Eyes you’ve seen me naked, you’ve seen me painfully bleed
you’ve screamed out my simple joys and demanded all I need.
You saw a pretty flower and thought nothing more.
What do you see, seeing me standing, naked upon the floor?

You’ve watched my hands wash my skin and pick things from my nose.
You’ve seen food to my mouth then watched to where it goes.
Eyes you stared until I obtained all I wanted to be.
Now, you eyes, look again and tell me what you see.

You may have once, maybe twice, looked away when I lied.
You may have smiled at the ends for which I falsely cried.
You may have screamed violence when my lips were  firmly smiled,
but tell me, eyes, do you think you are now beguiled?

Did you miss some season, past,
or left un-noted a vague wish cast
upon some current of subtlety
that leaves this ‘person’; standing in as me?

When did I ever note or even vaguely care
what another might see standing before them, there?
I’ve changed past childhood and, eyes, you’ve failed me!
Now, you eyes, look again and don’t you dare lie to me!

When once my standards were my own
and Time stood still . . . but now I’ve suddenly grown
and stand naked, now, and, could it be (?),
I find my eyes are not the only ones that see.

Please lie to me once again as you have before?
Do not see what stands naked, before you, upon the floor!
Pretend I am still that child, laughing at the sun.
Oh Time, oh Nature, look what you have, nakedly, done!

What a cheap and ****** recompense
for this loss of my revealed innocence
is this that now stands naked and new?

Tell me, eyes, what must we do?

I heard the trumpets from too far away.
Labored to save what I had given away.
Pretended to believe and Believed in pretend.
Semper Fidelis to the bitter condescend . . .

I answered the call, made a very important date;
scurried to remember then remembered too late;
embraced my Foe by forgetting my Friend.
What is this ‘This’ of ‘This We’ll defend’?

No Dream was too heavy, no payment too sleight
to abandon in the brilliance of the peaceful light.
So Determined I was to ignore my Fall
and give everything I bemoaned for security Above all.

No borders no boundaries no Heavens no Hell
nothing so precious it could not be given as well.
What use Freedom? What need I of mere Country?
What means Non Sibi Sed Patriae?

Oh Thetis put down your cumbersome sword.
Lift up the blindfold, as we can afford
to lay down courage, honor, duty and walk into the might
of Entitlement for All and for all entitled Night . . .

And Lady Liberty, you are no longer needed;
walk away, walk away, liberty ceded  . . .

Here are your chains, Lady, wear them quite well.
Pray speak not of Heaven so we can pretend there’s no Hell.

Shed the tears of lofty clouds in a bright blue sky;
pure, Groundward bound, left to do and die.
Wail the pails of pain to set them free;
dressed in the schemes of hollow charity.
Sing the fatal songs of the blessed, silent peace
of lingering death that is never allowed to cease.
For every body dead, crushed to dust,
a baby is born of endless, pious  lust.
Cry loose the sadness of endless hope
found orphaned at the end of a hangman’s rope.
Weave the fibers, me hearties, weave them right!
Is that a star? Wish I may, wish I might . . .
Exchange a hurricane of tears for an extended, trembling, golden hand!
Then Stride with purpose, blameless, shameless, through a desolated land
certain in the silent piety of a false, soul-less religion
that chains the human and sets free the pigeon.
Oh, the endless, fruitless cycle of the Circle of a Life
lived like a throat pressed against a well used knife.
And when all is quickly said and finally done
we find we’ve helped exactly . . . no one.
We find the mouths well fed and the tears dried to naught
and the soul dead and crushed under what mere charity wrought.

Drifting, spiraling up and  around
lifted to the cluttered ground
Ghost of Purchase, Spirit of Spent
Hell born, Heaven sent.
Twisting, dancing to a thermal tune;
Cast aside in a plastic dune.

Plastic Bag, oh plastic bag
I once prayed to you but now you sag
empty, dancing upon a breeze,
hanging like tinsel from the trees.

I peered inside, once, and spied
and plucked your soul then cast aside
your thin, vaporous ghost with empty pride
and let you, upon the breeze, ride.

Drifting, spiraling down and around
splashed to the cluttered ground,
Spirit of Purchases, Ghosts of Spent
to Hell, borne upon heaven cent.


Paper or Plastic: the prayer sings.
The Ghost of Choices, breeze borne, swings.

Oh the cringing  demon of eternal youth,
******* away promise and hard won truth.
I see far more than ***, lingering, in her eyes
I see, instead, the milk teeth of youthful lies,
of forever and today, hopes and screams
replacing tomorrows, frayed at the seams.

Oh, mere ***, be gone, you sordid troll!
Crawl yourself back in your hole.
If ‘tis *** you brought to this trapped piece of light
then speak to your own soul and leave me a bite
of the apple she does not offer
and the delights you think her youth will proffer.

I have no time to dance to your twisted tune
of youth over too fast and maturity too soon!
What stinks more of your *******;
her stretched, prolonged, aging youth or back bared, partial  ******?

I giggle as I consider her Eve-like dreams
of bitten apples and grander things.
And God said, let there be light.
Is that truly all He said when he banished the night?

Maybe she is wet from being born.
From demon Youth’s desperate grasp she is torn
and into the world, for a moment, she is cashed;
back bared and ready to be lashed
by the ‘cruel’ reality we keep from youth…
…like bronzed, baby booties and baby’s lost tooth.

Maybe, coquettishly, she glances ahead,
away from the bonds of youth’s birthing bed;
not, as you apparently dream, toward some sordid affair
you see in bared skin and strands of dampened hair!

There is beauty in her eyes, it is true,
the beauty of youth’s first, full faced view
of tomorrow and tomorrows again…
Exactly how long do you think, she should remain a youth, then?
Oh the Apple that lingers past ripe upon a tree,
Snakeless, Eve-less, unchosen, unbitten for an eternity.
Shall we trap, virginal, in iron cages of our blind, stupid lust
the false innocence of youth only tears and death can rust?

Foolish, foolish Adam and blind, impregnable Eve; is *** all you can ever see?
I can peer past your layers and layers and layers of false, bitter modesty.
If you see ******* then know this, before you atone:
You bring that demon wherever you go and it is yours and yours alone.

Drum Beat     Drum Beat    
Once again upon a Time
Repeat     a     Repeat
Prison then the crime
Doom     Again     Doom     Again
History repeats
Now and Then     Now and Then
Life between Deceits
Blind and Deaf     Deaf and Blind
A prayer before the Dawn
Pay in Kind     Pay in Kind
The Ferryman rows us on
Rap and Waltz     Rap and Waltz
The Fiddler pays the tune
For all its myriad new found faults
The Beginning’s coming soon
Stay Awake     Stay Awake
Half to teach the young
Grave Mistake     Grave Mistake
Bite your silent tongue

. . . says a twig to a stream, to a river to the sea . . .
“Why do you struggle so very mightily?
The ice grabs you like it’s beholden me.”
B
ut the water gurgles, below, unconcernedly.
“Once I bore a crown so light and green!
Where is it now? Only you have seen!
In the Fall I blazed the brightest red!
Now, in the Winter, I wish you were dead . . .”
The twig remembers that Spring comes again;
its leaves will be born and unfurl then,
“And Fall will give them to you to take from me!”
. . . says the twig to the stream to the river to the far away sea . . .

But the twig’s just a shadow the stream must pass through.
The ocean calls it home, so that’s what it’ll do.
The stream was born of a past Winter’s ice
and the twig’s just a shadow through which it must slice.
And . . . maybe it might bear a leaf or two
but it can’t remember what it might do.

An Ocean rages at the earth and the sky!
Rocks are torn to pebbles and mists flung to fly.
Then one day its water, as rain,
awakes the twig to leaf again.
And a twig looks down at the slice of shade
its leaves, once again, upon the stream, have made.
And forgets, come Fall, what colors there’ll be;
another twig is born of a branch of a tree.

One far Winter the water will freeze,
a cold dire wind will strip branches from trees.
One Old Twig floats down to the sea
and uncovers one thing a twig might be:
bright driftwood cast far ashore
and it’s not now a twig anymore.

A Flame spits embers at the dark, starry sky.
The children of its anger upon the winds do fly.
A tree gives those children a home in its leaves
as an iced over stream groans and grieves;
praying for safe passage through the Shadow of the Twig up above
. . . and so flows the circle of the cycle of the rhythm of Nature’s Love . . .

Time is but a moment that passes you by;
a stream of cold tears that others must cry.
Twigs glare darkly at other streams;
Life’s much bigger . . . and smaller . . . than it seems.