our shadows rise
on the winds
floating like flat
darkened clouds
ready to spill rain
ready to spew specks
of identity
dense as bone

all is hidden
on the pavement
unsteady outline
of a stretched-out
body minus feet
weightless as sight
wobbly as breath
penniless as touch

our shoes demand
new strings
a place
in the picture
wavering lumbering
like behemoth
branches rocked
by the winds

sprinkling
flecks of substance
shooing
voices to silence
sensing
the pluck of music
waiting
in the wings

1.
If I ever write a poem again, I will forsake my Muse,
that fickle, toying sovereign of my imagination, too often
leaving me empty-handed in my hour of need.
Her well of words runs dry, sinking woefully below
the water table. She makes me drink sand and call
it champagne. I stagger past her in disbelief.

So I will let my senses suckle me, source of lasting
sustenance, my mind expanding in the grip
of clairvoyant sight. Look: Black lines on a bone-white
page stand out in low relief like monochromatic
hieroglyphs with an indecipherable story to tell.
But I seek poetry, not stories, and will discover only
dusty metaphors and sun-baked images beneath
the bone-dry surface of this forsaken temple.

2.
If I ever write a poem again, I will write it backward,
dedicating the ending to my vacant Muse, who will read
the finale as a beginning, if she deigns to read at all.
Does art replenish the hollow heart? Do poems patch
the torn muscle? She says yes, of course, like a two-penny
palm reader, rubbing out lines from my inky hand
that do not fit her preordained paradigm.

A Muse befits the myth-eating Greeks as a source
of soul-craft and finesse, attuned to Orpheus’ lyre.
We have spewed out myth to make way for fact – solid
as stone, empty as an atom, shifting with the great
quantum winds. My Muse wanders aimlessly through
the desert, in search of words, of music, of nourishment
for the penniless poet in his epoch of need. Need means
want means lack means void means loss means anything
but fact. Let us seek succor in the seeds of the senses.
Let us cast the mutating Muse to the vortex of the quantum winds.

Mysteriously, like a seed
growing underground, consciousness
spreads into the world
seeking a presence to devour.

Like a lion lurking in the Kalahari bush,
consciousness crouches, hidden
within the body, not merely the brain,
waiting for its prey to emerge
from a field of nothingness,
to reveal its essence.

An act, a desire, a pure intentionality,
consciousness pounces on its prey,
embracing its whole presence,
filling in the many sides unseen,
teasing out its eidos.

In itself, consciousness is nothing,
a darkened grain of wheat
buried in the ground. It awakens
only at the stirrings of
the next manifestation.

Always, eternally
a consciousness-of,
it roams my room,
zooming past the myriad
items cluttering my gestalt,
fixing on the single form
it has come to inform.
Consciousness waits
for no one.

Uneasy until it grasps
the one thing necessary,
consciousness expands
and expands, actively roaming
among the wonders of my world.

It acts, but I cannot take hold of it.
It has me in its reflexive spell:
All consciousness is self-consciousness.
And I, in myself, am nothing.

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.

1.
The sky, slate gray, settles
On the horizon.
The Earth, drab brown, buckles
Under the weight.
Trees scrape the clouds
For sustenance, their
Branches like bony fingers
Clawing the thickened air.

                 2.
Sparrows flutter in the lawn.
Heat rises.
This summer ecosystem
Unwittingly
Works together for
The proletariat’s revolution.
Creatures of the world unite!

                 3.
I stare for hours out
My empty front door,
And see
Not a single movement.
The south wind has died
Down. The ideal vanishes.
Grass stands tall in the dimness.
Squirrels perch high on trees,
Scolding.

                 4.
If I could tell Nature
One thing, it would be
Not about its circular seasons.
Not about its intricate play
Of flora and fauna.
Not about its compromised
Beauty decorated in decay.
Not about its exodus of species.
No, I would sing of its
Invisible source, random
And ordered,
Mysterious yet familiar,
The coalescing, pressurized
Source of our water-logged
Globe.

                 5.
I would tell of
The feast of the senses,
Cacophony and all.
The red tooth and claw
Of survival.
The colors of delight
Along a mountain stream.
All in one; that’s the secret.
Harmonious, injurious,
Savage, tame.
Who takes the part must take the whole.

                 6.
The sky, slate gray, settles on the horizon.
The Earth, drab brown, buckles beneath the weight.
I stare for hours out my front door, and see nothing.

Earth and heaven yield to each other.
Points of light reflect ancient eons.
Stars recede billions of miles beyond.

Koi pond turns to canvas sprinkled
with specks of white. Celestial
expressionism. Mind measures Art.

Infinity reigns throughout the universe.
Eternal patterns swirl in water and sky.
Clusters of starry lights create a canopy.

We live between here and above.
One star shines down mercifully upon us.
The pond pours back its dazzling glory.

nexus of pain
journey of waters
webs of betrayal
nature's lost self

meandering rivers
indigo lakes
translucent streams
pylons of pines

climb the rocky staircase
pinnacles snag the grooming sky
light ascends recedes stalls
in layers of deepest black

from the moon winds batter
castles of wayward kingdoms
domains of reason & will
empty stretches of desire

step lightly your boots will soak
much to do merely to survive
art brooks no compromise
paintings end where canvas bends

if mountains are spirit their climbers
must mime the density of matter
better to grasp the burro's tail
than to pack out your gear alone

Their baskets tell a story by design.
Jewelry shines with the wealth of turquoise stone.
Navajos see all Nature as a sign
Of creation myths as solid as bone.
We are formed in the world, souls out of time.
We find our place with Spirit’s help alone.
Humility, grace our reason and rhyme.
Our songs of thanks stir Mother Earth to groan
As we gradually turn deaf and blind
To the harvest she has graciously sown.
All kinds deep in one, and one in all kinds.
We must remember the vast riches shown.
All baskets tell a story by design.
In them, lie sacred secrets of our home.

1.

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

2.

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

3.

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

4,

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

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

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

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

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

He slumps against the charity's steps.
Torn, oversized Army jacket, a ragged
stocking cap, unwashed face and hands.

His arm extended, he asks for a few dollars.
I resist his obsequiousness and answer
that I carry no cash, which is a lie.

I ponder why I am so afraid to associate
with him; his presence a finger of shame
pointing directly at my recalcitrance.

I drive home in my air-conditioned car,
thinking that I had helped him stay off
the *****. No money was for his own good.

Then my conscience strikes me hard: I am a liar,
a coward. That could have been my brother,
living alone on the cheap streets of Costa Rica.

I quickly turn the car around, race back
to the charity, whose doors remain closed.
I search among the grimy faces. He is gone.

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.

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.

Ile de la Cite weeps
like a fire hose dousing
dancing, infernal
flames to no effect.

Our Lady dies in her sleep,
dreaming of resurrection.
Gothic buttresses hold up
charred timbers and gloom.

The spire crashes into
nothingness; miracles
asphyxiate on fumes.
Still, the Rose Window

blooms. Memory resists
the flux of time.
Eight centuries snuffed out
like a wooden match.

Wait for it: the coming light.
Paris will reclaim its own.

There is nothing left
when the snows swirl,
the wizened apple falls,
the hills turn tawny
and dry, our love lost
in the undulant
folds of the earth.
We turn together
in search of the
blessing of the cirrus-
shredded sky. Hawks
soar, return to land,
then swoop away again,
carrying our hearts
in their hypodermic
talons, now heavy
with wounded prey.
Shall we step backward
or forward? Shall we
glide silently away,
or run moaning
to the hills? All directions
collapse into one.
All directions point
elsewhere, never here,
never there, never
where we stand,
never where we stare,
yearning for the steely
hawk's return, yearning
for more than this
chilly impasse, for more
than the frisson of
this no way out.

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.

Sunshine guides my vision

away from the shadow play
of giant cottonwoods and maples,
as a north breeze gently unsettles
them. Clumps of swaying branches.

Shadows, like portrait paintings,
fall onto the pavement. Such marvel.
I must write about it -- an ode
to darkness, yin to the sun’s yang.

But soon I see the face of Pablo Neruda.
Wise, whimsical, a piercing gaze.
Of the ode, he is all-knowing. I follow
the sunshine back -- today, empty-handed.

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

.
After "Sometimes"

1.

You call your dog home
from the mystic woods.
Larks land on branches.

You've built your final home
out of love and faith.
Clouds tear apart in branches.

You say that you're at home
with melancholy, because
it leaves you breathless.

You have God in your pocket
as you clamber up trees,
lodged safe and high in branches.

2.

A field of sunflowers blooms,
the crown of creation.
Simplicity, domesticity --
you lived the way your poems sang.

Death waited for you,
but you were unafraid, unamused.
You followed your own
instructions for living:

Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.

You left beauty and wisdom
for the rest of us, as we
walk slowly with you
and listen.

Before the Euro, you were -- swirling light, sitting pretty.
We kicked it at night along the grungy lanes of Ile de la Cité.
Notre Dame loomed large and long, a battleship on the Seine.
An exoskeleton of Gothic bones, what could it ever do but win?

Hunger hung out among us, an unwanted dog on a wayward walk.
Frenchmen directed us au centre. In those days, I could talk the talk.
Still can, still do, but who needs "J'adore vos diamants de luxe,
calme et beauté" when you must bow down in a row sans your ducks?

Serendipity, man, that's what la Cité seeped. Evening an ermine
blanket tossed effortlessly over the spires of the medieval vermin
that Haussmann hacked into Euclidean lines of parallel charms:
more ordre, beauté et calme. Organic geometry. What's the harm?

Dusk draped us in l'amour du mystère. Cafe awnings as exotic
as Flaubert's Egyptian tours, plump with mistresses for the neurotic
novelist who poisoned Normandy with naturalistic despair. He's
no Parisian, no architect, no monk. We absorb le mot juste; a star flees.

On the sidewalk, a 50-franc note calls out beneath the weeds.
We look for an owner, see nothing, feel nothing but the need to feed
on crepes, chocolat et confiture de fraise. I imagine Camus and Sartre
at Les Deux Magots, nursing black café, pouring noir into your heart.

1.
My mother hates me!
My father hates me!
Oedipus screams to the
stealthily silent Sphinx.

He scatters riddles like laurel leaves
waiting to be braided into
a playwright's crown. It is too
grandiose to fit his cracked. cramped cranium.

His unconscious mind flies open
like the Sphinx rocketing to the sky.
Sacred haunches soar. Wings beat
steadily to reach titanic heights.

Blind to his murderous fate, Oedipus
cannot know himself. Before the
Delphic Oracle, his life shrivels,  
unexamined by his bleeding eyes.

2.
Freud exults in triumph.
Maternal love births eternal love:
endless comfort and affection
for the newly bloomed beloved.

Soon, comfort metamorphoses
into feral eros, unspeakable, unthinkable,
beyond the bounds of catastrophic evil.
Submerged desire sullies the chastest kiss.

Jacosta embraces her son
as her new living king, her husband's
royal blood bubbling brazenly
on the bitter road to Thebes.

His hands stained, Oedipus strives
to transmute his trauma as our own.
We become him when Freud deigns
to interpret our darkest, direst dreams.

Blindly, we mimic him: carnal union
with the mother, lethal rage against
the father. Mourning Becomes Electra
beckons to the wary second ***.

3.
The Sphinx belies its own riddle:
How can prophecy spring from
the sculpted, smooth stone
of these perfect *******?

Only blind Teiresias plumbs the depths
of Oedipus' fate: Judgement lies blinded,
action lies blinded by the ventricles of
violence, the twisted telos of the mind.

Humans sin against the world, against
nature, siphoned of joy. They sin without
a sacred perch to rise from. Blood and *****,
mud and blindness fashion their Oedipal souls.

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.

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

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.

1.

I will baptize the sky
with new waters,
washing the Birger Sandzen pink
from the clouds.

Cattle reject their reflection in farm ponds.
Trees turn their backs to the horizon and bow.

Indigo night. Angular lights in the distance:
Freight train roars. Empty cars
headed northward.

       2.

I will baptize the Earth
with new fire,
scorching stubble and sod
from the Plains.

Cattle nudge clods of dirt for sweet tendrils.
Trees shape words, but can no longer spell.

Charcoal cairns point the way to deep furrows.
Growing pains. Orange flames
headed nowhere.

       3.

I will baptize my heart
with new poetry,
spilling villanelles
into my veins.

Cattle low for soft yodels from cowboys.
Trees sashay to the solos of birds.

Rosy-fingered dawns in my songs? I sail elsewhere.
Orange, blue. Twilight hues
headed homeward.

orchid blooms
sun limns petals
winter beauty

silver sea recedes
pink horizon plunges
black boulders full frontal

But now I am weary and my mind is dark; I can no longer distinguish right from wrong. I need a guide to point my way.... And yet -- and yet you have forbidden the shedding of blood.... What have I said? Who spoke of bloodshed?
-- Orestes, "The Flies" by Jean-Paul Sartre


1.
Ever the wisecracking bully,
Zeus trips atop Mt. Olympus
and tumbles into the Greek
borough of Argos -- a bumbling
deus ex machina sans any
working machina.

At last upright, he shouts,
"Look, Hera, no hands!"
then turns to mock Orestes
for his lifelong exile from
this, the city of his birth. Orestes
picks his teeth with his broadsword

and yawns. He has returned to Argos
to avenge the killing of his father,
Agamemnon, mighty general
and king, who led the long, dark
charge in the endless war against Troy.
Vengeance for Helen was his alone.

Now humiliation mounts on the back of ******.
Queen Clytemnestra gleefully joins in
the fatal mischief of her lover, Aegistheus.
His ambition: to be king. What else?
Hers: to replace the man she once loved, but who
left her bed empty for more than a decade.

War does that, you know. It requires sacrifice,
commands it, calls it duty. Nobody wants
to play that game, nobody wants to pay
the price for raging injustice, for the dangerous
rescue of the divinely beautiful Helen,
snatched away from Menelaus, brother

to Agamemnon, now Mycenae's scapegoat
of shame. Shame, guilt, rage, cunning, lust
for power, lust for queens and kingdoms,
hubris, maniacal ambition, evil run rampant
like an unwatched child, wooden sword
in hand, babbling for glory -- such

are the spoils of war on the domestic
front. Such the sorry state of kingdoms
whose king fights from afar in absentia.
Argos suffers. Each year, the ritual of bringing the
dead up from hell conjures a plague of over-sized
flies, befouling the people, who wallow in repentance,

perhaps even for their silent collusion in glorifying the king's
killing. And so Orestes returns for yet another reason: to liberate
the carrion city from the sickly, yearly confessions of wrongdoing
that attract the flies; a sickly, yearly punishment for those
long past sickness, long past even the remotest possibility of
condoning Aegistheus' dispatch of Orestes' noble, unarmed father.

2.
Orestes vows to avenge that death, only to be harried
by the flies. He will save Argos from its plague of
Clytemnestra's crime, collaboration with evil, all for
the sake of pleasure, not only in her royal bed, but
in seeing her subjects futilely try to atone for sins
she and Aegistheus have imputed to them. Such is
the queenly power that only an equally royal son

can shatter with his shining broadsword,
destined for use in eviscerating the farcical
couple defiling Agamemnon's crown, defrauding
Argos of its rightful rule of power, majesty,
and dignity. So long in the dark, the people
recite their own defilement, covered in flies
and false feelings of failure. No one dares

speak against it, for that, too, is sin. Zeus
presses his stammering stamp upon the ritual.
Electra, Orestes' wavering sister, willing to sacrifice
her own sanctity to the swarming flies, does not trust
her brother’s might or plan until he swings the sword
at Aegistheus' blackened brain, plunges it
into his mother's blackened heart, which pours

anemic blue blood onto the palace floor,
bubbling with sapphires of retribution,
with the beauty of righteous indignation,
now claimed by Orestes in his father's name.
The son shall inherit the throne, yet he chooses –
relying on nothing but his own free will -- to adorn
himself with the flies, liberating the people of Argos

from their misery, and pursuing a path of
infinite freedom away from the city. Little
does he know that les mouches will buzz
their way behind him in the form of Furies, Greece's
classic haranguers of the guilty, of the criminal
on the run from justice, on the road to ruin.
The Furies: favorite trope of Greek choruses,

singing the doom of the unjust, the impure,
the sullied hero, no longer powerful but pathetic.
Rotten to the core. Yet Orestes again freely accepts this
burden and its stain of rightful revenge. He admits
he is no Oedipus. Yes, he has slain his mother
and slept with the lionhearted darkness
of his iron will, steadied with purified

resolution, the signature of freedom,
the sign of heroism that violates all
laws but redeems the reputation of
those who stormed the invincible walls
of Troy, site of Greece's grandest victory,
driven by a giant horse and Odysseus'
wily wit and wisdom. To take part

is an honor, leading the fight an apotheosis
that a sword-swinging son can inherit,
carrying it on his shoulders as protection
from the Furies’ terrifying talons, their blood lust
for human courage -- not to possess its fearlessness,
but to **** it dry like the receding sea on the shores
of Ilium (ancient Troy), like the fading memory

of Clytemnestra's crime, now shrouded in gowns
of legend, of myth, of Aeschylus' Oresteia, of Sartre's
"The Flies", ancient and modern renditions of tales
that shower the human race with virtues even poor Zeus
cannot fathom, with his tired, lightning-addled brain, hounded
forever by Hera's imperious, Olympian disdain, free of every
working machina save the immortal pulleys of pride.

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

We came to the valley to absorb the glory
of the 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.
The mountains soar,
overflowing the bounds of what
the scrawny human spirit
can take in.

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.

I shiver on the edge of the precipice.
I must leap. I must choose.
But freedom offers no support;
it is transparent, pure possibility.
I suffer from the anxiety of nothing,
literally no-thing.
Yet it paralyzes me.
I try to leap; I fiercely will it.
But I only fall,
headlong into the abyss.

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 Flame of Life arrives
on a second-class coach.
He comes to cauterize my wounds of time.
The excessive heat can't last.

The Czech travel guide slumped in his chair, hair disheveled, eyes distracted, sipping a beer, then coffee at the Ostia Antica bar and bistro just past the tiny railway stop. He was tired, he said, of leading groups through the maze of Europe’s famous sights, explaining history, significance, value. His 42-member entourage would soon return from dissecting the massive ruins of the excavated Roman city — avenues, therma, fast-food kitchens, masks. We needed no guide to make our way along the brick-lined streets, stopping to stare at frescoes, mosaics, the sprawling theater. Ostia dwarfed Pompeii in size, if not drama. No contorted bodies, no brothels or sewers. Only a meticulously gridded urban sprawl. Headless sculptures heralded the humanity of history. Crumbling sarcophagi held water like broken baths. Few others like us tread the slick-stone path: The grimy chaos of Roma replaced by Ostia’s bucolic Pax. Its stone-masked ghosts, spent from wandering, embraced the resurrected statues in the stately museum. Peace in Apollonian beauty. New life springs from eroding stone. We needed no guide to show us where the tired spirit rests. Here, in the shadows of Ostia Antica, brick by brick, history was explained.

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.

Breathing
in her perfume
like a bee nuzzling pink roses.
    
Pure.

The Black Madonna weeps alone.
The stream of pilgrims
Dammed at its source.
No more touching, no praying,
No pleading for grace.
Only desiccation and silence.

The mountains of Montserrat buckle
Into grey stone clouds,
Rising crookedly above the monastery floor.
They will not rain.

Inside the small art museum, monks
Bank their bounty,
Largess of modern painting.
Degas to Dali.
The Madonna reigns in a room of her own,
Levitating beyond the mountains amid
Angelic beams of light.

It is dim in the basilica,
Candles flicker above a grave.
There is only the sound of weeping.

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

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

2.

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

3.

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

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

4.

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

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

5.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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 sea was once our prehistoric home.
O how we adapted to its dark currents,
to its India-ink infinities,
chasing seaweed, driftwood and coral,
before belly-flopping onto dry ground.

Now, the sea threatens our ancestral home,
the sea that falls from the angry skies
with their charcoal-smudged infinities.
A swelling flood, chasing red alert,
destroying houses and lives; raining grief.

Once sea-bound creatures now drown at home,
ill-adapted to meet the flood's malevolent intent:
to purge the Earth of all who cannot resist
the rushing, rising mountains of waters,
before proclaiming its final conquest of India's ancient lands.

Now, only prayer will be our home, built on deepest despair.
Now, only God's omnipotent infinities
circle the mud-brown rapids of sludge
choking all who helplessly cross their path.
Only God can make Kerala and Tamil live again, as one, on dry, holy ground.

1.

The cold winter moon
spills its luminous
jewels of fire
past the edge
of the road.

The night wind shudders
at the sound.
I turn my head.

A woman’s lovely,
shadowed face
ignites the plains
in silence.

In the distance,
wings light upon branches.

 2.

The long sad bones
of my hands cut deep
into dark stones.

I walk alone, listening,
among white fields.

This time, I have left something behind me.

In the open grasses
I will dream of placid water.

No celestial being will ever descend
the misty ether to complement my
wishing and seeking for its eternal presence.

None who are worthy of such adoration
will stoop to move me out beyond myself,
to send me hurtling down the long, contemplative spiral
of the Self, toward the focal point of Existenz.

Identity is elusive. I find no residue,
no center of recognition and acceptance
with which to make my defense.

Identity is infectious, a virus that plagues
without antidote or cure. As with the Fall,
I must disregard the Delphic Oracle. Who
among us has ever truly known himself?

Perhaps I am too tainted, perhaps I am impure.
Perhaps I would be blinded by the brightness of their glory.

No, I am quite certain that those who stir among the stars
will never be moved by pity or suffering to breathe
the breath of Eros that flings me out beyond
this solitude. None will ever come to bestow on me
the presence and embrace I so passionately desire.

I must reshape my future in the image of the Lamb.
I must leap across the world's murderous, polluted abyss.
I must land on the other side in safety, security,
with nothing bruised save the membrane of my porous ego.

tell this soul your grief
succor those who mourn their deeds
press the hand that bleeds

Chained to his rugged rock, Prometheus fumes.
He brought the gift of fire to mankind. Now
He must pay. The gods are not amused.
His is an act of defiance unbowed
By the threat of retribution. Unsoothed,
He faces his fate: to have ravens scour
His liver each day, then start up anew.
Like Sisyphus, punishment is his shroud.
He wears it regally: His will only hews
To its task; it cannot break; he stays proud.
His gift spreads across the globe. Only few
Turn it down. Man is equal to the crowd
Of gods on Olympus. They will strew
Their anger. But naught keeps this mortal cowed.

1.
Framed by a well-worn,
wooden windowsill,
we peer down on Purgatory
from our hotel perch
high above the restless shores
of Lake Como.

Behemoth slabs of marble
hang in limbo: rough-hewn
bodies awaiting their savior —
the divinely appointed sculptor
to chisel away the sins of their world.

Reflected in the window’s wavy glass,
the ghost of Michelangelo
glides past — an aging slave to beauty —
humming an Italian hymn to Venus
in syncopated rhythms.

He whispers that the stone
comes from Carrara,
carved out of ragged mountainsides,
carried down muddy, makeshift roads,  
crated onto misshapen barges,
then barreled down the Arno River.

Last stop: Firenze.

2.
In his hands, marble beams
as the body of the beloved,
draped in splendor and light,
draped in radiant form — form
of the sculptor, not the sculpture;
of the master, not the slave.

Beneath the rock-rough surface
of his métier, his soul
struggles to emerge from stone,
rising in rapture toward the divine,
rising on wings of beauty,
rising on wings of desire.

In his hands, marble melds into a mirror
of the making mind.
He levitates, an embodied ideal,
rising higher, ever higher,
toward his immortal beloved —
yearning to be made real,
to be made flesh,
the “coarse and savage bark”
of the artist’s first art.

3.
We come late to all
high lofty things,
he wrote.

And so we peer at the pit of Purgatory,
into its dissonant, disturbing discovery
that art cannot save,
that art cannot rightfully claim the artist’s life,
that art cannot breach the infinite reach
of divine love.

What happens is what is real;
but what is real is what we make happen.

The only choice, then: to go down, down, down into stone;
down into the blood-stained marble;
down into the rough-cut corners of regret.
Inconsolable, sculpture crumples into dust.

First, the patina falls away,
then appendages and organs —
everything but the sightless sea-surge
of skin, the seamless sanctuary
of pagan heroes and gods.

4.
The ideal — immensity, enormity, infinity —
ignites in unrequited desire. The heart strains in vain
to bear the weight of stone.

In Purgatory’s pit,
the master stumbles:
art cannot save him.
The body of his beloved crumbles.

Chiseled above his tomb:
Ripeness is all.

(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