Pull the weeds, plant the seeds
this is what the garden said

choose what stays
choose what goes

be mindful when you do

the silver oaks darken the sun in the mind
trim the trunks, so light may you find

the bindweed traps the heart
clip the vine, free the art

the poison oak stings your delicate hand
let the goats eat these weeds right off the land

the pompous grass clouds the soul in your eyes
pluck these weeds before they set and rise

the deadweed piles darken your spirit
compost the weeds, lighten your merit

plant the seeds of love, hope and color
water with nourishment, fertilize with wonder
and you will warm the heart of another

and then,

begin again,

pull the weeds
plant the seeds

Some say you can't read someone's thoughts.
Some claim to read them like a book.
It's phantom pages may engage
but I move on from thought to thought.

Those readings choke like a bindweed cloak,
coiling, twining, transmuting brutes.
Stereotypes shape many folk,
stifling, stunting valuable fruit.

March 2002
(inspired by William Shakespeare; and an eerie
floating drowned woman in the movie Titanic)*

Adrift amid the bindweed, through the reeds,
Watching the sky with deep unblinking eyes,
She passes where the turquoise mayfly feeds,
Oblivious of all that swims or flies.
Red flowered chiffon billows to her hands
Open like water lilies in the sun,
Her skin's the colour of tropical sands,
Her russet hair shines bright as copper spun.
Fabulous jewels languish on her breast,
Rich spoils of love rendered useless in death,
Her parted lips make unspoken behest;
The rosy portal of her final breath.
Now all is cold where roiling passion flamed,
As jealous earth mourns what the river claimed.

To be born, is to emerge as a soul within a verse  

existing through eyes, ears, nose, and feelers.      
Persistent as the bindweed thriving in a blind spot
and the rat-fleas riding around in the cellar.
            
All life contains this soul, it’s in; the drumming and the drift,
the way one shifts to their feet when battling the throes,
and the persistence of plague, which
encodes each cell with a rhythm and a role.  
                                        
To drown in a river is to **** that portion of the river’s soul,
as there is no way; no lungs, no mouth
to resuscitate waters that can no longer flow.
The soul needs a body to show; the body needs a soul to breathe out

to be re-born, is to re-exist in recurse of a soul already given,
that is, unless, the soul has already been driven out.      

S.L. Weisend-  2014                      

I saw the bindweed curl about your tomb
Whereon I set a rose, now short of breath,
And marked the similarity of death
Between your chance to live, its time to bloom.
For though your maker overflowed your hours
Yet still upon your blossom climbed the ****;
You noticed but did nothing; thus its seed
Cast round the earth, and choked your budding flowers.
    But brazen trumpets round its conquering green
    This bindweed blossom, in the rose's stead;
    Just so, before you took this rosy bed
    You sometimes woke and showed what might have been.
But now your chance is gone as chances go.
I've learned your lesson. Let me find the ***.

They say,
the Scarecrow stares straight
and never blinks
he thinks, but never speaks,
just listens to the writhing vines of bindweed:
Turn the earth, sweet arteries.

They say,
the Scarecrow was once a man.
He had hands that knew
perfect flavor of skin
And had red, winding veins of his own.
But that was a long time ago.

They say,
the Scarecrow blistered his tongue
on blunderbuss barrels;
Spat bullets.
Waged war against himself,
and lost his speech when the time came
to beg for forgiveness.

They say,
That by August, the Scarecrow's
Blood forgot to boil,
or simply didn't care anymore.
That when he found love fleeting
it was indifference, not hate,
that desiccated his chest
like prairie drought.

Dear Hollow Martyr who fears not
the white heat of sparks
or dry-weather wildfires.
Stand devout in your inertia,
bleeding apathy like canyons bleed echoes.
After all, it's all you've got to offer
except dead stillness, they say,
so callous it keeps the crows away.

'Listen, now, verse should be as natural
As the small tuber that feeds on muck
And grows slowly from obtuse soil
To the white flower of immortal beauty.'

'Natural, hell! What was it Chaucer
Said once about the long toil
That goes like blood to the poem's making?
Leave it to nature and the verse sprawls,
Limp as bindweed, if it break at all
Life's iron crust. Man, you must sweat
And rhyme your guts taut, if you'd build
Your verse a ladder.'
'You speak as though
No sunlight ever surprised the mind
Groping on its cloudy path.'

'Sunlight's a thing that needs a window
Before it enter a dark room.
Windows don't happen.'
So two old poets,
Hunched at their beer in the low haze
Of an inn parlour, while the talk ran
Noisily by them, glib with prose.

Clearing ivy,
pulling up handfuls of
choking bindweed,
uncovering delicate
wildflowers in
neglected garden corners,
and there’s this
tiny bird
lying in the dirt.
Feathers sparkle
pretty and golden,
as fairytale light
falls through
parted vines.
Surely dead,
but then
- like Snow White
surfacing from
magic apple-induced
dormancy -
the bird moves,
woken by the kiss
of sunlight and
being witnessed,
and seems to breathe.
A gloved finger’s
exploratory, leathery ****,
a moment to realise,
then disgust,
sharp recoil.
A wing lifts;
gleaming feathers
parting reveal the
crawling mechanics inside,
the writhing, parasitic mess
behind the sick illusion,
the briefly faked miracle
of something
like life.

Away over a fence,
Union bunting
***** erratic and jarring
in a neighbour’s garden.
In a stuffy town hall,
the town band is practising
God Save The Queen, but
still can’t keep time.
Our betters wave to us from
high palace balconies
and golden coaches, and we
cheer them for it.

There’s such hunger, such
pain and desperation out there,
you can feel it, if you
forget to stop yourself.
There’s so much tragedy and injustice,
you have to go numb or go crazy.
There’s no future we can see,
and the past has been rewritten
to reflect the views
of focus groups,
fascists and fantasists.

And there’s a bird
lying in the dirt,
garlanded by fragrant petals,
feathers flashing like jewels,
so dead
it looks like
it’s breathing.

Vermilion skies pass me by
and into the night the chasm opines
an imagined Ferris wheel at a carnival
turns contra against smothering bindweed,
is this a metaphor for confusion ?
a turnaround of sorts
and with a habitual doff of my hat I bid
to draw this recurring dream to an end,
the naked view now seems surreal.
Should  I then hear the adjacent marching feet of others
surrendering their names in juxtaposition.

willow of crystal, a poplar of water,
a pillar of fountain by the wind drawn over,
tree that is firmly rooted and that dances,
turning course of a river that goes curving,
advances and retreats, goes roundabout,
arriving forever:
                     the calm course of a star
or the spring, appearing without urgency,
water behind a stillness of closed eyelids
flowing all night and pouring out prophecies,
a single presence in the procession of waves
wave over wave until all is overlapped,
in a green sovereignty without decline
a bright hallucination of many wings
when they all open at the height of the sky,

course of a journey among the densities
of the days of the future and the fateful
brilliance of misery shining like a bird
that petrifies the forest with its singing
and the annunciations of happiness
among the branches which go disappearing,
hours of light even now pecked away by the birds,
omens which even now fly out of my hand,

an actual presence like a burst of singing,
like the song of the wind in a burning building,
a long look holding the whole world suspended,
the world with all its seas and all its mountains,
body of light as it is filtered through agate,
the thighs of light, the belly of light, the bays,
the solar rock and the cloud-colored body,
color of day that goes racing and leaping,
the hour glitters and assumes its body,
now the world stands, visible through your body,
and is transparent through your transparency,

I go a journey in galleries of sound,
I flow among the resonant presences
going, a blind man passing transparencies,
one mirror cancels me, I rise from another,
forest whose trees are the pillars of magic,
under the arches of light I go among
the corridors of a dissolving autumn,

I go among your body as among the world,
your belly the sunlit center of the city,
your ******* two churches where are celebrated
the great parallel mysteries of the blood,
the looks of my eyes cover you like ivy,
you are a city by the sea assaulted,
you are a rampart by the light divided
into two halves, distinct, color of peaches,
and you are saltiness, you are rocks and birds
beneath the edict of concentrated noon

and dressed in the coloring of my desires
you go as naked as my thoughts go naked,
I go among your eyes as I swim water,
the tigers come to these eyes to drink their dreams,
the hummingbird is burning among these flames,
I go upon your forehead as on the moon,
like cloud I go among your imagining
journey your belly as I journey your dream,

your ***** are harvest, a field of waves and singing,
your ***** are crystal and your ***** are water,
your lips, your hair, the looks you give me, they
all night shower down like rain, and all day long
you open up my breast with your fingers of water,
you close my eyelids with your mouth of water,
raining upon my bones, and in my breast
the roots of water drive deep a liquid tree,

I travel through your waist as through a river,
I voyage your body as through a grove going,
as by a footpath going up a mountain
and suddenly coming upon a steep ravine
I go the straitened way of your keen thoughts
break through to daylight upon your white forehead
and there my spirit flings itself down, is shattered
now I collect my fragments one by one
and go on, bodiless, searching, in the dark....

you take on the likeness of a tree, a cloud,
you are all birds and now you are a star,
now you resemble the sharp edge of a sword
and now the executioner's bowl of blood,
the encroaching ivy that over grows and then
roots out the soul and divides it from itself,

writing of fire on the slab of jade,
the cleft in the rock, serpent-goddess and queen,
pillar of cloud, and fountain struck from the stone,
the nest of eagles, the circle of the moon,
the seed of anise, mortal and smallest thorn
that has the power to give immortal pain,
shepherd of valleys underneath the sea
and guardian of the valley of the dead,
liana that hangs at the pitch of vertigo,
climber and bindweed and the venomous plant,
flower of resurrection and grape of life,
lady of the flute and of the lightning-flash,
terrace of jasmine, and salt rubbed in the wound,
a branch of roses for the man shot down,
snowstorm in August, moon of the harrowing,
the writing of the sea cut in basalt,
the writing of the wind upon the desert,
testament of the sun, pomegranate, wheat-ear....

                         life and death
are reconciled in thee, lady of midnight,
tower of clarity, empress of daybreak,
moon ******, mother of all mother liquids,
body and flesh of the world, the house of death,
I have been endlessly falling since my birth,
I fall in my own self, never touch my depth,
gather me in your eyes, at last bring together
my scattered dust, make peace among my ashes,
bind the dismemberment of my bones, and breathe
upon my being, bring me to earth in your earth,
your silence of peace to the intellectual act
against itself aroused;
                         open now your hand
lady of the seeds of life, seeds that are days,
day is an immortality, it rises, it grows,
is done with being born and never is done,
every day is a birth, and every daybreak
another birthplace and I am the break of day,
we all dawn on the day, the sun dawns and
daybreak is the face of the sun....

gate of our being, awaken me, bring dawn,
grant that I see the face of the living day,
grant that I see the face of this live night,
everything speaks now, everything is transformed,
O arch of blood, bridge of our pulse beating,
carry me through to the far side of this night....

gateway of being: open your being, awaken,
learn then to be, begin to carve your face,
develop your elements, and keep your vision
keen to look at my face, as I at yours,
keen to look full at life right through to death,
faces of sea, of bread, of rock, of fountain,
the spring of origin which will dissolve our faces
in the nameless face, existence without face
the inexpressible presence of presences...

I want to go on, to go beyond; I cannot;
the moment scatters itself in many things,
I have slept the dreams of the stone that never dreams
and deep among the dreams of years like stones
have heard the singing of my imprisoned blood,
with a premonition of light the sea sang,
and one by one the barriers give way,
all of the gates have fallen to decay,
the sun has forced an entrance through my forehead,
has opened my eyelids at last that were kept closed,
unfastened my being of its swaddling clothes,
has rooted me out of my self, and separated
me from my animal sleep centuries of stone
and the magic of reflections resurrects
willow of crystal, a poplar of water,
a pillar of fountain by the wind drawn over,
tree that is firmly rooted and that dances,
turning course of a river that goes curving,
advances and retreats, goes roundabout,
arriving forever:

*Mexico 1957

He's beautiful, I have already mentioned this to him
but I keep on insisting because I think it's not really clear for him yet
that his beauty is both inside and outside

I mean, apart from his noble heart
and niceness befitting of a prince;
apart from his ideas and his way of thinking, his strings of thoughs
that I love to follow and where I also love getting lost in;
apart from the beauty of his likes and loves
(because you are what you love, if after all love transforms you,
and thus I am he and he is I)
even if you took apart all of his being and essence
he would still be beautiful

because he is beautiful, no matter how you see him
although he sees himself and he is not content
he is beautiful in his signature brows
in his shoulders where I anchor and his fingers which I entwine with mine
he is beautiful from the wrinkles in his face and his combed hair
to his feet, wearing shoes two sizes bigger

he is beautiful, no matter how you see him
but he is on his most when he is honest,
when he shows himself weak: in his most pure and human state,
and that usually happens at night,
either with his mind a little blurred by a little alcohol
while his tongue runs and can't say anything but urgent truths,
dyed with that love that not even alcohol can erase;
either in my arms, moved by sweet whispers, his eyes releasing tears
that rise modestly like cotton
but, as they roll, have the shine of a gemstone;
or if not by early morning while we share a single bed,
naked and iluminated by the lights of my alarm clock

he is so beautiful when he lets you see him vulnerable
or he lets you see him in love
or he lets you see him without even noticing that you're seeing him:
he is so beautiful all the time
and he is not content

he tells me he is not content, when his arms hold me tight
and his chest seems sculped exclusively for my hands;
he is not content, my best kept secret,
the boy that looks cute and shy in front of everybody's eyes
and I know in so many different layers;
he is not content being so short and so pale
being that I could use the porcelain analogy to describe his skin,
but his porcelain was adorned with freckles, and marks, and moles
and I have never seen such fine, pretty, warm porcelain
(porcelain is cold and your arms are always warm)

and his dark hair contrasts with his light skin, and his eyes go along:
black lights, stars of Bethlehem that guide the way
to reach to his pink lips that, if you kiss,
you could swear you can find salvation
or a miracle; something strange happens because it's not normal to be moved by such great happiness,
and if his mouth is salvation, the touch of his hands is holy grace

he is not content when I could honor his body
and his spirit and mind,
when my mouth could paint masterpieces in his chest
because he doesn't see shape but I see colours
and I don't know if he believes if god is an artist
but if he doesn't see himself as art, it doesnt matter
since even so, art goes all over himself like a bindweed

since even so, when god said
"let there be light"
I'm almost sure that he was made.

The bluebells whisper in the dead of the night
Sweet nothings are all the bindweed hears.
On and on they go till it gets quite light
till the moon disappears and the mist clears
The daffodils stir and join in mid stream
without knowledge of the subject or occasion
A glow casts a shadow from a new sunbeam
allowing the rest of the forest to awaken.
Story tellers, nothing but story tellers
but then there is not much else to do.
Which is fine for most of the forest dwellers
If only the story tellers - the bluebells knew.

Don't speak to me of those droughted days
when you reigned over me for twenty years.

Your dark clouds planted themselves
above my garden like seeds wanting
to rebirth a strangled youth.

I sickled down row after row:
your bindweed, your choke pear.

Purple flowers strung about my neck;
those bitter fruits, I swallowed whole:
a peck of yoke, two bushels of anguish.

You grew onto me
You rooted yourself deeply
Within the gardens of my soul
But you weren't pigweed
Nor bindweed
Oh ..No Dear..
You were a crimson red Begonia
Glistening so  beautifully
In the rays of the morning sun..

I am the lover of the stars, flowers, and the wind,
I desperately love the highest mountain,
Just like the way I love the core of the earth.
I love all things with their energy, concerns, and occupations,
After the fashion of my love of raging rivers.
I love the dawn & the dusk equally,
As I love the tortoise and the hare,
The unknown and the known similarly.
After all, the bindweed is found as beautiful when compared to the rose,
And all things deserve my love, which they certainly get,
Solely for existing.

filled with daffodils and sunflowers,
carnations and roses

but overgrown with bindweed, deep-rooted thistles and
quickly-spreading dandelions

the gardener just stood by and watched it grow
it got worse and worse right before their eyes

sure. they did the basic maintenance
so the neighbours wouldn't notice too much
but the weeds kept winning.

lately it's been getting better. they used to be
ashamed of their mess
and they didn't let anyone into the garden

but now they realize that such an overgrown garden
is too big a burden for one person to handle

they have friends who want to help get rid of the weeds
and bit by bit, they're starting to clean it up

I see
The green of ivy and bindweed
Drenched by the
Flooding water

I hear
The cries of honest children playing
And dishonest men shouting

I feel the tired people
Travelling on the rat race commuter train

Whilst grey skies
Threaten
Overhead

And amongst
The chaos
Bestowed  
By the wild fantasies
Of the emboldened egomaniacs

I decide to hope
I decide to believe
To campaign
Fully

To use my life
For the sake of the future
To make a vow
For our children

To fight for the right
To battle for peace
To persist for our planet

thunderstorms in june
he threads daisies
through her wet hair
he wraps bindweed
around her bruised neck

two young lovers,
hiding from the world
in a glistening meadow,
muddy bodies tangled
on a muddy blanket

her, a siren of the suburbs
with berry stained lips
lays with her apollo
with eyes of august honey
and a rifle instead of a bow

pulling bugs out of each others hair
wondering if life will always be like this
or if it will change
and how these memories
will feel in the distant future

as the chorus of crickets begins again
after the storm has cleared
the sun descends like a halo
we can't be late
it's time to go

bindweed  climbs the college wall

&

flowers on the fence

The broken bells do try to chime
in horrid winds of broken times
hidden in the Abby there is her crypt
the place I leave her roses red and dead

Silent prayers form holy communions
as I sit by her coffin and weep
making shadows cast by candlelight
singing to her in numerous periods of sleep

I utter, Soon, my love, I will join you
just to hold you once again
in arms cold and unforgiving
we will dance the last waltz

The gales pluck at bindweed
playing pizzicato to our lost love
as I lay my head down on your tomb
for our slumber and eternal rest

Hear the voice of angels
they have come to us
just one more miracle
our last dance of death


By Christos Andreas Kourtis aka NeonSolaris

oh james i cannot tag your name this morning
in my thanks to you and i crack myself up

it is the way

never take it serious, this life
is all such a lark mainly

yesterday was such a day
with fettling and unpicking
the pallet and sawring it up
and spelling things incorrect
cos we can

it means the same

making a space come clear
imagining we are at chelsea
without the cranes and helpers

sitting on the grass until the bites overcome

watching him strimmimg the lane for the big
house
ready for the reopening
except we have no date
yet

mourning that the thistle and bindweed are cut
down

knowing i have a photograph
as i have those of him james

i like the number today
good in all respects i feel

i feel that we like the words the same
come thither, come random, moved
about with life
and details

he said he thought it would rain yesterday
and i told him i thought nothing
thought to wait and see
and found myself talking avidly about my bike
repairs
so worth finding it out

a topic
a project
the sculpture in the garden
to wheel in and out each day
counting

meanwhile james the seeds grow
and i gets smaller

stay safe

he said they have ordered take away sunday lunch with meat

oh james i cannot tag your name this morning
in my thanks to you and i crack myself up

it is the way

never take it serious, this life
is all such a lark mainly

yesterday was such a day
with fettling and unpicking
the pallet and sawring it up
and spelling things incorrect
cos we can

it means the same

making a space come clear
imagining we are at chelsea
without the cranes and helpers

sitting on the grass until the bites overcome

watching him strimmimg the lane for the big
house
ready for the reopening
except we have no date
yet

mourning that the thistle and bindweed are cut
down

knowing i have a photograph
as i have those of him james

i like the number today
good in all respects i feel

i feel that we like the words the same
come thither, come random, moved
about with life
and details

he said he thought it would rain yesterday
and i told him i thought nothing
thought to wait and see
and found myself talking avidly about my bike
repairs
so worth finding it out

a topic
a project
the sculpture in the garden
to wheel in and out each day
counting

meanwhile james the seeds grow
and i gets smaller

stay safe

he said they have ordered take away sunday lunch with meat