I skip, across a streaming, upon random~laid
flat and comfortable flat flagstone stepping stones,
from poet to poet, color to color, poem to poem,
Auden to Whitman, Schuyler to
myself, a dingaling notion, an errant word,
the here to there, all randoms, yet,
oval chain linked all,
a question posed, an answer unknown,
a reference to an old Italian myth,
and there, and here, a body,
comes to rest,
& also,
comes to rest…

<>

led not by the nose, but the single fingered
tip that guides across a landscape patterned
painting, lost but never a loser, each implants,
each imbibes, and the H&H^ alternatively
rumbles, pounds, vibrato burns erratically,
and the difference between a life in love,
and a life in poetry,
is not a line dividing,
but a path combining,
and the only sign
upon the road,
is never a reddened "stop!"

always just a soft lavender, so tender, inquiring,
requiring, deep thoughts and reckless abandonment,
the only guide inspired when ecstatic adrift in
a season, a sea, any one of nature's designed
unlimited
schemata's of vista creations,
      is this, simply stated:


What?
<>

postscript

6:27 Sabbath Sep 27
nyc
after a sunrise glorious, where
the windows eastern facing
make an irresistible irrational
pattern of golden yellow reflecting,
mirrors, and
after reading much,
and so I too, reflect, vista, vista,
what do you see, I see…What?

after reading a poem by James Schuyler,
entitled (yes, we are)
"What"^^

The Battleground Beneath Her Skin
(A Physiology of Light and War)

Before it reaches her;
even before her breath draws it in,
I break myself down..

  not as surrender,
  but as choice.

Each particle stripped bare,
each atom exhaled
made clean by the reckoning
of my own dark,
infused with the stubborn
weight of light
earned, not borrowed.

Within the responsibility of what
  leaves me,
I enter the quiet union—
the kneeling choice
to align with the hand of God,
to let even my smallest fragments
carry His capacity to heal.
Every airborne particle,
accountable,
deliberate,
refined enough
to cross the distance,
to enter her

without deception.

Beneath her skin,
a war unfolds.

It is not loud,
not made of swords,
but of smaller things..
things unseen by eyes,
but never missed by the marrow,
the blood,

the quiet trembling of cells
that have known both wound

  and wonder.

Light and dark..
not in theory,
but in matter
thread themselves through every atom,
every strand of her being.
Not metaphor,
but measurable:

the way shadows lean into the soft chambers of her lungs,

the way light, when chosen,
can rewrite the blueprints etched into the bloodstream.

This is the battleground..
her body,
her breath,
her most involuntary places.
Where no poetry of
seductive manipulation..
no whispered counterfeit
can cover what is real.
Only substance speaks here.
Only intent.

Only what survives the fire of accountability
earns the right to stay.

The particles come;
stripped down,
atomized,
refined.. not by accident,
but by the slow, steady grind
of volition.
They enter her;
through breath,
through pores..

through the quiet, relentless openness
that even fear cannot close completely.

And inside--
the war begins.

..   ..   ..   ..

Mitochondria spark—
tiny engines deciding

what stays,
what burns away.

Capillaries widen,
rivers branching through her like
tributaries
willing to carry
what is real,

what is earned,

what is Light.

The counterfeit falters here.
Pretty words mean nothing
to oxygen.
False portraits
dissolve beneath the chemistry of truth.
The cells remember;

  they choose.

And as the Light infuses
the quietest corners of her..
her thighs, her hips,
the soft stretch of her waist;
there is no seduction,
no trickery.

Only the hard-won intimacy
of substance made pure.

Not by the blending of oils,
not by the friction of skin,
but by the deeper,
unseen alchemy
of what enters,
what lingers,
what refuses to bow
to darkness.

The battleground is hers now.
And though the shadows  will not
yield easily,
they cannot claim her;
not where light
has been chosen,
earned,
metabolized.

The war is not over,
but benea.th her skin,
within her blood,

Light has begun
to rise.

perhaps a subject already well covered. but I consult no one else,
who can expertly summon the artificial artifacts, no better yet,
art~iN~facts of prior expert~tease, and speak only and wholly
for myself, blatant, and openly undisguised

it is the spilling, the upward sensory explosive detonating,
in a pressured chest, the eagerness
to race, to complete,
find the next line, to define, to refine to get the balance tween
elegance and simplicity, to have the ******* sensory totality
of completely having spun off a piece of me and let it free float as a balloon, that may fly to China or get stuck on a telephone pole
just beyond my front door
                                      =============
^ I write this midst the composition of another poem, wherein
unusually I feel the need to pause, collect my thoughts which are bombarding my atoms internal, causing  a new fissionable element,
distinct and unique, my poem…next…

They called Kierkegaard insane,
poor man, poor fool..
ink turned against him
by a city that feared
his furious clarity.

That label is given still:
“mad,” they say,
when a voice rises
against the hidden thing,
the shadow crouched in the soul,
the beast that feeds on silence.

It is not flesh that is cursed,
but the fortress
built stone by stone
from secrets unspoken,
where the child’s cry was buried
and the monster kept the key.

Yes, let it be cursed again..
that ancient predator
that left spirits trapped,
that tried to leave others
shattered in its claws.

If eternity should open,
even the darkness of God
would rise against it,
tumbling the beast
through endless years,
stripped of its power,
stripped of its stolen faces.

Call it madness,
call it folly.
The words remain jagged,
for truth has teeth,
and silence has killed enough.

At least the monster was named
when others smiled politely
and called it “past.”
At least there was no collusion.

And if the witness is written off,
    so be it

   Better condemned
   for fighting the beast
   than praised for leaving it
   enthroned.