Educate our hearts before we speak our minds.
For it is we who keep our shadow company,
not our shadow ours.
I try to catch the latest news,
Lest otherwise,
I become rolled over by it.

And I heard the hiss
Of venomous spinners,
“We must arm ourselves to the teeth...
**** them all! Bomb them all!”
Such comely pundits,
coated in makeup and gloss,
to read incendiary scripts from teleprompters,
to incite and heap bricks of lead
to tip their side of the scales of Justice.

Smoke speaks before fire,
then soon after comes the flame,
and then the wind of sentiment
to fan the inferno.

But who will speak low and soft of love?
Where are the healing eyes
and empathetic ears of poets past
who dipped their feather pens in compassion
and caressed messages, as
balms for our wounds?

Why do we taint the inherent scripture of mankind
with rhetoric and reaction
by those who seek to study the chaff
and not the wheat of a communal harvest?

Our great leaders have gone softly
into their nights…
battle weary
and brittle by war.

So if a bomb explodes at the Café I plan to visit today –
who will avenge my death
and who to see to the seeds I'd sewn
for compassion and peace?

Pray not these men and women on prime media payroll
and those of privileged wealth
and inherited power
who climb the backs of soft singing nightingales
to cackle the message of crows.
I’m none of these.

I was born of the womb,
and crawled to a walk, and thereon
through forests, and mountains, and shores,
shared with all things visible.

My heart rises and falls and races with beauty
and aches with darkness.
I fade, feeling the color run from my hair
and the suppleness of my skin
to dry and wither.

I watch my children quiver
like green leaves on the lithe limbs of youth –
fearing their fall,
but adoring their verdant energy.

All man is by nature equal
before the rise of knowledge –
and as the kingdom rises within each human being,
who will he take for a sage
and who for a fool?

Lo' we must focus the light in our hearts
before we speak from our darkening minds.
For it is we who keep our shadow company,
not our shadow ours.

Nourished by love
for the unseen within,
when seen with a heart,
Shimmers, sans end.

Swells the bud
a flame before bloom,
sans thorn, sans pain
sans sojourner's wound.

The wilting, the dying,
the falling to earth,
the paradox wrapped
in a gift of re-birth.

In death so many
nod in decay
who’s hues loved light
until light loved gray.

Deep hearted thinker
Let loose the reigns
To careen through
redolent gardens again.

Moments pause
on a fragranced path
you’ll hear a subtle
message plash…

twas a tear
of Mercury’s reflection,
spake, “whence you came,
is where you go,
take heed; all roads,
but One direction.”

Secrets pattern my skin,
Purple, blue and black.
Starting with cotton candy blooming,
Ending with music locked in sunset.
Each of these secrets are printed with lips,
Scattered over my body like dying paint splatters;
Starting in my head,
Curling across my goose bumps and
Pooling into my toes.
Sometimes I shed my patterns,
Making room to gather more.
The war paint doesn’t stop at the face,
It runs down like fragranced snow,
Soaking my collar through.
My delicate little secrets
Never wash away.

Miracles escapes your lips in the form of poetry,
And though kisses would also be pretty,
Nothing captivates me more,
Than when your soul,
Pours out of you like liquid misery.
A river of soul and history,
Do me the honor and quench my thirst.
Allow me to see you at your internal worst,
Because Externally and Internally,
All I see is beauty.

There is nothing more captivating than,
Blood ink and calligraphy.
As your words seeps into my skin
Imprinting on my mental cavity like tattoos from within,
A brand of paper that never gets old,
Sometimes its so intense, truth be told,
I hear you,
Even when your thoughts berate you into stunned silence.

Sometimes I just want to reach out and,
Grab onto the illusions that I store in that
Pandora's box in my mind,
Saving every bit of your broken perfection.
Your voice attack my emotions like an infection,
I become more battled-scared than I already am,
But I will endure your blood wars as much as I can,
Only a poet will know.
I exist only because of prose,
And pain, love and foes.