they came to me with Big Books
they came with appeals and threats
but I said:
Go, for
there is no philosophy,
no revelation
no dependence, no authority;
there are no terms
and one is free of all propositions;
there is none higher, none lower
and therefore all are same and even;
one does not slide to the past or tradition
and one does not idealize a future
and time is done and thought is observed;
there is no judgment here
no conditioning and beliefs
but one rests in what there is

when I said I wanted to have seventeen kids, you laughed
you said eight were enough, and I laughed
the night was the only witness.

Sauntering the night away
among Suburban streets
with the cars
the light pollution
the concrete
and all those other signs of humanity
that writers before me loathed so much.

True, Thoreau may admire
an alchemical need for walking
every day and every night
in order to stay sane.
Yet he would shun my use of an
mp3 player
as "too technological"
or "too inorganic."

Yet as I make my way
through paved streets
why does the music
fit my steps so well?

And if the Romantics
would hate my headphones,
why does every happy song
remind me, with a smile, of her?

I’ve been told,
I’ve been warned
even before I comprehended human language
one should revere Text and Revelation
and should prize the Holy Book
I have been told
by Priest, High Priest, Highest Priest,
and Even Higher than Highest Priest,
and all these Declared Representatives of God on Earth
and I have been told to revere the name of God
(for some reason, these Declarers say God is a He;
they’ve had a look, I am to presume)
and to prostrate myself before the Divine Leader
and I’ve been told, advised, counseled, warned
what is right, what is just
and what is good, what is allowed
all boundaries delineated
in the Book
and I’ve been told
by parent, teacher, clerics, Holy Men and Holy Women
and I have been told by Institutions, Foundations of God
operating as Family Trusts on Planet Earth
and I’ve been told, sure –
but still I put aside
I put all away
for when I look within myself
when I look in quiet
at the world and what unfolds about
all I see is the unfolding of beauty
and so it is the unfolding of beauty that one witnesses
a beauty beyond word and symbol and book
an unfolding beyond dogma and theology
and rules and conventions
and so it is the beauty I see, that I witness
and beyond that and before that
there is nothing, nothing more than that nameless beauty

From fairest creatures we desire increase,
That thereby beauty’s rose might never die,
But as the riper should by time decease,
His tender heir might bear his memory;
But thou contracted to thine own bright eyes,
Feed’st thy light’s flame with self-substantial fuel,
Making a famine where abundance lies,
Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel.
Thou that art now the world’s fresh ornament,
And only herald to the gaudy spring,
Within thine own bud buriest thy content,
And tender churl mak’st waste in niggarding.
    Pity the world, or else this glutton be:
    To eat the world’s due, by the grave and thee.

To see art
                    and shed a tear

To view a vista
                              that brings on despair

To meet a woman
                                   and be moved beyond repair.

Shoegazing.  The first time I heard of it, I understood it immediately.  Some may be hard-pressed to find the attraction in the stillness of the spotlight, but any modern romantic envisions with ease the dust on the tops of well-worn Converse, scraped from the warped wooden floors of the old warehouse/depot/theater/other artifact of urban decay turned venue.  Such mighty inwardness may produce confidence in the "performer," but true faith, as such a focused person must know, comes from truly knowing thyself.  From these fragmented origins spring the music, the serene meditation of one lifting higher the soul of the watchers.  He does not know that he has watchers.  All is as it should be.
Stargazing.  It's been many a year since my earnest forays into the night, trying to capture the clean green-dusk scent that also unaccountably exists in the ugly, fragrant shelves of the public library.  Who of those that take the time to look does not appreciate the night sky?  It is an open mysticism, inviting, to some calling, with less of the hypnotic tricks like incense and smoky air but more compelling draughts of equal parts mystery and light.  Light, for our nature; only the sort of dark mystery that alludes to more of the nature of ourselves, more essence.  Future.  But to open myself to the sky is to become sensitive, seemingly undesirable to the warm, smoky fragrance of an always inward and reflecting (stagnating) heart, which is why recollection caught me unprepared when she referred to the relation of my posture to the drably speckled slabs of ceiling as perfect stargazing.  With the recollection of such charged memories, I was more surprised when she leaned awkwardly back against my knees and called it
Stargazing.

color slips from photographs
and collects in a single file line
that leads through your door frame
and into the kitchen, where
the smell of us kisses your cheeks warm.

it's not the physical communication that's wrong
it's not the knowing parts, it's the missing pieces,
or the things we succeed to keep out:
like cold air, and feelings.

at least for now.

"you're lucky."

I have no idea what I'm doing.

"no one knows."