Beyond the farms
of my troubled fears,
a path weaves through
icy slivers of bone,
glossed by Winter’s breath,
who sits enthroned
aside her onyx pond,
reflecting.

“The challenge you face is twofold:
confront me and confront yourself.”

A black jaguar saunters from
her ivory throne, holding
my gaze in the vice
of its assured indifference.

“That which you seek may not be found,
but earned.”

My dagger shakes,
frozen tightly in
my sweating palm.
The lush snow absorbs
the crush of my knees
as the jaguar closes.

“Your unearthed answer, clean of instinct or knowledge,
bids closer reflection.”

At arm’s length,
the jaguar stops.

“Change does not ride the wind,
for the wind has direction.”

The jaguar’s breath
warms my quivering lips,
and I exhale
my unbidden thoughts.
My eyes, still fixed in place,
are not aware
of my rising hand.

“To understand is to forgive,
and to forgive is to love.”

Her words chill the blood
pooling in my outstretched palm,
quivering closer to my host.
The ferric scent tickles its whiskers,
and the jaguar laps up my gift.

“Love, and you'll belong.”

I dream of drinking from the river
rushing its abundance of life
through soil beds rich
with unknowing purpose
to reach the sea & combine
with all rivers & make its long journey back
to the tops of mountains
feeding new life & making
the same journey
all over again.

This recycling of life
emanates & pours from every crack,
& every chirp of the cricket
brings a willful reassurance--a notching of time
in the constance of life.
I am here, we are here
& the world is waiting for us
to see its beauty within ourselves,
because I am that beauty & we are all that beauty
& everything we do paints the picture
with different colors, shapes & strokes
& an image of life on this planet
emerges from our collective brush.

What is this mystery
we desire & call
love?
We all seek it
knowing or not
if it's in our
hearts.
We're driven to ask
whether it exists
at all, giving us
the perspective to see
that nothing exists
without it.
You don't read this poem
without love's
****** embrace.
Its creative power
pours the essence
of being.
The affinity
chemicals express
for each other
is catalogued
& categorized
into processes
& methods, evidence
of a mind crying
for absolute understanding.
We love truth
not for its beauty
but for its simplicity,
which carries beauty
in its form.
Yet the simple truths
sting the most,
like fear's glance
or the reaper's lance.
Let's follow the simple
truth that love is
all there is (for
The Beatles weren't lying)
& there's no reason why
love & death aren't
one & the same.
Perhaps life is
an expression of love
for the finer things
& death is our love
for the endless.
One moment we grow
tired of nothing,
swayed by love's
desire to be known,
born into another
universal fling.

Asthmatic heart attack fits
in a powdered-sugar
hurricane blitz
swept the fertile landscape’s
curves & twists
before the mud of disgust
was caked hard as rust
on the buildings hoisted
out of soil’s distrust.

Tear them down echoed
the canyon walls
whose layers of prayers
crept the ivy higher
reaching toward the sun
where the liar can envy
what’s honestly done.

In a stream it was spoken
to rush upon ears with
the good grace to listen
like whales of our years
unburied, and twice re-lived;
under seas of reproach
for having nothin’ to give.

For the words
that heal & heave
boulders through
walls, meaning-
less barriers of hate

For logic & reason to
forge tomorrow today,
this moment that ebbs
& flows so fluidly
through paradoxicity

For the meaning of
being, life & love,
colors of things beneath
our luminous sun, reflected
in the iris of time

For dreams forgotten in
the dead of night, the moon
carved high in the void
of lives borne & buried,
half-remembered, but…

For what matters
between something & nothing
though we can’t see it
clearly, it’s there
begging to be found

For the choices
that carry forward, not back
against voices of truth
that bellow deep within
these fleshy heaps of sin

For my soul’s intent,
which seems hell-bent,
or at least inflamed,
with desire to puzzle,
create, pattern & game

For the joy gone
hiding in plain view
that beckons laughter
out of silence, droning
across the roads

For inspiration
bubbled up raw, collected
scoops of sinewy thought
whizzing & whirring faster
each cycle, begins anew

For clues to history’s
key, to unlock our stories
for all, together at once
with abundant humility
to sustain this tree

For the blocks & atoms,
wavelets & platelets bouncing,
skipping, hissing & twisting
reality betwixt our view
with simple pleasure

For the purpose
in this poem’s lines,
words & characters forming
a lattice-like guise, all
in the name of feint surprise

Your aspect ratio’s wrong.
Stretching the truth
this long sows fertile ground
for artifacts, glitches,
quirks & bugs, worming
& squirming beneath pixel
shrugs. The worst kind
plump the frame to god-
awful proportions, bloating
bigger & bigger & bigger ‘til
vision’s engulfed.
Or the kind that squeeze
spaghetti confetti onto
our plates, drenched in
the Sauce of the Week
that “can’t be beat!”.
Your skewed parallax
attacks the facts at hand.
Recycle your *******
fax machine this second before
it grows smarter than
you. Yes, you—with the rolly
polly eyes & feint surprise—
quit pretending you’re dumb,
'cause you ain’t that numb
to the stings & pangs of change.
Your sloppy hacks produce
quantity @ the cost of quality
to benefit the greedy & satisfy
the needy, becoming seedy
to the logic of reason.
Correct your inputs to render
outputs worth tender & please
remember, it’s what’s within
the frame that’s important,
so get it right.