I hurriedly push past myself,
watching my body from above,
feinting with consciousness,
fainting into the Spanish black.

Velazquez's Las Meninas
jack-hammers a tunnel
of ek-stasis, pulling me into
the painter's dark studio,

weighed down by overwhelming
curtains, curtailing the senses'
sense of majesty and control.
This is not trompe l'oeil. This is

tricking the soul into the artifice
of the palette, of paint on board,
of black that illumines perfect
placement: the spectator on the floor.

Stendhal's sensitivity is no virtue
or vice. It suckles the sublime,
sated on illusion, art for art's sake,
delivering a blow to the solar plexus.

I gasp as my body trembles at tremors
of terror, annunciations of angels
bearing paintbrushes as paltry wings.
Their back feathers stained a Spanish black.

Painting owns no one, owes no one
comfort or joy or pedantic instruction.
The cherubs in the foreground radiate
innocence, wonder, humanity's blank heart.

At my feet, my body wriggles skyward,
wrenches for a transplant. Paint on it
Velazquez's black moustache, then part
the velvet curtains. I will rise to new life.

purple clouds swirl
in calligraphic patterns
no one dares mention soul

the cyan sky shimmers
towering treetops shimmy
all rivers flow heavenward
coyotes yawn at dawn
the sun reinvigorates itself

Eternal Now calls
time grasps infinity
all rivers flow upward

Circles of rope, white, grey and bilious, squeeze around
Wetterhorn Mountain’s chest, leaving only its angled
forehead in sight. Like the tail of St. George’s fiery dragon,
the clouds sink into stone, ******* down their grip
until nothing is left breathing, until nothing is left. Stone
emits a feeble cry of fear and trembling. The dragon’s
tail squeezes tighter, intent on suffocation -- severe oxygen
deprivation above timberline.  
                                                          
Rain is the Sancho Panza to the mountain’s Quixote;
the circles of Dante’s Hell mirror the clouds’
constant clinging below the pointed, harpoon peak.
You can climb this mountain as in Purgatory, but its path
is polished to a slippery ***** from the clouds’
constant rains: such a dubious, deadly affair. Only St. Georges
persevere here; only the holy ones manage not to stumble
on the bulky, slick rocks.
                                        
Rain is not a baptism, but an ablution.
Rain threatens the clarity of the day. Rain threatens
the clinging of the day to the present. Always, such rain will pass.
Puddles in post holes, precarious ascent to the cloudless light.
Rain clears the path in hindsight but nurtures the future to come
quickly, like cacti with brief, brilliant blossoms.
Let the thorns be your payment for grasping the blooms.

I follow the droppings-dappled sheep trails of Exmoor, veering right
toward the hills. A ***** white flock nuzzles the close-cropped
ground, but gnaws only humid air. In the dim light of evening,
a presence looms on the uneven horizon: the world of my
future and former selves, fitfully revealed and obscured,
first liberated from, then confined to the clinging veil of illusion
that clutches the dark English countryside, legacy of my birth.

I detect through the flattened corona of the monarch moon
outlines of a troupe of Shakespearean ghosts tottering my way.
Revealed and obscured, like questions in Hamlet's tragedy, they
mime the news of my heritage and inheritance: sin and ambition,
deception and pride. Emptiness reigns within me like a ruthless
queen, ****** and shorn, painted an otherworldly white: Elizabeth.

All this once would have been enough, but the soaked smell
of sheep reminds me I am still alone. No one comes to England
for solace or comfort. Yet the recipe for lasting identity, for a
significance of self, abides in the dark hills of Exmoor, launched
from sodden sheep trails, trammeled by a gaggle of ghosts who
juggle the jewels of Elizabeth's crown, sparkling in fog before me.

French revolutionaries guillotined God at Cluny, but He exacted
His tithe all the same: one-tenth of their bad ideas tossed back
at them. The tyranny of terror, cheap dream of heaven, in ruins.

A vast emptiness swamps the nave; stumps of pillars stained black
and gray and black again by age and rain and blood. Only one tower stands intact. I scan the burnished hills behind it; they do not look back.

“The birth throes of liberty,” cried Thomas Jefferson. “Rejoice!”
Despots toppled; authority crippled for a future that never comes.
Terror and waste; waste and terror. The desolation of faith.

On the tiny town square, a high-tech bistro beams. Lights
surge behind the bar, sending out distress signals of the mind:
the throb of synapses firing wildly in the wind. Material infinity.

Old men saunter in to down a beer, and harness their dogs under tables.
Parents and students slurp pricey shots of caffeine. Emancipated energy.
Above the din, they cannot hear the Earth’s foundation crack.

Freedom leaves a sacred void in its wake, watered by the blood
of worldly martyrs. On the menu: égalité, fraternité, fissure and ruin.
Thunder in the hills. Words crash around us like cannonballs.

Liberté lingers outside in the municipal lot. A van propped up
on wooden blocks for the night. No hassles, man. Free parking.
Let’*******another beer to Robespierre. His dog strains at its leash.

I cannot grasp myself:
I elide through my fingers.
I cannot face myself:
one pair of eyes eludes my look.

I am intended by consciousness,
still surpassing myself in passion,
still reaching beyond my grasp.
In what is not, I find myself.

orange dragon clouds
swirl in the dusky, baroque, winnowing sky
the once brilliant day dies within me
I cling to a rocky pinnacle        alone
one more step and I will laugh
my way toward heaven and
count the teeth of mountains
empty space my only confidante

Two glaciers that once kneaded the neck
of this tiny tourist town have bled
into the mountain -- now twin rivulets of ice
ambling aimlessly up the rocky, grey *****.
Robbed of its tourist prize, the town shrinks
like snow in the scalding sun.
I have not come for the snow nor the ice,
but for the warm-blooded Alpine splendor,
which cannot recede from this isolated valley.
The ghosts of glaciers haunt my path up the hills
into the belly of these bulky peaks, cemented to the earth
like pillars of stone sculpting themselves.
Tourists must settle for such shrunken beauty,
still as intoxicating as new wine.

Sheep graze the massive green meadows, wholly unaware
of the dilapidated barn I have come upon. Each rotting
plank a page of struggle, then failure, success and more failure.
Oblivious, the sheep have reached Nirvana: endless heaven of food.
I might envy them, except for their muddy, mixed colors of wool.
Paradise does not mean purity for these plump little herbivores.
They baah unknowingly, nature’s mystic vision: bliss of instinct.

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

reflective laughter flashing
          in the depths of eyes

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

bonfires seep across the heath
orange flames flit like fallen stars
harvesters rake beds of straw
lay their heads on stone

earth cools the indigo night
heat pools beneath splintered scythes
faces rise in dreams' sure might
light lacquers stone

we have charted nature's hopes
from unloved loss to deep delight
wrapped in darkness we covet gems
buried in rugged stone

your eyes trail me to the meadow's edge
neon colors ooze down the ridge
we paint them as flames snuffed out
in chiseled fields of stone

the seventh angel
carries the book
of days even-
numbered and blue

feral cats lead
donkeys to the
crow's-nest crest of
window-box bougainvillea

an angry priest swings
a golden censer
at pagan worshipers
up early he tends a tiny

garden in the sacristy
stained-glass laurel
trees spring up
over bejeweled pews

i count the orange
fishing nets caked
in cork larger pieces
breathe like fish

gills in neon purples
and greens piscine
hearts anchor
the poet's heart

possessions prove
useless on nudist beaches
flesh presses sand
presses flesh

i chant the cloning
of yellow dawns
the bearded archangel
guards the beads of dna

harbor-front havens
open wide their gates
tourists rush in
laptops aglow

all is even-numbered
and blue on this
endless dawn of angels
and ouzo and open hearts

Diffused rays of ever-brightening light
scoot across the hardwood floor,
pooling 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 above the surface.

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

Our love becomes 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 light of love overcomes all oblivion.

rivers of ice melt
from our vast carbon footprint
greenhouse gases ****
we must exist without coal
centuries of history
point to our eternal shame

I thirst fiercely in the desert;
I spy oases in the sky.
I've come to the edge of Mosaic Canyon.
There's nothing to drink
but the surface of stone.
I try licking the tiny pools
of rain water filling cracks
in the boulders.
But they, too, are illusions
packed tight below the sky.

If I could survive on colors, I would
be sated. Reds, browns and tans.
A subtle gray graces the front
of the stone where I sit.
I must try to **** it dry.
Foolishly, I set out hiking
without my water bottle.
Now I hallucinate streams
and gullies in the sand.
I can't go on; I must go on.

Cirrus clouds swirl around
palm trees. Camels linger
at a bubbling pool, settled
on their knees. Cold water
spills from their gnarled mouths.
They have forgotten nothing
to survive. I have forgotten
everything. Soon I hear
my name being called.
It echoes down the canyon.

I stumble backward, ankles
slanting on the stony path.
All along, I keep my eye
on the sky. The vision never
wavers, only intensifies.
The canyon walls box me in.
I cannot catch my breath.
Behind me, my wife calls
and calls me to safety.
In her hand, a cup of cold water.

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

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.

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

Faith overcomes all, a gift
of the Spirit. Let us hold fast to it, like Job.
Let us lean not on our own understanding,
but cling to the mighty bulwarks
of Your everlasting mercy.

1.
Stone castles float high above the moat,
rising in the empty sky.
Colonnades of clouds pummel the shoreline,
but plunder only Time.
The silver lake reflects the face of God.
Forsake its lifeline;
trace its outline in darkness,
then dive, dive, dive
to retrieve your destiny.
The horizon sleeps at the end of the road.
Light turns, but withholds its blessing.

2.

Pilgrims clamber over slick, thick cobblestones,
combing the ruins of history.
They slip, slide and slither back,
only to lose their way.
A baby-faced mountain bends low
to brush a raindrop off a rose.
The rose reddens; the mountain shudders;
and love blooms —even as older peaks,
streaked in early snow,
grind their teeth in envy.
Obey your nature.

3.

A crown of fog settles on the silent village.
Wet cobblestones snake back upon themselves,
pooling castles on the ground.
The road plummets to the shoreline; the horizon weeps for no one.
Light turns; Time tires; and infinity seeps into the soul.
Bruised pilgrims withhold their blessing.
Beneath the love-struck mountain,
a lonely traveler gropes homeward.
Patches of empty sky carry scents of welcome:
There, unbidden, La Tranquille awaits.

— Chaulin, Switzerland.

I carry the land
like a stranger in transit.
Wilderness calls me home.
Aspens shiver.
Knife-edge mountains slice the sky.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(after E. E. Cummings)

ALPHA

time's mightiest dream
fills unspace with lowliest freedom

we
choose
NOW to act
in alabaster innocence
we
yes the day
its
magnanimous
blessing

we
skip through
greenvanishing
meadows
leap to
pale
indifferent skies
(while memory
whittles
away
the past)

we
carry little
people's
humility;clouds
drain heavens
gates
of slippery/silver
tears

languid lovers lie
in curly locked *****
their coitus
the rasping
friction
of IMmortality

BETA

onetwothreefour equations
rewrite relativity,tumble down
puddle-licious
wormholes

Euclid inhabits
an ice-oceles
triangle
draws line
A to be

pockmarked
moonrocks
pummel
Atlantis

the universe dances
to canticles
of calculus
out-Zorbaing the greek
outshining
the starz

God lurks
in
unlucky alleyways
plays dice
with
Einstein's
willowy
hair  today
de-parts tomorrow

clumsy rolls
of
snake eyes
whistle down
celestial canyons
signals bleep
f  a  r.....    a  n  d .....  w  e  e

OMEGA

present's presence
courages the future
of illusions
(the
blind
heart
bleeds)
on a magician's
rickety stage

quarters sprout
behind junior's ears
magic,tricks
cut in half
cambridgeladies
faint from vapors
peddled by the
goat-footed
good humor man

kings horses
pull the velvet
curtains
a-side

sunken sailors
saLUTE:
scribble
on the sawdust
ocean
(a
n
c
h
o
r
s
a
w
e
i
g
h)
floor

schools of
spermatozoa
break-dance
toward
a/******/****

fluids flow
freely
to hard
hoed rows

cherubs:chime
a flowerblooms

time turn
s  in its
s l e e p

freedom
kisses awake
a  N  E  W  dawn

dreams
swirl
in the
mirror

a poet pens
his epitaph
the soul's eyes
BLINK

unspace floods
with;beauty

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

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

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

The moon disappears behind clouds.

Mmmmmmoon Lion roars.
The moon swerves in its orbit.
His voice reaches to the heavens,
avoiding omnivorous black holes.

He contemplates his philosophy
of life: poems written with
incorrigible vitality and verve.
He purrs the "m's" in his name.

Auden said that poetry makes
nothing happen. But Lion invokes
humor and thought, the rigor of form.
He holds deep respect for his readers.

They crave to do him justice in the
wake of an endangering diagnosis.
Poetry elevates the body, tunes in
to its hidden rhythms, sings its source.

As in Oz, the lion needs courage
to face the injustices of existence.
He silver-wraps his moments, gone
all too quickly. He instinctively roars

a new way to create poetry, one
that embraces the celestial,
disdains the body's betrayal.
He will win in the end:

His lion spirit soars.

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

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

The wrathful snap of rifle shots ricocheted
off the vast, seeping stone walls.
Cable cars descended to the valley floor
with a high-pitched hum that ripped
the curtain of quiet in two: no silence in Lauterbrunnen.

Bullets knew nothing of where they lodged.
Cable cars intruded on the space of Europe’s
tallest waterfall, whose spidery flow
continued unabated, oblivious to the human
connection below. The falls knew that Paradise
does not exist in any given, worldly place.

The Amazon River basin brutally burns;
glaciers vanish from greenhouse gases; the ocean
self-elevates: sea level a lost fantasy of the past.
Still, harmony hums louder than the knitted ropes
of steel squealing under unrelenting friction.

Silence has no purchase here; it is dead time, unproductive,
waiting to be filled. I fill it with my rambling
thoughts, held captive by the valley’s massive U-shape.
Maybe it is enough just to think and stroll,
the acrid smell of gunpowder in your nose, your
thoughts echoing like ancient hymns within your skull.

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.

Love is the thing with feathers
-- it flies to the poet's song --
straight to the heart of God.

brilliant sky
trees grasp the sun
January warmth

Beware the way your forebears came,
dragging goods and cattle, horses
and wagons, whimpering children,
not nearly enough food or water
to cross the unforgiving mountain passes.
Destination unknown.

They mistook the rugged, rocky, drought-
ridden road for the path to the promised land.
What they found instead was a land
full of promise, but beckoning only to the prominent
few, who could survive without loss of pride
or prowess or precious blood.

But that is not your way. You are destined
for much finer things, unseen, celestial
things that repair and reset your
spiritual compass, and unfurl the map
of successive crossroads you must face --
the terror of angels, the awe of the
miraculous and the angst of self-overcoming.

Your home is not of earth or water,
but of the sky, its heliocentric emptiness
broadcasting a better way to wander
through the inevitable suffering of
humankind. A delicate, mindful way.

No, your home is of the sky
and of its stars in all their ancient glory.
Together they project a haven of words
to protect you from the elements
and from ambush by the
rash mountain climbers before you.

Theirs is not your way, no.
Yours remains the way of Li Po,
the vulnerable, venerated way,
the way of the poets.

(after E. E. Cummings)

ALPHA

time's mightiest dream
fills unspace with lowliest freedom

we
choose
NOW to act
in alabaster innocence
we
yes the day
its
magnanimous
blessing

we
skip through
greenvanishing
meadows
leap to
pale
indifferent skies
(while memory
whittles
away
the past)

we
carry little
people's
humility;clouds
drain heavens
gates
of slippery/silver
tears

languid lovers lie
in curly locked *****
their coitus
the rasping
friction
of IMmortality

BETA

onetwothreefour equations
rewrite relativity, tumble down
puddle-licious
wormholes

Euclid inhabits
an ice-oceles
triangle
draws line
A to be

pockmarked
moonrocks
pummel
Atlantis

the universe dances
to canticles
of calculus
out-Zorbaing the greek
outshining
the starz

God lurks
in
unlucky alleyways
plays dice
with
Einstein's
willowy
hair  today
de-parts tomorrow

clumsy rolls
of
snake eyes
whistle down
celestial canyons
signals bleep
f  a  r.....    a  n  d.....  w  e  e

OMEGA

present's presence
courages the future
of illusions
(the
blind
heart
bleeds)
on a magician's
rickety stage

quarters sprout
behind junior's ears
magic, tricks
cut in half
cambridgeladies
faint from vapors
peddled by the
goat-footed
good humor man

kings horses
pull the velvet
curtains
a-side

sunken sailors
saLUTE:
scribble
on the sawdust
ocean
(a
n
c
h
o
r
s
a
w
e
i
g
h)
floor

schools of
spermatozoa
break-dance
toward
a/******/****

fluids flow
freely
to hard
hoed rows

cherubs:chime
a flowerblooms

time turn
s  in its
s l e e p

freedom
kisses awake
a  N  E  W  dawn

dreams
swirl
in the
mirror

a poet pens
his epitaph
the soul's eyes
BLINK

unspace floods
with;beauty

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The yellow cross
beams out white rays,
splayed into splotches
of orange red.

The blue edges bloom,
soothing, But deep inside,
I am color blind. No
harmonious hues will do.

Discord haunts me like
a ghost at its grave. My
promise is waxing; my
life a pale gray.

I will die by my own hand,
despondent and betrayed.
But before my misery ends,
I will cling to the yellow cross.

The old man clamped onto my hand
like a manacle of stars.
I gazed up at his wispy, white beard
and watched his cheeks tremble
as he recited the Iliad in the
original Greek.

Simone Weil, a French philosopher
who starved herself to death,
condemned the violence of the poem
as a testament to the brutality
oozing out of men's souls. Little
to celebrate there. Plenty to mourn.

Hexametric rhythms caught my
hearing: They echoed in my brain
like exhales from labored breathing.
Life or death lost its meaning.
The will to power conquers all.

Swift movements of being, and
broadswords plunged through
finely hammered breastplates.
Black blood pooled at the victim's
feet. Another triumph for Agamemnon.

The old man, collapsed at the poem's
end, shape-shifted to a marble bust of Homer.
I turned to grasp his missing hand,
But the constellation of stars had vanished.
He had instantly become blind.

River birches cradle azure sky.
Snow blankets still-green grass.
Winter paints with ivory brush.

a quiet sadness broods
the sea surges
rushes wave along the shore

She is my Muse
but never floats a poem
daily I hearken
daily I drown

A wise painter once said to me,
"Make every day New Year's Day;
resolve to start each new day
afresh, full of possibilities."

I retreated to my Stoic cave,
meditating on 2019, and all
its dark, ****** turmoil. I vowed to start
each day fresh in inwardness, beauty, peace.

1.

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

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

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

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

So where to begin? Where do I begin?

2.

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

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

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

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

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

Why am I so afraid?

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

So where to begin? Where do I begin?

Sensitive to her sensibility,
I carefully craft my thoughts.
One blunder means embarrassment.
Two, humiliation.
Wishes must be weighed;
intent investigated.
She is worth taking every pain.
In reverence, I gaze into her eyes,
take her hand, do not speak.

In winter much of the living hibernates.
The dead seek out warmth.
Birds sing only in treetops, serenading
the world beyond. Let us soar to it
on the white wings of your poems.
You have said that one day we shall
live in the sky. but our consolation now
is the green earth, draped in snow.
Our footprints fade as soon as the sun burns down.
You left us in brightness. All your poems
embraced goodness, love and light.
A blanket of feathers covers your grave.
Beside them, a silver pen shines,
the instrument of grace. You wrote
more than we could absorb, more
than our mediocre minds could imagine.
You blessed us with the whiteness
of wisdom. We yearn to follow you
and the tree-top birds into the sky.
For now, we must feed on your snow-white
poetry, nature's hidden calligraphy,
spelling out our names.

Sun
blankets
tidal waves
heading to shore.
Sky turns orange-grey.
No one in sight means this:
Nature embraces you whole.
You will doze on the shore, baptized.
The ocean is one; you are many.
Peace infiltrates. waters your bone-dry soul.

Being in the world,
there is a lesion

a murmur of the heart
I have fixed deep
within myself

a slight, distant shadow
a thin silhouette
that seeps
through my fingers
with each passing second.

I must try to **** it dry.

I have risked
everything
to accept it

yet it does not let itself
be drawn out.

I cling to it,
irreplaceable,
unnameable.

I would
annihilate it
in a moment.

The minutes crawl indifferently.
I grasp them in desperation.

I cannot
hold them back.

The silent murmur is not
prolonged.

I feel it pass
without beginning.

All is going to end.
I know it.

Still, I wait.

Nothing happens.

Darkness devours the gibbous moon.
Its final sliver shivers in the freezing void.
Pockets of pock-marked light spill out of dusty craters.
Prints from space-age boots deface iconic astronaut signatures.

Colonies of phantoms have settled on the surface.
They sacrifice stars in elaborate rituals of absolution,
then aimlessly amble in circles around the circumference.
They squeeze water from recalcitrant rocks.

In darkness they decline to speak to one another.
Mutely, they await the daily rebirth of solar flares.
The moon generates nothing on its own. Cosmic
passivity mimics social order. A fiery Logos descends.