The immeasurable depth of Being sustains our lament.
The divine radiance is extinguished;
the gods have turned their backs.

All earthly abodes found destitute, unhealing
in the dim twilight of history's
unfolding of the Logos.

And we are left hanging in
the age of the world's dark night.
Long is the turning this side of the abyss.

The remoteness of the Holy discloses its presence;
fugitive gods made manifest
in the acts of godless men.

The inner recalling of those who are most daring
summons forth the surpassing,
an openness to the ineffable.

And in their nameless sorrow all is preserved.

A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds. -- Percy Bysshe Shelley

The nightingale sings to itself.
But its melodious message flies
far from the bird's tiny tongue.
The song soars beyond her beak;
catches fire in another's nest.
Like listens to like; that is the mystic
chord of the forest, in which singer
and listener unite, trading nuance
and beauty for nuance and beauty.

The nightingale sings to itself.
But only one self grasps her poetry:
the Oversoul of nature; the universal
spirit of art. There is no bird
ululating in isolation; its voice
penetrates the darkness, the thickness
of the forest; it echoes in the twigs
of empty nests. Music always flees to
another's ears, forever reverberating within.

The flesh must be subdued,
for it cuckolds the mind
with its gargantuan girth.
To resist it we need
clear reason,
not dark desire; myriad ideas,
not the anarchic imagination.

The weight of finitude
bears down upon us like
a vertical vise. We spread eagle,
arms outstretched, raised in
a straining V to stop
the mechanical pressure
from crushing us.

We will not die from this ploy.
But the weightless will no longer
fight back. The struggle, eternally
repeated, exhausts both flesh
and mind. Ideas still carry
the heft of conviction; yet
they barely move the needle
on the scale.

2.
Movement springs up like
a desert miracle or mirage.
Powerful leg muscles find
nowhere to turn but endless
rock and sand. The sky
offers no help: as empty as
the listless day. Clouds
pull apart like puffs of
moistened cotton;
they cannot mend the
empty self, for they themselves
need mending.

The flesh plays a shell game
with lust and love. Divine the
winner, then slap away any
sleight of hand that might
lead you astray.

3.
I wander the arid byways
of New Mexico; one road
leads straight to the tomb of
D. H. Lawrence. He took
more than his pound
of flesh; his blood
pumps an irrigating flow
into English literature. Flesh
turned to word in his mind.
And like a phoenix, it sprouted
wings and soared breathlessly
into the stratosphere,
far above the dusty canyons
and the dry arroyo of desire.

I see him,
dressed in a crisp, new suit,
button-down, baby blue shirt,
red power tie.

His diction is flawless,
his banter witty and warm.
He exudes extreme self-confidence.
He knows his own worth.

Soon he begins to pontificate
on the presidency and politics.
Surprisingly, his remarks are nuanced,
sensitive, caressed with tolerance.

Then he begins to sweat,
his eyes downcast; his body slumps.
What dark, deep secret is he hiding?
What arcane cosmic law has he violated?

In all absurdity, I see him suddenly
as Joseph K. The burghers soon
join me. The verdict is in.
With practiced dexterity, they slit his pale throat.

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.

The monks pressed wine for the Pope in Avignon.
The Vatican drank fizzy water.
We tasted hand-squeezed orange juice
and eclairs for our petit-dejeuner.
Breakfast at Mas Vieux was a spiritual affair.
Transubstantiation of goat cheese and bread.
Here, the spirit thrives on mortar and stone.
Ancient walls as thick as oaks.
No town lies in sight: the isolation of prayer.
Old Farm grows a bumper crop of transient souls.
They crunch the gravel, find a body called home.

Dull orange bracken clings to the peat-like soil that seeps
into muddy moors past Devon. A shadowy fog makes
a royal landing on the low-slung ridge, spewing
fists of mist fit for scalers of Lakeland mountains,
balancing on the knife edge of Helvellyn before dawn.

I follow the droppings-dappled sheep trails, veering away
from the road. A ***** white flock nuzzles the close-cropped
scrubland for shoots of greenery, but masticates only humid air.
In the dim light of evening, a dark presence looms on the uneven
horizon: a distinct world fitfully revealed and obscured, liberated from,
then confined to the clinging veil of illusion that clutches the Earth.

This is no pilgrimage into the noirish heart of nature, yet
I detect through the flattened corona of the monarch moon
outlines of a troupe of Shakespearean ghosts tottering my way.
Revealed and obscured, like questions in Hamlet's tragedy,
they would gladly chant as a Greek chorus, if only they had
material voices to be heard. Together, they mime the news

of Elizabethan England: betrayal and intrigue, executions
and ***. The lust for power pours the foundation of the
City of Man -- sin and ambition, deception and pride. I hear
nothing but the constant scuff of my boots against wet stone.
Silence wraps round me like a cloak of quicksand. I must try
to scrape it clean. But with each new blade stroke, no novel
message emerges, no sign points homeward. Emptiness reigns
like a ruthless queen, ****** and shorn, an otherworldly white.

Looking back, I search for Coleridge strolling atop the Quantock Hills.
He has coaxed the Wordsworths there, convincing them to barter
isolation for inspiration. Poetry speaks to William, demanding
a new voice, a new style that joins the bright heart of nature to the brooding spirit of man, that lifts the lowly moments of the mundane
into the celestial heights of the Poet's magisterial meditations on Being.

All this once would have sufficed for me, but the stale, soaked smell
of sheep reminds me that I remain alone. Night falls and the moors
glisten from the constant damp. No one comes to England for its weather or cuisine. No one comes for solace or comfort or love. History,
      literature,
haute couture, base passions: Such is the recipe for a signal
      significance,
for a British extravagance of soul. It abides in the blackened bowels of Exmoor, launched from fallow footpaths and sodden goat trails,
skillfully trammeled by ghosts who juggle in silence the lavish jewels
of Elizabeth's crown, sparkling in the saturating mists before dawn.

You clutch a dazzling pink rose
In front of the Spanish Steps.
The last of the day, bartered
For a bag of M&Ms.
No money changes hands.
No promises kept.
No way to go but headlong
Into the crowds.
Tramping on tourists, staring at horses,
Thinking Poesy past the Keats House,
Piazza di Spagna 26.
Life mask, death mask.
Walls of poetical works bound
In shiny green leather.
Romanticism dies on the short, striped bed,
A sleigh ride to the Elysian Fields.
Awake to sweet unrest.
Here is my ode
To a rose not fading unto death.
Bright colors of the Steps.
No struggle for a breath.

1.
We carry a river of ice within us.
With its ***** scuffed ripples,
like a starving child's ribs,
it ascends the mountain *****,
strewing in its wake a palette
of naked rocks and clear-cut tundra.
Orange-stained cairns point to our shame.

2.
Once you could see the glacier
behind the rough-hewn pulpit
of the tiny Anglican Church
on the South Island
of New Zealand.
Angelic white, full and overflowing,
it swept into the front pew
like the descent of the Holy Ghost.
Now you glimpse only a dull tableau
behind the big picture window.
Aging panes of glass point to our shame.

3.
We swam against the tide
of La Mer de Glace near
Chamonix, France, urging
the glacier to not turn back
from our carbon fin-print,
urging the train we rode in on
to let us hike our way back.
All was silent except for
the constant drip, drip, drip
of la Mer's tears. We wept, too,
but to no purpose.
Centuries of history pointed to our shame.

Cavernous shadows and clouds encase
the uneven edges of my dream, a dark,
disparate dungeon of beclouded jewels.

No splendor gleams through the pinpoint
gaps. No radiance revels in the penetrating
rays that steadily stalk my internal darkness.

In the deepest center of my dream, I swoon,
wounded by love, which is the light, which
is the Living Flame of Love that sears away

all signs of soot and smudge and stain, all
distorting ripples in the window of the soul,
all disruptive detritus of the dream, its dreaded

diffidence at the prospect of illumination,
of receiving all that it is capable of receiving,
of riding the photons and waves of light

into vast fields of grandeur and affirmation,
of transformation, spilling over with power,
being and virtue, lost in labyrinthine rays

that curve and whirl and roll and plummet and bend
round the center that centers itself outside the circle
of my dream, now flooded with light, an elliptical path

that turns back on itself, leaking through crevices,
slicing up clouds, brimming with the brightest
white, a radiant white aglow with beams of white,

engulfing the bejeweled white that penetrates the center
of the soul, lanced by legions of white, lanced by flaming love,
now penetrated and pinned to the light, until I become the light.

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.

1.

You descend through night's black skies
an elongated bullet suffused with blue light
from your window the cityscape lumbers awake
like a crab side-stepping fires of flotsam

Your soft shell flashes with pinpricks of stars
plucked from your earth-bound parapets
no one says "castle" or "torches" anymore
yet how you long for the glow of the past

Generators churn energy to seal you
to brothers in arms guarding the runway
your ears pop as you widen your mouth
and swallow the moon hanging by a string

2.

How you love this desert blanketed in sand
how you wrap it around your troubles and sigh
how it obscures the mist of your crab nebula
how love outlasts the sky like a fresco

Reach across the aisle to your sister in chains
plumb the depths of her quiet revery she knows
what light obscures she knows the cost of darkness
tell her night slakes every thirst in the romance of light

The crab sleeps half-buried in sand it stirs only
to shift positions even sleep cannot ease its pain
you know now that this flight remains in shadow
O how light loves the drama of our checkerboard lives

1.
Pink carnations bloom
in stenciled flower boxes,
looking down on Bruges'
grand canal. Locals say they
live in the Venice of the north.

Tourists speed by on guided
boat trips, rigid, peering straight
ahead. The carnations sigh:
They could die from such
indifference. The boat leaves

a white, frothy wake, which
whisks away all the passengers'
woes until the next hour of
ennui sets in, restless for
distraction. I see no need

for speed as I wander the cobbled
lanes laid from the 13th century
to the present age, signs of Bruges'
vast prosperity and pride as the
exquisite lace capital of the world.

Luxurious wares for a luxurious price,
more valuable than the goods
the city once traded as the bustling,
commercial hub of northwestern Europe.
Sundries bought and sold at bargain rates.

I have not come here for
commerce, but for Bruges' late
medieval beauty, for its religious
miracles, for the marvelous making
magic of Belgian lace. All legendary,

all fine, all the subject of tall
tales, of tattling to history about
what can be found and what
can be lost. All draped in gold leaf,
expertly pressed into regal crowns.

2.
After a hurried and forced
lunch break, I scamper to the
Basilica of the Holy Blood
in search of a glimpse of the vial
of, well, said blood with its cloth

that Joseph of Arimathea used to wipe the
blood from the body of Christ. Preserved
for centuries, the vial and cloth made their way
to Bruges from the Holy Land during one
of the unholy wars of the cruel Crusaders.

I have to push my way through throngs
of the faithful to reach the room with the
relic that has mesmerized travelers for
centuries after centuries since the Crucifixion.
Like so many vessels of the supernatural,

the vial disappoints. How can one verify
the holy, the sacred, the miraculous?
The divine element eludes us, remains
hidden, designed to try our faith, to test it,
to measure it against the rule of genuine

devotion. Satisfied that my presuppositions
have proven sound, I squeeze back onto
the streets of the main square and head past
the edge of town toward the windmills and ****,
holding back the sea and its myriad mysteries.

3.
The windmills whisper, "Holland," while the
****, stoic and stolid, remains mute. Sails
whoosh above me, ready to fly from the
Earth, ready to slice the wind into pieces
before it swoops past the city tower and onto

the square. The breeze bears a message that
I can barely decipher. Written in code, it declares
something about the efficacy of the Holy
Blood as a salvific force to bring peace
to the true believer, as open as the windmills

to the wooing of the Spirit. My antennae rise up,
although nothing more seems said. That is
not possible. So I hike the **** of the ****
toward the gray, billowing clouds that herald
their own message of rain, of storm, of baptism.

Such struggles sting more severely than
ennui: Conflicts lack resolution. Resolve leans
on the arms of faith. Arms carry the weight
of the world. The world whimpers in a
whirlwind stirred up by muscular clouds

of doom. These dark thoughts hound me
as I make my way back to the cobbled
streets and the security of the familiar city.
Soon I stumble onto a paint-peeling
open door boldly illuminated by a long

rectangle of light that washes over a group
of older women, their bobbins and
thread and rapid-fire fingers flashing
in a blur across their velvet pillows,
creating magic with skill and aplomb:

the confidence of hard-earned experience.
There are no presuppositions against such art.
Lace making resounds with the spirit of
blessed endurance, with a sanctity of
purpose, a sanity of mind that only

the vial of Holy Blood provides for those
who believe, who see the divine in the failures
of the mundane, who worship a vulnerable deity.
"Only a suffering God can help," Bonhoeffer proclaimed.
The carnations grimly nod, hang their heads and sigh.

The lighthouse looms
far off-shore,
its blinding Cyclops eye
circling like a hawk
closing in on weary prey.

The beam blips to
infinity, signaling
wayward ships to slow
their progress through
the choppy sea.

From here, on land,
the house rears up like
a medieval tower, a defense
against dragons menacing
murky depths unknown.

I blink back, trying my best
to reach infinity on my own.
The sea is no substitute. Its
vastness sweeps to a pinnacled
caesura on the Western islands.

Ask Melville whether the spiny
reefs held infinity at bay.
Only for a fleeting moment.
Only until a colossal crash on
the firmament sounded. Paradise lost.

We have no paradise here, save
the spectacular Oregon coast
after sunset, when flat sand lights
up like a neon walkway and
purple streaks paint the sky.

Star fish, in puerile pink, cling
to black boulders. Waves
dive deep. The lighthouse
keeps signaling to no one.
No shred of infinity to be found.

Twin stallions gallop beside the sea,
their flanks sweating, curved backs
foaming, long, dark manes flying
through the brine, braided into whips.

Riderless, they splay the sand beneath
the tide, charge ahead as if in battle, flash
large white eyes of fiery purpose. Or is it
merely pleasure in taking stock of the sea?

I could sing of Pegasus, the perfect portrait
of their power, perfect myth of their reality,
perfect essence of their being, perfect eternal
Idea, as the hallowed Plato would have put it.

But I know only the Pegasus of my childhood
imagination, channeled through the huge, spotted
horses on my grandfather's ranch, larger than my
little life, all muscle and nerves and jittery to bolt.

I know only the lush leather saddles, hand-tooled,
badged with Baroque designs, smooth to the touch,
gear of Olympians, smelling of alfalfa, the hay stacked
high in barns for the uncertain days of winter.

I have sung the secrets of the sea, like Homer,
with his wine-dark waters that carried the long,
black Greek ships toward Troy. My twin stallions
surge to trample the ancient city's ruins. Ilium no more.

How I yearn to run with them, to speed over
the sands as if they were nothing but solid air,
as if they raised no resistance to racing, as if my
hooves could heave into them like a golden paddock.

O the line between dreaming and waking
is so fluid and frail. I breathe deeply and feel
the stallions fly over the ranch, up the canyon,
climbing, ever climbing into the atmosphere,

which constrains no thought, no memory,
no deep feeling for flight itself, for rising
over the ocean and its endless tracts of water,
its boundless kingdom of life and death.

How do I go on, here in my loneliness, ornate
saddle at my side, a shoot of hay between
my teeth, champing at the bit to tie myself
to the stallions' tails, to quiver my way

into the shadowed arroyos of dreams, where I
could walk without limping, where I could fly
without falling, where I could shake the brine
from my hair and laugh in the face of Zeus?

The stallions perform pristine pirations,
stealing time from the future, soaring past
days of ice and shivering woes, hay carrying
the bitter taste of sand and seaweed and brine.

I place my saddle on the ground, sit beside it,
and trace the swirls of its swift designs, spinning
me into dreams, into the weak waves that creep
upon the beach, that breach the line of death, only

to return again. Is time a straight arrow fast in flight
or an ever-spiraling circle like the Earth? How can we run
so far only to reach nowhere, only to teach ourselves
to heartlessly crack the whip, as cold as winter’s grip?

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.

Poetry hunkers down behind
the freshly finished facade
of language; each link to the lexicon
lovingly chiseled into the smooth,
grey stone. Here, precision reigns over all.

Vainly held in place for the length
of a reading, the facade glides
toward a shimmering white dot
on the horizon.The perfect poem, perhaps?
Here, perspective precipitates all.

Like quicksand, a marshy morass
of words ***** at the poet's feet
as he strains to match
the facade's pace, stride for muddy stride.
If he succeeds, pride will power all.

Poetry is breath, inadequately lodged
in the poet's ever-shrinking body.
Reading wrests the silent syntax,
inhales form through its viscera, exhales
metaphor and rhyme. Like becomes like, becomes all.

Critics aside, the poem thrives as a living organism;
it breathes itself far beyond the face of the facade;
it swirls into the stratosphere, flying
straight toward the cosmos' breathless edge.
Here, the getting of wisdom is all.

(After Louis Glück, winner of
the 2020 Nobel Prize in Literature)

I rise into the faithful, virtuous
night, misty and mysterious,
illumined by the spying moon.
White shadows point the way.

I am the light beneath the
expansive canopy of stars,
tiny and malleable, trekking
through my limn-like work.

A peak, a pinnacle, a red
plateau. These haunt me,
captivate me. I am the lost
pilgrim, perched on the edge

of expectation, serenaded
by the dark music of loss.
I am open, shapeless, ever
wondering at the capacious

sky. What shall I gain or lose,
bound for permanent separation,
all so my soul may not be
distracted as I limn the light?

1.
We all die daily,
our breath shuddering
from the body,
the body shriveling
into matter, which
languishes, empty
and inert,
envying the
labyrinth of the soul.

What bright spirit
lures us back
into the light, stirs
us to awaken out
of our dark night?
What burden can
we still bear as
ghosts of ourselves,
erstwhile egos
chanting nada,
nada, nada as we
furtively avoid
the mirror of
Narcissus?

2.
We all die open-
eyed, gaping
at the void,
or a vast
field of stars
swirling and
sparkling above
the blackened
upper
atmosphere,
illuminating
the full breadth
of Being:
The Great
I Am of
everything that is.

Beside us, the cosmic
jester and curator
of the world
adds another
plastic frame to
a crudely rendered
self-portrait. Which
self paints the self?
Which self becomes
object and subject
simultaneously,
having its cake
and eating it, too,
but failing to notice
the crumbs
on the floor
and the icing
on its lips?

3.
So many questions
that challenge
the mastery of our
language, that
stretch the boundaries
of our mind like
an inky rubber band
dangerously
near to breaking
from overuse.
No answers
can verify
themselves
to us.
They demand
judgment, an
accounting that
only the dead
can deliver from
the far side of
the grave, beyond
the end of history,
beyond the erasure
of time.

4.
Daily we all die
only to rise again,
our lumpish
flesh electroshocked
into animation,
our soul newly
dependent on poetry
to dial in its
upper frequencies
before they
fade away
into static.
The tuner picks up
an AM station
out of Juarez.
The Mariachi
music reminds
us that this
energy may sputter
and flag like
a somnambulist,
but it never dies.

Fog shrouds the dark hills.
Gray sky, gray autostrada.
Rome shines ancient light.

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.

O America!
I wander through your golden-red fields.
Vines with still-green grapes snake toward the sun.
Just how fecund you are!

Kick-started beauty lays me low.
Prairies burn with the fire of desire.
Judge me fickle in my allegiance to you.
How little I sense of your natural glory.

Great basalt stones border the ocean.
Vapors of cirrus clouds streak the sky.
Down the beach-packed path I stroll.
Every starfish clings to life at low tide.

Untold riches remain stubbornly unseen.
Great waves of brine bathe the shore.
Xanadu basks underwater.
Atlantis skims the floor of the sea.

Beyond every seagull, a screeching cry fades.
Mountains suddenly beckon inland: a sea of stone.
Setting my sights eastward, I take the plunge.
The slopes and peaks call to me; meadows blossom.

Here, on my way, I exult in your massive splendor.
Who can ever be sated by your majesty?
Nature mesmerizes. I renew my pledge to you.

I saunter through the silent square alone.
The cobblestones gleam from the misty moon.
Midnight, or so I think; the time’s unknown.
A trip to Bruges, where flower boxes bloom,
And canals spout beauty to make you groan
In awe of how the Lowlands can swoon
Under simple charms: an enlightened tone.
In the moonlight, St. Bartholomew’s looms,
A ship for lost souls; its deck made of stone.
Frans Hals, the portrait painter, will sail soon
To the studio where his art was honed.
Haarlem has a legacy, hid at noon;
Only in the dark have its treasures shone.
As dawn nears, the great reversal comes soon.

I sit weary is the grey, shadowed corner of a monk's cell.
My ragamuffin clothes fit me well.
When I read, the neurons in my brain fire out of control.
They erupt through my conical hair: helmet for space patrol.

My body language belies my intellectual yearnings.
Literature invigorates me: I blast off without earnings.
Ideas, images prove their own reward;
rockets, like Quixote's windmills, form a vast horde

Of cosmic challengers, who meet me face to face.
There is no lonelier place to land than outer space.
All this, of course, comes from a tattered book.
Stop reading, and I can take a long look

At my isolated setting, scattered but safe.
I feel the innocence of Earth's first waif,
who leads me on through page after page.
I am a stranger still to the atomic age.

The company owned
the village.
Residents slaved in the textile factory,
Huddled in Communitat, a social,
industrial haven for the soul.
They shared a workplace,
Housing, amenities made
by modernista architects.
All that was missing was
A church.

Gaudi stepped in
in 1898 and conceived his
elaborate construction.
Perennially distracted,
he finished only the crypt.
A keystone project that
synthesized politics, nature
and faith.
Abandoned, in flagrante, in 1914.

The portico forms a forest of
leaning columns.
Convex vaults shoot from
polygonal arches.
Symbols, monograms,
mosaic iconography
adorn the rugged façade.

The Trinity dwells within
the treasures of the crypt.
A dove perches without.
Alpha and Omega,
beginning and end of
a grand, operatic idea.

Workers bowed in
worship, thanked God
for their jobs,
Gaudi for his art.
No one sits there now.
An empty sprawl of the spirit.
Only ghosts settle in
organic-shaped pews.

Circles of rope, white, grey and bilious, squeeze around
Wetterhorn Mountain’s chest, leaving only its angled
forehead in sight. Like the tail of St. George’s fiery dragon,
the clouds sink into stone, ******* down their grip
until nothing is left breathing, until nothing is left. Stone
emits a feeble cry of fear and trembling. The dragon’s
tail squeezes tighter, intent on suffocation -- severe oxygen
deprivation above timberline.

Rain is the Sancho Panza to the mountain’s Quixote;
the circles of Dante’s Hell mirror the clouds’
constant clinging below the pointed, harpoon peak.
You can climb this mountain as in Purgatory, but its path
is polished to a slippery ***** from the clouds’
constant rains: such a dubious, deadly affair. Only St. Georges
persevere here; only the holy ones manage not to stumble
on the bulky, slick rocks.

Rain is not a baptism, but an ablution.
Rain threatens the clarity of the day. Rain threatens
the clinging of the day to the present. Always, such rain will pass.
Puddles in post holes, precarious ascent to the cloudless light.
Rain clears the path in hindsight but nurtures the future to come
quickly, like cacti with brief, brilliant blossoms.
Let the thorns be your payment for grasping the blooms.

The book opens into infinite space,
myriad folios flutter --
parallel universes we inhabit
one person at a time.

Pages read forward and backward,
upward and downward --
no directions reliable,
no compass or rule.

Imagination stretches its
elasticized muscle --
to encompass any object:
Doric pillars on the sea.

The sea swallows itself,
book spines cover dry land --
tread on them lightly to
choose a way forward,

to reach a conclusion,
existential noir --
whodunits lead to a map
of the stars, pulsing

in invisible night ink.

His hounds bay and croon in the distance.
The Arkansas woods weigh down upon us
like a black hole ******* every particle
of light from the cluster of brittle limbs
and branches above our heads.

I ***** in trepidation behind my uncle,
wearing a ball cap and dungarees;
his carbide lantern leads the way.
I watch his right hand bob, half a thumb
lost to a chain and a mule in a logging accident.

He is at home here, stalking wildlife
night after night. He has found his haven from
the world, the quest for sport and game.
My father joins us. There is no need for talk.
We proceed in silence, listening to the forest floor

and the yelping of the hounds far ahead. I feel fear
as we advance in the darkness. This will be my first
and only hunt. I am 12 years old, innocent as the prey
we’re tracking. Out of breath, I catch up with the dogs,
a whirlpool of tongues and teeth and fur circling a tree.

The lantern shines high into a deep V in the trunk.
Filling it, a weak-eyed opossum peers back.
My uncle hands me a .22 rifle and says nothing,
keeping the light steady on my target.
I shakily take aim, **** the trigger, tremble.

The pale torso erupts in red. Congratulations
ring out all around. I sicken at the sight.
My fear has turned to hatred of the blood lust
and violence that has made me a man. We wait
on the hounds to return. The carbide light goes out.

Deceit is the deceiver
who tarnishes our golden words
with the blood of angels.

It is a diamond blood, hard enough
to etch a tattoo on the iron in our soul.
A mendacious message
that even poets cannot read
without swooning.

Deceit deceives itself,
stalks us like wounded prey,
until we lie down,
dead weight, to read no more.

We cannot see what follows us to
the chambers of the underground.
Does deception supplant sanctity of mind?
Who harvests the center of the soul?

Deceit deceives deceit.
Meaning we have lost all meaning
except for poems written
in angels' blood.

Bernini’s sculptures float
Over fountains like
A ship’s mast set in stone,
Straining to stray off-course.
I follow the muscular, hysterical
Flow of the Four Rivers.
Lethe bubbles underground.
Step lightly.
Chubby-faced children spew
Showers between their cheeks.
Nothing is quiet in Piazza Navona,
Spreading to the seven hills
Like a blanket of bedlam.
Heaving waves of tourists
Speak to themselves in tongues.
Whose gift to Roma is this?
The Four Winds? The spigots spilling
Holy water onto the hordes
Of heedless souls?
Neptune stares down on
My dampened bald spot.
I will Photoshop it out
If he snaps my picture.
Or some other petite, American tourist
Will, craning her head
Like a dolphin
Flopping on Neptune’s trident.
Navona is a nova of marble
And foam.
Specters live here.
They shout here, they circle.
Bernini’s spawn.

He spent one night in jail
for not paying his poll tax.
Good government, he wrote,
governs least. He kept his
integrity intact by composing
"Civil Disobedience." He did
what he proclaimed: Pay the price.
Suffer judgment for what is right.

At Walden Pond he embraced
simplicity and reflection; he
eschewed civilization's trappings.
He hammered out a budget
for supplies and survival.
He transformed the reeds and pond
into his temporary home. Vitality
exuded from his pen. He was alive!

Transcendentalism became his
religion of favor. Partial to "Hindoo"
philosophy, he sought the final
diminution of the unruly self.
His poems elevated the cosmos
above his puny human stature.
He situated the heart in a world
awash with questing and meaning.

Illusion obscured the way to life's
essence and virtue. Acute vision
of the natural world and shunning
all distractions proved the formula
for true fulfillment and strength.
He made the life of the mind matter;
his poetry gave voice to lasting wisdom.
He blossomed as a scribe of the soul.

I take my paradise
where I can find it.
Sacred or secular,
stationary or ecstatic.

Penitent pilgrims pack
the width of Las Ramblas,
marching headlong
down the pedestrian boulevard
toward the burgeoning square
of Cataluyna, scurrying
to find fountains and buses
to whisk them away
from themselves.
The burden of identity weighs
heavily in each backpack and bag.
I share their plight:
the onus of being.

2.

The sun brilliantly burnishes
the crowd, beaming with
its childlike hunger for toys.
Nothing changes
except the country
beneath their feet.
Tourism is purgatory
to the undirected.
No map, no plan, no
rescue from impulse.
Lacking travel's baptism
of fire and freedom,
they learn that
all roads lead home
whence they came.

3.

Before the closed
doors of the cavernous cathedral,
Catalans circle, lift arms,
hop, twirl and dance.
Raised hands
signal liberation, unbrokenness.

Separation plays a different melody,
sends an inferno of deconstruction
spiraling downward, singeing factions
of language and race.
Yet a divided Spain paints
its face as united,
coyly cooing behind
a splayed, perfumed fan.
The perfect picture
for the uninitiated cruise
ship crowds: No trouble
in paradise.

4.

I cool my heels at
the statue of Columbus,
anchored harbor-side;
the navigator
still ready to sail
under mistaken,
prevailing winds.
The crew
still ready to plant Spain's
contagion-carrying flag
in the shallows of faux India's
purifying pool.

O America!
How far you have drifted
from these tapas bars
and tainted streets.
How far from the graffiti-
filled neighborhoods.
No space uncovered:
The gritty lust for color, figure
and form conquers all.
Tourists queue to grab
their fair share.
Paradise need not please,
they discover.
Kick your bucket list to the sea.

5.

All is exotic in
Mediterranean Barcelona:
the languid light,
the briny breeze, the sun
radiating like a silver
grapefruit in the azure sky,
the orange shards of tile
piecing together the face
of heaven.

Gaudi still erects his towers
in wavering waves of
nature and faith.
Inside Basilica La Sagrada Familia,
construction workers
hammer his corner
of paradise slowly into place.
Christ hangs naked
on the cross.
A blue light filters
through modernista stained glass,
falls on the floor,
bathes my feet.

He came dancing across the waters
with his galleons and guns.
Cortez, Cortez. What a killer....

Neil Young's high-register symphony
of electric guitars carries
over the sound waves, the lonely,
mournful, ever-mutating melodic
line a message of death and waste
and loss. In it I hear an elegiac call
to the coyotes in the fields,
howling for companionship
and comfort from their
missing, flea-bitten pack.

A shaky, high-pitched, grief-laden
voice tells of Montezuma and his
Aztec nation, alive in an idyll of many
colors and nature's pristine harmony --
a utopia only the modern, romantic
mind could conjure out of the ruins
of its own civilization.

Rubble rots, strewn through
the ages. The Aztecs die,
victims of viruses and steel,
while we, too, gasp for air
on makeshift ventilators,
going under the charged,
electric waves of consciousness,
dancing breathlessly to
the beepless grave. What a killer....

History breeds only conquest,
only the tragic conflict of cultures,
equally innocent of the unknown,
equally guilty of lusting for the blood
of the Other -- whether gold-drunken
Spain or a mutant cell slipped
beyond the bounds of some
fly-infested Chinese wet market.
Progress ends only in destruction,
while we dream of utopia and idylls
and call it good. Cortez, Cortez....

The coyotes howl for comfort
and the lasting scent of prey.
In the morning, they will hunt,
rustling through high grasses,
while we will rise to Neil Young's
symphonic, electric refrain:
What a killer....

First, know the exits;
stage left, stage right.
The play may be much
longer or shorter than you imagine.
Be prepared to bow out gracefully.

Next, know your lines.
Make them authentic, real.
They reveal your character,
for good or ill. Never deliver
them halfheartedly or dully.

Next, polish your actions.
They keep your audience on its toes.
Act naturally but with modulated emotions.
Melodrama has not been invented.
Lugubriousness is simply in plain bad taste.

Finally, study your author.
Is he smarter than you? Or does he
merely have the creative power you lack?
He moves you according to his whims.
He judges you on each day's performance.

And remember as you rehearse: There are no second acts.

For You, justice remains mercy.
Your will shines as agape love.
And still darkness reigns.
Out of the whirlwind, You
spoke only mysteries.
There is no rational answer for evil
this side of the grave.
Yet faith overcomes all, a gift
of the Spirit. Let us cling to it, like Job.
Let us trust and obey.
Let  us lean not on our own understanding,
but cling to the mighty bulwarks
of Your everlasting mercy.

Homeland

Morning clouds tear apart.
White-blue helmet of heaven.
On the river, goslings glide.
Ripples of desire.

A darkened figure climbs the hill,
silent, snaking homeward.
Death marches, stride for stride,
and drops the red baton.

2. Berghof

Who has cried for sunken Dachstein?
Its crumpled crown.
Beauty is stone.
Carry me through glacial waters,
green and trembling,
fear alone.

Lichen blooms
on blackened tree bark.
Ice blocks clog
paths unknown.
Half-hewn timbers
line the walkway.
Heed the warning:
Hide your soul.

3. Atelier

Shadows shatter:
light’s division.
Present passes.
Breathing comes.

Silver circles:
no corrosion.
Water siphons.
Spirit song.

A water lily opens,
an orange hand atop
a murky koi pond.

The flower's pad floats past
like a slim man's buoy.
No one notices.

Beauty is of no value
to the practically minded.
Soon, the orange hand closes.

From York, I booked a train seat, then arrived
At Leighton Buzzard, where my good friends came.
We had dinner with whisky; I survived.
Their tidy house, **** and span, looked the same.
In Stratford, we found Shakespeare still alive,
And Anne Hathaway’s Cottage earned its fame.
We reminisced: In the Lake District thrived.
At Wastwater, the wild we could not tame.
In Grasmere, bountiful meals were prescribed.
Wordsworth and Coleridge wrote poems to shame
Those who keep their meager talent alive.
Back to reality in Wing we came,
Renewed bonds from which our friendship derived.
That they ended, only death was to blame.

Liquid diamonds adorn the sea,
silver sunbursts of brilliance shine
through the waves, living, heaving,
violent jewels of seaweed and paste.

The sky bares its midriff of pale blue
skin, unmarred like a newborn, a marble
dome of sweetness and smoothness,
restless to immerse the nascent dawn in light.

Under the fierce Aegean sun, we saunter
toward Pireas' port, bags packed, supplies
secure, farewells sobbed, to set sail for Spain,
like Odysseus on his makeshift barque.

The journey demands a lifetime of searching
signs, of casting far and wide to escape
the Sirens' enervating songs, anchoring
the helm in darkened caves the size of yurts.

On the hunt for El Greco, the Greek painter
holed up in Toledo, his home away from home,
his haven of elongated, diaphanous figures,
who rise to the clouds, linking heaven and earth.

We owe the Greeks the fat seeds of culture:
philosophy, theater, sculpture for all, democracy
for the fortunate few, women and slaves stuck
in the kitchen pouring libations for ancient sins.

Shades haunt the past, mounting arsenals of guilt
and accusation. The Greek splashes linseed oil on
canvas, erases his debt, dabs an eerie white in the eyes
of threadbare saints, who elevate to everlasting heights.

Poetry hunkers down behind
the freshly finished facade
of language; each link to the lexicon
lovingly chiseled into the smooth,
grey stone. Here, precision reigns over all.

Vainly held in place for the length
of a reading, the facade glides
toward a shimmering white dot
on the horizon. The perfect poem, perhaps?
Here, perspective precipitates all.

Like quicksand, a marshy morass
of words ***** at the poet's feet
as he strains to match
the facade's pace, stride for muddy stride.
If he succeeds, pride will power all.

Poetry is breath, inadequately lodged
in the poet's ever-shrinking body.
Reading wrests the silent syntax,
inhales form through its viscera, exhales
metaphor and rhyme. Like becomes like, becomes all.

The gibbous moon hangs over the Earth,
death descending upon a dying reality.
A shovelful of ashes,
this dance of futility,
nothing left behind but fallen soot.

Dearest brother, we are at the last point,
it seems, and who would have expected
such a ridiculous finale,
this eschatological confrontation
with the black summit of existence?

O impotent little man,
in your melancholy selfishness,
how you distress me
with this great, surging silence,
the oppressiveness of solitude.

Despair is disease,
but I can no longer mourn you.
Your remorse is indulgent,
self-forgiving, superstitious.

The pain of relentless doom
in no way ennobles you;
your retreat into suffering
but a complicity in guilt.

Stretch forth your wretched head to
say the words you cannot say;
a contortion in the throat,
a choking on each syllable.

Do not be deceived.

Beyond all else
there is nothing more human,
than these last, few moments
of the searing white heat
of the God we cannot prove,
of the broken mirror image
of your imminent demise.

Passing beyond all morality
oozes the wound of your existence:
to decry the winnowing of meaning,
the destruction of freedom,
the end of everything.

1.
emerging from
shadowed kiva
ladder rises
piercing light

sandstone heat
heat of ruins
old world heat
heat of grains

elevation
height of heights

embers
glow to
blackened
charcoal

silent scrawl
waxing
warmth

dust
clouds
swirl

boot soles
skate
along
pink
floor

smooth
as gems
secret rites

2.
spirit dwells
above
commotion
shelling beans
water's weight

unhunted trail
path untrodden

scrubland
tangled
bush
of thorns

white cloud
sky
of blue
blue sky

noonday
heat
aching light

thirst
for meaning
hand-tied
rung

steps
toward
heaven
rocky
roof

of rock
and stars

level
wall
knife-edge
corner

reaching
high
to touch
cool
stone

overhead
ghostly
hand print

time's
embrace

beyond
all time

Once, in the moment, struck still and silent,
Shadows creep along the hills toward dusk.
Crows blacken the sky; the leader pilots
The followers toward the clouds, fine as dust.
The moon sports a halo of mist, piled up
To sweep across the star-splayed night, which must
Uphold our dream of a world less strident,
A world where truth is beauty, beauty truth.
Prescient as he was, Keats saw violence
As nature’s faulty mechanism: rust.
If not in poems, then in his own demise.
There’s no glory in death, ****** upon us.
But in the moment, scared, still and silent,
A darkened beauty slithers toward dusk.

The wind lifts the moon above the darkened wheat.
I touch the water
and think of nothing.

The cold night beckons
to the slow, bending shadows.
Between the trees
a feather falls.

The leaves divide my breathing
toward the long, ashen poplars.

There now.
Listen.

The clear movement’s gone.

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.

1.

Dust devils swirl on the desert floor.
Saguaro cacti raise their arms
in praise or an invisible stick-up.
No gunman looms on the horizon.

My father drives us home
from California to Kansas
in a brown '61 Chevy station wagon.
His goal: to get there as soon as possible.

My brother and I bake in the back seat.
The air-conditioning freezes over.
We roll down the windows to a stifling
wall of heat. Soon, we will cross

Death Valley, already 111 degrees
at mid-morning. I squirm and worry
that we do not have enough
gas to make it. We are the only car

on the road. Emptiness breeds around us.
My imagination peoples the void
with phantoms, characters from comic books
and drugstore Westerns. Ghosts hover over

my memory now; they hold the key
to my travels. I must invoke them again.
I hear the rumble of the American Southwest:
canyons and buttes, mountains and hoodoos.

2.

On the outskirts of the Grand Canyon,
my father searches in vain for a place to stay.
All motels teem with the smell of curry --
for him, the stench of war in Calcutta,
anathema to a young Army Seabee
stationed leagues and leagues from home.

The neon light flashing VACANCY over
the whitewashed, A-frame office
might as well say NO. We do not stop.
We sleep in the car, the four of us
restive and uncomfortable, awakened
at last by sunrise over the North Rim.

A sage-scented day has begun
under a yellow-lavender sky.
There are still miles and miles to go,
as Frost put it. But something changed
in the night. Barreling down the barren blacktop
we have already gotten there, absence our new home.