the sea gulls chanting,
the sun rising

shooting fields of fire
dancing across
the rise and fall of the sea.

she is standing by the shore.

the beautiful loser
floating lonely
like a storm cloud
ripped from the night sky.

she smiles the sorrow away
with a beauty so hidden and delicate,
distant eyes as grey as the sea at dawn.

she robs my head
sending my heart

floating
like a feather lifted
by a wayward wind.

she does her sky dance
on the sea shore
jumping
here and there
like sand fleas
across the beach
and wants for nothing more.

beautiful loser,

I see she is crazy.

and I want some of her madness.

her blessed madness.

Absence palpable as
An avocado stone-

Flesh delicious but
Roots are filling a
Far-off Jar-

White filaments lighting
Clear cool water

nobody tells me what to do with longing
unquantifiable as only the sand is
exulted light dives in my hair
my shoulders are amazed like a cactus flower
your blood self-absorbed rehearses abysmal cascades
tigers are still asleep in your dreams
will you chase the moon on my surface, will you, tell me,
leave your silence on a chair
what if love is this cypher for the mystery of time
what if the pulse is a form of photosynthesis
we have to stay away from any fire since
we would exhaust its thirst
a step into a surreal second that augments me
second after second  the one who loves
disturbes time in its mazing grace
the sky this gestational field
the space between each word a cosmos
a white truth will repeat itself
again and again bearing witness to
life hand in hand with death

Your grand memorial, all engraved,
Your history gilded, iniquity paved.
But each new eye who stops to read,
will know the less your wrongful deed.

"Erected here for future’s view,
By friends to make you shine anew."
The weight of grief, the tears once shed,
offset by a plaque that says you are dead.

Still, neath this stone, to make it clear,
Your marker says, “Yep, I was here.”
For all your fear of being erased,
In stone, your ego seems misplaced.

Sing joy to me of May and rose
along the tree lines shade and grove
let stride and time slow with noon sun
while hold of hands become as one
know heart and mind are with you dear
and fear us not of stone marks near
for love will steer our hearts with cheer
until the stars sleep sound wu wei

-cec

Let's begin our song with its music coda —
Nahua elders, of an agricultural peoples of ancient America
weaving their way into history's braided tail
with a relevant document of late fifteen hundreds
communed with a Spanish Franciscan friar, Bernardino de Sahagún
suspending time and space onto European paper
writing, a general history, of the things of New Spain
the Florentine Codex (1575-77), during the Great Pestilence of 1576

Meeting to collect the remains of the day in Colegio Imperial
on the Aztec bones of a city now called Mexico
it was ends of eras, community, culture, ghosts
a Rosetta stone of Spanish steel and Nahua blood columns
laid out so even Pliny the Elder would be proud
thirty plus years to account, thousands dead
now resting at Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana in Florence, Italy
this profane tomb still wet from the voyage of conquest ...


Nahua, you plant your staple crops, still
beans, maize, squash, tomatoes; still
the maguey plant calls to your weavers, still
remembering your hands and hearts, still
crushing life may come and go
but the elders foregoing forgetting
released their spirits to print your song

-cec

Tied into taut lines of poetry
bridging the chasms of thought
these entangled ideas in words
sometimes spliced or braided
weave suspension into a prosaic world
stretching it with loops and rosettes
then tighten and measure, rhyme/rhythm
in action crossing the great divides
testing strength of imagination's thread

-cec