These poems
Are my song.
I sing to the Universe.
I sing across time
To my family,
My friends,
My ancestors,
And others
Born and unborn
I will never meet.
I sing to you.
I sing to myself.
In singing,
I feel heard
In my aloneness.
I feel connected
To all of you.
I feel your touch,
Your reach,
Our love for one another,
And faintly learn
The unknowable.
If words can do that,
My words,
Then I will smile.
I will be content.
I will return to you.

You want to know
The soul of a warrior?:
We deal with eternity.
Not bullets or bombs,
Not thinking or qualms,
We deal life or death: him or me.
Long time ago
When I chose to go,
We were hated, spit on, and scorned.
Now it’s “Thanks for your service.”
From sympathy folks,
Who at the time
Weren’t even born.
No one has dared
Or honestly cared
To shudder and utter and claim:
“Thank you for doing what I voted for,
The killing of men in my name.”
This is the truth of our task
You should know,
The essential war spirit of men:
We did what was done,
For the all and the one,
For the hope none
Will do it again.

Now that we have met,
You cannot unmeet me,
For the energy of the world
Is no longer the same.
That is the nature
Of encountered souls
Who now know
What the world misses in passing,
That brief door into hearts,
Beyond appearance.
Our meeting is a dare
Time has organized.
Drop your clothes,
Dismiss ancient hopes,
Kiss the air one last time,
Fall into warm darkness,
And go home,
The home you miss
And never knew,
The peace you need
But never claimed.
Shake your life this meeting
And raise your eyes to a view
Through a window
To the god I am.

Do you have to be heroic
To be loved?
Build a city, save a human
To be loved?
Can you cook a can of spinach,
Take a load with nothing in it,
Do you have to be heroic
To be loved?
Could you just change a diaper,
Tuck her in, or just delight her,
Is that sufficient for you
To be loved?
What’s the reason or the season
That you do the quiet things,
Things that no one knows about,
Those that are never seen?
Do they add up toward a total,
Earn attention, force a yodel,
Turn the desert of your heart
To something green?
You don’t have to be heroic
To be loved.
You just love, forget the getting,
Nothing more till sun is setting,
You don’t have to be a hero
To be loved.
Flowing into all the creases,
Never stopping, never ceasing,
Love flows out
Beyond the labels
After all.

I will cease my writing
If you will look at me
And see the words within my eyes;
If you will hear
The music my heart
Beats like yours;
If you will say no thoughts
And feel ours;
If you will embrace
The ecstasy of our intention.
We are more than us;
We are a new understanding
Flowing to the mystic seas,
Another voyage of soul-children
Returning to stellar destinations.
We have been found
And been nourished
And become strong.
We have created more more
In togetherness,
And know beyond seeking,
And laugh without moving,
Silently soaring to yes,
With no more need of
Feathered wings.

Death by misadventure,
The story of a time,
We boys picked up our guns
And punched the air in rhyme.
They whizzed and they exploded
The peace and men beneath.
We left behind a legacy
And suffered, our bequeath.
Stand we, no more indifferent,
And hear the faint bells chime:
Sober, sad, and wiser,
This story of a time.

She’s a hard, fickle woman woven into my soul,
The way that they say it must be.
When we fight, it is right every day, any night;
When it ends, there is love – I and she.
We don’t lie, we don’t cry, we continually try.
It’s our nature to battle for free.
As you can tell, we’ve done it quite well
As part of a great company.
The truth of the matter, our thunderous clatter
Is a world that few ever see.
You can take me out of my airplane now,
But you can’t take my plane out of me.

Live again with me, and smile.
Warm my face, and turn it mild.
Break the layers over me
And I will look at what you see.
Show again to me that smile
Loving here, tamed and wild.
I see it in other faces now,
Never doubting our how,
All these windows to joy,
The lover and the boy.
Live again with me, and smile.

We have the time, late in the day,
Build once more, talk and play.
Live again with me, and smile.

May I tell the truth of you?
What we were and cared to do?
What we made was silent strong,
Carried by our secret song.
Live again with me, and smile.

The simple glory of your smile,
Constant trust all the while.
A simple wish, so simple, this.
Live again with me, and smile.