Everything spreads in an expanse.
Forms like candles feathered
flickering float in glassine tombs,
Sounds like those dip and sink at sea.
Silken carpet of clouds pulled,
numb stones and numb thorns,
pain from under my naked norms.
Chain breaks and rattle songs,
oh the horror of raveling knots, that
endings have humble beginnings.
Everything's same, but nights melt  
and fans slow, flooding the days in
broken moons and shaken stars.
Solitary lamp in the damp room,
Everything spreads like ocean waves
from me in an expanse like this.

On the far corner of my hall hangs a giant poster. Janeway is leading
her crew through the unknown. Spruced up so nice, you could
mistake it for a wall. My cupboard of skeletons. Beware, uncover the secret
at your own risk! Sometimes though, I wonder why we don't just accept:
aren't we all about the mean? Good man. On average, I am. White crows,
do exist! Everyone knows but crows are black. Of course the extent counts.
Of deviance I mean. But trust, you must.  I am a monkey that learned to
think. So are you.  I learn my religion, I learn my culture. I learn to act:
my part in the Play. Life is a rule-bound game we choose to accept.
I rebel too. When the rules aren't fun no more.  Isn't that true of me
as of you? Meantime, meanwhile, mean love. On the average lets seek:

Mellow season rain slipping by the thunderstorm
oh you have come, unknown visitor,
unrecognized. Lone rose that bloomed in rain,
drenched always in tears, this morning
shaded beams of light and the song of birds
welcoming the respite bend past you.
This is the sea leading to Ithaca. Here I stand
on the shores of the land that was my home.
Who left with hundreds, alone I return like a thief.
The gentle hand that passed last from my sight
out of the multitudes that waved us bye,
A hundred whispers of chants and hymns
from shadows that rise from the corners where
I found refuge from pain in these years:
Whom do those fingers choose, honour-bound
whom I left alone those twenty years ago?
Years that rush like a river streaming past gorges.

The mother that nourishes you in the rainy dawn.
Loving maiden whose fragrance fills the spring.
Mirage that you thirst after, heartbroken in high summer.
I am the daughter you cherish at the winter of your life.
Your friend always, through ages vast.

I am the unknowable love that sustains your being.
I am the joy for which universes arise.
I am above the last that men can grasp.
I am accessible here always in your heart.

Dance of the thunderbolt in the storm-sky.
Music of the sky-river at night. I am the flute.
I am the Supreme. I am all.

Rend the clouds!
You are the rain that washes the worlds in love.
You welcome the world in your arms.
You have no one. You are everyone.

Will you become the wall and stay silent listening to my wails today?
I count every drop that wets your edifice brick by brick in this rain:
This day of prayer, the festival that comes only once in many years.
Today I stand kneeling before the skies that fumed in thunders
I have weathered life to walk up to this shore where you stand,
Your watery eyes the lighthouse that guided me lost in the sea-storm.
Polyphemus could not stop me, nor the Sirens, not even Calypso.
Here I come, your pilgrim in my hood, I who accepted war over love
The war in which I lost everything: friends, comrades and mates.
O Athene, have my sacrifices been in vain, will you not bring her to
speak? She who has gone silent like a wall, wet in this wailing rain.

Nameless and formless
I wish to just be
Yes I am, I just am.
To whom providence sends in my life
I am love and care.
When their time is done,
they depart and I do not grieve.
I am a fallen twig,
I fly as the wind carries me along:
In spring time I fall on soft grass;
Hug me and place me on your ideal
or don't notice and trample me over,
I don't bother.
I am the storm cloud high up the sky.
No-man lived but
Ulysses died with the storm.
Nameless, formless
Yes I am, I just am.
This fellow who appeared as me
I am the one who appears
as You too.
I have seen my own death, now
I wish to just be.

The slow winding years sliced up here:
Your birthday: that memorable year
New year O'seven,
that festival of lights,
Sulis,
Brussels;
Years that rolled like mellow waves:
Receding, returning;
Slices of joy.
Photographed here.
But pain, is all curled up.
Jarring notes, unfitting angles
caged like birds
grieving in the corners of our souls
where we return, each time
the bass is strummed at the string of our hearts.
Half-drawn breath, part-held lungs
Moist pain I see in the corners of your eyes.
Let go, let go, let us let go.
This hour of receding darkness,
let them fly away
free with babblers that ring in the day;
Freed, freed of the burdens past,
let's walk in the wind
into crimson tides
to tipping waves,
dipping skies.