muses and priestesses
spin to the fore.

infinity of heaven sparks.

water everywhere prepares to speak.
earth and sky, to tumble as lovers.
surfaces to shimmer and split.

for every contained paradise
there were ten tie-downs,
and she, great mother,
had eleven freshened swords.

protector destroyer giver of life
she and she and she,
mothers to all.

and as this it was;
paradise came.

Buildings for the most part are boxes square.
But Pentecost circles and spirals,
they turn and burn wild.

Of those who would tame
and make comprehensible any fire--
apt tongues have gone titch titch
and beautiful catch 'til words and music
and parlor diplomacies fortify
much which is untrue.

Fear has no finish, even in our dying.
The path is a cliff edge.

Let us turn, un-adult-like, and strip ourselves  
of civilized persuasions. Usher
Earth's children into primordial worlds.

Water shall love and receive us, as it always has.
The naked ground will speak up,
into our touching feet.

Listen to the tongues of the wind.
Unhinge the body, which is you.

Let all creation fly.

a thing wholly wild
natural and yet to be
beckoned me to the edge

there was whispering among ponderosa pines
that windless morning

roots of rocks seemed sighing
water danced in a shadow
sparrows weaved the air

o cliff-hanger of my heart, woman,
you are near to me and far away

i feel your delicate sweetness
a settling peace

every star to me is rainbow
and heaven how it sings

within the modern human of me
lives the innocent indigenous

within the indigenous
the modern

inside and outside
there is no difference

my heart my silence
humility sing

i am equal in importance
to a stone to a mountain top
to a grain of dust

no greater, not less than

Cat three-tooth, cat stone-deaf, cat sidewinder walk,
Old Bealman stalked the croaking, the croaking,
with forepaws meek stroking
airs of a summer cool night.

Bealman, Bealman, Meow & Sealman,
Pacing, still racing, one two three man.
Bealman—frog fisher & free.

Delphinium, the roses, lupine interposes
a shadow of fortressed green leaf
disguises the notion my Bealman supposes—
to seize, dismember it through,
make self-concocted, dishering frog stew.

Bealman, Bealman, Meow & Sealman,
Pacing, still racing, one two three man.
Bealman—frog fisher & free.

Night hours accounting, morning’s surmounting,
a bird warning Bealman, his patience to thin.
Croaking still blending, a flower stalk was bending,
two legs, peaking out, sent Bealman straight in.

Bealman, O my Bealman, Meow & Sealman,
Pacing, still racing, one two three man.
Frog fisher & free.

I saw Bealman beaming; I saw Bealman beaming.
How cats manage beaming I’ll wonder again.
Since Bealman was twenty, any beaming is plenty.
I loved my old Bealman, my frog fisher friend.

Bealman, Bealman, My Meow Dear Sealman,
Bealman—frog fisher & free.

Is it ever too late to be circumspect-select?*
I asked myself.

My semi-permeable state
invites distasteful items to my plate.

These careless hands of me
are flying all about,
opening all the gates.

And who or what has called to order, set opinion,
filed judgment, if not something
of a lie and a hatred?

Tries to tells me who I am
and says: this and that is what
I should rather be doing.

At my frosty age, be a man.
Get that straight.

And when I have seen hands of others
come, wishing to be as helpful,
they flash their passports at my door.

I shall deliberate and trust
the simple and silent
dominions of my house.

Practice.

What is it that I shall practice?
I'll not tell more.

innocence that young child
at sudden appearance came
from behind a cloud it seemed
of my day

he
silent

his smile
it made a sound

sweetly scattered wind

cradled distant mountaintop
touched fire

I awoke this morning with all my
nanoseconds whizzing by—

spiraling, they broke for their exits,
they disarrayed my sky.

Each now and now and now
seemed a face, flash color,

many worlds. I could not sense
their place of start or stopping.

Morning sun peeped blue curtains.
I tried my usual breath, felt
heartbeat, wiggled foot.

My dog, he stretched
and bumped my bedframe
with his chest.

Against my fear I placed and pushed
messages of gratitude.

I thanked all things changing
and all of changing time.

Rather than elsewhere, I was here.

Instead of dead--
alive.

moon
waste no seconds with my heart

above my head invitations open

moonlight's no solstice sun reflection,
but solstice moon rather
mooning moon

what gifts you bring for me
to make me stop!

simplicity in the message

solstice moon
you my heart

and my heart
love

every being of creation is queen and king

with crowns everlasting
not given not taken away

crown-lit from head to toe
fin to fin wing to wing
however a being is composed

every inch every ounce
sphere spinning geometries

golden sovereignties
of many name

sun star god true power
earth air water heart

shine on

out of a shallow dip
catch-water field
of landscape polished rock
a shock of pregnant junipers

olive-green fires arise
and my eyes bedazzle

gossamer
floating specks
of bees

new hatched
butterflies

golden jump
and spiral

as if tethered
to child's witching wand

random ride
the windless air

Carefree in leisure time, one blasé tourist,
almost happy, I once had collected a complicated stone;
after the sunny hours had ended and last opportunity
for keepsakes began.

In my hand the stone had kept all of its mouths sewn shut,
holding its amalgamated story, and likewise in the car,
on the plane, through US Customs where it was not
in the least suspected.

A thumbnail identity I now should guess at, marking an old date,
and fixing it to, with reasonable estimate, a map location:
Plot No. 243, East end of the island, slave sugar plantation,
the stone from the corner of a ruined sugarmill stair—
broken free by my criminal hand.

The stone like a bleached out mini-monolith,
square rectangular, could be stood on end;
was swollen at its center like a pulled cork.

What could have moved this sequestered world to opening?
That was not for me to exactly discover,
except what came on Christmas Day,
two days after my returning.

Slave watercourses, the sight of innumerable Dutch ships,
ballasted with human flesh and hewn rock
for sugar works buildings.

The drop at-arms-swish of the Driver’s bullwhip.
Flecks of spirit splayed on vegetation.

A mongrel dog barked beyond the windless wall of sugarcane
in centipede and mosquito heat.

Seaside, beautiful seaside impressions;
distant coral light shadows, etched deep azure;
snowy colored breakers that pencil-marked the sea.
The staid, vibrant, mocking power
of visual symphony backdrop.

So little of aid for the slaves, but for those dangerous secrets,
un-housed in the fallen coolness of the night:
demonstratively crystalline heaven of stars;
a ragged moon, clouds scudding eastward toward Africa.
And there -- Orion’s Belt, mid-sky, illustrious bright,
with its three centering star points in rational line,
as if Hope could have flung its anchor onto Life
engendering sanctified resistance.

Christmas morning, 5 a.m.
I had awakened from a stuck place, shapeless and dark,
half in dreaming and half knowing I was in no dream.

I was sobbing, yet strangely, because there were no tears.
I had only put the stone inside my pajama top onto my heart.

~~~~~~~~ FLUXING between frightening
                 & so beautiful ~~~~ flowers of
many shapes and colors

                  WALKIN the desert
                      alone ~~~~ last
                                                 evening

when everything everywhere
whispered in irresistible languages

hey you there
stop resisting

i began to surrender
was flowing free

stretching
wings flapping

toward the unknowable
inside

experimented with ditching
body as identification
name as identification
personal history as identification

faded off
mad word searching
explaining  justifying
reiterating too much information

i loosened my squeeze grip
on intellectualism
tell-me-how-to-be spiritual books
whatever the famous someone
said once then got bronzed over

i surrendered to universal unity
where i lavishly decorated
my living changing dream
with my own snap choices

i was flowing with fresh
synergetic synthesis

returned outside to pedestrian streets
where angelics mixed in
wore transparent disguises

i began to flow
forgiveness out and in

skipped a light fandango
splashing puddles was
answer to inclement weather

i set wooden faces
to smiling after
i switched my own

i rolled on through
perceived stop signs
of the everlasting no

incinerated all my karma with
nownownow
wonwonwon

made myself
stock still

experienced
yes yes

relaxed awareness

breathed
emptiness

opened all my hands

Down from Arizona desert cold, absence of ice and snow
three white painted terracotta pots
by the Villa apartment on the tabled walkway—
Christina’s place.

Stacked, each alternately inverted one to the next
stabilize a snowperson body.
Can you picture it?

Black painted buttons all the way up?
Lips of dots, an orange twist of nose,
deep eyes void black.

Burgundy scarf tied around the neck,
positioned just so, it could be fit
to a Christmas Chihuahua.

By its playful form and surprising attitude,
may it well succeed at pleasing every passerby
and draw out, on each scroogey face, a smile.

It’s been doing just that for me, as I park
opposite each night, my headlights there shining.

Still, I have not and shall not peak inside
the alluring, open terracotta skull,
since I have imagined not wishes,
nor disappointments, nor elves and cookies,
but practical ash, randomly spiked with spent cigarettes.

Last night, as I walked out, with my night’s anticipations,
my grab-bag of happy tangles, Christina’s hanging silver chimes
issued soft whispering over terracotta, and I caught
a remembrance of Amazing Grace how sweet the sound.

Then Mojo my psychic dog turned me sharply,
and he took me away–we two, going toward home
a starry desert.

Last night, a spiraled light
it caught and submerged me--
carrying far off
all my fears.

My drum-pulsed heart was flying.

I rose and weaved my airy way
among jagged mountain rock--
my path opening, opening

until a high-arched gate appeared,
laced with colored flags
and I moved through it and beyond.

In a while I saw among distant shadows of villagers
and wisps of smoke a child there, sitting,
her back to me.

Are you my teacher?
Yes, she said, though not with words.

What do you have to teach me?
Be simple.

Some could say: nature's lavishly attentive
ever blossoming to the extreme, on point.

Just so, the pearl of her earring
she wears in the photo seems
to have completely composed her.

Bare honesty rages, in picture left profile--
her stoic aquiline nose, upward tilt of chin,
late day sunshine through velvet curtain.

O, how sweet, her seashell ear.

That spiraling whorl converses with me,
as Water God Neptune might speak
of any innocence, of any liberation nature.

I see her -- a little girl at seashore,
skimming her toes across tiny waves

dash-running, leaping laughing,
her parents nowhere near.

In this adult picture she might be thirtyish
and by heaven likely married.

Her pearl has captured one fleet spark.

Oceans and continents away,
I am regarding this and her.

I, whose heart's on fire.

something stirred and alive came forth
out of my own heart it spoke
    
      all creation is of equalities
      sister brother relations
      here is truth

not to let it pass untested
i made an agreement
with belief

     blade of summer grass
     teach me

     dust speck
     gold starshine

     water droplet
     prisms
    
     fortuitous spider
     i hear your messages

spider moved in her sun-sparkled circle
she threw me spider kisses

but when i gave her kisses back
some voice came booming

     humanity is the golden crown
     of god's achievement

and the spirit of these words then took flight,
transversed my landscape,
crossed an ocean's width of time

and dropped under the waves
with the natural weight
its distorted truth

practices of superiority
of *******, of killing exploitation
rose from the collective--
flashed their white lightening

but struck counter--
diluting dissolving disarming

greediness and favoritism
manipulation and lies

expectation of privilege
so called divine right

a voice it came again
so that greater love
may have heard itself

    all creation is conscious
     all is alive all are equal
    
     none is better or worse
      than another

      remember this
       
       *to practice

considering the lilies of the field
palms laid down

blue white arizona desert flower
sweet blooming oh

considering sunlight
moonlight

mourning dove
hello

i ride into my jerusalem
singing

beautiful moment
full everywhere

is it not time to call for a gathering

to overturn tables
of the money changers

in this our
Holy Sanctuary Home
called Planet Earth?

O Peaceful Warrior
gird yourself

with humility
with silence
with loving heart

grow wings

now
time

Let this be spark to collective action!
The exercise of natural freedoms and equality.

Sever attachments, break from your safety,
from the shores of who you think you are.

Set sail with faith,
placing ideologies in abeyance.

Set sail with soul songs,
join with saints and strangers
harmoniously singing.

Be ALL as One
in open repartee.

Brothers and sisters, all of a wild nature–
none left uninvited.

Friends at heart all, all welcome!

Who shall be chief navigator?

Trace sensitive fingers on contour maps the Universe makes.
As we navigate, we invent.

With tiniest of maps (the same is the largest
with infinite pathways) we are destined exactly
to found and inhabit New Earth.

Who brings gifts of intuitive sensing?

Everyone?
Shall we draw straws?

Any can buddy up with the experts
at the rational sextant.

Every single she and he of us
is a guiding star.

Accordingly, let’s begin
convergent conversations of stars.

Of the humans who choose to stay behind, let us love them.
Let us love them and let’s be on our way!

It is enough now that many have had good intentions,
have spoken authentically, enthusiastically.

Yet they do not wish to enter in.
Each in his or her own time.

Others have voiced opposition,
demonstrated resistance.

Some others — stuck in apathy,
in numbness, powerlessness.

Is fear of ****** death
the ultimate stopping?

What is living if living itself
is death?

Are you one who has ears
to hear?

Are you that very passenger
ready to disavow, to disembark?

Have you awakened
to your own alluring whisper?

Let us begin.

Saturate and brimming of my hometown Boston,
of its sunshine Marathon peoples and bomb images,
my heart fracture rend.

On the third day—resurrection of all my sadness
came to me, feeling fresh and born to fruition,
so this grew.

It grew and through my tears coming,
I stood to witness two loving sparrows
on a window branch.

My sadness at some abeyance, studying and curious
I was of her--all akimbo shivers and rock-in-roll, of him--
flying feathered stone, rolling from branch to branch
and coming home, repeatedly.

Circles flying within moving circles!

Did something happen
with the last jiggle of her branch?

Did you see that? Science says
what they were doing—they had finished.

(But what to believe of Science?
It calls their loving--mating rather).

Now to tell you—the sequencing was this:
when I was full knocked down
on account of my grief,
and I hardly had strength to go on,
a Beatles song flew in and gently pierced my heart,
singing to my ear: Why don't we do it in the road...
no one will be watching us...why, why don't we do it

O, Spring Life of Sparrow surprises!
Open road, that budding tree,
any new notion is something grand!

How do I say now? That you two
were most helpful, your innocence
forever abiding?

Fly off Sparrows, forever prayer!
I speak this with all my love.

looking up
at the beautiful blue sky

saying hello
to fluffy clouds

here and now
costs me nothing

Upside-down and unconditioned I
climbed my tower.

Sprinkled my flecks and dodges.

Wistful-eyed, in soul surrender
with my twin wild roses, I grew.

Sunset in mauve near sparked attention
cop politician any progressive crew

and all the while
I whinnied to the moon.

Before the door was broken into
under-rooms had shut, had disappeared.

Streaks of starlight filled the streets
and sailing, flew.

This is way the desert sings
tra-la-tra-lee.

Tra-lee-la.

What's your take on walking?

My body serves my soul
and tells me how to go.

My heart, affixed -- aims to show.
These ways I’ve walked in my shoes and stockings.

I've looked to heaven’s stars, to daylit clouds,
when I've stepped out, or dropped my gaze
to track the ground.

Yes, it is true—whoever passed me by
could have taken offense and supposed
I lacked my confidence.

And ofttimes, I strode out straight and true
as if toward a far mist horizon.

Un-manifest future,
even peek-a-boo,
could be comprehended? 

I should doubt it.

And if I wished to address an occasional
in-the-dumps, lost-at-sea feeling,

I'd shut my eyes, and walk backwards --
owl-like, swivel 360 my head.

Backwards blind circumspection seemed worthy my try;
Ask--Who am I?

I would story where I’d been.

In my most spontaneous of nature foot-trafficking,
in roulette walk; my spin of gun chamber click--
ant, spider, beetle, and the occasional sighing snail
had fled my shadow shoe?

As slow drift clouds in a sky game would play
with the sun to hide—creatures had sought me out,
sung their farewells?  (it was an excellent day to die)

Let me tell it, as it had happened today,
and truth says how.

My feet, they had gotten to waltz-walking.
O how my body and soul
danced a-fancy free.

Love was brimming out of me; happiness
whispered her wordless name; and
my tongue tripped nonsensical.

So if, at last, you've kept a-pace with me
in sympathetic striding, then perhaps
you would surmise:

there never could be a flat-footed me,
when I spout off with poem-talking.

Now, what’s your take on walking?

I've known heights, aimed like a bullet
to the top of the head.

Forbidden songs, jagging
placid landscapes.

Waterblood waterbone --
my body cries out to me.

How long the abuse, how long!

In the barreled pit of my sober life
up from common sense--snapping into it,
my soul came alive.
Alive I say!

By grace I breached.
Free in the wind!

Kingdoms of water, alive kingdoms --
hear now the words of my tears.

Mea Culpa!

I slam on the brakes, tear off the roofs
of steel compartments.

I see sky and feel in daylight every hidden star.
I declare -- the emperor of death
has no clothing.

I scatter forgiveness
across all the fattened streets.

Oceans of me are singing.
A spinning angels' symphony.

Over the graves of ancestors,  I vow:

Water, I shall love you.
I shall speak up, shall protect you.

I shall fight for you and die
if I must.

Ten times ten give my very life
-- that you live.

Letters and print seemed not my language anymore.
Pen in hand I felt like a weighted foot.
My eyes tracked; I lost the scent.

But whenever I rhythm, rhythm free --
false underpinnings of me evanesce,
cease their being.

Alphabets break through school room doors.
Wall clocks split their faces.

Whenever I rhythm, rhythm gentle--
my heart its codes concoct--
make all green fresh alive

as sweet this earth
become green eternal springtime.

(my blood my body know
openings wanderings)

Whenever I rhythm, leaping leaping;
my mouth mouths, my breath breezes.

I am at one with shivers of sunlight.
I sing I sing:

kei quah rae sa
sa e cha nu

e cha nu quah rae
kei quah sa saaaaaaaa….

whoever i am
i do not know

i do not know
whomever i am

i am who?

i am that which
is not known to me

this whoever i am
who knows nothing
is me

i am a walking tree on the path of the sun

I walked familiar pathways,
felt my shoulders--pressed embraced.

My feet, they moved so quick,
I  levitated.

All along my lower spine surges of traffic came --
particles, waves of sunlight,
from the center of the earth.

HI **! my trillions of cells exclaimed,
stretching borders of their community kingdoms.

This is all of why I am simply here, I think:
to stop, to listen, to give receive.

Call it love.

How is it that such magic happens?

O, this place and me
at year's ending.