Piggies dancing, floating along narrow passages towards what they hope is their ends. Their means have been stolen and packaged and sold by big suited, corporate, handy-handy machines. They eat piggies every day and love it, love it, love it down their gullet.
They are not worth a mention yet they get it, they want nothing but your attention, they don’t need it yet they get it. Their appetites are insatiable and contagious, they use it against us by showing us how we are nothing but what they are     and we are fools enough to take it as Truth.
                                                          ­                                                                 ­                                      Shame.
We have shame because they debase us and hence debase themselves.
We have shame because we see their debasement and yet powerlessness is in our bones.
We have shame because all we want is not all we get and nowhere near all we deserve,
-it measures much lower.
   It is irrelevant, it is biased, it is useless, IT is un-real-(UnRealistic, UnRelated, UnTrue)
                                                                ­                                                                 ­                          Lie.

If my breath stinks or my hair is greasy or my cloths *****, my teeth yellowed, my feet smelly, my nails long, my social life quiet and solicitous-   will you discern a negativity in my human-ness? We are no villains. We hate only those who would have us believe that we must hate ourselves and each other. They are no beasts like us. The animal within, encased by a carapace of Humanity glued and mortared by self-centered ideologies gets too thick and you must break it by looking at yourself. ******* and ******* and spitting and grunting and moaning in ecstasy and pain.
Repeat after me and say it loud with beastly yell “ I am a ******* beautiful Animal!”

Bodhidharma, the first Zen patriarch,
told Emperor Wu that merit
meant nothing;
but great emptiness
revealed by sitting facing a wall
had great merit.
Wu was perplexed.

Patriarch number two, Hui-k’o,
faced a granite wall in a forest for seven years;
it became his beloved.

Seng-Tsan, the third Zen patriarch wrote poems
and his legendary Hsinhsinming verse
transcended all the unnecessary duality
in the mind’s mire.

Tao-Hsin, patriarch number four,
said don’t’ stare at a wall,
just do the laundry
and watch the clear water
turn brown
then pour it onto the vegetables in the garden
when you’re done.

Patriarch five, Hung-Jen
meditated from age six staring at the horizon
and said if you find the line between sky and land and sea
you slip into infinity
with no sky, land and sea
just one place for the mind to finally rest.

Hui-Neng came next;
no wall
no laundry water
no heavenly horizon
just fascinating monkey mind
sometimes full, sometimes empty
running whichever way, whenever,
and that was all good.

The 300-year Tang dynasty
had three wild man patriarchs-
Ma-Tzu shouted constantly;
Pai-Ching did laundry,
and Huang-Po told everyone
they were already enlightened
and should not bother  with Zen at all.

Lin-Chi was the Jesus of Zen
who loved everybody everyday.
He taught the heart’s clear natural action,
compassion, not walls and laundry and trying not to think.
His love was wiser than his mind.

The patriarchs of zen
taught more than a thousand years
before I grew up an American idiot
in a materialistic world
populated by narcissistic borderline freaks
thumbing smartphones in leather car seats
never doing laundry
afraid to face the walls
built of brick made
mortared tight together
with the fear
of their own compassionlessness.

I have built this wall,
brick by brick.
I’ve mortared it all,
sturdy and thick.

I remember the time
I was washed in forgiveness
my face wet with tears -
my sense of self released
as I lost that heavy load.

I turn, and start another
line of bricks,
heavy with the mortar
until it sticks.

Each year the wall gets thicker
and the light is sometimes thin.
Each week the wall gets higher
so that nothing will get in.

Still, I can remember when
I was stripped of all my woes,
the weight of sin washed clean,
burdens lifted from me
to feel that touch within.

I turn, and start another
line of bricks.
Heavy with the mortar
Until it sticks.

It has been many years
since I began this wall.
I've spilled too many tears
as the bricks built up so tall.

And though the memories
allow the light’s way in,
I know - deep inside of me,
I’ll not break down again.

I have built this wall,
brick by brick.
I’ve mortared it all,
sturdy and thick.

I know that when it’s done,
I've placed the last brick of this room,
that when, at last, I’m through,
it will become my tomb.

Lin Cava©

He was long-winded
and going on about
physics, about gravity
and the processes with
which it associates,
about how you can
blow lightly on a
precariously assembled
house of cards to see
it fall over but if you
remove one of the great
mortared stones from
the base of one of the
great mortared pyramids
the structure stands tall
and sturdy, a forever
remnant of one great
injustice and remarkable
innovation.

In the dusty garage that
day his glasses covered
in gray soot and greased
fingerprints on side of
face and shoes with caked
mud from the recent rain
that quickly turned to
cerulean sky as the clouds
were whisked by so quickly
it looked like they were
being pulled by some great
and holy wind, beckoned
to festoon someone's poorly
timed outdoor wedding and
force crepe paper flowers
to stick to stucco walls like
wheat paste.

You think you need to
talk to a person when
you have a problem,
but those automated
systems were created
in the images of people
who were created in
the images of other
people who were
created in the image
of God or some other
restless celestial being,
perhaps a dying star
or an asteroid hurtling
and on a trajectory to
startle a species primitive
and struggling to survive.

The vast mathematical
implications that determine
the universe are sometimes
a bit too much for dinner
conversation, so our chats
turn quickly to local sports
teams and the evening news.

I found you

lone brick, of a million, one part of a mortared whole

your brothers now buried by time, without benediction  

progeny of clay, shale, you were born in a kiln as hot as all creation

dragged to this plain by spoked wheel and mule--sweat of the honest illiterate

long before the dusters blew the crops to hell, and Tom Joad's kin to the promised land

the mason who laid you in a proud straight row is now in the ground too

not a mile from you, where the county put him the hot Friday a man set foot on the moon

the bricklayer’s days with the trowel long past, his memories of you, your place in all weathers interred with him  

I found you , and you are the man’s legacy, he yours

Adobe skinned mimicry of light,
Piece of pebbly lunar surface fallen
To misty *******, reverse panoply,
Spiny spar of stellar tapestry
Nimbly navigating mortared limbs
In sultry sea-cellar ballet,
Rocky roofed conspirator of clams,
Swarthy pirate, silent smithy of shells.

Prohibition came, but not to Whiskey Hill.
A man has got to eat; a drunk must have his fill.

Old Abner dug a basement before fall
Beneath the milking barn at night;
Dug down and mortared up a wall;
Bought copper sheets and hammer-fit 'em tight,
Disguised his vent holes in the stall
By countersinking posts to keep them out of sight.
Set down a trapdoor and a sturdy stair,
Strawed the lot and penned up his old mare.

In all he did, he didn't tell his wife a thing;
He reasoned there was money to be made...
More than the crops would ever bring,
More than the eggs the chickens laid,
He'd be enriched by moonshine in the spring.

He learned to ferment mash from an old book,
Soaked down a bag of corn and let it sprout,
Waited twelve full days before he took a look,
Cracked kernels, poured on water, boiling hot,
Then pitched the yeast and left his hidden nook,
And all the while kept his mouth shut;

Seven days and Sunday passing by,
Old Ab could wait no more;
Ate supper quick and told his wife
He'd one more feeding chore...
Stole to the barn and shoo'ed the mare aside,
Pulled up the vent posts from the floor,
Climbed down and lit a fire inside
Beneath the still to let the vapors soar.

A thrill began as drops began to fill the jug;
The fore-shot blended in as Ab forgot
That methanol would poison off the slug,
So when a shot he took, his breathing stopped.

Above, impatient Molly stamped, then paced
Hungrily in her pen, shoved to reach her hay
And dropped the standards in their place,
Plugged tight the vents, above where Abner lay.

When Hildy woke, her husband still was out;
She walked down to the barn, no sign to see;
And thought it odd the horse was out...
The cattle lowing hungrily for feed.

The sheriff came to have a look;
No luck had he,
Old Hildy sold the place and moved away.
Where she went and how remains a mystery.
A cousin bought the place: house and barn and still (unseen).
His sons, exploring, found old Abner in the spring
Beneath the horse's paddock where he lay.

American
Whiteness
the greatest mental illness of all time
even before they were diagnosed
the world has become safer
because the world finally
has funded a wall around America
a padded room institution
where the dissociative disorder
can destroy itself
and not everyone else in the process
the casual crisis
is an emergency
whiteness the coup d’état
is wreaking havoc
on the human soul
domesticated whiteness
riskiest to do business with
spilling blood all around the world
quarantine the biohazard
whiteness on its journey of impunity
when my family was most vulnerable
to the morbid lust
of the mental illness of whiteness
we gently genocidally refer to as social construction
which is really the deconstruction
of the black human
and the origins of humanity
American
American built by the pieces of my family
glued and mortared by the blood and sweat
spilled from them
the most dangerous deconstruction site
in the world
biological warfare
spewing
leaking
uncontrollably
contaminating humanity
polluting its evolution
at war with symbiosis
for the purity of fascism sake
a coup d’état called American whiteness
which is also been a long
untreated dissociative disorder

3rd Ward, Houston, Texas; where the ancient layers
Exude the art of living.  Living cheek to jowl,

Hand to mouth, foot to road, bullet to head, head to heart.

Under these paved streets beats a heart of history
Mortared with ground bones, and sweat, and blood.

I call to you Soil teeming with our mothers and our fathers.
There is no rejoicing when I meet you, face-down,

And I am pushed and shoved down by hands of any color.

The footprint of this place
is a freshly razored face.

Mother Earth’s been ‘beautified.’
trees, grass, roots, shrubs,
stubble shaved from the chin,

neck and face smooth.
Underneath this house.

The whiskers have been shaved
        she’s dolled up
But in gruff’s stead
        there’s a wart on her face
A fossilized, mortared blackhead.

you live in a crumbling castle:
bricks of musty newspaper
mortared with decades of dust
solidified in grease, cemented in decay.
you constructed an impenetrable fortress.

your storehouse is filled with broken plastic,
moldy photographs, crusty nick-knacks.
here you count worthless tin trophies,
shattered glass and empty bottles.
you're drowning in your treasury.

there was a time i knew that castle well:
palace, gaol, it held me fast.
i could be captive or courtier
but your role never changed:
benevolent or tyrant, king you reigned.

but a castle of refuse cannot stand forever;
an empire built on brutality topples.
subjects eventually revolt
and refugees seek brighter days;
fleeing or fighting, the kingdom falls.

yet you remain, clinging to the rubble:
scraps of paper, broken records.
rusted memories and fossilized mistakes.
wandering towers of unread books,
a broken king repents alone.

and here i am, a knight on a horse
to sweep in and hear you, to dig you out.
but when you cry for help i falter--
cautioned, i yet hold out my hand,
but you can't let go and i'm afraid to go back.

it's gone and we're gone and she's so far away.

you live in a crumbling castle:
bricks of words you can't take back
mortared with decades of mistrust
solidified in guilt, cemented by hurt.
you're trapped in your pitiful fortress,
                                                                *and i cannot get you out.

She is her own island
A porcelain memory with
tendrils twisting through the brutally
polite obsession of her few inhabitants
She fancies herself abandoned-laughable!
Doomed daffodils embroider themselves into her hair and
frame her cold hands, pale arms
(mortared, mistranslated) scars
fingernails like moons slaughter foreigners
and petrify
the flea ridden.

The guise of a false hope warily cloaks
an unkempt soul bereft of fortitude -
stolid in the belligerent face of unnamed evil,
an aura of past opulence adulterates naive purity,
the stigma augmented by an insidious breach

of internal asylum. The vulnerability of
a soldier against oneself takes precedence
in the chasmal crusade yet to come; omniscient
intimation gives way to dour prophecies,
ambidextrous in their intricate verbosity.

Molten in the inferno of cross-interrogation,
pliable in the hands of a mortared veteran,
reiteration serves only as a gibe, a grievance
only the most foolish jester would make
before a corroding monarch. The demons

have rallied for annihilation; the starling
warbles an aria of capitulation, its notes
reverberating through the tentative sunset,
a sky of gray and orange mingling with the song
to convey an unequivocal defeat. But after every

dusk comes a period of resurrection, and from the haze
emerges a heroine unrecognizable if not for eyes
ablaze with scarred determination. She strides
with the strength of ten thousand legions, a leviathan's
courage uncovered in her still-beating heart.

The devil flees, uncomfortable in the blinding presence
of mortal accompanied by heavenly body. This -
this is redemption for armor lost, the answer
to her yearning prayers that had been barely audible over the
convulsing sobs that had swallowed her for so long.

Finally vanquished of the toxic beast that had claimed her,
she rises victorious, proclaiming amidst glory a single word -
“Checkmate.”

We married in the back of that old Rambler in that syrupy summer. Kitkitdizze mortared under pestal of our tires and its grind made an aroma of peculiar pungency. The moon was plump as an unshelled fava and I was about to peal her. This was all the commitment ceremony we needed. Stars be our witness. Outsiders we were, and the cliffs of the Malakoff Diggins where we did our rambling. I initially met her at her wedding to him, whence she gave her away, though rumor had it she and she were once an item prior to he and she ever meeting. Still, more ****** talk spoke of them being a three. This was all good with me, being that I had had that other he who was still bound to that she who had two hims herself. Lucky gal. Notice, I'm not naming names here.

It was our life and we lived it in polyamorous faultlessness. Gurus, rock stars, poets and other worldly scholars were all in the club. As gluey as all that free love was, most became unstuck in their ways. Hot, hot, hot sticky June crooners. Man I can't wait for summer to come again. Who's getting married in the morning?

I am trapped, deep within the walls of my own subconscious.
I mortared brick with dark thoughts and built an unconquerable wall of self-loathing.
I am free, but only for a fleeting moment.
I fall into the vastness of my own space-time-whatever-the-**** and I am lost.
I am trapped, deep within the walls of my own subconscious.
I laid brick made from all the happy thoughts of my past, and I mortared the wall with the reality that nothing will ever be that way again.
I am trapped in a room, with liquid matter rising, attempting to drown myself in all that actually matters.
I am trapped in a room braiding a noose from all the words that I said; I attach it at the beginning of time and I try to outrun myself.
My leash is too short and I stumble and fall, unable to escape my own dark thoughts. Unable to reach the light at the end of my metaphysical tunnel.
I am a coward unable to take my own meaningless life, because somewhere in my brain synopsis are firing, telling me that my life isn’t meaningless. That I need to live.
But why live when you can’t let anyone see inside of you.
I have built up these walls to prevent people from seeing my specious body. From hearing my voice and being lulled into a superficial sense of friendship.
I am trapped, deep within the walls of my subconscious.
I mortared brick with the thought that someone could love something like me.
Not quite human, and definitely not animal; just dangerous.
Dangerous because I cannot possibly fathom my unearthly potential.
Dangerous because love is the only beast which I fear.
I am trapped deep within the walls of my own subconscious,
I mortared brick with my most daring thoughts.
I am in love – I am a man.
I am a man and I have forgotten what I promised myself.
She tears down my walls.
And I start laying brick around the two of us.
We are trapped deep within the walls of my subconscious.
And we mortar brick with thoughts of our future.

I stacked up these bricks,
to build this wall.
You knocked it down,
to see it fall.

Higher and higher,
brick by brick.
Mortared and solid,
six feet thick.

Your words were explosive,
like gasoline.
Burning me inside,
feeling so mean.

All day and all night,
the barrage never stopped.
Feeling so guilty,
my senses were cropped.

I stood there and took it,
while you were so wild.
I was a boy,
but you were the child.

barely it was swaying terrifically in cotton wind of sharp niggling wafers that flummox specially the growling infant sea, this lake, where i am by and satting with my soft particular femme who's metal slithers from her very roundest nostrils glinting rather unobtrusive and stubbornly silver. and jousting by in meager dollops college children blatantly. a basic scent of nonsense huddles on the 2's and 3's (or mayhaps more) they slant upon the dappled lazy soil reticent and uncouthly tread upon with flats little souls. their heads are fat with gullible churning knowledge. they farted from the dusted books. that stately chord of mugging music. that lays in bricks and mortared sighs. on the hillest of tops over looking the cordial bay.

Still Thin Canvas Walls
What good thing could come from such humble surroundings it’s nothing like the original tabernacle
Made from badger skins but the battle rages in modern life the wounded lie in great tragic sprawls just
Add your city’s name that will suffice wounds of alcohol, ***, drugs, bitter was the fight but the
Conclusion was already cast men and women are highly susceptible to these diseases there isn’t a
Natural antidote quickly wariness robs all strength the fallen lie strewn in the most pitiful scenes to even
Raise their head takes great effort what about the great mortared churches that stand in grandness on
So many blocks in America the already saved and righteous go there effortlessly but a war takes mobility
You have to go to the front lines be abreast of the battle line conditions one day the battle rages fiercely
Then the next clear across town the enemy strikes if transfusions are the single most necessary act in
Natural battles then so is it in the spiritual battles only the blood can clean and doctor the wounds and
Bring complete healing prayerful condemnation of that life and refusing to participate any more then
Going down in pure cleansing baptismal waters will usher you to the birthing place of the final solution
As a creation born of the spirit you will never again be over run you can feel and know temptation but
Always a way of escape arrives in the nick of time you now are the spiritual medical team assigned to
Walk among the wounded comfort and show them the way out of the most extreme circumstances
Tell them from knowing personal experience defeat no longer will rule them with a most cruel tyranny
Now they stand at the portal of freedom where richest life ever flows outward until the bright eternal
Day is revealed. Talk if you will at times and speak with a tinge of pride that causes you to practice a
Little Disdain for brush arbors tents and those humbler days but out of them mighty revival flames
Consumed entrenched strong holds of sin that resisted all other efforts to eradicate them Look upon the
Empty field a lone tent stands seemingly so thin and fragile if you could see what the devils see. They
See those they have enslaved walking bent and bowed all that registers on their faces is bitter
Disappointment they had such dreams the highest ideals they walked with their heads in the cloud but
During these tremendous high times something very base was setting traps to remove you far from
Those Cherished dreams lust for drink lust of *** that has nothing to do with love and tenderness that is
To be shared between a man and women or lust for things can bring people to spiritual wastelands
And when your power ebbs away you hear what you hope is the sound of a helping hand but the lowest
And cruelest enemies use this time and place a their choice hunting grounds these bonds are secured
By human default they have no escape fighting is the same as quick sand the harder you fight the
Deeper and quicker you sink but as in natural war the artillery has spotters with powerful glass they
Pinpoint weakness and the targets that best will serve your side it is so in the spirit but here it is the
Searcher that goes forth he looks deeply and with the most knowing sight he sees those that truly want
And will change he calls to those who are free and they rush in with the weapons that are credited with
Tearing down strongholds of the enemy there is no greater joy found than they who have been set free
To walk without guilt and shame and the dread of future judgment is gone you now eagerly await your
Change that will bring to your eternal home and all longing will be forever satisfied.

I kept my feelings locked up,
In letters.
Imprisoned by words.
Controlled by a choked up pen and a tear stained page.
Because I was afraid
I was afraid.
What others might think.
What others might say.
What others might not say.

In reflection,
My life was lived through fear.
Ruled by a tyrant with an iron fist.
But anyone can acknowledge
Their mistake.
How was I to move past fear?
To scale the walls that had protected me.
Made of bricks that I laid myself.
That I mortared together with animus
To keep everything out
To keep me safe.

But I started my ascent
Climbing brick by brick.
Passing one scribed with "Sarcasm"
Another etched with "Solitude"
And as I progressed
I passed others named,
"Laughter," "Humor," and "Feigned Interest."
Each one placed by my hands.
Each one now beneath me.
As I reached the summit of my wall.

Now was the difficulty.
Now this was my decision.
Pressure resting on me.
The effort it had taken to scale this brick fortress.
Was it in vain?
Had I wasted my energy.
Would I return
To the existence I had created?

Would I
Take Flight?
And soar to the ground,
With wings feathered with bravery and guile,
Vibrant in color and life.
Embracing both the sun and the rain.
Instead of passing on sunlight to avoid the possibility of precipitation.
All or nothing,
I told myself.
"If the definition of insanity is proceeding down the same road expecting different scenery,
You need to
Jump."

At the third world's first sun,
the Anasazi climbed
through a narrow Sipapu
and pressed footprints in the dust
of a new unspoiled universe.

In secluded canyon hollows
watered by softly chanting springs,
they piled rocks upon stones
shaping vast adobe cities
mortared with pastes of moistened clay.

At Mesa Verde - Chaco - de Chelly
fields of maize sway,
brushed by the canyon winds
while Pueblos danced in the plazas below
to the throbbing beats
of skin-stretched hollow log drums.

Today their children’s children
circle fire pits in sacred Kivas
raising chants and prayers
to their hallowed ancestors.

Wearied by famine and conquest,
Pueblo eyes scan the heavens
searching for a new Sipapu
to lead them to a better world still.

September 11, 2006

I leapt as far as I dare not
To do naught but prove wrong or right
Yet knowing not if what I sought  
Was truly the truth I ought to fight;
Who can know what really exists
Without that tug that so insists?
If there be such a like as doubt
There must be grains of faith about.

Without faith, there be doubt, but with,
There must be some belief inside.
Standing here, looking down the cliff
Walls, eyeing this gap so mightily wide,
On two feet must I stand, so sure;
As tall as the mustard seed did spur
So filled with courage and little pride –
Weight that sinketh, not make me glide

No lies can I then tell or then
Shall I fall – or not even step.
Courage must I have the day when
I try; no burdens then to schlep.
But try I must, for what indeed
Is life without our soul’s life’s need
For adventure and risk. Oh! How
Hard, though, to take the first step now.

No ground under my feet but what’s
Inside my soul; breast pounding hard;
Then mind and heart align; fear cuts
Its tie on me, and fall does my guard
I had so carefully mortared.
Now soars my hope like wizened bird.
Leap, for you cannot know ‘tis faith
Lest fruit of actions so saith.

I spent drunken walks
saying I love you into a made bed
into a moving train
a locked gate
like the mortared bricks could hear me.

The Christmas lights shone on wet face droplets
happy tears of nothing.

And if you were never coming back
I would never cry out loud
and it was the first time a love would never feel crippled.

When I was a boy, the castles of education
soared impossibly large: Brick-laid with Blake, mortared
with Marx, wound round-about with subsidized ivy, rooted
in the 17th century.

And me, just me, on two legs, from 1981.

The flickering incandescence of rebellion started in
these fortressed halls; ideas more snapped than volleyed, until
at the end of our emotional tether, we society on our pale legs,
we sure did fall to a gust of reason.  

Emotion pounded at the walls in every century; and minds, fortified with logic and stoney fact, beat back, beat down, beat away the
Crying, yelling minds. For tears do not make progress.

I was tender, careful, deferential in my youth—an idealist without ideas; merely the powder keg of emotion lurking somewhere beneath my epithelial smarts. Ready and willing to rain against the parapets of education with unsightly feeling.

And I stood, in my academic frock, at the feet of the great hall of learning. And I wondered if my legs could stand it.

Is it any wonder I was raised to be an intellectual?

candle on the typewriter


~for V.B~


lit, to better see the typewriter keys,
as if the those longest fingers needed guidance as to
how to lay down a word, each a brick, mortared to the next
knowing full well, permanence a laughable notion,
and the old house lives on by the good graces of storm kings

the cat, lazy supervising, purring delightedly,
when the sunlight requests their lips porch presence
to see what the island gods have proffered to the inhabitants,
this new morning to feed the soul and the soil, and a cats tummy

never mind the mis-stacked old occupant documents,
important enough once, that too, yellowed by
times relentlessly agile agent aging imprimatur,
the candle is a needed, a promise to oneself, that the words
hidden in the keys, require that shadowed glow, to find the
way-out, to be released unto life, bonded onto bonded paper

you reveal in silent photos so much,
even your best work, a younger version,
who says a lit candle on a typewriter, that’s crazy,
and you laugh, crazy with - from words,
that reveal all, but not as much as the
light of candle burning on a typewriter