your expectations,
my feet held to the fire
for falling short.

Lately I spend much time thinking
maybe I have a right to ask for what I want.
Maybe I have a right to be happy.
Maybe it's acceptable, to me,
to have healthy relationships.

I should spend more time writing
and perhaps, one day
I can eliminate the word "maybe".

Uncomfortably Numb

Many holidays that came and went
Empty days and memories
Echoed laughter as time was spent
Something I refused to see

Each time I knew the day grew near
I felt uncomfortably numb
To wake alone like all days past
And wish it had never come

Is it future yesterdays
Or maybe past tomorrows
I fear the dawn and what it brings
This overwhelming sorrow

I've finally seen what it was I left
With no friends or family
What it is that hurts so much
My life went on without me

As I Die

Let this time for parting be sweet
As love melts to memory
          As pain to songs,
And the gentle last touch of your hand
Soft like a flower
That only blooms at night.
Be still now my soul
My death is but completion
My lamp no longer lights the way.

And while I am gone,
In the depth of your hopes
          And desires
Exists your knowledge of the beyond
          Unacknowledged,
Like bulbs under the snow
          Dream of spring,
My restless breath now rises
          To seek God unfettered.

A Meal, Post Marriage

Alone,  at my breakfast table
In an otherwise empty room,  ruminating
The bitter taste her beauty held,
How that kept me in sway
And the loss of two castles
Each charming in its way
And missing them (but it wasn't a catastrophe)
Even losing her (the voice and gestures
I'd loved)
I shan't have lied, but the art
Of losing is not hard to master
Though it does look like (write it pen!)
Like disaster.

Resentment

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.

Dreams

But a dream or two ago
we'd trade a kiss hello.
But the scourge of dreams... ?
Soon I'll wake, and it seems
certain my tears will flow.
In a world of constant change
some things never do.
That's how it's meant to be
with the love I've held for you.

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 its prerequisites
requires lovers lose themselves
to find themselves
to become themselves

The Burnished Copper Girl

"Have you seen her,"
          they all say,
"The red-haired woman
          with the sexy sway?"
"Yes I've seen her",
          one man cries,
"The ultimate enigma
          with bright blue eyes!"

"She caught my breath,"
          one man speaks.
"I've dreamt of her
          in my sleep."
Her copper locks glisten
          in the light.
Her milky skin glows
          like the moon at night.

She owns the room
          but unaware
of the reaction she cause'
          or the lengthy stares.
With all eyes upon her
          women wish they were she.
Men all want the woman
          and wish they were me.

More, Together

The reference to marriage
as institution belies
a value underlying promise,
that public proclamation
of private intentions
be more edifice than enterprise.

To say "a state of wedded bliss"
will not be too grand ideal,
no, hardly large enough
in fact, some states
are much too small
there being a country required.

And not a bond as some do claim
based on a fiat rate of exchange,
the economics don't pencil out
but put to rest any doubt
you are more, together
than the sum of parts.

Love Poem

My pen dips deep, lingering

in the warm inkwell of your endless ardor.

The ink of passion flows for me tonight 

and I would show you how it feels, 

my muse, to be truly needed.

I would write poems of love's power 

on the parchment of your skin, 

secret words, that only you can understand 

until my pen runs dry and I return 

to dip again, 

in ink created by ecstasy 

for the calligraphy of desire.

A Rare Thing

She was a rare thing
so fine and lacy she flowed
on the breeze or spoken word
walking about like a playful eddying wind
revealing its path in what it moves

Writings From The Dark Journals

I

I hate you, mirror.
I hate the mask you wear
your eyes assuming a depth
they do not possess, drawing me
into the grotto of your skull
filled with horrors, and words
so fake and scented
with rotting meat.

Last night, right here, sobbing
I asked you: What are you feeling?
Do you feel anything?
I feel this world is no longer viable
not for me, not any longer
Shut up and quit crying!
That is not a feeling.

II

In the time before dawn
I can recall, briefly,
what it is like to be myself
without the influence of others
and their alien ideas.

And then I'll lie here
twisting the emotions of the past year
into a knot, a story of madness
where I am the wooden ketch
that left the harbor today
on broad reach west, rounding the point
in my lee, Monterey Bay.

III

Fantasies of suicide; not enough.
To die is to cut off the pain.
When I dream of meeting the enemy
this is my dream:
gasoline, sickly sweet and pungent
ripples from my body, effortlessly
released, perfectly trained
on the true threat,
consuming this body,
burning away the lie,
leaving me in a new world
having morphed now
to a new man.

Recovery Verse 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.

Haiku 14

being wholly mad
is freedom to fingerpaint
my thoughts on wisdom

Must Be Present To Wince

I come once more to explore
these words become purpose, maps
compass, light and air
to locate, illuminate, expose
the damaged vessel
hidden for a personal eternity
          below the surface
                    of my stormy sea.

Descending, awkward
like climbing a gravel pile in flippers
and now I forget
          why I am here
                    what I might gain
among those who have preceded.

And now I am breathing differently
as I drift downward
closer to the drowned face
sleepless eyes in perpetual stare
this is the place;
          drawn by cowardice and courage
to find my way
          out of the wreck