Before the bomb exploded, before my own last breath,
The terrorist in bomber’s vest pinned a poem to his chest.
A poem that foresaw my death.  

Can I read your poem?  Can we conceive of what you’d pen?
Did you write of anger? Or pain, or fear or when
your own father went to war, or his father before him?

I might think, some riotous spirit you’d invoke,
a thing of fury, envy, rage.
But rather, you might fill the page
with every pain of every age
a memoir of a stoic sage.

And this great choice before you,
Do you see it as a chance to free your heart, to free your mind
your soul reborn, your choice resigned, your one last final stance?

“Do they not see?”  You wonder, “that I’m not scared to die?”
“That all my wrath, all my worth, this choice will amplify?”  

You’d ask how kings and lords who dine,
who themselves drew the battle-line,
in restaurants, sipping sparkling wine,
now sermonize and opine
your life and mine should intertwine.

Roses have the sharpest thorns
That stain with blood and ***** the flesh
causing but new pain afresh.

And violets? Weeds that strangle all
the weaker, finer buds of spring,
smothering, choking each tiny thing.

With thorn and coil, these flowers of love
are but a boil, a cancer that blights
the subtle, the frail, the fragile, the slight.  

Their promises sour, their perfume is stale.
I don’t want your roses or violets or tales
of longing, devotion, or how you’ll assail
the enemy, the beast.  You no doubt will fail.

So give me a lily, a flower of death.
Or give me an iris, or maybe the breath
of a baby, an orchid. Any will do.
But if you bring roses and violets, we’re through.

We know more before we’re born,
When the soul is still one
with beauty, truth, pure knowing.

All the universe is ours.  
All time, all mass, every atom,
a thousand Angels on the head of a pin.

All paradox laid plain,
All mysteries resolved.
Then the great rupture, pure being
poured molten into flesh.

Charred Mortality pollutes
and warps what once was whole
and infinite. The skin, teeth
bone seem a gift,

but only does it seem.

Clotted and entangled, the mortal self precludes the truth,
erects a shelf we cannot reach, a barricade of rusty razors
against which we smash and die.  
We cannot help but live a lie.
Ask flesh and bone, they’ll tell you why.

There is a cave inside my eye.
Hollow, damp, moss-grown.
Secrets echo in its depths
Against wet walls of stone.

Where ancient waves have smoothed the rock
And in the darkest deep
Sits a sage, a toothless crone
With cloistered tongue she yowls and moans
And through her immortal groans
I sometimes hear her speak.

There is a cave, that much is true
But the more I think it through,
I realize that my eye can’t see
Inside this cave inside of me.  
And though I strain with heart and mind
This cave will always leave me blind.

The louder you yell, the less the truth
contained in words you speak.
Your furious face, all goad and base,
heaving up lies at your frenzied pace  
for people brave and free.  

Your bleeding tongue, grotesque, inane.
And somewhere in the drops,
tiny specks of shredded fact,
eaten, digested, circulated, spat
back at the black-toothed, awed, and cracked.

Groutless walls you build so high
with grimy bricks of fear.
But bricks or not, rash walls will rot, for  
Truth is simmered, sturdy, stout
It’s not the brick, it is the grout.
The sticking place of Truth survives
the bloodiest tongue screaming “hoax and lies”.

Rolling whips of water flame and twinkle in moonlight.
Moths whisper and fluster at the lamp.
Warm summer’s darkness sits wet on my skin.
Everything seems Holy tonight.

This poem does not exist.
At least, I didn't write it.
It's crouching in the closet,
frozen, humble, quiet.

Is there more you ask?
I honestly don't know.
Finishing the poem
would be mostly just for show.

To show I finished something,
that I made a work of art.
But I didn't write the poem.
It's still crouching in the dark.

He was dead.  Inside and out.  
But still, there was a chance
A tiny hope that if I dug
Him up, for one last glance

At face and form I’d loved so long,
To me a hope, to him a wrong.
And scoop by scoop, the dry cold grave
I shoveled, like some spellbound slave    

And brought him home, to me, ALL MINE
And propped him up to bathe, to dine,
He’s quiet now, so calm, resigned
To be a body deaf and blind.

And when his body start to rot
I loved him more, and so I ought.
And so we live, me and this thing,
His stinking flesh, his eyes two holes
It is enough for me, though,
This dead body with no soul.

There is so much that is not true.
Am I to be the judge?
I can barely lift my foot
From truth’s black slippery sludge.  

To take the risk of being wrong
Is something only done
For sake of single, Golden Truth,
a jewel so many shun.

But risk I will, and gladly so
And never hide behind
A claim to subjectivity
Insisting truth is MINE.  

“My truth,” you say. If truth may be,
Admitting no hypocrisy.
“My truth,” a murderous appetite
consuming both wrong and right,
til white is black, and dark is light.

There is a cave inside my eye.  
Hollow, damp, moss-grown.
Secrets echo there against ancient
rock smoothed by centuries of waves.
And in the darkest deepness, a sage,
toothless crone, sits cloistered.

Why is it my eye cannot see
inside this cave inside of me?

I’m no hero.  I’m not wise.
I’ve never been to war.
I have no mental illness.
I’m something of a bore.

But I’ve lost my parents,
I’ve felt pain and grief and loss.
I’ve been in love, and I have seen
the leaves and flowers of the spring
And I’ve felt, beneath my feet,
The warmest earth, the sand and peat,
The softest, greenest moss.

So I clip my toenails, and I floss my teeth
And somewhere in the daily grind
the stuff of poetry I find
In things too often left behind.