The orange-pinkish horizon slips
into the silver sea.
We sit side by side
reading.

Soon night slides into place,
infinite in scope.
I take your hand,
squeeze it gently,
as if to say,
"I am still here. I am not lost
in this book, but
am ever present to both
you and its pages."

You squeeze my hand back,
as if to say,
"Yes, I know."

The moon disappears behind clouds.

The stench of their bodies overwhelms.
Their barks and howls echo as
Weirdly human voices.
I want to answer back.
They would not trust me.

The lions joust and scream
for position on the dark brown dock.
The stark sun stuns some
into a trance-like slumber.
I feel the heat burning my cheeks.

They would not move, even
if it meant to breathe, I think.
Alpha bulls clamber over
The immobile hoards.
And doe-like eyes, laden

With silken lashes peer out at me.
I carry no fish in my pockets.
I am not worth even
a casual interrogation,
which I would not pass.

I lull them, dull them to sleep.
Their blubbered bodies,
plump, sleek, bulging, flop
only as little as the flies permit.
And then: they form a chorus of harpies.

Bewhiskered snouts snarl,
baring sharp brown teeth.
They no longer want me here.
In my reveries, I harpoon the
Ugly ones. They answer back.

So, like Orestes, in Sartre’s play,
I flee the Furies of the flies.
The lions bark and howl.
I want to answer back.
But I no longer trust them.

(After Cavafy)

Do not let your life get so far
ahead of you, busy and distracted,
that you meet it on the way back
a stranger, an alien.

Your years are long and vigorous.
They curl upon the sand
like S-shaped tidal waves, as the bay
itself seeps out of the vast, gray sea.

Tomorrow, if you meet yourself,
burdensome and strange,
you will have lost
your one chance for glory.

You will have lost your way
in a dark wood, as another poet put it.
You will have lost
the mothering protection of the sea,

whose gentle tides are always
taken away, never to return the same.

The wedding feast is readied.
The giant tent firmly staked.
The table overflows with the seven wonders
of the palate. No one should be discontent.

Outside, the breeze stirs the dunes:
a shape-shifting horizon
seemingly too distant to matter.

All things well underway,
the groom stands to deliver
his speech, as the feast inexorably unfurls
in the blazing afternoon.
"Dearly beloved," he says.
"This is the happiest day of my life...."

As he heads back to his bride,
he feels a slight sting on his
heel. One of those pesky flies, no doubt.

Seated, he again turns to his wife with
yet another loving look, then collapses
onto the table, clattering dishes and glasses.

Within an hour, he is dead.
A slight breeze stirs the dunes.
Beneath the table, a fat-tailed scorpion
scurries toward the horizon.

From Plato's cave
we rise together,
shirking shadows
for the light.

No longer ours, thoughts
burrow deeply into
the shared, human
kingdom of insight.

I

the memory -- ethereal --
sprouts forth upon a field
so like a dream so real
we are caught up in it running to overturn
each black stone sweating to hide
behind
the Self we cannot hide behind

for controlling;
to control this Love-thought-lust
****** the waste deep into the Sun

                        II

Earth-day woman, you are both
young and old alike, you frighten me woman

with your sanctity your sanity
of purpose
it is almost wooden
the laughter in your eyes
it is almost grain
this hunting of both

the prey beneath the stone
black not hiding
the harvest of elusive heat behind bodies
turned silver by the Sun... you sing

                        III

hands defile the planting of seeds, overturn
the passion that silently touching your song
could burst into flames

ash chaff so hot
come running back to this lust-thought-Love
let my tongue taste the saltiness of your sweat

let my hands cut deep into the woodenness
of these stones so blackened

with soil

Fountains fly skyward,
Splattering the boxy hedges,
Impeccably cut,
That line the paths.
Villa d’Este overflows
With sculpted beauty,
Elegant and crumbling.

The infrastructure does not hold.
Static masks bereft of water
Spew blank, dry stares.
Multi-breasted statues
Nourish the grounds
With milk.

Still, we carry on under
Neptune’s ghost.
Gods flourish here.
Inside the villa, Hercules
Performs his 12 feats
Of strength, painted in
Blazing frescoes on
The towering ceiling.
He kills a bear
With his bare hands. Superhuman
power that made him a god.

Another room, more frescoes:
Noah frowns; the 40-day
Flood swirls and surges,
Reeling off course.
He tames the elephants,
Rather than wrestle them
To the ground.

He lay naked and drunk
Before his children in a
Shower of shame.
Facing a lion’s maw
Would have fared better
for him.

Nature unleashes its own
Fountain onto the gardens.
Water spreads everywhere.
Tourists jostle in ponchos.
Lanes empty; the sky darkens.

Irises bloom like Eden:
Deep purple.
Strolling past the hedges,
We are washed clean
By the rain.

Their baskets tell a story by design.
Jewelry shines with the wealth of turquoise stone.
Navajos see all Nature as a sign
Of creation myths as solid as bone.
We are formed in the world, souls out of time.
We find our place with Spirit’s help alone.
Humility, grace our reason and rhyme.
Our songs of thanks stir Mother Earth to groan
As we gradually turn deaf and blind
To the harvest she has graciously sown.
All kinds deep in one, and one in all kinds.
We must remember the vast riches shown.
All baskets tell a story by design.
In them, lie sacred secrets of our home.

The vines have turned the color of the season —
as red as the wine their grapes will spill.
I peer back up the hillside into the circling sun,
an infinite swath of yellow. Below it surges
Homer’s wine-dark sea, repeatedly, endlessly, effortlessly
spreading. Except the sea is never red in Greece or Italy,
or even in France, where I stand amid a sea of wine-red leaves,
in silence, under the sun, holding back the flood of invaders below.

From the crumbling wall of the vineyard,
I survey the village of Riquewihr in all its medieval splendor,
gorged with tourists like an unfortunate goose
gagging on grain forced down its gullet:
foie gras for the shopkeepers, who crowd the cobbled courtyard
in all its chaos and cacophony.
“Sample a macaroon for free under the ramparts.”
“Buy a reproduction of a one-of-a-kind watercolor of the bell tower,
built in 1291. (Only 400 Euros for the original),” the artist says.
“Reserve it now for Christmas.”

His stocking cap needs cleaning, I think.
I eye the village fountain, the half-timbered shops, the claustrophobic
stone houses, brightly painted, squeezed into walls like tiny fortresses.
The artist tells me how hard it is to make a living —
the global economy his impenetrable wall, which holds back a flood
of buyers from Germany, China, New York.

I decline his offer to buy and climb the steep hill out of town,
the wine-dark hill of the vineyard.
This is what it means to inherit the world:
to stand apart, high, distant, above the sea
of other tourists, just like yourself, who yearn to stand apart,
just like yourself, laden with bulky guidebooks,
just like yourself, looking for the perfect souvenir, just like yourself,
the one that will sit perfectly on their mantle. Just like yourself,
they seek a memento that will remember for them — remember
all they could have had if only they had had the village to themselves.
If only you had had the village to yourself, to make it your own.

On this sunny afternoon, the village is my own — for a moment,
from a distance, awash in gray-blue shadow. Only the vineyard beams:
isolated, fecund, teeming with dreams; ever gaining on the harvest;
angling closer to the giant wine press that will spew the scarlet juice
at my feet, the earth turned the color of blood.

I resist the urge to pluck a baby cluster of grapes, nestled safely
beneath a leafy wave of this wine-dark sea, these purple berries
springing from the ground: so many earthy bubbles, born to burst.
Le terroir in French: The dirt makes all the difference.

A handful of soil would prove the perfect souvenir, n’est-ce pas?
sitting pretty on my mantle. The dust and debris would blow away
day by day, like ashes spilled from a funerary urn,
the sacred remains of my travels.

Let me be buried, then, in memory of the fertile furrows of Alsace.
Let me push up this hillside, along its ample paths of abundance;
its ripening rows of fruit; its wine-red passageways through leaves
and vines, steep and luminous; the sea of blood yet to be pressed
from the soon-to-be-crimson grapes.

“Does this vast vineyard hold any secret worth journeying halfway
around the world to find?” That is the question I scribble in the dirt.
“Does this village? Does this vision? Does this ancient, failing wall?”
Even if the answer is “No, no, no,” I shall reply, “Yes, yes, yes.”

Yes, let me be buried in Alsatian soil as a lasting souvenir.
Yes, let me lie here, as I stand: free and upright,
lighted by the autumn sun, unchanging, set apart
to revel in the marvel of red blood seeping into the soil.
Yes, let me make this stained patch of dirt my own.

The vines have turned the color of the season —
wine-red, wine-dark, blood-red.
And I have turned the color of the vines,
in silence, under the sun, holding back the flood.

1.

Drifting through the empty, sunlit stillness
of our broken minds, we weep at the futility
of reprieve for the dead.

Remembering the living, then.
Dark places,
shadows of the past.
And who remaining will have won relief?
Surely no claim to spirit,
its movement being stifled or staggered --
true vision of the Self gone blind.

Godot won't be coming.
We can no longer wait.

And upon our signal,
the living must go on.
But do not speak of meaning.

So where to begin? Where do I begin?

2.

The limousine door --
large, empty, open-armed,
behind us --
catches up the evening's light.
Along the window's edge,
subtle hints of black and gray
begin to appear.

And the dull white wash of your face,
your grief-stricken face,
all that's left behind.

But come: We must go forward.
Remembering the living,
we must return.

"We are carriers of this disease,
this pirated charade.
And it is not in our bodies
where the nothingness resides."

"Then why," you ask me, "am I so afraid?"

Why am I so afraid?

Over against the pale, pink, purple sky,
there is no great solace.
A single glimpse,
fleeting, gone --
and there is nothing.

So where to begin? Where do I begin?

On the other side of silence,
A lonely, primeval drone.
Wind hisses through the violets.
The dejected spirit moans.
i reach for eternal solace,
But grasp only rough-edged stone.
Here, climbing toward the Highlands,
My sureness of hiking honed.
I cross and rush to Inverness
In search of the ancients' bones.
They bless me with their hieroglyphs
I cannot decode alone.
I wander through the mistiness,
Keep clambering for my home.

Berries and cream, Gruyeres’ eternal taste,
Cream thick as wooden bowls you pour it from.
The mountains rise outside the village gate.
The castle, past the bridge, bids all to come.
Walls surround the square, the well, the worn slate.
Outside them gleam the green, vast pastures, some
As fresh as cream; well worth the bovine wait.
Turrets, arches, beams: elements of form.
Traipse the cobblestone at an uphill gait.
Shops sell crafts, art to the beat of Swiss drums.
Time suspends its march: the cadence of fate.
Here, the Middle Ages live on and on.
Gruyeres offers tranquil treasures that sate
The traveler’s wish for a world full of charm.

trees grow birch and pine so thick
some fallen to this forest floor

trunks turned thick with gray,
half-rotting, reclaim the earth once more
roots like gnarled hands grasping
for the damp

grasses green stagger silent in the wind
blades biting sharply through shadows so dense/
space has no measure in dark

the sun rises, their bloodless meat turned dim,
turning circles in the sky
humidity hangs, building like a cloud
seeded silver to rain

struck by lightning, the forest,
no longer ******, flashes with the intimacy
of death's philandering copulation/
stumps cluster sticky with sap
and saplings sprout no leaves

rings rusted upon rings reddish-brown
slow years no longer lived through

birds are never yellow here
melodies float like water, colorless upon the breeze
wings break the stillness, signal home, repeat

the road turns away, red clay and rounded rocks/
too few lichen-painted orange and green
dust rises
small clouds under cleated soles

you would not like it here

Michelangelo's Pieta shrinks
Behind glass.
Bernini’s canopy shimmers
In wavy brown.

The sculptors face off
Like boxers in a ring.
Each punch plants
A terrible dent in
White marble.
A squeeze of a hip here.
A dip of a head there,

Stone can wrinkle
Like time. Light
Can emanate from
Wood, gilded
In geometric designs.

Death laps across
A mother’s lap.
The divine turns human
In a litany of flesh.

Formless blocks of stone
Ascend to the dome,
Met by a descending dove.

Perfection in art.
Love bounded by love.

Roman thunderstorm crashes
around our ears.
The Forum gurgles gamely
under water.
Rain pelts, ricochets off
slippery stones, shrouded ruins.
History drowns before our eyes.
No road back stands passable.
So let us swim through the ages.

Yes, I am late for the wedding ;
my car was hit
at the fifth intersection south
of the church. I apologize for
the intractable circumstances
of life.

But time has no meaning
for true lovers. There is only
the Eternal Now,
the Eternal "I do".
We have wrapped
ourselves in its
glittering blue.

Already,
we have said our vows
in private
sotto voce.
Already we are One.

Mysteriously, like a seed
growing underground, consciousness
spreads into the world
seeking a presence to devour.

Like a lion lurking in the Kalahari bush,
consciousness crouches, hidden
within the body, not merely the brain,
waiting for its prey to emerge
from a field of nothingness,
to reveal its essence.

An act, a desire, a pure intentionality,
consciousness pounces on its prey,
embracing its whole presence,
filling in the many sides unseen,
teasing out its eidos.

In itself, consciousness is nothing,
a darkened grain of wheat
buried in the ground. It awakens
only at the stirrings of
the next manifestation.

Always, eternally
a consciousness-of,
it roams my room,
zooming past the myriad
items cluttering my gestalt,
fixing on the single form
it has come to inform.
Consciousness waits
for no one.

Uneasy until it grasps
the one thing necessary,
consciousness expands
and expands, actively roaming
among the wonders of my world.

It acts, but I cannot take hold of it.
It has me in its reflexive spell:
All consciousness is self-consciousness.
And I, in myself, am nothing.

I sit ******* the side of my grandfather's bed,
the bed I had envisioned him dying in:
my dreams as a child.

I sit firmly now to watch
the distorted, yellowing image
in the bureau's mirror
begin to matter-of-factly undress:
its long, thin limbs outlined
in ****** reflection.

I delight in contemplating
the angular movements
of the torso and hands.
I delight in the mirror's contagion.

But my face is what truly fascinates me:
lean and intelligent, its protruding,
weak eyes rest astride
a slightly flared, upturned nose.

The mouth and chin's
angles of curvature are defined by
whiskers exploding
into wind-blown strands --
spirals of long, dark,
pubescent locks.

Here the truly primate features
predominate. Simian and secretive,
my face is not my own.

My face speaks of a vast heritage:
the common gift of humankind.
But it is also eternal -- the face of
Poetry and Art -- destined for a future glory.

I peer into the mirror
and think of death as one possessed:
a bearded, pale, thinning face
lingering beside my grandfather's ghost.

1.

dawn
grayness turning pink and orange mist
upon the crooked vines, the fragrant rows of trees

i see only a wasteland, as my brother's face brushes past
"i am human,"
"i am free,"
i breathe
in and out

in and out
Abel is crying, sobbing softly,
broken in the fields
ever so faintly the echo fades

"Murderer, murderer,"  my conscience screams
screaming into my daylight dream of guilt and remorse

i bolt upright in flames of pouring sweat
the finger of God pointing
firmly at  me

2.
the serpent will not visit me now or again
of this i am certain

but with elongated, ***** fingers
i have given shape to the swirling
shroud of blood that surrounds me

i am encapsulated by regret
with a curious ambivalence of the will
i cast off
the cloak that splatters
into a thousand drops of wine-red liquid

reminiscences, shadows and reflections:
sorrowful leaves sparkling with the glint
of the dazzling morning light

all this and more lies scattered on the wind

my struggle is so heavy; the flames consume so much

wearily i lay myself down to rest
to breathe deeply in this stark, elusive silence:
the silence of the moral void

rest in weariness, rest
and the unpredictable predispositions of divine justice
will expand and divide ever so slowly
with the course of my dreaming

i am  human; i am free; yet i still cannot scrub
the blood stains off my hands.
they leave a mark
that will never leave me

murderer, brother, i am resigned
to suffer the plight of eternity
alone

i am human
i am free
no longer

none of this is new anymore
the writing,
the dreaming,
the happy guilt

how many times have i sat
and listened
to the wet leaves slap
against the cold morning pavement?

how many time have i seen
the trees in wonder
give their smoky shapes
to loneliness,
changing with the seasons?

the seasons keep bringing me
back to the knowing,
time in the moving
moving through time

for many they claim
that this is the triumph:
the nature of return
to the original presence

but who among them
can give force to the anguish,
defy the distance,
there-being,
himself?

surely the answer must be immanent in the asking

it must be the place
that is severed from its project

and not i who am falling
through the horizon of meanings

Roman thunderstorm crashes
around our ears.
The Forum gurgles gamely
under water.
Rain pelts, ricochets off
slippery stones, shrouded ruins.
History drowns before our eyes.
No road back stands passable.
So let us swim through the ages.

This constant vigil,
mercilessly endless,
is but an act of love, I know:
headlights blaring
through the broken dusk,
sickening heaps of flowers
crushed and soiled upon the seat.

Sorrow weighs down upon us
like handfuls of newly spaded earth
begging to be tossed.

The smell of earth, warm and moist;
and no one is there.

The mourners tent is empty.
We have arrived too late.
Kneeling then, penitent, prayerful,
to touch the soil.

I trace my finger
over the epitaph engraved
on the hollow-white
headstone:

It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.

The limousine door
catches up the evening light.
Along the window's edge,
subtle hints of black and gray appear.

A long, soft cry
on the wind --
or is it the wind?

We answer with our undying act of love:
Christ lives in me.

1.
Genesis:
grandiloquent awakening
genteel reawakening from the depths of a sleepy ocean
as dreams floated idly overhead like driftwood
translucent surging
back and forth
rising and falling with the moon and its pull

i open my eyes in the salty brine
and am purged

i open my mouth to swallow and
suddenly: Satori!

2.

in the beginning:
the driftwood would not burn

it's true i wandered aimlessly beneath the cliffs
into early morning
even before the sun, i was
mist upon the beach, barefoot, in jeans and sweater
damp in the morning

yes, i was there walking alone past
seal carcass and seagull carrion
seaweed and ***** would scurry
over smooth gray stones and sand
whitewashed with foam by the tide

somewhere along the shoreline    i thought
the firmament moved
a lighthouse beam perhaps

i, too, like the gull, was scavenging among the shells,
some spotted brown like leopards,
for the 15th century
heavy coins of Spanish galleons and gold

"holding a seashell to your ear, you can hear the voice of God,"
the Horse-woman once told me
stooping i listened
yes yes yes    you would have seen me there in the morning
but only because i was dreaming

3,

your reply:

1
Shivering, I stand alone
inside a sleepy railway station,
looking for a train that never comes,
watching as my spirit comes undone

From the ceaseless clicking of the clock,
the senseless ticking of the watch
that weighs my body down.

Behold how the mortal earns his fate:
There is always time to wait.

                    2
No sooner does time expire,
than it rises up to sire
its progeny again.

Shamelessly self-seeking,
it wrecks our days reeking of narcissi.

Gaze into its plate of polished glass
and watch your phantoms pass.

They punched their tickets late.
There is always time to wait.

                    3
The Flame of Life arrives on a second-class coach.
He eyes me, careful not to reproach my sensibilities.

He comes to cauterize my wounds of time,
but worries I might swoon or mind
the excessive heat.

Perhaps he’s right; I’ll change the date.
There is always time to wait.

I fought for beauty, goodness and truth
against your nihilistic violence of love.
All guards down; teeth, claws, hammers, awls;
frenzied, you wielded your weapons of choice.

Your aim was deadly, like a cheetah taking down a gazelle.
It's only necessary, you said, that nature's black palette
be gentle: It obliterates the conscience, paints over all wounds..

I found mine bearable, torn flesh here, black eye
there, a gimpy walk, an endless headache..My energy
level collapsed; I had no appetite, no ambition, no hope
for escape.

Your hold on me was like the hangman's, delaying the inevitable,
yet asking for a little decorum before the bitter end. And still you
fought like a she-cat, black, sleek, sinewy -- God's beautiful killing
machine. You attacked like lightening -- swift, crooked and wonderfully on fire.

You clawed my face, my back, my brain at its soft spot.
You cracked my skull with your nearly 90-pounds-of-pressure jaw. You tore open my chest, ripped out my heart to sacrifice it to
your gods of vengeance.

Then you drew a map in the blood and offal inside the cavernous
room of my beaten body. The map charted a path to the heart no longer there; to the brain now chomped in half; to the claw marks on my face, my back, my tattered torso. Each path you drew left a ragged incision that eventually healed and left a scar.

"Follow the scars," you said; "they will lead you to the soul --
or the blackened morning sun. Follow them and see
how my love is virtue; how it knows no limits."

Supersensible residue of sound
      reverberating within
the waves & waves & waves of consciousness

reflective laughter flashing
          in the depths of eyes

upon the precipice's edge
          the Absolute folds in on itself

The pallid, pure, lemon-colored sky
is no great loss.
You are suffering now,
floating like the dreaded archangel
through the fragrant floral wreaths.

The end of day,
this gentle light upon
the resin-colored hill,
filters through
all threat of sorrow.

You shall be known
tomorrow, it proclaims,
as they are known today --
en masse,
without pretense,
bearing new names.

I shiver on the edge of the precipice.
I must leap. I must choose.
But freedom offers no support;
it is transparent, pure possibility.
I suffer from the anxiety of nothing,
literally no-thing.
Yet it paralyzes me.
I try to leap; I fiercely will it.
But I only fall,
headlong into the abyss.

I sit cross-legged in the darkness
of my cave of solitude. No one else
will enter as long as my breathing
ricochets off the wall.
I have fought hard for this cave.
It is my life. Alone.
For any who come after,
My scattered bones
will be a fiery treasure.

We eat heads of grain
as if they were candy.
The mothering earth,
fecund, flush with seasons,
brings forth a bounty
for the husbandman
and squirrel. Worry
wilts beside abundance.

He invented space anew,
painting subtle cubes in bright colors
flattened by a wide, gray light.

Critics called him the creator
of the modern age. He did not listen.
Shuttered from the trappings
of artistic success, he eschewed
the Parisian salon scene with its
sophisticated circles of envy and lies.

Fiercely perfectionist, he destroyed
canvases that fell short of his
extreme, exacting standards.
But he would always begin again.
The essence remained; only
the execution had faltered.

His art mesmerized many of
his fellow painters; they saw
the world with new eyes.
Yet he sacrificed the reactions
of others to achieve an impossible
incorruptibility of life and art.
They intertwined like a
double helix of DNA,
companion contradictions
seeking a final synthesis.

A cramped wooden door
in a rough stone wall in Aix-en-Provence
leads to his studio, a humble
hovel where modern art began.
We live there still.

Wordsworth tends his daffodils; Coleridge rhymes.
Rydall Water circles, slow in the rain.
The poets compete -- friendly, over time.
Coleridge finds ***** eases the strain.
Each writes beautiful verse of his own kind.
Wordsworth favors daily speech, spoken plain.
Coleridge bows at imagination’s bright shrine.
Wordsworth’s sister, with them, divides the twain.
Her journals paint the joys of simple climbs,
Or walks through the fields: Dove Cottage awaits,
Awash with white walls; moss-dappled sides
Of the roof. Inside, Lyrical Ballads proclaims
That the power of Art will outlast time:
The Romantics shall never be put to shame.

Purple clouds at dusk.
Canyon walls darken with age.
Elk graze the roadside.
I must change my life.

I wander into a dark wood.
Nothing familiar crosses my path.
I am at a crossroads in life.
Middle-aged, confused, seeking beauty, delight.
Which way to turn is achingly unclear.
Immediately, Virgil appears,
A bright, transcendent presence.
Bemused, he understands my predicament.
Heading straight into the darkness,
He turns and says, "Follow me."

Berries and cream, Gruyeres’ eternal taste,
Cream thick as wooden bowls you pour it from.
The mountains rise outside the village gate.
The castle, past the bridge, bids all to come.
Walls surround the square, the well, the worn slate.
Outside them gleam the green, vast pastures, some
As fresh as cream; well worth the bovine wait.
Turrets, arches, beams: elements of form.
Traipse the cobblestone at an uphill gait.
Shops sell crafts, art to the beat of Swiss drums.
Time suspends its march: the cadence of fate.
Here, the Middle Ages live on and on.
Gruyeres offers tranquil treasures that sate
The traveler’s wish for a world full of charm.

the black rain
pushes incessantly
against
the window

great dull gray streaks
spread
the ephemeral sun
into
pallid false reflections

ridiculous faces
touching ***** white
wisps of clouds

a narrow
uncertain light
falls heavily
upon a page
I have written

crossing out
an unneeded,
superfluous
word

the room
is illuminated
with a golden
bright appearance

reflected in
four varnished
corners

of the table,
which catches my eye

I look at it
and the faces melt

the whole room is like that
nothing left but great dull gray images
even the cold ridiculous sky
is like that

this diminishing light;
I can no longer write with courage

No celestial being will ever descend the misty ether
to complement my wishing and seeking
for its eternal presence.

None who are worthy of such adoration will ever chance
to stoop to move me out beyond myself,
to send me hurtling down the long, contemplative spiral
of the Self toward the focal point of Existenz.

Identity is elusive; for me there is no focal point, no center
of recognition and acceptance with which to make my defense.

Identity is infectious, a problem that plagues. Like the Fall,
the Delphic Oracle must remain unheeded.

Perhaps I am too tainted; perhaps I am impure.
Perhaps I would be blinded by the brightness of their glory.

No, I am quite certain that those who sit among the stars
will never be moved by pity or by suffering to breathe
the breath of Eros that flings me out
beyond this solitude; none will ever come to bestow me with
the presence and embrace I so passionately seek and desire.

None