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.

At the peak of highest ecstasy,
so prettily pleased with herself,
she sinks beneath the surface sea,
gripping tight, like a book from a shelf,

her silver mirror, the perfect thing
to admire her perfect form.
Her virginal gown rises in angel's wings.
Her face beams beauty's eternal norm.

How long can she contemplate
herself before taking a breath?
Absorbed by her image, she satiates,
floating gently upward, away from death.

orange dragon clouds
swirl in the dusky, baroque, winnowing sky
the once brilliant day dies within me
still I cling to a rocky pinnacle        alone

1.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge digests his grayish-green anodyne
and dreams of the kaleidoscopic exotica of Kublai Khan.

Orson Welles puffs his cigar between takes, edits and directs
the poet's smoke-thin visions into everlasting, silver celluloid.

Xanadu, palatial complex of Khan's magnificent Mongolian empire,
metamorphoses into the fantasy kingdom of Charles Foster Kane

and his flame-filled childhood. Fumes of sizzling rosebuds streak
traces of gray across his bejeweled grasping after operatic grandeur.

2.
Coleridge pens imagery of high-minded passion, tragic loss,
despair at sea -- an epic Delacroix -- while William Wordsworth

lets loose a clear-eyed revolution in the high flowery stanzas
of England's prettified poetry. Plain diction and the depths

of the self, suckled by the mystic wonders of Lakeland's fells, attune
to the melody of the poet's maturation, nature's marvel of The Prelude.

Chubby, cherubic Coleridge chases after the lean, elegant Wordsworth
to connive an unpatched rupture in poetry's flow: birth of Romanticism.

3.
Kublai Khan's courtly poets conjure impossible imperial feats
to further the wise warrior mystique of China's first conqueror.

Grandson of Genghis Khan, he weaves the calligraphy of his
bravery into the broad shield he uses to rebuff temptation

of all but the serpentine lure of luxury and opulence, his rightful
reward, his cherished spoils, interest compounded daily at Xanadu.

A knock at the door, and Coleridge's dream tears asunder on film,
dissipating with the vapors rising up from Welles’ golden cigar.

4.
Wordsworth wanders lonely as a cloud, watchful of nature's glory
expressed in woodlands, mountains, and the steady wash of the sea.

This all can be praised without ornament, witnessed without
embellishment, an earthy channel for the radiance of the world

to bless us, even though the world is too much with us. How much
splendor can one soul gather into the barns of abundance? Coleridge,

dejected among his odes, seeks ever more film time. Khan, free of worldly weariness, tallies his treasures. Wordsworth waves a daffodil and weeps.

1.

Like a giant chrysanthemum in full bloom,
Carmelite nuns in white habits overflow
the chapel of the Gothic church carved
exquisitely into the Spanish hillside.

Faces averted from the pressing
crowds, voices rising in ethereal
harmony, the nuns sing the world awake,
seeking absolution for its night
of restless sins.

An empty crucifix hangs as the only
stick of imagery on the Spartan,
straitened walls of their cells,
illuminated by a tiny opening
ten feet above the penitent floor.

They would surprise their audience
if its members knew that after
each vespers service, the nuns quickly, quietly
meld into the foreboding night,
sleuths on the trail of their greatest treasure,
the Beloved, who alone can satisfy
their deepest yearning:
abiding union with Him.

2.

Slicing through hedgerows, thickets
and medieval gates; scurrying past pristine gardens
and quiet patios, they flee the convent
in the dark, moving by trust and desire, not sight.

Under a brooding half-moon,
their habits turn slate-gray, as they begin
the spiraling ascent to the peak
of Mount Carmel, where their Beloved awaits.

It is no easy climb. Scrambling, falling,
grabbing low-lying branches to pull
themselves forward. Discalced—shoeless—
they slip and slide, cutting and bruising themselves.
Dehydrated, with no light to guide them,
they fear losing their way.
Knees scuffed, sweating, breathing heavily,
they struggle to stave off chaos and disorder.

3.

The nuns know that the Beloved’s love
for them is their greatest good. And they know
that their natural faculties are inadequate
to achieve the union they desire.
So they must put their senses to sleep, and let
the Beloved’s own virtues guide them up the mountain,
drawing them to Himself through
His power infused into their souls.

To receive Him they must be like Him;
They must be brought to nada inwardly
To be filled with His todo.
This is becoming like for like.
This is how to ascend the heights of Mount Carmel.
This is the mystic vision.

4.

At night, the nuns remain hard at work chasing
their ecstatic dream. In the pre-dawn hours
of the morning, they return to their mundane,
daily post at the convent, selling marzipan
to visitors through a miniscule opening
to the outside world; *****-faced urchins press
against the iron grate, awaiting their turn.

With sensations of the holy pursuit
still freshly imprinted on their minds,
the nuns recognize that this, too — in all its
worldly humility — is part of the mystic vision.

Soon, they will sing the world awake again.

evening falls heavily
like footsteps in the sand
gliding with the weight
absorbed in the formless

moonlight reflects
in the dull moving water
through the saw-toothed-edged grasses
all images refract

he takes a step, stumbles
in the darkness, falls heavily
the white sand wrings his ankle
the silent burning in his hands

the pale moon has robbed him
his cries abnegated
he dies
a rivulet of clearer water
trickling creases to the open sea

The tiny red train clawed its way
up the mountain *****,
clamping on crampons to pull itself
over the ever-widening angle
of ascent. One-hundred-year-old
slat chairs defied any pretense
of repose. Comfort vanished like a wisp
of smoke as altitude rose and rose.

At the end of the line spread Schynige Platte
with its front-row seats to the three tenors
of granite. Pasted with snow, nearly equal
in height, they stared at us face to face,
unapologetic, unconcerned, untamable.
Sentinels over the knife-edge valley,
they penetrated our psyches with
the grandeur of Wordsworth's infinite sublime.

Up from the crest of our hilltop lookout  
swept a vast array of Alpine plants.
Flora flourished where oxygen
grew thin. A band of volunteers
humbly tended the garden
for nine months a year. They stuffed
hay pillows, sifted tall grasses
for hungry Ibex in Interlaken.

When the sun had sunk, they  
joined hands and bowed to
Eiger, Munch and Jungfrau,
the elevated elders of their tribe.

William Blake's Ancient of Days
casts down atomic-yellow rays
of ever-shimmering light.

Coal-scuttled clouds vie
for dominion in the dusky sky,
majestically darkening into no-longer night.

On the desert floor, barren and warm,
recumbent dunes lie like sleeping women,
restless and turning.

Cacti stand sentinel over unearthly silence.

Gold limns the crests of the dunes.
Muted light paints the sand a once-fiery ocher.

All this passes for isolation in the world,
a cosmic confusion of identity,

Until the entire tableau passes through its stage
of equilibrium, passes through me like liquid.

No day, no night carries the bundle
on the road to enlightenment.

I peer at the synthesis, bemused.
Suddenly, Satori!

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.

Scientists 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.

The blue of a glacial lake lures the hiker to its shores.
He shivers from the water's icy touch.

Reflected on the lake's mirrored surface,
blue mountains rise to the sky.

Sky, too, is blue, a paler version,
burned daily by the sun.

Blue impasto cakes the canvases of Van Gogh.
He marries blue to yellow on his sacred color wheel.

Wallace Stevens wrote "The Man With the Blue Guitar."
It is a modernist classic. Who reads the poem now?

Joni Mitchell sang "Blue" -- Songs are like tattoos/
You know I've been to sea before.

Bluebells, blueberries, blue wings on the jay.
Who says this is not nature's true color?

The dead turn blue before they creak into rigor mortis.
Blue eyes shed tears at the loss of the living.

Blue sapphires glitter in the blue-blood world of high fashion.
Blue blooms the hue of life. No one blinks twice at it.

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. Slimy, crooked flesh
at low tide. The lighthouse
keeps signaling to no one.
No shred of infinity to be found.

Grief becomes you.
Your wan, tear-stained face.
Your razor-sharp finely cut dress,
black shoes, black pearls, black hat, black veil.

You were cavalier in life,
cloying with black at death.

Quasimodo frantically sounds the alarm,
swinging on bells like a medieval orangutan.
No sanctuary lingers in the smoldering nave.
Gargoyles roar like fire-breathing dragons,
then cower in corners, confused.

Notre Dame crumples in the wind, baptized
by the Holy Ghost and fire. Passion Week
transvalues every value: the great reversal comes.
Centuries of history agonize on the cross; dreams
of resurrection snag on collapsing rooftops.

Once a lighthouse to French pilgrims,
the spire tumbles, puncturing the pews
and all signs of hope. Prayers smother in the billowing smoke.
Non-believers gasp in hellish horror; while
the devil laughs, looting their scorched patrimony.

The ghost of Victor Hugo strolls amid barricades of crime tape.
Fire has done what the revolution could not:
Our Lady has lost her head, flames so much
messier that the swoosh of the guillotine,
strewing collateral damage in their wake.

The cloudy sky reflects in the summer pond,
After the long-anticipated rains.
Cattle herd as one; at the water, bond.
They seek moisture, rare on the dusty plains.
A cottonwood gives shade, but no one comes:
Emptiness of the land a stark refrain.
Of the flat horizon, Kansans are fond.
It opens out to an infinite vein
Of loneliness and hope, like a fine frond,
Storing the last baptismal font of change.
Nature terrifies and soothes, justice cons.
It brings as much pleasure as wanton pain.
Still, we pin our longings on Eden’s song,
To hear the Earth’s sirens never again.

The psychiatrist declares
himself pleased with my progress.
I am stable, hypomanic,
glibly articulate.
My mood feeds
on poetry and travel,
the exultation of grace.

I can face
the limits of my fate,
Ravenous for glory,
gluttonous for Art.
No work in retirement:
creativity is no work.

Outside, the lawn shines
In neon greens.
Irises, poppies break
The color plane.
Beauty, too, is no work
For the Creator.

Unlike Lowell,
My mind is quite right.

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

Death comes to Everyman sooner or late.
You can’t change the days of the life you’ve led.
Some worry, some pray, gripped by anguish, fate.
Some scurry past problems, all in their head.
Philosophy or Art their yearnings sate.
God of the gaps brings others daily bread.
If nothing’s the end, then nothing is great.
Socrates stayed calm on life after death:
Deep sleep or society would await.
Christ died in torment, his last, living breath.
If we believe or not, our hopes abate
At the gaping grave soon filled with fresh earth.
Nature seems too real; supernature’s late.
Best live your life as if already dead.

Lorca leans into the bullring's skybox,
freshly painted red and green
like blood and grass beneath the Iberian sun,
where poetry composts into compositions
fit for a toreador, whose tights hug his thin hips,
tempting the huffing beast to hook his groin.

Spain's family jewels bulge behind the tattered
red cape, the one tool of the trade that can't
**** the bull, only blindly enrage it to charge
for its pride, its race, for the red light of glory,
as royalty wave their embroidered handkerchiefs,
awaiting the bull's ****** ear, still warm and steamy,

after so many twirls around the packed-sand dance floor.
Each step kicks up a black faux pas, first lunge
along the fatalistic journey to mortality: a pale thigh gored,
an artery gushes. Gangrene seeps in, drenched
in brandy, which disinfects only the guzzler's gullet.
No antidote to sepsis, no darning of the tights.

The toreador dies to fight another day, his banderillos
still stuck in the **** of muscularity, his eyes darting
among the crowds for a sign of good fortune, good
hunting, as in the old days of machismo and torture
and blind lust for the blood of brutes who threatened
no one but the cowardly prince on horseback, wobbly

beneath the weight of his armor. His ardor as fabricated
as his divine right to rule over the beasts of the field,
over the beaten-down brows of his subjects, toothlessly
grinning at the hope of dining on sacrifice, something
the truly chosen people could do only on the pain of death.
Lorca mourns the dying fighter with the duende of

flamenco, the wild, passionate cry of suffering, the blackest
black of Spain, the urge to create and destroy, to undress
the poet's soul, as naked as a newborn, as powerful as
a raging bull, charging without thinking, divining the forces
of nature like a hurricane, an earthquake. To shout down
death is to immortalize art, as long as human history endures.

We came to the chalet in the lush valley
at the foot of the Eiger. The line of
mountains rose ragged against the sky.

North Face loomed, a fatal *****
begging to be climbed. Death beckons
on its icy rock face soaring into the foggy
clouds, only to vanish. No peaks, no crags, no crevasses.

The ogre offered no relief, no guidance,
no help to attain the top -- the prize of balance,
strength, courage, and willpower.

We came to the valley to absorb the glory
of the Swiss Alps. Wordsworth succumbed
to the sublime here. Now we all romanticize
nature. But the sublime overwhelms;
it is too grand, too large, too dark, too menacing.
Too much for the scrawny human spirit to take in.

Apple trees heavy with fruit line the patio of the chalet.
Receptive, fecund, the Earth brings forth
sustenance to the eye, to the taste buds.
We will not climb Eiger, only devour its power.

roto-tilled clouds:
swirling sooty silver-grays and purples
moving ever-northward
perhaps like geese gliding swiftly atop
the hazy-blue mist
the dew-covered horizon    brown    green
geese gliding home to Canada

Canada
clouds like heavy fibers being pulled apart    slowly
like cotton
like hoary hairs thinning on top
an old man's head

for they are moving northward now
I can sense it
it is not the Earth moving
I am facing west through trees
and these clouds keep moving/thinning to the dark
yellows    pinks    faded

dark clouds soon obscure the pallid glowing harvest moon
this golden grapefruit hanging above the Earth

it is Kansas and it is dusk

this is the meaning of orange autumns:
to stand looking westward beyond the well-worn wooden handles
of some rusting rotting ploughshare
and know that clouds move north swiftly
perhaps to Canada

The dead cannot pray.
They molder in their graves
Awaiting resurrection,
The force that creates
The soul’s yearning for
Transcendence.
We yearn for happiness,
Satisfaction, comfort, rest.
We yearn for meaning,
Purpose, a cosmic path.
We yearn for self-consciousness,
Preciousness, an open heart.
Death cannot extinguish them.
Our days are strung together
Like letters in the sand.
We see the message only
As it disappears.
Night divides the light
Into fractal pieces.
The firmament flattened by
The weight of stars.
We rise and recline like
Mechanical banks.
Shoot a penny into
The lion’s mouth.
Hear the hunter roar.
Death stalks the living,
Sticks its finger in our
Ribs. It is a holdup,
But we carry no cash.
Remember Ozymandias.
Memory sculpts
Memorials that crumble
In the sea.
Waves lap the pieces.
Epitaphs erode.
Death be not proud,
John Donne proclaimed.
But how can the fallen
Take pride in their downfall?
Extinction awaits around
Every corner.
There is no defense.
Death is a theater with
Its curtain half-drawn.
Below it, you track
The actors’ shuffling feet.
Above it, only oblivion
And empty stage lights.

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.

She brought me dozens of photographs.
White, shining virgins
on the eve of their weddings.

I kept them for days,
these dull, glossy surfaces;
the faint grease of fingerprints
screened the black-and-white view.

I returned them in September
on the white eve of autumn.
She took them in silence,
a sadness I knew.

"I wanted you to choose one,
for whom you had fallen."

"But I'm past the age of falling,"
I said,
"For love, I only stumble."

Here, atop a rocky crag,
walking stick in hand,
I survey the swirling
mountains of fog,
a vast gray-white panoply
of vanishing peaks,
blanketed in clouds
doomed to dissipate
in the returning sun.

But no heat ever comes,
leaving me wrapped
in my moody solitude,
eyeing the outcroppings
of ragged stone, reveling
at summiting the top of Europe,
scaling the sluggish
slopes of transcendence.

This is what Nietzsche
hailed as self-overcoming,
rising to the grand height
of perfect power and control:
my will alone uber alles.
Aswirl, I order the horizon
to fulfill my desire, to shift
into view all that is missing
from my finite vista -- the glory
of nature -- only to have it
swallowed up instantly
in the menacing shadows
and mists of immovable stone.

The sea crashes hard into
the black boulders
of the harbor.
Fountains of spume dribble
landward into crevices.
Shrouded in gloom, I climb
slippery black stairs to see
the spectacle.

Rough sailing ahead.
Rough rains behind.

Cinque Terre craves attention.
Five Lands of building blocks
And pastel colors.
I stand on the *****
of indecision, stumbling
toward the rocky marketplace.

Can I buy peace there?
Can I make fire on the waves?

Riomaggiore anchors my fall
onto the watery stones,
black and blind.
Face down,
I float the Five Beauties of spume.
It is safe among the crevices.

Muscling past yards and yards of clothes
over yards and yards of shoes, I reached
the back corner of her closet, dark, dusty,
deserted. I gently moved the shoes
out of my way, looking for what might
lie there, hidden, in boxes long forgotten.

I discovered a fiery red opal, once
the centerpiece of a magnificent
ring, but now lying loose from its
setting, stuck amid the collected
detritus of a long, luxuriant life.
Opals were her favorite gems,

After diamonds. So I picked it up,
wiped the dust away and dropped
it in my pocket, where the opal
seemed to burn with zeal to
see the light again after so many
years of darkness. I could feel it sparkle.

Its beauty reminded me of hers,
fiery, bubbly, lighting up at
the slightest hint of wit. She laughed her
way through life, perennially
an optimist, finding the future rich
with possibilities of goodness

And love. Out of her closet at last,
I walked into the front room
and placed the opal on the mantle.
It shone, as expected, in the low-
lying rays of the late-afternoon sun.
It would be the perfect stone, I knew

to lay on her grave.

My brother and I stood three years apart.
We stood toe-to-toe, fists clinched,
each of us angry at the world, each of us an avatar,
each of us angry at the other.

One carried the mark of Cain, a discrete tattoo.
The other wrote poems, an acceptable sacrifice to the gods.
I never recovered the ink he stealthily stole from my desk.
i never recovered his confidence. My fist never unclinched.

At night, we frolicked in Bacchanalian revelries,
in psychotropic highs only poetry could eclipse.
Yet he never respected my temple of books, desecrating pages.
The written word was not his friend. Nor I, in the end.

He had a son out of wedlock; I dedicated poems to the boy.
But he could not speak English; his small tongue would not fit
the hieroglyphics on the page. My brother chiseled them off.
He died in middle age, unsung, poorly read. Still angry at the Word.

Lucretius envisioned the universe
as made of atoms governed by chance,
with a "swerve" reserved in the void to
salvage some semblance of free will.

Breathtakingly, he foresaw the chief
discovery of our age: atomism, which
we harnessed for energy, genomes,
and the horror of Hiroshima.

His brilliance cannot compete
with the mushroom cloud's darkness.
He foresaw the building blocks
of reality; we deconstructed them.

Insight, wisdom and true philosophy
live of one side of the millennia.
On the other, that same wisdom
crumbles into fusion, fission and death.

Good can be used for ill, unwittingly;
ill can rarely, if ever, be used for good.
Lucretius peered into the anatomy
of the universe and beheld the atom.

Science of our age followed his vision
and beheld, unwittingly, the ferocious
power of destruction, all atoms swerving
from their path. Free will would have its day.

stacks on stacks of books
knowledge encrypted inside
who will crack the code?

Wittgenstein's ladder wavered in the wind,
as he set out to scale the great garden wall
of language. His ladder, hand crafted for many
years in Vienna and Cambridge, came up short.
He could not climb the moss-dappled wall --
his intellectual paramour since
he started building a new metaphysic of the word,
with his Tractatus.

Suddenly, he hit a stalemate. Not able to scoot over
the wall, he washed his hands of trying to analyze the
black hole of predicates, conjugating verbs and slippery
allusions ******* up each particle of proper speech.
He splashed his face in mystic water. then offered
a gnomic pronouncement over his failure. A type of
recipe for missing the mark:

Whereof we cannot speak, thereof we must be silent.

A proposition of the limits of language; it turns out we
cannot say everything about everything, after all. So we
must embrace silence in its coarse cloak of humility.
We must stare down our limits.

Jacques Derrida thinks we must write what cannot be
said on the other side of our mystic sputtering.
The written word has an immediate, imperative tone
of authority, he implies, an authority that renders
silence a respectful remnant of our former backward ways.

But silence butts up against the scruffy gray wall
of meaning. And echoes off it precisely as what
has been said. Pointing by writing opens up another
avenue of speech. Writing speech only codifies it
as a once living thing. You must read the written
text then still point to be understood.

As Wittgenstein knew, silence proves less reductive;
writing simply cripples the living word.

Love dies like an assassin's victim: caught
completely unaware, the thud of a bullet to the head,
mouth gaping to pronounce its own name. The heart
pumps its leaking reservoir of warm blue blood; the final
breath gurgles in the chest like a baby nursing.

Love dies because we create it in our own image:
two become one become two again. We see ourselves
darkly in its bright, believing face. We wrap our bodies
around it, lusting for ecstasy, with no room left for
the self, for the other. Like St. George and the dragon, we

unsheath a righteous broadsword to make a surgical
separation of locked *****. We dread what we wish for.
We lose our world in passion, empty-handed when
the end inevitably comes. We crave an eternal love,
but are fit merely for a temporal one. Time is love's assassin.

Abandoned, she waits
for her lover's return
across the empty field.
Banks of clouds bunch up
behind the rising forest.

Loneliness does not dole out harsh
punishment. Solitude re-creates
reparations for the self, fashions
an unyielding glue that will fuse
together all her shattered pieces.

Inwardly she knows he is not
coming back. Her packed bag
a scornful reminder that love
is as fleeting as the wind; it
blows where it will; it razes

whatever stands in its way. Her heart
is not ready for such defeat. Her will
grabs hold of a hope rising behind the
charcoal clouds. He will not return, no.
Still she stares through the trees, alone.

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. ***-
mings
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

Six waterfalls shoot through the viscera of the mountain,
jack-hammering the stone with the precision of
an Excalibur ax. The jet-engine force of the water
cannot be resisted: It is destined for victory,
deep canyons the sign of its easy conquest

We all carry a waterfall within us --
spidery and delicate, or pummeling the heart like
a heavyweight prize fighter. The count nears 10.
The falls are guaranteed a TKO. The heart, a soggy
mess of muscle, simpers in its corner, lost and forlorn.

I shower beneath my falls, which wear away
all my grit and grime, all my stains and soot, for the mere
price of my surface blood. “Vengeance is mine,”
declares the falls, laughing as I stagger beneath the weight
of the water, scrubbed clean again, but missing the heart.

The future swirls steadily
ahead, rocky, uncertain and dim.
Our choices are pre-ordained
for freedom. We cannot
not choose. Creatures squirm
at the paradox. Black and white
no longer grace the color wheel.

Ragged caves beckon as shelter.
Birds take refuge in the tops
of empty trees. Exposed, they
chirp melodically at the moon.
There is no difference between
the road less traveled and its
counterpart. Mirror images,

they recede into the woods
at straitened perspectives.
I walk one alone, scanning
the sky for lasting signs
of the present. They are
blistered by sun spots.
The road veers inward.

Duration drags time out
to the breaking point.
What will be gestates
in what is. Seasons give
birth to a multicolored
brood. Paint them a
monotone grey. Walk on.

light of sorrow
journey claims its end
red rock stains clouds

Death dies in the assiduously sealed tomb,
smothered by tidy, useless grave clothes.

It takes the strength of Samson to roll away
the stone, inhumanly heavy, except for the Chosen One.

By the time the women arrive to perform their funereal rites,
the tomb is empty. They run away, frightened, not hearing

the angel's good news: "He is risen." No, they think,
he is simply not there. Where, how could he be gone?

The gospel will come later, after all will see the tomb's
great void, after all will cling to what is no longer there.

Only a transformed body -- eating fish, breaking bread,
passing through walls -- convinces them of the truth:

We do not believe in an empty tomb, for in itself,
it is not salvific. We believe instead in the risen Christ.

Death dies forever in an impotent tomb, outwitted by
the love of the Creator. In Him, life triumphs over all.

Jeffers’ poetry is as hard as bone,
His windswept lyrics fed by his dark side.
At Carmel, he built a tower of stone.
Wind, sea and storm fostered his rugged pride.
On nature’s fiery force, his skills he honed.
His message bleak, from which he could not hide,
Foretold an elemental strife alone.
He wrangled roan stallions only few could ride.
His wide-winged hawks over the waves would moan.
He joined their wildness with soul open wide.
His poems made me yearn for his coastal home.
Nothing human-made would pull the tide.
His poetics read: Find your heart in stone.
A Zen he practiced till the day he died.

Abandoned, she waits
for her lover's return
across the empty room.
Banks of fear bunch up
behind her furrowed brow.

Loneliness does not dole out such
punishments. Solitude re-creates
reparations for the self, fashions
an unyielding glue that will fuse
together all her shattered pieces.

Inwardly she knows he is not
coming back. The static portrait
a mournful reminder that love
is as fleeting as the wind; it
blows where it will; it razes

what stands in its way. Her heart
is not ready for such defeat. So she
grabs hold of a hope rising behind the
painted walls. He will not return, no.
Still she stares through space, alone

The Ancient Mariner slaughtered
this ungainly bird around my neck
like a bridle it directs my days
like a talisman it breeds only doom
the poet acts the marksman
his words aim at the all-seeing eye
to blind it of foreknowledge
to skew its vision toward the western sky

Only the bird hears my words
recited like a child's rhyme
only its wings mute my voice
flapping recklessly on deck
the music of my verse turns to spleen
for the ****** masses who assault me
the albatross a mere distraction
an impotent symbol useless and puerile

The bird's plaintive cry resounds
as the measure of all poetic voices
why speak when you can fly
why land when the weight of the world
propels you forward atop faded alexandrines
you can goose-step from height to height
or slosh through the gutter swishing music
into broken light spying feathers at your feet
biting the bullet of your humiliation
plotting the evil in all things

I welcome the new year
in all its vagrant glory.
Absurdity may follow in 2019,
or a blissful beauty unimaginable.

Either way, we remain at fate's mercy.
Either way, our choices seem anemic, naive.
Yet that is not how time transitions:
It opens ever-new fields of fresh possibilities.

I must commit to plow those fields,
using all the strength and courage I can muster.
Everyone faces the same challenge:
Any clear path ahead wallows in obscurity.

Is this new year really happy, as they say?
Am I only kidding myself that I can choose?
I see a lonely road before me, full of pain.
Even so, I welcome the new year again in all its glory.

(After Emily Dickinson)

The earth has many colors
Where canvases are not
Near the unbounded horizon
Beauty is nature's faith

But dip a fresh brush for the sky
Dip a fresh brush for the sea
The stars are distant arbiters
Of painting's fate for me

In the dark womb
of the forest, sun-
light filters through
the canopy like
a mountain
shower. Its progress
is microscopic. A
photon bounces
from branch to
branch. A wave
wraps itself
around an
unsuspecting
leaf.

On the forest
floor, shadows
rule the kingdom,
painting over
the middle distance,
pointing to organic
geometries of color,
where long trunks
of timber lie shorn,
where streams
shimmer past
boulders stained
with orange lichen,
where tawny deer
flinch at the first flick
of danger and
flee on their delicate,
toothpick legs.

This is not Eden.
Decay creeps
across the leafy
floor. No living
creature can escape
its grasp.
Decrepit trees
fall without
aim, buried above-
ground, their
roots like gray,
broken
skeletons,
their bark like
naturalistic
wafers. This
is my body.

We wander
through
the forest
amid pungent smells
of water, earth
and wood. Decid-
uous limbs convert
the moss into soft,
buoyant beds that
nurture us, shelter
us, inspire us as
we arise into
shards of light
and fight our way
along the path
of survival.

The struggle won,
we follow myriad
paths, packed with
a labyrinth of
choices, and so
we mark the paths,
make them
temporarily
our own, only
to discover that
they have
already
permanently
marked us,
imprinting through
our coarse skin
the primeval
genome of the
soul.

We stride
toward the misshapen
mountain that
halts all progress
of the paths.
A glacial lake
reflects the crest.
Forest birds perform
Beethoven's third
symphony, Eroica,
to hail our epic
journey homeward.

Soon we will be
cast out
of the inner
darkness
of the forest
and into the
teeming world
of pollution,
viruses and
the machinery
of hate.

Wounded,
we will keep
our focus
forward,
having gambled
on the path
not taken.
With a sweet,
green shoot
between our
teeth, we shadow
the light, bouncing
from branch
to branch. Abstract
patterns in the sky
write our way
into intricate
vistas of color
and delight.

As sap
seeps from
the wounded oak
we left behind,
our progress
is microscopic,
our canopy
dense.

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 human earns his fate.
There is always time to wait.

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

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

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.

Two Tennessee yahoos
trekked the train tracks
outside of town. They
were always at it --
half habit, half quest
for something new.
Anything.

The older man -- perhaps
the father or brother
of the younger -- had
hit on a plan of his own:
Today he would make
something new happen.

It was an act straight out
of a John Berryman
"Dream Song," even though
he had never heard
of the poet or his
magnum opus.
Little did it matter.

Down the tracks, you
could pick up the shrill horn
of a locomotive, barreling
blindly toward its stop
in town -- a Siren solo
that nobody paid
attention to anymore.

But the old man heard.
He stepped more evenly between
the rails, tightly shut his eyes,
and lifted his arms wide,
as if meeting an old friend,
The train sped on, clacking
clinically over the creosote ties.

The Cyclops eye on the face
of the locomotive shone
like a laser into the autumn twilight.
The older man braced himself,
deafened by the lonesome horn.
Like that, the train whooshed past
on the second rail.

He had picked the wrong track
to die on. He fell to his knees,
the horn of the train still rattling
his brain. Years later, he would
tell this tale -- half habit, half quest.
And we could still smell the scent
of something real coming close.

(After Dante)

The Beloved glides through the room in light.
A flick of her hand, and shadows dispense.
Her form beams shapely, resonant and bright.
One sharp look will wilt my world, weak and dense.
She is fragrant as hyacinth at night.
She turns around, and my willpower’s spent.
I reach for her arm, but she’s fast in flight.
No coquettish flirting to make me wince.
Only freedom that exposes my plight.
I am lovelorn, hard stricken. No defense.
Rising skyward, she claims heaven, her right.
Living earthbound, I maintain my poor sense.
Still, I yearn for her with heart, mind and might.
My pursuit is authentic. No pretense.

For Laura, the Beloved