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

We are pushed by
out-of-date clothes,
chased by boldly printed scarves,
shoved by trinkets
and lozenges.

St. Remy’s market bustles
in the morning sun.
Massive crowds craving
bargains. It is
a festival day.
Vendors lace the cake with
eternal candles, turned off
shortly after noon.

We wander through the
giddy ambiance, peer at the
high-priced wares, wary
of being taken for tourists.
Art, cheese and spices
catch our eyes. We
take home paintings,
etchings, nougat.
We nourish the local
economy.

A church hovers on
the brightly colored fringe.
Its steps a convenient
respite from the madding
crowd. I taste
cheeses, meats, candies
and foie gras.

A twinge of conscience:
Innocent geese gorged
on grain.
Farmers work hard to
achieve the right-sized
livers: bloated.
They can their product,
stamped with primitive
labels.
An immoral delicacy
proffered on tasting sticks.

Euros drop like flies
from my wallet, emptying
it. In search of cash,
we discover antique
wine-tastings cups.
Burgundy tinged with
pewter.
Materialism thrives in
every crammed, covered
booth. Bartering for
prices the hard truth
of commerce.

Who knows a value when
you see one?
Who needs another object
to shelve?
Yet we buy, buy, buy, eyes
weak against temptation.
Humble elegance especially
earns a tip.

We die of ennui and boredom,
blind to the cosmos’ resonating
with a revelatory repertoire
of marvels and wonders.

Our spirit intermingles
with Spirit, history’s unseen
hero, pushing the dialectic
forward to its inevitable conclusion.

Art is no easy accomplishment.
The Muse descends in silence.
We listen for her secret command,
shaping words into the integrity
of the poem. Spirit imprints spirit
on the open page.

Spirit rises with spirit to the realm
of the Titans, muscular poets
crowned in laurels and draped in multicolored
sashes. They have shown how
willpower can decode the Muse’s
cryptic command, and how poetry
is eternally reborn.

We die of ennui, boredom and blindness.
The cosmos enriches itself without us,
counting billions of stars, not hundreds
of poems. Consider the Muse like
the Delphic Oracle: Ignore her at your
own peril.

She knows that glory awaits
the courageous. She knows that there
are laurels enough for everyone.

The ocean accepts every sacrilege,
every pollutant,
every lasting piece of plastic
that amalgamates into an
artificial coral reef bobbing
toward the top.

The ocean is no longer our home;
we treat it like a compost heap --
infertile, ugly, smelling of death.
Fish cannot compete with artifice,
cannot feed on trash.
It is too late to save them.

1.
Stags crest the hill
splotched with heather
and cairns. Their body-
builder-thick necks
carry a massive
headdress of outsize
antlers. Heavy is
the head that wears
the crown.

They snort with
disdain at dangers
from humans. The hunt
means nothing to
them but the thrill
of the chase. The
nearness of death
simply one of nature’s
teasing tricks.

A misty sun punches
through the yellow-
gray fog, a blurry
corona emerging as
a chick from its shell, no
match for the Red Deer's
majestic rack. Royalty
spawns violence to
protect the crown. No
challenger approaches.

Nobility, integrity, power.
Scotland finds these
virtues hidden in the
regal heart of the Red Hart.
And so killing turns
to regicide. The
bullet melts in its
casing from shame.
We yearn, yearn,
yearn for the
beauty of the stag,
only to "possess"
it by destroying it.

2.
To leave the hills
and dales, the
mist of the stag's
fierce breathing,
and to warily enter
the shadowed lair
of some hunting lodge --
all this vanquishes
our claim to
nature's bounty.

On every white wall, the
stag's crown hangs,
a dark skeleton
of taxidermy,
unsightly, lifeless,
mute witness to
our failed attempt
at unity, our empty
chase after beauty,
the lust to own it,
become it, caress
it, love it and so
woo immortality --
all this vanishes
like the moon on
a winter’s night,
as elusive
as the Red
Deer's ghost.

On the hill, cairns
point the way to
the grandest vistas
of the Highlands,
rolling in patchwork
colors toward the horizon
and sea. Our place
is left looking
and longing, the stags
prancing behind us,
elders chanting their
glory. The sun
glints off the waves,
lighting up a vast
kingdom of brilliance.
It swells and recedes,
forever lost to the
petty reach of our
lonely grasp.

Giant cottonwoods rake
the sky, slake their thirst
below dried-out creek beds.
The sunbaked soil fractures
into pieces of a shattered ***.

Octopus roots root out secret
channels underground, unclogged
by fish, debris or mythological
creatures rising from the rocks.
Trunks molt flattened flagstones

of bark, ragged chunks more gray
than brown, more a coat of armor
for battered torsos, more a pillar of steel
for massive, chipped legs. O Time! Age too
long, and bushy tops topple into the creek.

Leaves rustle like muted cymbals.
Still, there is much to celebrate in such
fearless longevity: Do not Heracles-sized
branches veer off in heroic Y’s that
claw their way higher and higher until

they burst through the clouds, free from
the world, frowning down upon it in
verdant condescension? I cannot answer.
Trees soar in silence. I scoot along the creek
bed, scrambling for arrowheads, for some sign

of human presence that shows I, too, belong among
the giants, shooting my roots underground,
rising up as an arbor above the dried-out
shadows, grasping for the sweet sap of longevity.
I shall bite off a bit of bark and bid the world adieu.

— he died. Though hard I strove, but strove in vain,
To rend and gnash my bonds in twain.
Even from the cold earth of our cave.
  — Lord Byron, “The Prisoner of Chillon”

1.
Like an invisible maelstrom, toying
with its own survival, preying on
the Good, pure nothingness in itself,
pain plunges into the recesses
of my ragged hip, races down my thigh,
scorching one side, numbing the other.
Flesh becomes kindling, becomes petrified
wood, all excess bark singed into flaking embers
that flit through my dull, dank cellar, alone.

I push up from my intricate Victorian armchair,
vowing to escape this onslaught, this lightning
torment -- my leg pummeled by staccato left jabs
from tiny gods, which sting like hailstones in
a summer storm, clinging to the battered lawn:
piles of white rocks, of snow and ice, emblems
of the surety that lasting damage has been done.

2.
We all walk into the world with a faltering gait, unsure
of the rhythms of our wandering ways, or the wisest
guidebook to carry for gaining ground. A crooked
back wrenches my flimsy progress, flings my steps
into a crooked dance, off-balance, rude with vertigo,
flailing to regain my footing, fighting to find my
footprint cast in papier-mâché, tissue of the Earth’s
tenderness toward this wayward, mutant child.

Lord Byron carved his name into the limestone
of Chateau de Chillon as his pledge, wielding poetry,
to liberate the 16th-century Swiss prisoner who
lingered there, lost amid his habitually gnawed chains.
The metallic taste never left his mouth, bitter as bile.
Lac Leman surges beneath the isolated dungeon
window, shuttered by three iron bars, defenseless
against the winnowing light that sweeps across
the manacles hammered into a post, now void
of any aching limbs, of any useless fists, the hollow
trophy of the tiny gods’ ****** foxhunt of justice.

3.
Justice has no name but mercy now, the grace
of pardon and rest for the crooked soul. My spine,
twisted into stenosis, choked by constricting bone, pushing
ever closer to itself until it fuses into a gargoyle’s face,
spewing rainwater on the madding crowds below,
striking matches on my sense-less skin, imprinting
rough, blackened stripes with each flash of flame.

I would steal this fire like Prometheus. I would eat it
like a big-top performer with an asbestos throat. I would
digest this fire, then excrete it on the hailstones. I would
burn within like a primal fire, and let the gods burn with me.
Only then would I reclaim my rightful balance. Only then
would I rebuke the grotesque justice that rules this
fire-filled, shadowy fiefdom of my body’s minor gods.

The first word is the hardest:

Letters combining and colliding
to emerge from the vast,
empty whiteness of the page,
a facsimile, an imitation
of matter taking form.

Some say
form is what really matters:
pre-existent, eternal,
the God-force of creation
dictating ex nihilo
the process of becoming.

And some say
matter is what really counts:
seductive and inert,
a slumbering potentiality
murmuring softly to be
molded and transformed
into an ever-eroding effigy
of the permanence of Being.

But I say
only the Logos calls and answers --
in dialogue and soliloquy --
deep sounding to deep:

A cry is formed in the dark heart of matter,
and a poet is born to utter it,
struggling -- his whole being burning --
to speak the last things of existence
before his voice gives way
and the gift betrays him.

Yes.
The first word is the hardest
because it is the last word,
it is the only word,
coming into the world as a whimper
and passing out of it as a groan.

Desolation, smoke and ash.

The world and its relentless, restive urgings
are not enough.

The edifice of order is too ephemeral,
the tenuous bonds of meaning
too easily razed to rubble
beneath the nihilist's gaze.

No doubt, the end is assured for all,
prolonged by believing,
hastened by the wait,
but coming just the same in fullness:
the fat, swollen belly of death.

Perhaps.

Or is it not our calling
to struggle for exemption,
to defy the violent course of history
and its pitiless lack of purpose?

Is it not the triumph of the will
to rise above the ruins of time
on wings of wisdom,
to sing and dance, to sup and celebrate
the marriage feast of laughter and the absurd?

Surely, necessity can be resisted.

Who, then, will dare to tear against
the bruised, battered earth
with new-honed tools of abundance?

Who, then, will dare to seek out
the sweetness of day
that whispers and beckons from the one, true dwelling?

Who, then, will dare to begin?

A burning candle could light our way,
as we make a foray between a stream
to our left and black woods to our right.
The night is starless, nameless, harmless
to the nocturnal creatures who guard the way.

Our path lies indistinct, boulders rising up
like barriers: no room ahead, no place to bed.
We peer at the murmuring stream, searching
for a stripe of reflected light. None can be found.
In our pockets, we carry two candles, but we have

no matches, no way to ignite the light that we seek.
Only the Source will provide, not these flickering,
flimsy facsimiles. We seek the light everlasting,
overcoming the night, overcoming our fright.
We will find it only in our Buddha nature, which

radiates like a burning ember through our monkey minds,
which illumines without burning, which needs no fuel
or breath. We will sacrifice our candles to the eternal light.
It crawls out of the woods onto the back of the stream.
Water will carry it; we will follow and never look back.

We emanate from the timeless One.
Some reflexively christen it the sun.
But their poetic imagination *****
in the wind, a useless appendage.

We are bound to blind matter,
an inane substrate of Being.
Planted in it, we rise as intellect and soul.
This triumvirate makes us whole.

We yearn to return to our Source,
seek union in inwardness and love.
A part fitting uneasily in the whole,
we contemplate our sorry cosmic role.

Still, mystic oneness drives us forward,
carried on wings of virtue in this life.
What comes next we cannot fathom.
The Origin beckons; we stand the strife.

"ad astra per aspera"
how many times
have we heard it
repeated ad nauseam
how many times
has it been floated
like a balloon
above our leaden dreams

"to the stars through
difficulty" yes and so
why the stars
we aspire to them because
      they are there
maybe if mallory
had been an astronomer
maybe if he had been
a star climber

at least everest
welcomes
you to the top
of the world
at least mountains
may try to **** you
with great height
at least elevation
mimics transcendence
and who doesn't like
a good mime now and then

stars offer nothing
but distance
their light has long
gone out by the time
we reach them
and for good measure
if their light were still on
we would be toast
burnt not buttered
not jammed not jellied
crisp cinders of toast

stars are so many suns
they burn like black
furnaces they scorch
the synapses
of the soul
a consuming
inferno wild
and explosive
and dead
to us

we grasp for them why
they are not planets free
from ourselves
and all our space
detritus they are not
life not light
that illumines
more than more
stars then goes out
for good
and all this
after difficulty

never has inspiration
smelled so sweet
like smoke from
a raging wildfire
leaping over
mountains
to try to **** us
under the
canopy of
dying stars


(that's not writing, son,
that's typing!)

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.

(After Sartre)

There’s a sorrow that overcomes us all.
There’s a sickness that never can be healed.
Within itself, existence casts a pall
That no one can remove; the cover’s sealed
Into the searing consciousness of all.
Its attributes can never be repealed.
They inform freedom, forcing us to call
For a meaning and value we can feel.
Death makes the veil of nothingness to fall
Over all the choices with which we deal.
We can’t escape this burden or forestall
Making ourselves the judges of what’s real.
It’s a problem that suffocates us all:
We solely pick the cards that we must deal.

History deceives us with many fictions.
We mistake fantasies as if they’re real.
Such illusions create stringent frictions,
Giving past emotions their strongest seal.
Our heritage deserves valediction,
But narrative art asserts its appeal.
Myth, story, fable and archaic diction
Overwhelm concrete facts; their essence steal.
I long for the past without reflection
Of ancestral interference or zeal.
But there is no version without mixture
Of deceptions and meanings we can feel.
Past accounts remain shrouded in factions,
Whose rifts of fabrication will not heal.

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.

We crawl on
our bellies
under the squat
sandstone bridge
to emerge into
the mouth of
the canyon that
boxes in
the light. Walls
slick with
darkened
rock plunge
to the sand-
soaked floor.
Iron-stained
boulders line
our way. Only
silence speaks.

Ahead, we climb
a makeshift ladder
of timber tied
with fraying rope.
Up, then down again,
crawling farther
atop the sand,
captive to
the dark until
we emerge again
into the day's
last light.

Behind us,
giant eyes
peer out
of gray-white
plumage. On
the rock shelf,
two infant
Great-Horned
Owls spy on
us with
curiosity,
wonder
and fear.
No adult
in sight,
trustingly
airborne at
twilight
to swoop
down on the
day's prey,
plenty
for all.

Uncanny,
the infants’ eyes
never blink,
absorbing
us in their
piercing
depth
of field:
strange
mammals,
too large
to slash
and carry.

In the distance,
heavy wings
cleave the
darkened air.
150 words

pin oaks tower
above the sunbaked
sky    clouds snag on
branches tear apart
into shadow-streaked
clumps of white    they
split into patterns
of significance
like newly bought
sheets
of satin

on an L-shaped limb
i see the face of my
muse shredded into
strips of suffering
her eyes are gone
her mouth firmly shut
as always      the font
of inspiration dappled
with dry green moss
plugged as long as
the shreds survive
on the sahara-searing
wind      elongated
tattered rising with
the currents bounding
straight toward
poetry's embrace
straight toward
the infinite
void

rimbaud sits
at the base
of his oak      the giant
gnarled roots shape
an uneasy divot
a place
to rest
he has gagged
his muse
so no sounds escape
her lips
silent
comme habitude  
    to prompt
true poetry first derange
the senses    poetry
sets its own
standards raw elegant
faithful demonic
buried at the base
of the titanic oaks

just as for wittgenstein
words are not enough  
for rimbaud
they scale the moat
of meaning    at the top
only emptiness a missing
moon      whereof
we cannot speak thereof
we must remain silent

rimbaud enfant terrible
of paris'
literary
scene
takes aim at his muse
fires      she falls
to the ground
permanently mute
and he is finished
writing forever    
he abandons
her like a faithless
lover      words taste like
sand      they are symbols
of nothing      difficult
to chew      inadvisable
to swallow
no nutrition
    so the poet
jilts his vocation
traipses
off to ethiopia
to sell guns to any
lowlife buyer
who carries cash      with
poetry exhausted
guns make a life
of danger adventure
worth later losing
a leg to bone
cancer worth later
dying penniless
in marseille
eager to return
to africa to reclaim
his primal homeland

at the base
of the oaks swaying
in the sub-saharan breeze
we dig for the muse's
buried speech
to rimbaud her
reprimand and
prophesy that
words are only
symbols of breath
no one can define
them      they stand
for everything else
they inhale experience
exhale the semblance
of art      senses
do not remain deranged
but come to them-
selves with
desire      what is a leg
a life a legacy of
modernism      what a gun
holstered in the
french-african sun
shining
into the open
wound of the
future which no
poet can wrestle
to the ground
shaded by titanic
oaks towering
above the sky
powerful
yet quiet
as a muse

Come hither
O Thou,is life not a song?
-- E. E. Cummings, "Orientale I," Tulips & Chimneys

1.
i lay the book down
bookmark in place
still shivering with
possibilities still
vibrant in the after-
glow of literature's
vitality words bloom
like daffodils the
white space around
them the clay to
reshape a living
persona of the dead
poet he populates
the page like rain
on fertile soil like
pennies on the
dollar hear him
holler i am here
his heart broad-
casts his feelings
his feelings broad-
cast his voice

2.
i sense e. e. cummings
singing each
chanson innocente
each birth of spring
each burden
of love
joyfully borne
he is there in
the sounds
that echo
in my skull
that slither
down my
spine an
anatomy of
meaning
that even the
harshest critic
cannot dissect
muscle and
bone united
to lift the weight
of puddles
meant for jump-
ing stretching
to tie jump ropes
into knots of
playfulness
still taut
today

3.
it is always
spring in the
dewy meadow
it is always
meadows that
cushion the
poet's fall
o father how
i've failed
you
how i set
free the
body that
hypnotized
the greeks
that still
shifts its
weight
in marble
of oh so
innocent
white

4.
the poem
passes
judgment
on the
pompous
on
repression's
hosts not guilty
are the children
laughing
and skipping
past the
latex
meadows of
the goat-footed
balloonman
who paws
the mud
like well a
tied-up
goat
e. e. whistles
a chanson
from far
and wee
i lay the
book down
and whistle
back
the reader’s
chanson
de merci

Lying down
at the day’s intermission,
I listen to Puccini arias,
and am transported to Lucca,
his walled hometown,
with its *****-white streets,
its darkened straits,
its massive cathedral under
eternal construction.

Life limps along in
effervescent flux here,
beauty kept dormant,
or sprouting like a tree
from the Torre Guinigi’s
grassy roof.

A one-time amphitheater
sports cloned tourist shops.
Only one
sells Puccini souvenirs.
La Boheme survives
on note cards and
lop-sided bookmarks.

The composer’s legacy turned
into trinkets made in China.
A vast, discounted reserve
of memory, kitsch and fame.
Still, they provide me
a precarious solace.

Music without words
charts my tourist mood
of endless angst.
Opera is the grandest art,
some critics claim.
The human condition rendered
thick in symbol and sound.

Happily, I carry
the philosopher’s stone
to decipher the soaring
scores.
They say, passion, foreboding,
no regrets. A fluttering
high C stirs the airwaves.

Ululating sopranos,
searing tenors sigh
heavenward.
The last act over,
the curtain rises on
the dull, restless, repetitive
routines of everyday life.

In the background,
echoes of Tosca, currents
of ruin and rust.
We must embrace our destiny
even on the off-notes.
Opera’s solo signal:
Amor Fati.

We travel through our lives, hapless and lost.
No pathway sets its course before our feet.
Yet we push onward, whatever the cost,
To chase after mirages, vast and fleet.
A void of understanding spells our loss.
We fail, groan and grasp; our destiny meet.
A lack of clear-cut meaning makes our cause:
We await a revelation so sweet.
Many roads lead to callings at no cost;
Which one to choose seems a quest for defeat.
Absurdity creates a fray to toss
Such callings to the flames of these mean streets.
A void of understanding keeps us lost.
We follow random markings at our feet.

The streets of Rome swirl with ***** water.
My clothes drenched, my shoes soiled
By this unholy baptism of nature’s fury.
The Watchmaker sleeps.
The heavens fail to answer, protect.
Behind us, the Colosseum circles broken time
In fragments: blood, sand and stone.
Sacrificed to the elements, we resist
Our fate, resist defeat.
Blue skies hide their faces
Behind *****, distorted mirrors.
Nothing to see here. Only
Rain falls like tears. Only
Tears fall like rain.
Dry land does not exist
Except elsewhere. Dystopia.
Here, curbside, umbrellas sagging,
Italy drowns.

orchid blooms
sun limns petals
winter beauty

Unamuno wrings his hands, frets over
the Tragic Sense of Life in which we
all die inevitably, inexorably, unwillingly.
And death is simply non-being to him,
and non-being looks a lot like pure
nothingness, which means we can't
even think "non-being" or "death"
when we're dead. It's all one, big,
fat zero. Add it to or subtract it from
itself, and it's still nada, the sum
of all fears. O the woe of being human.

I read him as a teenager in love with
philosophy, and thought him the most
profound thinker Europe had conjured up
in the 20th century. Continental philosophy
was the only philosophy for me, heavily
Germanic. Even Sartre was a closet
Heideggerian, teething on Sein und Zeit.
But Unamuno leapt over the Teutonic depths,
plunged into Dante's circle of death, scratched
out a mirror image of the human face. I took
it and ran, Kierkegaard stuffed in my back pocket.

Philosophy is eros is love is an incomplete connection.
Reality rises like a daffodil in the green grass
of spring. Wordsworth pens an ode; the rest of us
stare and blindly think we know what we see. But
the eye doesn't conceive, it doesn't relieve anything
save a surface tension. The eye can't speak, can't say
that the daffodil is real. Nobody sees reality in the
flesh. Nothing meshes with sensation but sensation.
That's the Latin way, the Mediterranean way, says
Jose Ortega y Gasset, another Spanish wizard of
wisdom, wishing for intellectual love, dancing at Delphi.

Philosophia. You can't see it, you can say it, but it's
all yearning, no release, no peace until the mind
settles on the bottom of the stream, feeds on
jetsam, maybe flotsam, then thinks "Being" and
gushes *******. This is Plato's territory, a long way
from Spain. But there's geometry in the bullring. There's
life and death and nada and sol y sombra in the stands.
Ideas don quixotic cloaks. Cervantes turns them into
literature, the Ur-story of Spain and its millions of minions.
The common man squirms for comedy. Tragic senses
squire hard work, and if life is so short, why not eat, dream

and be merry? Unamuno deserves his fate. Thinking
about death still adds up to nothing. Thought dies, too;
it's not accustomed to rue the end of infinity. It has no
affinity with hard limits. It rises, stays aloof, looks down
on the world, which has only one side visible, and pronounces
it good for nothing. But can't the thinker take a joke?
Incompletion competes with vast yearning like the tortoise
with the hare. No one gains on the other: Zeno's Paradox.
We might still ride Mediterranean Vespas, but the Greeks
kick-started this thing into motion. There's no reason

without Socrates, and he pronounced death a no-fear zone.
Unamuno forgot his Crito, Phaedo and Apology. Irony adds
up to something, not nothing. There's no surface irony here,
folks. This is Mycenean, not Mediterranean, Athenian not
Salamancian. Spain thinks it thinks new thoughts, taking
the bull by the ****** ear that's left behind the horn. No mas.
Only philosophy thinks itself, eternally. It never dies, man, even
if the cosmos explodes to a pinhead, then vanishes like
a magic trick. What's tragic about necessity, certainty? They
rave on in that dark night of the soul. Nada means nada,
but "means" isn't nada. It's todo on the human topos.

So climb it like a mountain in Dante's Purgatorio. Fret
no more, amigo. You are on the top of the world; it's a tricky
move to the summit. Ascend on the wings of meaning,
then see what you think, not think what you see. That's something.
And Socrates proclaimed it enough. Hey, Plato made him say so.

the amethyst jewel
lies coolly on her forehead
bright beauty of death

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.

Angels
1.
The color fields shimmer
in yellows and blues.
Rothko’s ghost lingers nearby,
wearing his snappy, green
editor’s eye-shades,
studiously red-penciling
every word that a painting is not worth.
He labors in Limbo because
he took his own life,
even though he did not believe
in an afterlife, or in Limbo,
or in laboring endlessly
for redemption.

2.
The color fields waver
in primary hues.
You can see the suspended
movement in great stationed,
feathered rectangles, electrified by,
shivering with, transcendence.
Van Gogh believed in it.
So did Chagall: Angels,
on the order of Rilke’s
terrifying beings from
a realm of suffering higher
than our own. They hear
our cries as shimmering rectangles
of color. Pick a hue, any hue.
Any hue will do.

1.
A perfect cube, this precious steel cage,
with its endless accouterments
of nourishment and bedding,
exercise and entertainment.

No pain, no suffering,
no indignities, no boredom.

The blessings of technology,
salvation of science.
Nothing left to be desired:
The cure of comfort eliminating all need.

2.
His blood pink eyes fixed gazing on eternity,
the tiny gray human once more begins the day.

He rises in silence, no pretense of rationality,
no meaningless disdain for the task set before him.

Pawing and praying for his effective release,
he gnaws incessantly at the cold steel around him,
yearning in anguish for the conditions of true struggle;
willing, affirming the inevitability of defeat.

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.

The delicate smell of marzipan wafts
through the room, as the nuns push
their specialty candy through an
ancient iron gate. I pass them
a handful of euros in exchange.

Inside the entrance to the cloister,
we move in slanted lines of shadow.
Outside, the sun, blindingly bright,
awakens the day to everything
but quiet and contemplation.

How sweet these primal gestalts
of darkness and light. Secular
and sacred. Prayerful and profane.
You cannot invent such memories;
they simply spill through the maker’s
hands – not like sand, but like clay
begging to be subtly shaped into
a figurine.

First the noses, then the arms break,
like fragments of an antique statue.
The pieces vanish, but you can retrieve
them, hold them spellbound, pull them
from the depths of forgetfulness.
The past does not exist; it’s true,
except in this powerful kind of willfulness
that holds on to brokenness no matter what.

Time moves like thoughts move,
unidentifiable in the body. Time moves
on its own, eternally trapped in the present.
Here, now, is all we can say.

We can resent time, mourn its passing,
but we can never stop it from moving.
The eternal now that moves like cattle
across a field, like clouds across the
lavender sky. Once we aim to taste
the marzipan again, it flees before our eyes.

The sun limns the crest of snow-capped peaks packed below
a pale, cloudless sky. The faded blue draws out the
steely gray of the three mountain musclemen: Eiger,
Munch, Jungfrau. Alpine white outshines the same hue
of fresh carnations placed delicately in a vase
on the living room table -- as if forever.

Alps wear puffy cowls above craggy faces, drooping
indentations from too many jaw-shattering bouts
with the natural elements. White wobbles always
on the ropes; the countdown begins. Disfiguring
bruises turn into the loser’s crown. Nature tricks
us with its charms of purity and innocence.

Lucerne’s {Kapellbrucke} exists only for us, transported
from the 14th century to now, little changed from its origins --
and all for our pleasure. Yet It is a ruse that anything
eight centuries old would remain in place for
our touristic joy. We are intruders on history, backpacks
replacing 19th-century carpet bags, gilded in fool’s gold.

At dusk, Eiger turns from white to orange, a fruitful hue
whose sustenance is only glory. You can feast on
white Raclette cheese, white wine, white boiled potatoes,
white onions, but not white glory. Nutrition comes in many
substances. Orange stones satisfy some senses,
but leave us waiting for more, night after night,

This is true even in the light afternoon rain of autumn.

The genome tilts on its axis, spilling memes of shame,
mutation and death, tattooed on plasma walls.

Coronavirus latches onto a lowly cell, clamps down,
spews pellets of bubonic plague as fleas flee disaster.

1666. Eyam Village barricades its boundaries: No going in.
No going out. The population dies like convulsing rats,

bodies stacked high in the street: cords of firewood. No one dares
light the flame. Pestilence obeys the border's blockade, contained

behind thick, golden stones. Tiny cottages mutate to infirmaries.
Judgment seeps through window panes. Mercy aligns with death.

We build no blockades, boundaries shift in the wind. Virus obeys
no one's laws, vandalizes the body, sets fire to the human touch.

Eyam beams prettiness now. Neat, manicured lawns, well-swept streets,
no trace of plague save on the village entry sign. Tourists flock like fleas,

soaking up history's survival, sobering on its showcase of blight.
Who deserves to die from nature's aberrations? *Who goes in, who out?

1.
Long, empty days flee into the past.
No agenda.
No impulse.
No telos.
No soul.

My whitewashed angel claps
her silver hands.
I hear a dead man’s cry
sink slowly in the sands.

A mortar round pounds
the trenches at Verdun.
His heart stopped, Edward Thomas
blinks and falls.
Robert Frost tosses an apple
across the mending wall.

2.
Akhmatova mourns a faithless love.
Stalin disfigures her features
with a blood-stained dove.

Poetry extends beyond
the horizon of time.
Its foundation transcendental,
its meat image and rhyme.

3.
Empty days escape into the ticking void:
a metronome made meaningless,
a vacuum of joy.

Seeds sprout inside a driveway.
Dirt blackens in the rain.

Now knows no start or finish.
Eternity tightens its grip in vain.

Ignore the Tao.
Mountains remain mountains.
Moon remains moon.
Infinity in a grain of sand,
raw silk, uncut wood.

Man sweeps earthen floor,
mindfully makes jasmine tea.
Everything is as it always was.
All confusion shattered
in the clear light of being.

The clock stops for no one.
Sunday turns to Monday
turns to Sunday.
Endlessly absurd days.

Diffused rays of lengthening light
scoot across the hardwood floor
and pool on the space where we last lay together.

A long yellow-pine slat of wood
gleams in the afternoon sun.
A bump of lacquer breaks the surface.

For eons, we have coaxed each other
into the light, bearing down upon us
in ever-whitening stripes of purification.

Our love is the light, seeping through
the dark crevices of our hearts,
scouring the deep recesses of shadow and doubt.

The floor creaks as we glide across it,
hardy survivor of this hundred-year-old house.
Our love creaks as the past thrusts itself into the present.

We cannot grasp it, but we feel its warmth
wash over us again and again. We know
the radiance of love overcomes all oblivion.

heavy yellow-grayish waves
of swirling ****** backwater
**** steadily at the runner's knees
foaming at the ankles
deep green and lathered
in the sweeping middle distance.

he sweeps the rise of sand
and sedge with arms outstretched,
eyes afloat
fingers ply the flesh along his back,
brush water from his legs
the sheeny stinging film of brine

the white beach runs its sweeping course
swirling, sinking with the sand
drowsing in the drunken sun
refuge is offered -- a luminous blue
screeching of the soaring gulls
the thunder of the surf

great black rocks divide the tide
rolling in fields of azure
limitless, integral
he calls the sky
sweeping back
upon the distance
the endless sweeping middle distance

sunlight dazzling complexities of colors
ascetic flashings in richness of form
purity of beauty in fragrant elevation
the taste, the touch,
the vital intensity

swept away running
for the purely accidental,
the happiness, success
of the accident of nature

movement in rhythm, swift in apprehension
swiftly toward the integral combination
to combine the elements
fundamental, the intensity,
the taste, the touch,
the vital intensity

The blue man with the blue guitar
no longer plays things as they are.

Things as they are are not so quick.
Blue men of substance aim, then kick

against the ****** of six-beat bars.
The bass line rumbles near and far.

Half-notes turn whole. Another hue
spews discord, then chords of blue

sprint beyond us as we are. And we
ourselves compose the tune in three-

quarter time. Harmony orbits a billion stars,
slingshots through our world of blue guitars.

A troop of goats trot triple-time down a valley road,
a machinery of bells threshing the mountain air.
Little breaks the silence of the rural dukedom where
we reside. What does, gains immediate notice.

It is the happening of the moment passing through
to another place to pasture, the *******
Of the seasons. Though meadows burst with Kelly green,
and no trees have dropped their leaves, it is
autumn’s inaugural, where clouds hug the earth, mountains
curry themselves, goats scurry to new homes.

We, too, have shifted homes for a respite from the mundane.
The new now advertises surprise: This will not
appear elsewhere, will not last long enough to forget
where we came. With time, we follow the goatherd’s
abrupt call and hope to be rewarded with a golden bell.

1.

Like a colossal black hole,
the pitiless night devours
every glowing shred of light,
generating an impenetrable
darkness for the pilgrim
groping to find his way home.

2.

Darkness is its own reward.
The lines on the highway
disappear into pavement.
Compasses swirl counter-
clockwise, blind to true north.
Death hides behind bushes, reaching
out to ****** the unwitting soul.

3.

I yearn to embrace the night
in all its inhumanity, to find
its weak spot for the traveler.
But there is no shadow of
direction. The night hides
within itself, dense and tragic,
like a Puccini opera.
Who can sing its arias?

4,

Like a colossal black hole,
the night compacts every
beam of light. Who can lift
the curtain of darkness
that falls across our lives?
Who can bring light back to the world?

1.
sunlight prisms through beveled glass
aging oak door squeaks      open      shut

only blue emerges      verging on violet
mixing three-alarm-fire red in buckets

spattered with streams of coagulated paint
safely      the room turns        sea      sky

the color of my faulty iris      too much
light pours through its torn surface

2.
reality wears no aura or crown      only
glare and double imagery      to see things

twice is to reap the whirlwind      from
my doppelganger to twin oak branches

high above my fertile lawn      two is a blue
number      prime and insinuating      duplicating

the snake in Eden      pairs of vipers slither
at my feet      vision is performative      it acts

out      toward what it beholds      a shivering
subject defenseless against the label

object        hopeless to transform
itself in front of the spying Other

3.
light refracts      refracts      spreading thin
to bathe the authentic self      the true

self      the self who will not squint away from
blue      who will not pour red into

prisms to alchemize        purple      most royal
of colors      oligarch of hybrid hues

by divine design        purple rules      the field of vision
before it        all things shiver as one

in dual dimensions      they recite their
names      twice      the authentic serf      the true serf

4.
backs break under burdens of vision      serfs
march double-file        into exile      their way

draped in regal tunics of purple      their way raked clear
of signs      of double vision      twice color blind

my eyes turn inward      away from purple
seeped forever in      shades of  b    l    u    e

Mephistopheles moans.
His bargain won; now what
to do? What good is a human
soul as vanquished prey?

Faust exults in his superhuman
strength. He holds an unfair
advantage over all other poets.
No drug testing for magic.

He dances with the devil,
cheek to cheek. He swoons
at the crescendo, falls into
his partner's waiting arms.

There is something maniacal
in his character, like arsenic
in a tall, cold glass of water.
He gets drunk on it, gets high.

Who will judge his newest
achievement? Like for like cannot
be found. He stays isolated
in his cold grey cage. No touching.

Freedom breeds creativity,
the force of all masterworks.
Faust settles as a lap dog
for Mephistopheles.

Soulless, the poet wanders
through Dante's circles
of hell. With whom will he
find his place? No place

for his cheapened soul. No
punishment for his fiery
hubris. He forms artist and
audience as one substance,

and applauds himself.
His victory is self-serving,
but he has no human
self to serve. His triumph rings

hollow. He plays the xylophone
on his ribs. The music turns
toy-like and irritating. He has
gone too far. No way back.

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 chiseled 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.

Apples fall from the tree
behind the Swiss chalet.
They fall through me as
shadows climb and crest
Wetterhorn Mountain,
crowned by rocky horns
borne from Michelangelo's
"Moses." Horns of brilliance
and power, horns of shining
light that passes through me
into the shadows of the sun-stained
mountain, whose horns turn,
twist and fall through me
into the scattered piles
of apples plopping
onto the neon green grass.
Apples tumble through me
as I pass into the silence
within the silence that beckons
from the mountaintops. I am
the fruit of darkness and light,
fruit of the horn of the divine,
a son of Moses seeking exodus
beneath this rocky band of ragged peaks.