With an old secret
I sank into her endless eyes
Pondering over laws
That effected such marvel
And leased me to madness
Words were melting in my mouth
She, refraining her turn of phrase
A tear rolled down my cheek
Stirring passion's tongue
A tear rolled down hers
Wielding my soul ablaze
I rejoiced in silence
Lest i betray my confidence
She handled my eyes
Spotting my inference
I could no longer bear
The fruits of my fear
I leaned over and touched
Her sculptured nails tenderly
Freeing my emotion
She smiled coyly
Sealing my devotion.

Glory to craftsmanship
That endures the wrath of time
Artisans vanish one by one
As is Nature's custom
But their inner beauty
Remains in their labored art.
A masterful stroke of hand
Guided by divine volition
Engages thought's flight
To spheres unknown
Where true art gives birth
To creativity's genius.
Art imparts mystical light
Upon envisioned designs
Shaped by hand, heart and spirit
A poem, a painting, a silver cup
Is brought to life
For the pure joy of creation.
O' masters of the wind
Hearken the hopes of craftsmen
And steer their zing heavenward
They are the symbol of plastic arts
A manifestation of wizardry
Toiling in labyrinth of formation.

The essence of love
Runs atop pillars of space
Anticipating to transform
The oblivious by-standers
Into inflicters of righteous pain
The pain that will set free
The reins of resistence,
Foreshadowing portals
Of everlasting beattitude.
The songs have all been sung
Yet not one has been able
To surpass the nightingale's
Who spins the sweetest darkness
Without a tinge of temptation.
The rhythms that fall upon thee
Speak eons of platitude
Of pedestrian coronation
Of revelation devised
Where the upshot is
Synchronized syndrom
That eats away the spirit
Like canker.
The flow of love
Is not a smooth ride
Like a luxury car on open road
Love's code is candor
That suffocates without killing
To reveal the lofty window
Toward unearthly meadows.

Life is a puzzle
That won't be solved
By the argument of your mind.
It can neither be cracked
In ivory towers
Nor in the parlors of grapevine.
The mystery of life
Crowns the benighted
With a twist of a wand
Leaving the enlightened
To commune with the dark.
At best, it is a glass enclosure
Attuning your moves
Along the belt of blessing
Beneath the shelter of stars
And at its worst,
A dungeon floor
Delineating your lot
In unbending reality
Under the dome of despair.
Exposed to eternal pumping
Of raw information,
Student of life knows
But a speck of curricula
At any given time
The process of life's lessons
Extends well beyond the grave
Not even multiple lifetimes
May suffice to scratch the surface
Let alone discover the core
Yet the student of life
Knows no limit
Goes to village today
And metropolis tomorrow
Mounts a mustang to Shangri-la
Hops on a boat to outland.
Tantamount to the amount of stars
Are pictures of life
Full of synonyms and antonyms
Boding inflections and reflections
Of thought, taste and bearing
In the academy of day-and-night.

With branches bolts of tinder
And leaves to hide the Moon
The sacred cedar globed the grove
Without an inch of hope
A pyramid of sadness
That prayed to stars at night
In outstretched emerald limbs
To be uprooted and laid to rest
In the woodlands of paradise.
It was the tallest and strongest
The haunt for deadly birds
Who drew passion off its hate
The hate that grew in its sap
Was once rivulets of love
Enthralling it to climb the air
And canoe the clouds passing by
It climbed and climbed
Higher and higher
But came up short
To claim the magic of sky
A disappointment it could not take
For the song of truth was so fair.

The truth that captured its vein
Was but an epiphany of pain
Its monument remains a stump
As Love's riddle's type.

Her lips a curl of wildfire
Dodging darts of desire

She walks with wistful feet
To suppress the beast in her heat

Butterflies set off for paradise
In the moonlight of her eyes

A thousand stories ache to part
From the sorrows of her heart

Let us savor her patient dance
Beneath the dark sky of chance

Limpid waters reflect
The shadow of sunset
Chase has long been interred
In catacomb of dreams
And roar of thoughts muffled by age.
Stripped of but all verve
The shriveled fingers dip in
To ripple the reflection of night
Toward the fringe of life's purpose
Toward destiny's flowchart
To galactic conglomerations
Or a shaft of light
That carries with it
Aeons of dictatorial abundance.

There shall be white words
To praise Love's creed
Ruled out by courts of reason
And traded saint by saint
To merchants of salvation

There shall be black words
To mourn the season
Rising out of ailing credence
Turning healers into dealers
Under the tubes of  loaded laws

There shall be red words
To brand Love's defeat
With scars of history
while tenor of last lines
Chase an undying dream...

Truly gifted poets
Straddle their crafts early on
Some even in adolescence
They have been cursed or blessed
To be kings and queens of utterance.
I never dreamed of becoming a poet
It was furthest from my mind
Then in a sudden twist of eardrum
It happened in my mid thirties.

Out of the recesses of Time
Came the lure and a hook
Shining in enchanted brook
And before i knew it
My heart was snatched
And my movements flustered
When i bit on ambrosiac bait
Drenched in Muse's wine
Drugged and drunk
On sounds and images
I struggled in a pool of words
To assemble what held me infused
To make sense of orphaned views
Swaying between shade and light
Like dancers deprived of audience.

My poetic rapture began
In frenetic rain of ink
preposterous in direction
A poetaster rapt on vapid rhymes
With sounds of poetic crimes
But my craft developed
In piecemeal fashion
And rendered my pen composed.

A minnow of long ago
Has grown into a mackerel
And longs to become a whale
In the ocean Ars Poetica
Though it seems a pipe dream.

A fleet of Moon's spears
Swoop down on shadows of night
Like silver dragons

A ****** of crows
Rupture the sky asunder
Devoid of mercy

People scatter IFs
In the most fertile farmland
They refuse to grow

Poem is a thing of devotion
That rarefies mind's aperture
To captivate the reader's emotion

Through the winding lane of lines
With unparalled tincture
Matter manifests its mines

As the words waltz in detention
To mold the motion of thought
Rhythm ramifies perception

To reach the crest of credo
Via the voices that rebut
Poem elevates by veto.

I'm not a seasoned poet
As standards go
I have neither the will nor wit
To assemble words that exhale
Sensuous truths of beauty
I have been tossed in poetry's net
To serve and protect its fate
I'm not sharp enough
To detect Moon's climb
For I'm not Archibald MacLeish
I'm no master metaphorician
To equate yellow fog to a cat
For I'm not T.S. Eliot
I'm just here to release the waves
That load my pen to barrage
Their organic ammunition
I cannot delve into the dark show
As smooth as Edgar Allen Poe
I'm not one to sing of love, of wine
For I'm no Rumi nor khayyam
I can't settle music's dust
For I'm not Robert Frost
I can only write what I'm taught
By the shadow rulers of Art
If Yeats is awake
And Shakespeare watching
If Whitman, Dickinson, Keats
And the rest of the sublime ones
Happen to be espying
They would regard me
As an underling
And that would be a win
For I shall never reach
Their poetic spin.

Celestial blessings are abundant
Competing with worldly curse
Which shall be the victor
In tours of Human Race
That entirely depends my friends
On the number of dreams
Sailing the rough waters
Or floating on halcyon seas.

My doors open
To pain of evolution
In her sibylline chamber
The curves of heroine
Divine and devilish
Imprison my piety
In shadowy corral
Rendering my calculus steamless
Left untasked of masters
My thoughts waft like gossamer
Toward pointed hills parted
By aphrodisiac crevice
Her silent words caress my ear
Whispering ******* bliss
In grotto of mystery.

The little bird alights
Near the windowsill
Saturated with
Communing eyes and gestures.
Though she would rather
Lay it all on the line
At best she gets away
With a modicum of her tidings
Knowing the moment's impulse
Shall sepulchre her understanding.
But the magic has been done
And esoteric wheels in gear
To rear the revelation ride.

Forsake me not Love
For I need your flame
When desire dims wisdom
And conscience yields candle rays
Forsake me not
For I need your fuel
When my blood wilts to climb
The precipice of salvation
Forsake me not
When I stray off your path
I'm just a lowly creature
Amused by the woods
Forsake me not
When pride gets the better of me
I need your cloak of kindness
To ward off evil attire.

You are a mystic night
Impeding sweep of disaster
Keep me nigh and let me linger
In the magic of your trust.

As transitory as breeze
Are the afflictions we encounter
Which will sabotage like termites
The integrity of our fabrics
If we try to despise them

Accept them wholeheartedly
And wrap them all in a bundle
With curtain of season
And let it float
In waters of survival

History is a basin of mistakes
Supporting the river of ultimacy
What that might be
Remains a mystery
Which gives credence to intimacy.

Colored clouds furnished the sky
Pink, yellow, orange and white
Imparting mystic images
Stimulating the view
The messages my heart decoded
To be from fire eroded
The gods and goddesses of yore
Rejuvenating my calor
The caress of passing breeze
Seemed no longer mundane
Flock of birds wafting above
Deity formation in disguise
The rays of Sun a rapid river
Flowing into ocean of air
In high plains i heard a song
Soothing my wounded crown,
Inebriating my spirit
Such calmness i had never felt
Such state far beyond pain
As the moments began to last
Intensifying my soul's goal
Time admonished the Earth to roll
And diminish the light fast
Where day endured becoming past.

Of one essence in creation's mold
Our souls are organs
Of a cosmic whale
Swimming the ocean of Time
In search of destiny divine.

When an appendage
Is suffering in pain
Others must apprehensive remain
If some members show no pity
For another's afflictions
The appellation of Human
They can not retain.

What is a feeling
And where does it come from
Is it a vibration
From the earth of your being
Or a joyous image
Of leaking tears
Is it a ping
In cerebral engine
Or a sting off psychic mirror
Is it a continuum of living signs
Or a spectrum of ancestral mines
Whatever it is
Two things are sure
Once it is owned or disowned
It never leaves you alone.

Hop on a train to nowheres
Where no kindred souls reside
And you shall find ebbing cares

Get away and defrost
Your turbin of independence
And electrify soul's ******

Leave and don't look back
Your hut is an allocated rut
An ever-widening crack

You are born free of chains
A roving verve of stardust
Exploring firmament's veins.

Let us flow
Like a wafting feather
Smooth as kitten's fur
Let us flow like an arrow
Into the heart of Fate
Let us flow with day with night
With natural satellites
The whole universe is flowing
Into what we may never know
But the sure thing is to flow
To flow with all our being
Toward starmight opening
Toward the zest of life
That throws us a sign here and there
So flow to deceive the end
For nothing ever heads nowheres
In stagnant bordering.

Poets are strangers in roads of life
Turning hither and thither much
Striving to even the odds

The tale in their gift of hours
Unfolds verse by verse
Trickling their insightful airs

Off which heaven falls the light
That straddles their perceptions
And hooks a halter to their rides

Some reach the realm of stardom
Some swallow the pill of obscurity
Some meander in limbo of words

Would it be worth their while
To buck and unload the reasons
And abandon noble cause

Would it be worth it to discard
The strings of lingering lyre
In favor of earthly cards

Would it be worth it after all
To chase the wind and not catch it
To rig the wings and not match it.

Like myriad others
I was born crazy
A blessing bestowed
By Moon's grace
And a curse slotted
By Sun's paradise
I was born crazy
To take on two things
Shift for myself
Amid worldly plagues
And exhibit my perceptions
With opalescence of my dance
I was born crazy
In light of squares
There are not enough stars
That Darkness can't sway.

Good deeds and bad deeds
Whatever they brought
To the hostelry of Fate
Another page turned
In the book of life
Another leaf tumbled to ground
Off the tree of Time
How often
In the midst of graceful shadows
I have been tempted to trail
The vagaries of a moonlit mind
How often
Amid sobering sorrow
I have been led to shed my wings
The road is unknowable
And not knowing takes me home
May your days be springtime
And your spring eternal.

Sometimes without faith
Things work out fine
Sometimes even God
Can't unravel the vine
Sometimes wheel of Love
Arrives on its own
Other times century of priming
Won't tailor the tone
Love launches without introduction
Myriad advice make it ill-sorted
Sometimes a thousand prayers
Fall prey to breeze
Sometimes without a word
Fortune finds your lap
Sometimes you are a total beggar
And luck is not your friend
Sometimes the whole town
Petitions you
Sometimes I miss the joy of laughter
And my heart becomes
Metal shavings
Sometimes our clear blue sky
Turns suddenly turbid and colorless
Sometimes my breath
Becomes sharp as sword
Sometimes I become fed up
With all of life
Our youth passed away
As if in sleep
Sometimes how soon
Our chances are late
Not my business
Where you are and what you do
Don't go on without Love
For your heart shall grow senile.

Within boat of words and views,
Ink my sinker and paper my bait,
I go casting line after line
Upon the waters of Muse.
Fingers putter the pole of play
Anticipating hook's fetter
Eyes and ears survey the waves
That may carry rhythm's freight.
As lips of verse grip the sense
Hand rustles to reel out the take
Before tension becomes tatter
And free the lay in lady's lake.

I have one thing
That God does not have
And that thing is NEED.

Don't know exactly who I am
And what I'm meant to be
Just following the hello signs
Laid upon the trail of my being
Keeping my feet loose and raw
In calender of surprises.
The day that I stop learning
My heart's magic weaves a cocoon
The day that I stop teaching
My mind's ocean becomes a lagoon
I have a tender spirit
That won't stay a minute
In trawls of social mood
Or the chains of pendant feelings
There is a spell on my candle
To surpass the air
Leaving behind earth and water
And merge into incorruptible fire.
Nature's law is my shield
And its grandeur, my sword.

When tenor of thought is sleepless
I'm a cat on the prowl
In alleys of sense,
In word's backyard
And can't get satisfied
Till i ****** me a note
Till i choke rhythm's throat
And end the line's last breath.

The pundit on the pulpit
Strumming my wit
With fingers of Providence
To turn verity into meal
And process into page-****.

You devils who do deal me wrong
In need, in despair, even in sleep
I defeat you with shameless tongue
And defy your cause
By the minute
Till the morn be night
And dark, light
Till the time meets
The tearing limit.
You gods whom
I'm supposed to trust
To obey, to praise
Till my time is done
Be aware that the day is dark
Where the Sun
Is helpless to shine.
Godhood is reasoned
Devilhood is pawned
Let the notion of good and bad
Be odd.

Keep me away from higher truths
Let me cope with mundane ones
Or reveal to me the highest truth

I'm  free of religion, politics and law
The triad of corruption
The rein of my body and my mind
Rests in the hands of my spirit
I'm not above anyone
And no one is above me
I was born unique
Like everybody else
I've kept it that way unlike most
No superbly skilled mastermind
Can infiltrate my being
No cutting-edge mechanism
Can alter the course of my craft
I'm a drifter in the land of mystery
Magical birds shall sing my history.

Thursday might
The height of mystery and chance
Gods gather the crops of their dance.
Within halls of universe
Harbingers travel
Telling of newborn hells
Of blazing beacons
That steer survival's Florence
Thursday might
The light of spirit's night
The shield of current's horse
Sad ones rejoice
In ***** of verse
Happy hops forth
To north of levity
Meanwhile the rotation journeys
Through the deep, dark
Marmalade matter
No telling what the disguise brings
But the next day's around the corner
Appearing more and more certain
At every turn of the clock
Time is soon Isabel
Pushing toward feminine Friday
Toward love, beauty and fertility
Leaving me lost in Thursday.

Love is a cloud
Roaming the sky of dreams
When it rains
Originates flowers of passion
Driven by solar bridge
Fueled by Moon's grace.

No rule can stop the reason
Take it easy and enjoy the breeze
The stimulating melodies
Validating your rhythm.

The lost love returns once again
To plow the fields of credence
Moon's divinity  sinks
In sun-baked desert of emotion,
Unearthing buds of rebirth
In the jaws of reason.
What lunacy boils
In the ruse of treason
As the rhythm rigs
The corporeal bliss.

Blanket of poetry
Shelters all
Be not coy to clamber
The semantic wall
Like a drop of dew
Indigenous insights brew
In lonely and dark places
The star-studded sky
Carpet of evidence.

It was written in stone
With celestial chisel
That they walk the path of sin
Reined by the rings of Hell--
Much like a planet
Waltzing in captivity.
What could they turn to
Beyond the drift of revelation
Trickling through the wake of Time.
And I, the so-called progeny
Of such cursed matrimony,
Have myriad of times
Rebelled against
unwanted imprisonment,
Have resorted to
many uncanny schemes
To tear down the bars of legacy
Alas, i have come
To a stupefying standstill
Stood and swallowed
The demons of my waywardness
Oh, how those demons kept me alive
At every destructive yet
ecstatic turn.
How to separate God and Devil
Impossible!
The promise of descension looms
In every game of darkness
The Light above blooms
Every hue of divine harness.
In mystifying ocean of thoughts
Which way to walk, to run
Humanity seems the only savior.
A forbidden fruit
Unleashed the human race
The fable of original sin.

Mountaintops are magnificent
Approach them with rapt hunger
Atop lonesome crags
Lies a mnemonic view
Rejuvenating ancient roots
Within the bowels of psyche.
Unbridled of mundane laws
Upon gigantic tombstones
The abyss dies in distance
Accommodating Fate's fancy
To revolt against chains of chance.
Along the cloud-lined crests
Time loses validity
Abandoning its throne
To become a hammock
Tied to casters of universe
Rocking gently the dreams
In search of ethereal wings.

Let us open with wine
The window of mind
Toward God's breeze
The sea of halcyon dreams
With ships of golden shadows
And pearls of dusky hue
Let us ditch compass
And sail the dark
In formless fleece of faith
Love is winking
Through the clouds
Of pride and spleen
Waiting
To patch our wounds
And dispatch us
To autumnal bliss
Hallelujah...

Praise to Modesto members
Of this radical society
This medicinal space
That tolls the bells of fellowship
And heartens creative release
Tribute to stalwart members
For each a cog
In a global clock
Turning its handles onward
Toward a loving world
Each a cyber tallow
Melting morsels of care
Keeping the wick of hope aflame
Each a feather
Of a mystical bird
Lifting its wings
To pleiades presents.

Think not
That the journey is fated
For the work remains
And the future's serrated.

Resonance of words
Sway to-and-fro
In the dead of night
The deep sea welcomes
Swimming oar
Splash metaphores
Fertilizing the white leaf
With bird droppings
The right is a wrong
And left, stone flower
Heaven lives next door
Her eyes a wilderness
Hell is downright here
Blazing a roar
In stillness of poet's pond
Moon reflects
The passion of Truth and Lie
As Morning star waits
To outshine the darkling grace.

Rustling of Da Di Da
Me Me needa needa
Shaper shooper shida
Head dead tumble tun
Riddle ****** Moon
Chirp and chirp and chirp
Da Di Da Di Da
Wing feather beak
Tangle mangle sick
Claws flaws tiny tiddle
Woozy coozy for little
Weather thither turn
Me Me in pain

There is an urge behind this beast
That sends it forth to tangible places
Where profundity drives outward
Drying out the wells of thought.
Like a passive dog barking inward
It sways the soul to some failing end
And remedies of it trap the crowd
Who become bound
To its changing faces.

I'm sitting alone nostalgic
Kettle's been boiling for a while
Water nearly gone
What was it to be made
Coffee, tea or brew of quince
With a touch of tarragon
In your antique pocelain mug
A windfall from college days
You called it a talisman
Cast out of immemorial lands
A sign you must take to heart
And chase your feelings
With reckless mind
Without help from anyone...
Feelings that show you the way
Toward Elysian fields.
The water is all but gone
A drop or two for fond memories
We might have beaten the odds
Planting love in ******* mold
But enchanted by dreams
You chose to contain your love
And follow the singings of your heart
Though you have long been gone
Your illusion still lingers on
Tempting me to feed your love.

Science is son of poetry
Psychology, daughter of sea
Wind is father of religion
Earth's mother, the fire engine.
Through the self-centered rhythm
Light and twilight saddle me
In the ring of solarium
Temper of seasons suckle me.
Tomorrows and yesterdays are
Torches and candles of the Time
House of here and heavens of far
But cradles in Space paradigm.

Days are passing faster
Than I can recall yesterdays
The unobservable speed
Taking its toll upon my youth
Leaving me half hearted
In pursuit of relations.
Is this the way of the world
That strips you of all your verve
For a debt that must be paid
To compensate the privilege
That creation offers?
So what does it all mean
Here today and gone tomorrow
After a lifetime of reflections
I have yet to understand
The true meaning of my own life
Let alone life as a whole
Are we just moving in circles
For the pleasure of unseen forces
Or is there an invisible rhythm
Pulling us like magnet
Into unmistakable finality.
Either way is an insult
To our creative capacity
To our potential as intelligent beings
Then again humans are cursed
With dichotomy of perception
And perhaps this is the reason
For our misguided attempts
To invent utopias and distopias.
Just like water though not as swift
Energy must level itself
Far too few come close
To balanced frontiers
Far too fewer
Experience the coalescence
Of Heaven and Earth
While the rest struggle
In a pool of mystifying policies.

In the heat of passion
I'm not a kind man
Though kindness lives through me
What is a bard to do
Beyond engraving words in history
His honest intentions fall short
In reality's locomotion
Her repertoire of remedies
Attenuated by degrees
What wind deletes delusions
The dragon stops and groans
The journey has taken its toll
Upon its haggard soul
How long to fly, to run
Perhaps to frontiers of stars
The distance eludes the dance
Its furnace getting hot
Hot from the cold thought
Of forever moving
Toward indistinct destiny.

Columns of red lights
And headlights
Of slow moving vehicles
Some roaring, some howling
And some, comfortably blowing
The air reeks, the road
The road persistently
Seals the wheels
And the drivers, the riders
Barely visible
Hound the maze.

Earthly time is fine despite Death
The eternal dark out of which
Shadows creep sparking illusions
That hold sway over dreams.
I came from darkness
To store the burning Light
That echoes the yells of creation
Toward some demotic destiny.
Achievements soothe so little
Within the web of eclectic waste
We tend to call societies
Run by the elite undergrowth
Who pay no heed to evergreens.
It was only yesterday
When i first went to school
When i tasted my first cigarette
My first beer, first *******
When i wrote my first poem
And many things in between
Well, out of long list of vices
Only cigarettes have survived
And they probably will
Till my stiff body
Touches the cramped coffin.
Scoop me up Ursa
In your *****
My spirit shall bask
Playing heavenly marbles
Within the volatile void.