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.

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?

Weakness of will plagues the poet:
Misery he can’t slow down.
Find talent; he tries to grow it.
His scratchings issue no sound.
His Muse is mute; his heart knows it.
His vision of art ground down
Like Leibniz’s lens. Sloth shows it.
Light dims, could still come around.
A poem builds steam, then slows it.
His gift a gift the void crowns.
One time he wrote well. He knows it.
Now passion cannot be found.
Whence Dante’s raft? He will row it.
Fragments of rhyme underground.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

As I lay dying, I will write poems
on my palm, using a calligrapher's brush.
The ink will dry overnight.
In the morning I shall start again.

Li Po sits beside me, reciting
haiku and clasping his palms.
When I am gone, he will burn the ink and brush
and streak his palms in rich charcoal.

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.

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

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.

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.

— 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.

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.

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.

infinity reigns
his ways are not our ways
hope blooms eternal

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.

1.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

all this and more lies scattered on the wind

my struggle is so heavy; the flames consume so much

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

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

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

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

i am human
i am free
no longer

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

The Man in the Moon
stares down at us,
craggy and cryptic,
a closet curmudgeon.

His face shows all
the bumps and wrinkles
of the lunar surface:
cosmic age spots, growing older.

He is isolated, stuck circling
the Earth all day and night,
cast into outer darkness,
blinded routinely by the sun.

What he doesn't show
is his vast loneliness. Until,
that is, he discovered a gift left
behind from the moon landing:

A huge, cuddly hare, hopping
over moon rocks, flopping
its big furry ears. O the Man in
the Moon is lonely no more.

Rome conquered Gaul,
erected vestal statues
whose vestiges still stand today,
symbols of the lust for
power that turns all foreign
territories into home.

Romans enforced the
Pax at swordpoint,
built long, straight
roads throughout Provence.

Centuries later,
Vincent van Gogh
wandered among
the ruins at St. Remy
and sunflowers
began to bloom.

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

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 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

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.

Pegasus soars with a golden bridle:
imagination unharnessed.
He performs aerial feats
with composure and grace
high above the buckled clouds.

Pure white scion of Poseidon,
he ascends to the heavens.
Lightning and fire flash
in his wake. His flight
lights the world in silence.

Untamed by mortals,
he metamorphoses into
the constellation that bears his name.
Stars spread across the sky
as his pasture; ambrosia
overflows his jeweled feed bag.

The great winged stallion of
Greek mythology, he struck
the earth with his unshod
hooves and purified
water sprang forth.

He irrigated the cosmic mind,
soaked the bone-dry soul.
Those without wings must
continue to search for his
inspired springs of grace.

Rapture of the imagination,
disciplined by the gods,
he paces Zeus' stable,
free of the weight of
humanity; ridden only
by Olympians.

As he prances among
the coiling clouds,
a solitary feather falls
to the earth.
Look for him in the dark.

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.

(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

sun kisses iris
grass stirs from hibernation
dew rises like rain

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Warm and tender, the sotto voce passages
of The Passion of Joan of Arc soundtrack
waft softly through the room,
replenishing the pre-winter glow
of a perfect autumn afternoon.

Deep yellows, oranges and reds line
the cracking, gray sidewalk –
beacons of the inexorable killing to come
in this, the outpatient season.

I have survived many such seasons,
thinking only of what lies ahead,
willing myself blind to what has come before,
vainly trying to grasp what is here, now,
dream upon dream upon dream.

I flee Time, the incorrigible executioner,
who leads each brilliantly colored leaf –
its medical gown gaping – to the lip
of the abyss, forcing it, with
an icy hypodermic shove, over the edge.

At the bottom lie piles upon piles of
fading badges of courage – oak, maple, elm;
crumpled prescriptions;
fraying prayer flags once flown to protest
Nature’s annual euthanasia.

Now, in this outpatient season, let us not forget
the sap of the trees slowly freezing,
let us not forget the mesmerizing harmonies
of angelic anthems urging us to turn away
from the illusory beauty of death.

But let us hear the screams of Joan of Arc
as she is burned at the stake for heresy,
the flames leaping as high as her crudely
shorn head, singeing away her wispy eyebrows:
She, the chief victim of ecclesial euthanasia.

Yes, this is the outpatient season,
the season where autumn goes to die –
stripped, prepped and scrubbed –
and where we strive to survive,
in deep yellows, oranges and reds.

My father’s legacy dies within me.
I carry his book of rules like a coffin with no lid.
A long, grey, wooden rectangle
Full of admonition and praise,
Phrases spilling out like stones
Splashed with symbols and ciphers.
Stones stacked to heights below my grasp,
Staging the play of ancient axioms:
Do, don’t, resist.
Ahead, the future, rife with signs:
Go, stop, resist.
Resist the emptiness of death,
The ephemera of memory.
Carry stones like sins.
Pray for mercy, forgiveness.
Carry his legacy like iron
In the soul.
Weight of sorrow and disbelief.
Weight of anguish and grief.
Nothing dies within me.

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.

Enervated, unenlightened,
I trudge the path to the Cirque
of Gavarnie, lodged high
amid the French Pyrenees.

Sheep cluster on the *****.
Mud and muck mar my way.
I must will myself forward,
weary unto death,
yet soon to rise up above the Earth.

Like Leviathan of old,
the rough, angry ocean
pummels the basalt shore
and coughs up its denizens
of the deep

California Gray Whales
breach the surface of
the autumnal Oregon waters, slide
over the waves like seals
on a hunt,
their colors mingling perfectly
with the yellow-tinged whitecaps,
their bodies aimed perfectly
at migration south.

How innocent they sound
as their songs penetrate
the cacophony of the
crashing surf.

How magnificent they sound;
untranslated poetry, haunting
love lyrics, caressing
the beloved with a sonata
of sonar.

Like a child, they sing for joy,
and the sea turns a deaf ear.

But I hear them. and am transfixed
by their emotion and intelligence.
They sing to me, a mammalian
serenade at dusk.

I dare not sing back
for fear of failure. Of foolishness.

Yet I weep to hear them sing again,
once more, before their majestic
passing to the milder seas of Mexico.

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.

moon white face
fiery red lips
perfect female beauty blooms