I came to the pavilion of the big cats
And in the center was a palace ruin,
The walls were stone and feeble mortar,
The great, golden monarch was the lion.

With wisdom eyes, he gazed upon me,
I lowered my head as was my station,
He did not move, nor deign to care,
In His royal chamber I was under thrown.

I thought, you are caught my over lord,
But his stance said, these bars are scepter
And I heard him say with a long lost roar,
'Hear my horn, I am he, the storm of Jericho.'

In the palace of the mighty, indifferent, king
His thundering voice crackled the lambing
Stables and even heaven closed under ceiling
Dome and I was caged when the walls fell away
And the whole, blown world, remade, a zoo.

Moist lips in room fired  .  .  .
When first we met her voice lit,
  .  .  .  Sonoluminescence.

Sweet stonewall princess,
Tear down impossible walls,
  .  .  .  See me as I am.

.
And speaking to the western wind,
In the sped and turning time of the revolving sky
As a top unwinding like a dropped fable;
He dreams of taking leave, unraveling the coil
Upending his foil
Of listless sights as daylight creeps one more tread
And sweet belief breaks down once again:
Days that are ******* like a sad hunt
When the tracker is bent
On tragic orchestrations that only lead to a duel . . .
Undoing, Oh must it be, "Must we fit?"
Let us know and get on with it.

In his bed the women are only dreams
Phantoms, iridescent sirens.

  .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .   ­ .

Yes! I am not King Lir, nor could ever be;
Am a child cast out, transfigured, remote
Innocent, prey to the white flaming truth
The growing down, that clothes my name
Inconsequential, sheathed with shame,
Polite, capricious, calamitous;
Empty of all, it is unanimous
Nor even the memory of ripeness
Invisible, a drop in the pool.

I am weary . . .  I am weary . . .
I shall whisper to the newborns when I am old.

Shall I build upon the strand?  Have swordplay with the sea?
I shall tear my hair, mutter to the moon, bury my wounded knees
I have heard the Selkies singing, sailing with the breeze.

I do not think they will give their skin to me.

I have known them gliding beyond the ninth wave.
I still hear them sing so sweetly, weaving sorrows, on my back
Carving the blue waters as the waves are turning black.

We come and go in cycles with the moon, as tidal waves
Seep and seethe, foam and heave, lone captains setting sail,
In folly with a capsize brimming, before our boat has been bailed.

              

                                        ­­­                     ­­                                      — after Eliot
.

.
He walks in stolid darknesses
At days zenith, hears whispers
In the dew dusted fens, lights
Leaves into sun candle flames,
Drew a lake sword by maidens
Hand, alchemic shaper of water,
Air, old fires and earth, bending
Cold elements of moly and lode
Rushing forth, in extra emotions.

.
I row beneath you on the ancient lake,
Before sun arrives and after he is gone,
I will still be rowing even in my dreams,
Great yellow hills, my work is never done.

Words, utter, deconstruct,
Pure truth is now, tainted.
Always two ways of seeing,
Right is mighty and written,
The blinking stars, warning,
Over heads of manly stone,
Silent testimony unheeded.
Faith, the hearts perdition,
The exquisite supplication,
The tyrants dream so freely
Spun for turning heads tips
As baubles do when moon
Is full or the sun is searing.
Is the world really flat? Are
The angels already among
Us or do birds surely winter
On the moon?

Deep in the screws of his lonely keep,
Waiting for word of a land promised,
Sentinel man watches across the sea
Never knowing faith was so dishonest.
Across the sea of doom lies his joy,
What awe, so spindrift were his days
And what lay behind was no corridor
And all his dreaming has left no ways
Forward, but to sink with hapless sorrow
And flowing to the thirsty ocean seas,
He pours another drink, toasts tomorrow
And all the empty horizons of history.
Spiraling down he leaves his diggs,
Praying, death be not a doornail's rig.

Winged caterpillar
That frees my soul,
Sets my mind to dreaming,
How the hand of man
Out plays the God,
Makes love
To its master.
With fondled fingers, you paint
A dumb firmament, the way
Light dazzles as it breaks
Or how the itching rain
Taps a teasing melody as it falls
To the lover ground.

Beloved of Orpheus
Whose wove you coiled in-
Vents a garment of bird song loom,
Content my breath
The way that water wells
And lolls into puddles
Nesting not before the hot,
Harpy steam.

O melodious pool,
Undulating lake, frame
To emotive vapours, without
Ship you ply in wakes.
The oarsman plucks the main,
Your body is the sail,
Drunkard winds and warblers,
Blow hard, but fail my ears,
Atone as well, the wretched sounds of day
For they are sour spells, and but a fools
Trash canned movements, in a state
So needy of weeding,
Mere sound is soiled
The way you rake.

Evolution spreads,
As stones do,
When moves the river bed,
Grace, in violence,
Sparkles as it blooms,
Like an ears creation—
Rose on the tomb.

Rain, thumping down,
Pressing grey prints,
Ocean, tears the sky,
Drowning with drinks
Of blue eye and salt
Taste, rude earthling
Song, takes too long.
Must I go on walking,
In gurgle paths spray,
Soaked, silted, ******,
Drabs colours running
In days raging of rain?

( Sonnet )*

Good deer are gracing the trees,
Take communion in handed leaf,
Touch the soils with loving hoof,
In the tabernacles of the wood.

The owl cries for all souls eternal,
Deep in the shrouds of the vernal
That drape the newly born dying,
Beneath the solemn owls' crying.

And songbird has a psalm unread,
A parable in the twining branches,
Gifts of song foist lanyards of crop
Dear in old forest, this offered sup.

As blood seeping deep in the wood,
Sky washes away those who stood.

Rain dapples in fens of the marshland brooks,
Among the rue hillocks of the sapling woods,

What little peace may fall to drop the shivering
Leaves, rood of the sun, a crop, kestrels quiver

In midair, to keep as they sway into the stations
Of all minions moused who faulter in formation

And bright is birth, when night clothes the day,
As all the mornings long, song of hope, in May.

Winter snow hares gone,
Hunger rules— just giant goose,
Stooping white falcon.

To face the world, a runt,
With such brunt and abasement,
Is to know ones place in the scheme,
Standing in the stream of frivolous
Happenings, this is the dance,
To be danced, this is the play,
Yet, he has the ears of a king,
To jest with such fire is to be
Ferocious, not feeble, his mocks
Are mostly mirrors for the blind,
For madness is a known methodology,
How he revels round the sad theatres
Of the high born absurd, how he speaks
In tongues and with bold proclamations
Only taut whispers of wind would know?
He is certain that the spindle fates are real
And that lightening strikes purposefully,
Kingdoms will fall, as the sun will rise,
As the noble trees ring with ideologies,
Without travails, he is always arriving,
To sleep out of doors, this is his way,
The path, the masted ship of fools.

You've asked me how can I see a future when love, in all
Its numinous beauty, is waning?
I reply, the immortal stars still shine above the veil of clouds.
You say, why are the salmon swimming to their pools of origin
Only to die as they spawn?  Only to die?
I tell you their love is unconditional, like mine.
You ask me did the giant sequoia know it was shelter for the burning grasses
When they walked from the seas?  I reply yes they knew.
You question me about the lofty snow cranes that fly over the Himalayas
And I reply by describing
How the priestly flocks, chanting on their mission, honk—
Announcing the mantle steps to the heavens.
You inquire about the elephantine manatees gracing the shallow banks
And wonder if the sea mermaids remember their lives beyond the latitudes
Of capricorn and cancer?
Or you’ve discovered in the wind a new reasoning as to why
The talons of the paired eagles lock in midair as they court?
You want to understand the nimbus garden, ocean slate, of lake Titicaca
Where resides the Andean sea horse gliding above the clouds?
The whales that circle dance in unison collecting krill?
The noetic display of the birds of paradise, the songs of nameless creatures
Playing in the wilderness like a forgotten melody only lovers lips remember?

I want to tell you that true love knows this, that life in its
Prismatic shimmer is all the myriad colours of infinite existence wrapped
In time to the sublime structure of white and bones.  I must tell you
That the flower is mighty in its opening, the humming bird is a sorcerer
Who needles ambrosia with vortex wings weaving his way to the Gods.

But I am nothing beside your disbelief which has arrived, before
I can even imagine the sweet awakening, like doom, my shell is the iridescent
Hollow of the one eyed Abalone, discarded in the deep fathoms
Of the ocean pressures.

I swim the tides as you do, investigating
The endless tendril seas,
And in my chest, during the night, I woke up empty,
The only thing treasured, a golden face
Trapped inside my dreams.

Mankind playing God,
Red burning sands, angry skies,
Blue ocean will rise.

Lose lips are threshold  .  .  .
She takes me— to house of love,
  .  .  .  Doorways of her eyes.

When late springtime comes,
Fresh scent of cherry blossom,
  .  .  .  Memories of her.

Snowy egrets, pure,
Stoic, white statues of grace,
Digging in the muck.

In my working days world,
Outside little birdies do swirl,

With wings and songs saying,
Wee birds in trees are playing,

But my blue drab or grey suit,
That chains me to my roots,

With only windows to imagine                                          
A world so colourful, tangible,

Is shroud, only wrap of clothes,
Yet little birds, so downy robed,

And within my comely, demise,
See how brightly birdies do fly,

As I shudder, muted, wintering,
O how wee birdies can sing.

Little yellow finch  .  .  .
No bird listens to her song,
  .  .  .  Only cat entranced.

Ocean birds scatter—
Sun melting day on horizon,
  .  .  .  Waves in pantomime.

Today, a poem should be palatable, cute
As a Kiwi fruit,

Dumb
As a horse battalion's scudding run,

Strident as out of tune horns
Of basement bands where the gloss has grown—

A poem should be bloodless
As the slight of words.

A poem should be film of ocean brine
As the reel unwinds,

Cleaving as the gear greases
Spoke by spoke the light smearing breeze,

Blowing, to the temple outhouse
Exalting all the ****** functions—

A poem should be not true:
Equal too.

For all the history of vanity
An empty room and a bass relief

For lust
The keening masses and no light above the stream

A poem should not be
But mean.

Swallows round steeples,
Indifferent as enlightened ones,
Purple robes in skies.

We made love as strangers—
Do when they eye each other
Separately intimate in a rush,
Our bed was a rack we made
Tortuous and flesh— revealed                                                         ­ 
As it gave into itself, the moon
Conspired in our dominations,
As we suffocated in the breaths,
Way down sips, of earthy heavens.

.
Notes wash over
The no angled ear
Listener, journeyer
See trails leading
To a cloud of sun,
Break in the skies,
Soon to know again
What was creeping
In the eyes of restless
Thought, unrequited
Sense, the whirling
Ride in the globes
Of vertigo and touch.

Dismembered by mood,
The musician conjures
Lost jewels in thought,
Sparks to the mind,
Sorcery in the bland,
Wayout, man, you dig,
Tap the deep rythmns
Drowning under toes,
Shutters we have lined
Go ourselves together
In the blinds.  Turn on,

Off those penny eyes,
The horn careening
In its heights of low
Down blues and sheen,
Be bop and stirring
In a rush, unfinished
The player knows
Your got number,
Is offbeat, syncopated
With the pearly drums
Of the sheet, read heart.

Jazzman is charmer
To sleepy serpent
Kept, shot in only bars
That leech into night,
The looking glasses
Pouring over misery
Ride sweet nowhere
In the tempos of fix,
Youngling daddy-o,
Plenty is the brass horn
Of Jazz in the clears,
Cool fingers singing
What the mind hears.

Sometimes the body is contagion
To the soul.  Stars in their mission fall
To seed the fertile flesh, ignite
Blue waters of sulfureous hearts,
And so the flash is set to cancel
In the flood.  

Sometimes the lip of soul onto seal
Will not hold, before he first knocked
And let flesh enter, thorny pegs
Pricked nerve and pierced bone on his climb
To the rose, yea, some stars odd as
Meteors crash.

In the swan-sea, song-sangy-frame of crib,
Rough hewn words bent mold to scrape, like
Blasted coral, stood half-submerged
Amid sea and sky, for between the leaves,
Behind the eye, there are little stars
Shining like existence.

In a circle world he fashioned green
Blazons about the darkling day,
Fostered by celestial navigation,
Wrote a language for music, on a map of love
And charted the force of green in a wind-
Rose of discovery.

Sometimes the soul is not contained, it
Bursts in silent sound like well water
From the source.  And of men in streets
He saw the pennies in their grumble
Eyes, and of love and its course he rubbed,
Tickling dim stars.

It was his thirty ninth year in that fall
To heaven when the steeping cell,
Refused to push in its tide.  Homeless
And free on scaffold of bone the middling
Man retracted from sun to sink
With the moon, turn-tiding-toward sea
Like a changeling.

And as ever, nor often, unwavering eyes
Sprout through shifting grains.  And as he spoke
Quite rimless, Dylan Thomas was petrified
In undying light, and solid set within a rill
Of reef sparkling in concert betwixt gas
And sea, so becoming in purple sleeves,
This constellation of mute singers all,
Dried five-fingered-fish, bright embryos
Returned to the shell, they burn between the leaves,
Beset the grounded skies and show sprite flashes
In the dark where He has left his imprints, burning
Above and plastered below.  The first rock stars!

Asleep with my love,
I wake, she is in dream— still,
Conversation runs.

And speaking to the western wind,
In the sped and turning time of the revolving sky
As a top unwinding like a dropped fable;
He dreams of taking leave, unraveling the coil
Upending his foil
Of listless sights as daylight creeps one more tread
And sweet belief breaks down once again:
Days that are ******* like a sad hunt
When the tracker is bent
On tragic orchestrations that only lead to a duel . . .
Undoing, Oh must it be, "Must we fit?"
Let us know and get on with it.

In his bed the women are only dreams
Phantoms, iridescent sirens.

  .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .

Yes! I am not King Lir, nor could ever be;
Am a child cast out, transfigured, remote
Innocent, prey to the white flaming truth
The growing down, that clothes my name
Inconsequential, sheathed with shame,
Polite, capricious, calamitous;
Empty of all, it is unanimous
Nor even the memory of ripeness
Invisible, a drop in the pool.

I am weary . . .  I am weary . . .
I shall whisper to the newborns when I am old.

Shall I build upon the strand?  Have swordplay with the sea?
I shall tear my hair, mutter to the moon, bury my wounded knees
I have heard the Selkies singing, sailing with the breeze.

I do not think they will give their skin to me.

I have known them gliding beyond the seventh wave.
I still hear them sing so sweetly, weaving sorrows, on my back
Carving the blue waters as the waves are turning black.

We come and go in cycles with the moon, as tidal waves
Seep and seethe, foam and heave, lone captains setting sail,
In folly with a capsize brimming, before our boat has been bailed.

              

                                        ­                     ­                                           ­    — after Elliot

Grafted birds in uproar—
And grey moorlands a fog,
The cacophony of orders,
Even turned earth a slog.

Highest heavens, all one,
Seeing with truthful eyes,
Black and white eagle—
Dispenses the blue skies.

Under the muted bark of hazelnut trees,
Spurious, sprite juncos scurry in vertigo,
Pecking, replete bouncing downy knees,
Grounded, tuft, constellation of Scorpio.

If I touch your face—
With lips, cool as cave water,
I am wishing well.

I walk along the vaulting cliffs,
My mind is open, a clear horizon,
In passing breeze, I smell her hair,
I must get home, dark clouds arriving.

Dear Pablo, as I look over
my soaking body, wet, with patches
of dirt, blotched and raw bleeding,
the clouds turn in my yellowed eyes
in order to love you, my Pablo.  
You, who made me feel radiant.  
As I am the sea,  I fish for you,
rolling in mud, and becoming
mountain, I topple for your toes
who'd dig in deep and itch my aching

breast to sleep.  My dreamful-drowsy
birds, rake the skies, rush-out like nets
wanting you on their wings, my poem.
Pablo, I loved you so when you said,
my flowers were little stars to pick,
and that loneliness was a train who waits
in a far-away station, and how, my most
minuscule attributes — a cat, a pear,
the atom, you praised, in odes, heaped
like showers hailed from heaven, as fresh-

water you reigned from the other side
of tears, and temper'd my salt, my green,
murky life.  Dearest Pablo, since you've gone,
my breath has the emptiness that hides under
stone.  And the blue-winds crossing, my life-
less age, they are nothing but long waves,
keening,   —  Nay   —  rood   —   ahhh!
Since you have left me.  And my trees,
they forget how to grow,
my song, my only,
Pablo.

Caged hands
Fumble,
Eye teeth, nick
*******,
Toes, tumblers,
Unlocking
Combinations of two,
Nose to ear,
Fingers printing
Smear,
Tongues, tasting
Freedom,
Jailed
In clothing's
Night.

Snowy egrets, pure,
Stoic, white statues of grace,
Digging in the muck.

Dimples on her face,
Walking long miles without her,
Pebble in my shoe.