One, two, three, two, five, seven
Rhythmless feet clad in branded shoes
Adventurous, brazen fingers strolling on wide, voluptuous stalks
Towering sunflowers with wide, voluptuous stalks
Pristine dandelions enticing pairs of hands
Pristine dandelions enticing my pair of hands
And I give in, and I willingly give in
Summer petals weaken the gullible heart
The summer petals abandon the gullible heart
One, two, three, two, five, seven
Rhythmless feet now bare
Adventurous, brazen fingers now dormant

One, two, four, six, eight, ten
Rhythmless feet clad in cheap shoes
Curious fingers strolling on wide, voluptuous stalks
Towering white daisies with wide, voluptuous stalks
Pristine dandelions spring once more
Pristine dandelions enticing my pair of hands
And I give in, yet again I give in
Winter petals capture the derelict heart
The winter petals emulate mirrors after caressing the ramshackle heart
One, two, four, six, eight, ten
Rhythmless feet once again bare, now calloused
Curious fingers now cautious

One, two, two, two, two, two
Rhythmless feet hesitating to be covered
Vacillating fingers mapping the wide, voluptuous stalks
Pristine dandelions surface once more
Pristine dandelions displaying subtle coquetry
And I stall, for heaven's sake, I stall
Fall petals demonstrate its desire to the heart
The fall petals fall but the bitter heart hangs on a silk thread
One, two, two, two, two, two
Rhythmless feet discovers a rhythm
A rhythm so unpleasant, so abhorrent
Vacillating fingers now curl
Curl into the palm in resistance

On an Ohio vacation, we got the call.
Dressed in a navy t-shirt, and stiff boating shorts
(plucked fresh off a J. Crew shelf just earlier that morning –
        I wanted a darker grey)
My mother and I parked by the open grave.

The visitation was packed with strangers.
Stuffy, suffocating almost – I tugged at the new shorts,
coarse, rough-feeling, no time to break in yet –
        fibers still unset –
My back hugs peeling wallpaper.

My mother's tears stain my shirt, the salt stiffening fresh fabric –
Baptism. Each tear carves fresh wrinkles, crossing her face like rivers,
slicing into her like canyons. Her hands are childlike upon my shirt,
grasping blindly for anything, her vision blurred, her breath short,
her heart broken.

I peer at the uncovered casket and look at the woman's face.
Thin halo of white hair, skin pale like alabaster –
She is stiff. Eyes fixed, blood cold. Her hands clasp tightly.
Her black cardigan holds her like a piece of glass,
stiff, hard, yet so fragile, threatening each second to crack,

and the sounds of its breaking my mother's muffled cries,
and my hand's rhythmless consoling pats upon her back.

The boom of artillery roars in my ears.
A deadly projectile whooshes over my head,
Slamming into the luckless soul behind me,
And heavy feet beat out a rhythmless tattoo.

Men - are they warriors, soldiers?  Gladiators?
They shout encouragement to their comrades,
And screech obscenities at their adversaries.
Reduced to savages, they are consumed by bloodlust.

Something lands nearby.  
It strikes the ground, bounces, rolls to my feet.
“Get it!” someone cries out desperately.
A grenade?  I lunge, lift it up, hurl it away.

The battle rages on, the artillery still booms,
Men still shout.  I want to run, to hide,
But I can only wait for it all to end
When basketball ends at 12:35.

[A child of indeterminate ***--either a delicate-featured boy or a tomboy-ish girl--, 9 or 10 years old, enters the chamber where the United States Council of Artists is meeting.]

"Is this the United States Council of Artists?"

[The Chairman of the Council responds:] "Yes. Who are you?"

"That doesn't matter. Are all the high arts present? Poetry, Music, the Visual Arts?"

"Yes. . . . There are people from all the various arts here. . . ."

"The Hour of your Doom is upon you."

"What do you mean?"

"You've failed to create with feeling.
Nuclear angst no longer excuses you.
Moral uncertainty, the dissolution of society,
no longer excuses you.
The 'Death of God' no longer excuses you.
Human beings have not changed.
We are not the hollow men.
Great art
comes from the heart;
your superfluities will now depart.

"Painter! Isn't it true that the same day you started work on this [holding up a reproduction of the painting "Incongruities: White Lines, Pink Lines"] you visited a hardware store with a middle-aged clerk whose face was wonderfully sad and quizzical? That as you walked home the pattern of the sun shining through the trees onto the sidewalk was marvelously variegated?


"Composer! Tell me honestly [playing a cassette recording of "Duet in F-Minor for Flute and Woodblock"] that these rhythmless sounds move you. . . . It's made with the head, completely with the head.

"Poet! Isn't it true that you've never written any poems expressing your deepest feelings: your love of your older sister; the painful growing-apart of you and your wife leading up to your divorce; your hatred of the stuffy academics who denied you tenure; the passion you felt for that Australian ******* Corfu last summer. . . . Instead you've written these [holding up a book entitled Root Crops, No Metaphors and reading from it:]

     translucent, magenta-veined root-tips
     push, cell by cell, into humid grit;
     dark green, dark-red-veined crowns
     expand profligately sunward. . . .

"Great art
speaks to the heart;
your superfluities will now depart."

[Another Council member:] "Mr. Chairman, with all due respect to this --surprisingly eloquent-- young person, I suggest that we return to the business at hand which is" [consulting his agenda] "the allocation this fiscal year for haiku in South Dakota."

my sister fell soundly to sleep in her duvet
once i sang her the song of the moon;
her curls framed her delicate face in the night’s light
and her breath hummed a rhythmless tune.

i had sung her the story of an elegant princess
who haunted the moon’s sunken hollows.
her dress was woven of lonely girls’ tresses
and rope from the broken mens’ gallows.

i walked through the amber of the living room lamplight
and stumbled back into my bed;
i gave myself up to the threshold of nightmares
but sleeplessness came instead.

i told my brain to be quiet and rest
and i turned and twisted and waited
but no matter how tired my eyes were of shadows
my thirst for sleep was not sated.

so i went to the forest where the owlets were hunting
and climbed the first tree i could find,
then thought of the place where the sand was ashen
and the darkness was quiet and kind,

and i wished and wished and wished myself back
and not a moment too soon
for next morning my sister found that my heart was beating
but my soul had flown back to the moon.

"My brother, you could be a Christian
And go from being Catholic to being confused
To knowing the only way is to fear God
And you got nothing to lose, everything to gain
Can I get a witness?

But you got to believe in something
You got to believe in something
Or you will be a rhythmless void
So here’s a toast to my God
And all of y’all who played a yard
May your word be born and may you find
That the Lord may not come when you call
But he’s always on time"

your eyes, melody
your smile, a thousand drum beats
my heart, **rhythmless

AKELDAMA (THE FIELD OF BLOOD)
If I were Shakespeare
I would say: what hath happened to you mother earth?
Fallen creation! What hast thou done?
Abel’s blood laments from the ground
Innocent streams of blood flow in the swamps
Calling in the deepest seas
Yet creation joys at its screams and groans
Blood and bones spread like a red carpet
Bodies hung like clothes on a washing line
Akeldama! Akeldama! The earth has become!

Brothers butchering each other over stolen money
Babies murdered in the name of abortion
Albinos sacrificed in the quest for wealth and good luck
Oceans are dump sites for human carcases
Pastors servicing their ministries with innocent souls
Alters covered with ***** and blood
Bribery has become the order of the day
Akeldama! Akeldama! The world has become!

Authored outside the garden of Eden
Anger and heartlessness have become a burden
The love for money has made hearts to harden
With personal pockets to fatten
Forgiveness and good virtues are forgotten
Akeldama! Akeldama! The earth has become!

Shattered into pieces my heart bleeds
My soul weeps tears of blood
Tears that are torn and roasted before they reach the ground
Causing my troubled heart hasten to pound
Just like a floating trophy blood shed circulates around
My voice is bubbling within me
I am like an ant under an elephant’s hove
Akeldama! Akeldama! The earth has become!

Judases creeping in the shadows
Like giant monsters
Innocent hearts dripping and drizzling with blood
The guilty jubilantly roaming the streets

The church is silent
A sleeping lion!
A toothless bull dog
Blood stained tithes and offerings
Flesh fuelled businesses crowding the CBD
Deceit and betrayal is a game of hearts
Dead consciences that cannot be resuscitated
Children are fatherless and mothers are childless
The rich are heartless
The heirs are senseless
Crying is useless
They deem Christianity meaningless
Talking about Ubuntu is a sign of weakness
Leaders are foreign to selflessness
Oh Akeldama! Akeldama! The earth has become!

To him who hold the seven stars in his right hand
Who is the first born of all creation?
Turn not a blind eye on our afflictions
For how long will we sing the sour song of Akeldama
A song written by the greedy and blood thirsty
A rhythmless song sung when strings are broken and voices are full of anger
Akeldama! Akeldama! The earth mourns!
Oh Akeldama!

I need the music in my ears to silence all the sickness,
As my mind is falling hard and I cannot tame the darkness.

My heart is breaking from the pressure of life and my spirit is oozing failure as I fumble around listening to the rhythmless tracks of the hallway.

The air is the funk of fourteen-thousand feet and the stink of breath that I usually never notice.
My ears burn with conversations I've never joined and my mind is clouded with the deficiency of balance.

Help Me.
I'm calling out to you.
Help me survive this.