The current of life always flowing
The river remains, the water keeps going
Escapes from your hand
Turning rocks into sand
Its secret is something worth knowing

An unkindness of ravens may pester your soul
And challenge your heart till your patience is full
Embrace them with grace
Put yourself in their place
Not until then will your spirit be whole

Into a tunnel beyond darkness and light
The soul makes a journey under cover of night
The course of this voyage cannot be explained
A path toward the life source which cannot be named
Its secret location no road map reveals
But he who goes searching must trust what he feels
The circumference is nowhere, the center right here
But to even the wisest it will not appear
Hinted at only on the hero’s return
No shape to behold and no form to discern

It’s hard to accept in our rational age
When every known fact has its own wiki page
But among the cold data a gap still remains
A sense of experience eclipsing our brains
A sense of emerging, belonging and will
An aura of something consisting of nil
Neither tiny, nor mammoth, nor cool, nor hot
For all that it is, it most chiefly is not
Neither seen, nor touched, nor felt, nor heard
Borne on the wind like an unspoken word

If you can bear the brunt of a thousand callous elbows
And hold your ground among a throng of hungry fellows
If you can stand the stench of liars who rise above you
And keep your thoughts on the one or two who love you
If you can bend over backwards with stress and tension
Or stand up tall with undivided attention
Or lean from right to left with ease
And not just wiggle in the breeze

If you can sense your tragic flaw and give yourself a laugh
Or lift a shining kernel from a crusty stack of chaff
If you can chase the spirit of wanting that burns a man’s heart
And loosen the desire before it tears your soul apart
If you can drink from both cups of joy and sorrow
Or wait for now and drink tomorrow
Or see that coins are all two-sided
And know your fate is not decided

If you can take a page of Kipling and follow every letter
Or find your heroes’ faults and do their deeds one better
If you can stand alone and know that you’re right
And surrender your words for good works in plain sight
If you can bite your tongue and accept it with grace
Or let your thoughts go drifting in space
Or focus your mind on everything pleasant
And know that forever survives in the present

If you can forgive the crimes of those who write the rules
And let go of the past and the pranks and prep schools
Without forgetting what you stand for and why
And never believing it’s useless to try
If you can do what you can to steer clear of strife
And act with respect toward all forms of life
You’ll be the pillar, and carved out of wood
And – what’s more – you’ll be misunderstood

In a desolate desert where peaches are scarce
An oasis appears and a goddess prepares
To ****** her next partner with apples and pairs
And proposing a union she takes me upstairs

Into the skyline and over the weather
To a room in the clouds we inhabit together
The book of life opens, she reads me my rites
Informing my dreams for a thousand more nights

Our foreplay, like Gospel, begins with a word
Whispering wisdom and secrets unheard
While waves of effulgence wash over my ears
And unspeakable lightness conveys me to tears

The courtship completed she lifts up her veil
Undresses her figure and shows me her tail
Her gown on the floor in a soft silky heap
And we drift to the bedroom where cherubin sleep

Melting like butter, collapsing before her
Her miracle strength has me backed in a corner
And so I surrender, no use to resist
Beaten by Ishtar, I wait to be kissed

She spreads herself open, unnaturally wide
Receiving my body and spirit inside
Inserting my tome like a book on her shelf
We form an anthology, bound in one self

No match for a goddess and giver of life
And yet we conjoin as a husband and wife
The muse and the poet are spun in one strand
Just see how my pen is now firm in her hand

With one leg in heaven and one in my bed
I recline and receive her celestial head
Arousing my mind and exchanging our dreams
Through visions that swim in ethereal streams

Perusing her volumes and rarely seen stacks
A scholar who studies the shadows and cracks
I reach out to ****** her wavydark hair
Her substance reflecting like dust in the air

I dip in her inkwell again and again
In search of the words that will flow from my pen
Receiving and giving, a cycle unending
Eternal rewards from the muse I’m befriending

A goddess lay resting one cold winter night
In a soft bed of jasmine she sighed with delight
Warm in her blankets with dreams in her eyes
Sleeping for beauty and gaining her prize
Well after dawn she woke from her slumber
She rolled to her side and she trembled like thunder

Deep down inside, a familiar sensation
A twitch in her *****, in need of attention
Smooth slender fingers traversing her chest
Stroking her belly and squeezing a breast
Cupping herself, her hand overflowed
Gifts to mankind, from heaven bestowed

Massaging her mountains of honey and butter
The touch of the skin sent her body aflutter
She reached for a ****** with finger and thumb
Felt something tingle, and started to hum
Her heart beating faster, her breath now increased
She twisted her torso in need of release

Like greek alabaster, a pillar of marble
A temple of flesh we can worship and marvel
The priestess lay back and explored with her hands
A summons to action, her wetness commands
Caressing her lips and primed to explode . . .
... But I'll need a few minutes to finish this ode