When darkness come, in darkness we pretend
And only if the light begins to rise
Then fortune's wounds so swiftly shall we mend
And thus we stand against our slow demise.

These demons fly within our blackened souls.
So too do angels flit inside our hearts.
Against our evil wills we build up shoals
And hope to holy help no hope departs.

Thus ****** battles rage inside us all,
A fatal flaw for which there is redress.
We pray for love to catch us when we fall,
Forgive us for these sins we must confess:

Tis us, you see, ourselves whom love must fight-
Our dark, our self that tries to block the light.

Love poetry is not about
The joining of man and woman-
****** or otherwise.
That is too simple for love poetry.
It’s about separation
Longing for
Searching and waiting.
In the longing lies the divine.
In desire is faith-
Reaching for something
You know is there
Reaching back for you
Like a hopeful horizon,
No proof that her arms are
Outstretched towards you.
But you feel it,
Know it somehow,
Viscerally,
Can’t help but know it
In a way that others don’t
And never will.
The faith of reciprocation.

You are special for having been
Touched
By this beautiful agony.

I can't sleep. I don't want to sleep. I don't know which it is but it's happening, now and infinitesimally forever my eyes are open and not shutting down for the day, not recharging, not doing anything but waiting for something to see and perceive and solve, a problem to appear before them and present itself begging to be taken in and toyed with like a Rubik's cube. I don't want to sleep because sleep is giving up on the day, it's saying the day is over and it's giving up the chance to accomplish the innumerable tasks yet to be accomplished before I sleep that I haven't done and won't do if I sleep now, if I lie down in that bed and pull covers over my head and let myself drift away. I don't want to drift away, can't let it happen, can't let go of control over really the only thing I have left to control which is when and if I go to sleep so I don't, I force myself not to, I expunge the records of thought from my head into a text box and hope that the soft rattling that had droned there softens because now after all of this my eyelids get heavy and I may have to let sleep win, give up the day, defeated, fight again tomorrow because I'm tired. I'm tired. I'm tired of fighting, fighting against the minute tedium tripping along, fighting against transcendental ecclesiastical endlessness, tired of fighting when all I do is get bloodied and bruised, tired of fighting when I can't win because I'm tired. Rest now. Fight again tomorrow.

The Sage is short and compose of circles.
Flattened circles, not ovular.
A roundness that is not portly nor lean
Just round, simply circular, simply his shape.

The Sage speaks with contrasting sharpness,
A voice angular, particularly his laugh. Cacklingly
Angular. Unexpected laughs seem demonic.
But The Sage is wise and sometimes even holy.

The Sage talks about fuel to push young artists.
Graduate schools, challenges, gasoline to blaze and extinguish.
I consider the role of Serious Artist, capitalization so telling
And am curious if that is me, if it could ever be.

The Sage knows but wants me to search
He knows but isn’t telling
You’ll have to wait, the Sage says.
I’ll show you, soon, when you stop searching so hard.

Book holds for Reader
The secret to divinity,
Between ink and fiber
Lies the universe.
Sustaining itself by
Luring others inside,
Book fools Reader
That escape is within
Then entraps them in the
Fantasy that life could be
Like Reader's favorite Book.

But Book lies to Reader.

Great literature is proof
Against God.
For God created World,
Author and Ink and Paper-
Reader and Book.
But Reader wants to escape World
    (created by God)
And travel into Book
    (created by Author)

His creation has outdone Him
And has been outdoing him
For centuries.