"genuflected" poems
Sorry to...
Hit yo noes
like a brick of green
Like the grass that grow
nourished by the Celtic saints that know
Man tell a lie better make it true
if you don’t, then what do I make of you?
Now Wonder Woman
no wonder were human
bringing Brooklyn
some thunder hoodlum
My baited brown eyes look up and down you
Mile marker .66
and I’m still hitting this
crisp as a chrysalis
you may be the eyewitness
of my fist to this
more like the wittiness
of my pen tip dipped in ambergris
I get around you get the gist
healing hands I mend the cyst
with broken hands I gripped the rich
don't understand
don't worry
like Krishna I persist
zzzz Slept on like
The buzz of viciousness
**** the violence
turn the red to VIOLET
just look right through my eyes slit
Now and then
divine feminine deigned
to grace my face again
turned fake eyes to grin
false pride, double subs, and sin.
Complete appreciation, genuflected form reflected in
this fertile goddeSS
who puts the seeds in season
She see through SnakeS and reedS when
She based in wiSdom
reaSon
designed to take the basest race
from darkest depths to airs of divine space
till we’re flushed with grace
some are hushed by my ace in the whole
I'm a S33ker throwing axes
but YOU better only call me
an axehole
when
I
mis
s
.
***** simple as this.
Feb 28, 2019
Feb 28, 2019 at 12:22 AM UTC
More folk need to learn
About Cause and Effect
Respecting others
Is fundamentally what earns respect
My dad was raised Christian
Episcopalian
But left
No disrespect
He just wasn't convinced
So when I was a child
Our attendance at church was
sporadic
Sometimes a source of contention
And, usually, more pain than joy
The summer of 1969
Men walked on the Moon
And my parents
Split
My dad moved across town
I saw him one day each weekend
The most time we had ever spent together.
When I was twelve the earth moved
Sixty-four people died
And my father embraced Buddhism
And Buddhism embraced him
In a way nothing else ever had
and he learned moderation
Regaining his freedom
What got him was the Law of Causation
Cause and Effect
What goes around comes around
The Golden Rule
Unencumbered
With the baggage from his past
The philosophy of common sense
His pianist's artist's teacher's mind
Could comprehend
Grasp and hold for good
My twelve-year-old mouth
Would not be denied
And so I one day announced
That chanting
Was simply another form of prayer
A fact he acknowledged
reluctantly
but ultimately
with humor and grace
And was it my father's turn to Buddhism
That sparked my own
Journey into Spirit?
In 1972
With Godspell on the radio
I saw Jesus Christ Superstar
At the Universal Amphitheatre
Twice
And when my sister joked
"Let there be light"
And all the lights came on
Then she genuflected
Before taking her seat
It was only partly in jest
For there was reverence in the air
And a sense of the Eternal
The foundation of the story
Of every story
Cause and Effect
Later that year I was baptized
Before I realized
That no church held the key
For the key was within me
As it resides within us all
More folk need to learn
About Cause and Effect
We are here on earth to Love.
And respecting others
Is fundamentally what earns respect.
6/7 July 2005 Approx. 2 AM
Jun 27, 2015
Jun 27, 2015 at 1:36 AM UTC
The world was never going to end
in fire.
It was never thought to.
Now. Thunder comes on.
The raincoat boleros around the street.
Momentous,
One two slow slow one two. Earth splits
/ an avocado, molten core discarded.
In the southern hemisphere they are waving flags.
Complimentary colors crawl up the sky tiding in.
They are dancing.
Ba-cha
-ta,
Me-ren-gue.
Their hemisphere Charybidises,
trees genuflected.
Quiet. The puddles are sleeping.
In the north. The hemisphere has run aground.
It capsizes. All the bands are going
down playing.
Rain panics off the timpani
prisming.
The brass cherubs in the clouds.
The strings red shift.
At the equator,
an umbrella floats:
1 bird inside it.
She prays in single syllables. Help.
Please.
Quack!
Feb 22, 2011
Feb 22, 2011 at 3:10 PM UTC
these faces on the wall that have no eyes,
the young children with blood escaping from their hands
as they pick up a mound of the Earth and throw at genuflected roses.
these battered men in parks searching for light
and my woman is no longer with me.
it’s all vaudeville: this obnoxious working of continuance,
these redundant flutings, these unprecedented fluctuations.
opening the yellow gates to death
as the automobile churns the last of its exhausted snarl.
we are children peering through glass cases
as death laughs at his hopeless clientele,
sad, desolate progenies in working-classes,
in parks, in factories, somewhere along Mendiola,
or just treading the waist-high hellish froths of Dapitan,
there’s always death in the nooks of the quiet
and from where birds stir in sidereal circles, death
with his hands resting on the cage, chases us back to our homes.
death the changing of the gatekeeper.
death the telling machine.
death the dentist.
death my next door neighbor.
death, this boorish broken-winged Maya twitching in front
of my dog’s shadow shot out of the Sun’s shameful recoil.
death, my loud and loutish muse,
death the truant,
death, the copious fog somewhere in Kennon Rd.
death, in my hands through darkness and light,
death through troves of enigma,
death through undisputed clearings,
death the long line of red beads in EDSA,
death the gates of Plaridel,
it’s the moon following you, trailing your measure,
i hold my woman’s used shirt, pick up her photographs
and there’s no tender movement left but the still-seeking lion
prowling the jungles of my heart, seared by lovelorn undoing.
through the bottom of the sky and the unchanging roof-beam,
the weathervane ceases to a sojourn and the wind is trapped
in a place where we cannot utter any word between the gnashing
of our teeth – through the wasted years, through the sleeping in and out
of homes filled with beatings, to cathedrals swollen with tribulations,
and to the vineyards wrung out of wine, my lover, walking through fire,
sound silence.
Jan 2, 2016
Jan 2, 2016 at 9:20 PM UTC
I tried God,
I tried to be your little boy,
Your altar boy, the tin soldier for you,
Because it was easier when life was a toy.
I have genuflected just to be patted on the head.
I do not cuss, drink, smoke, or gamble,
Aren't you proud of me God? Aren't I good?
It was not easy, becoming a nice guy.
I had to trade in words like passion and faith
For words like duty, responsibility, obligation.
Because I do not love you or your children,
No, I am obligated to them, held accountable.
God my heart feels captive and not captivating,
It feels as though it has sold out and not been purchased
With blood by your Son, the first living Man,
My destiny is one of a Pharisee and not a Savior.
But God make me wild
Because this penance has left the man in me chained
And lets the good little boy, the nice guy, wander.
But set me lose upon this world,
And I will roar as the Lion of Judah!
Let my love run rampant like a wildfire,
Let passion rush from me like a waterfall,
Because nice guys are scented candles,
And good little boys are bubbling brooks,
But your Son was a hurricane
Walk through fire with me, into the Lion's Den,
Silence the voices of kings before me,
Lead me to preach to pirates and live with lepers,
Because the heart of adventure lies in your heart,
And the battle of a lifetime is your lifetime,
And my beauty to rescue is your Bride.
Let me seek your heart and once sheltered there
I'll discover that mine was made after it.
Mar 24, 2011
Mar 24, 2011 at 6:25 PM UTC
#…a threefold cord is not quickly broken.
(Ecclesiastes 4:12)
A pastoress once bore a name
which merits neither guilt nor shame;
Pentecosta Charismania
(biblical in megalomania).
Worthy of poetic fame,
a brilliant if unstable flame.
Sincere she was, yet volatile,
she brought it down, revival-style.
At altar calls, she could inspire
tongues of glossolalian fire.
The Devil she would oft rebuke
with lines from John, or Paul, or Luke;
a prophetess on holy crack
was Pentecosta on the attack…
Her nemesis was prudent, able
doctrinally dull—but stable:
Patriciana Presbyteria.
Less given to divine hysteria,
wisdom did adorn her table.
And her soul bore well the label.
No prophecies escaped her lips
nor prone to divinating slips;
this sensible reformed young maid
was made to have and have it made
Elect, correct in doctrine, wit
invested in no counterfeit
her pop’s portfolio lent her worth:
not less than heaven cashed on earth.
Mocking these unseemly heretics
swayed by neither sects nor politics
was Maria Della Romana
Faithful matron, primadonna,
loyal to her Papal rite,
she grieved her sisters by candlelight;
fingered furious rosaries
stormed the gates with St. Peter’s keys
beseeching Jesus that they turn
from devil’s doctrines fit to burn,
rejoin the holy Mother Church
rather than their souls besmirch
with further Antichristian sin.
(She genuflected fit to win.)
God is known in Trinity
but less through femininity:
His three adherents, flamed by One
like braided gold reflecting sun
are Christian fates: three tendencies
or triplicate analyses,
tripartite in judgemental grace
each one assumed, with zealous face
that the other two could not be saved
as sure as Heaven’s roads are paved
with wisdom’s gold and Christ’s pure light.
(They made a most amusing sight.)
Since threefold cords cannot be broken,
let my punchline rest, unspoken.
Apr 24, 2016
Apr 24, 2016 at 8:19 PM UTC
hear me now as i say
pilgrimed is the image
unloosen
yourself into the wind
as i *****
for some
sense of
placeness in this
vaudeville
no more are
the birds that
sing and way past us
already seconds
in waning
is the same permeable blue
tracking up
our curved spines
and when weakened
falling at
last
as multiple
cities do -
i see a line
for a stream uncollected,
as rain
over genuflected
hills will.
Mar 23, 2016
Mar 23, 2016 at 12:48 AM UTC
UNCLE MICHAEL- ALIAS GOD
His hands(tobacco stained)
twisted & gnarled
knotted like an alive piece of wood
scrawled gestures across my mind
as the sick calf bucked in his arms
& his quiet strength - calmed:
'Shhhhhh... shhhhhhh...suck...suck! '
he crooned
& the sound
soothed.
And the veins(line vines)
ran up & down his arms
pumping crude life like a sudden sketch
to suggest the gist of rather than
the meaning of things.
And he walked(& I ran)
towards Granny's garden(like God tending Eden)
& the gate(a little hoarse)sighed at his hand and
the leaves murmured
(like worshippers in a church congregation)
& the sunlight genuflected through the trees
and the trees wore socks & apples.
A tablecloth was laid
on a loganberry bush.
And the young tree gave herself to him
broke tenderly in his hand
and, the knife whistled & whittled
& out of the branch came a man.
And he told me(& I believed him
'cos he was good as God & strong)
that the little wooden man(the silent statue)
had been waiting(all the time all ready made)
waiting to be released
from his prison of wood.
'All things...'he whispered
'all things are waiting for you to call them.'
'Call them to come out...'
'Awake them...create them...! '
The rhododendrons were blue with amazement
-at this revelation
a dragonfly walked upon the water.
A butterfly became infatuated with a flower.
Me...?
I watched as his hands talked...
...explaining things that could not be...said.
And he took my hand in his and I understood
flowed like a little stream
into his big river
felt God(close)
near at hand
and...smiling.
May 20, 2019
May 20, 2019 at 5:23 PM UTC
BEHOLD A PALE HORSE
Recall-quietly-the-hazy-days-where-I-didn’t-know-poisonous-berries-from-safe-ones.....
I hazarded a climb up the tallest tree
the ascent was genuflected as I recall.
The grove was perfect in its equanimity,
forcing my gaze to rest upon a single silver stallion.
For hours I watched
Oh, Primeval Traveler,
with your triumphant mane, silvered across horizon
echoing the lunar eclipse in your brilliance,
your muscles reminiscent of an anti-apocryphal steed
It’s flow showed the authenticity of nature
Here life proudly declared
Movement & Peace
And each of it’s components perfectly crafted in the Cosmic Forge
Look how its luminescent power survives the darkness
I thought this until a neural feedback loop formed,
“This is the beast that would have pulled Arjuna forth unto battle
As Krishna directed him in his dharma as a secondary event
to the arrival of natural perfection.”
As the day past to night,
the night brought forth darkness
And in the darkness I recognized a primal need of my own.
To evacuate all of the grunginess I felt brewing within my body.
I resolved the anguish in a moment of perfection.
A loss of self catalyzed through the release of wasted being
And I recall that as I came back into my being
the horse who had been so distant and yet so near
the one who I had borne divine witness to
galloped full stride in the trajectory of my lofty dwelling
As it passed under me
It......s.tum.-b.led-------->(^)ooooo,,,o,o,o,o,o,o,o,o,oo,0.
Through the most polluted of rancid berry waste I have ever let go of.
Its mane plastered to its leathery skin by my own liquid adhesive
It lay there
dying and breathless
among the wasteland, which came so inevitably from my bowels
now a haven for insects nestled and rotten, a temple of the naturally begotten child of life named “death,”
Or rather an impromptu and particularly gothic grave of a God who has received no worship and is now forgotten.
Feb 10, 2016
Feb 10, 2016 at 1:39 PM UTC
The taxi dropped me off
as the bell for Compline tolled,
veni creátor Spíritus,
best go to the church
because that's where
the monks'll be
a guy said
so I went into the church
February 68 that was
first time,
la casa di Dio,
red lamp at altar end
and a few lights
by the choir stalls
and a monk walked by
genuflected
and walked on by
to ring the bells again,
she had that sway of hips
and a nice ****
and I swam
into her deep seas,
Dom Joe said
have you eaten?
no I said
so he took me
to the refectory
and got me macaroni cheese
and hot cocoa
and sat talking
about the monastic life,
Dio chiama ma pochi risposta,
smell of incense
and hot bread
and smell of flowers
from the cloisters,
kiss me she said
there there so I did,
non introíbo
in tabernáculum
domus meæ,
listen and attend
with the ear of your heart
said Benedict
(saint that is),
Hugh folded the napkins
with the carefulness
of a maiden
with the deep set eyes
of a ******
prier pour Dieu
dans la vérité
the French monk said
as he walked with me
to the chapter house,
moonlight and stars
and shadows
where the clositer walls
on the outside
allowed in light,
it is not enough
to have a good mind
the main thing is
to use it well
said Gareth
quoting Descartes
as we sat in the novice's room
awaiting Dom James,
plough my field
she said
sow seeds,
the bell tolled
over the cloisters
and it was getting dark
and Compline was ending,
making the sign
of the cross
as we entered church,
but that was later
in 71,
seeking through darkness
and felt all done.
May 12, 2016
May 12, 2016 at 12:43 PM UTC
Ad astra
1
From the city I know you were from,
building up the perimeter in summer – it was plenty searing.
Must when I found the town already, triggered and almost accomplished,
searchable signs for searching parties involved like grass on the lawn,
scraps on an empty lot – when in summer it got very hot
and your salt smelt of the sea crushed in between my territories, start the word.
Flesh deems it so in frame, walking with us this very evening crafted
by a waking remoteness.
2
When it rains, build this city from here on – relieve it of its terrors.
The memory of an old cathedral being burned down to the last cross,
the volume of prayer genuflected within pews, or anything that was hieratic. Rain in the
afternoon was what your entire ocean meant to me, crossing its span of promise,
sure of its weather. Rasp the skin tight like gears fine-tuned. Borrow its heat when
it drizzles. Do you remember my face when you pass by familiar pavements, stalls,
hospitals drenched in prognosis? The even flutter of a bird? What does this question seek
but your truth – like an elastic map stretched to infinite directions.
3
Here is where you were named darling. Taut your name had it belonged to someone else.
Sharp were your features. Your definitions smooth. Your textures visible with difficulty.
When you wore denims rising from the cuff of your knees you showed
me a blotch and other fraternizations. Moles as variables. Your body as graph. My senselessness,
somewhat a trying delineation. Thousand fingers mesh altogether to formulate rescue,
mind a garden of salvage enough for two. Or underneath the sphere of a body,
neither rain nor sun could stop to flourish me completely. Yourself full of
symmetries – the universe cut inside and out, trimmed to lasting – ubiquity, inhabiting the temporary.
I transact with this darkness yourself containing light, like a window to your home
when you’ve moved on to a different continent, I myself staring right into as if the whole space,
in search for a singular glint I could make up for a cluster
to make an elusive thing such as you walk backwards, from the entry, just before the guardhouse, to meet me.
May 24, 2016
May 24, 2016 at 7:39 AM UTC
life the grandest stage.
life, gelid waters – I, the pompous admiral.
life, thorns withholding enigmas,
clenching the true blood of flowers.
life, the flimsiest avant-garde.
our measures
conceal all our knowledge,
our fondness of exactitudes
bludgeons us to back to our smallness.
the heart, like a riot,
will always scream blood.
the soul, like a jailbird,
will always carve a song.
the mind, like a grave,
will turn soundless filled with bones.
some will beat back to the same old music,
assaulting the others with a concealed knife
gutting all of us as we lay still – the rest shaking around us.
when I was young, I was unsure of myself
and now that I have aged, it is all but the same:
I am a horde of drunkards.
I am the incessant pendulum.
I am the night-watch
and sometimes I am being watched by the night itself.
I am the loutish vandal on the wall.
I am hot, steaming music I am an earful of ***
I am a handful of hollow I am the dandelion whittling away
in the garden of full women seething with woes
I am the catapult of air from the sling of trees I am a somber god
I am an ungodly god I walk over toppled waters past genuflected hills
like maddened horses screaming victory
I am a limbless beast crawling back home
I am young I am old
my blood ravages the sinews of my body – I am a binaural cinematheque
of slow minutes I am a mausoleum of chiaroscuros
I am all pleasure pleasure pleasure
I am just as ****** as everyone I am sour mash stirred in a wide-mouthed
glass clinking together with this heavy slither of attendance around me
somewhere in Pasay
I am love I love I am hate and I hate
I am forever the lion that roars at what life has done to us
and they will cage me soon when the roses shy away from the deliberate daylight
and when all of this is through
I have only just begun.
Jan 8, 2016
Jan 8, 2016 at 9:39 AM UTC
the ides stupor
leaning into the wall of this
grave sunset.
give me once again
your voice
your shy voice
like a banca
waiting for the moon
to sink below
its dome.
give me once again
your *******
your lithe *******
like genuflected hills
waiting for the sun
to sink below
its dome
give me once again
your being
your agile being
like wild horses
running into the sun
striding into the moon
waiting for me to sink
below your dome.
Oct 7, 2015
Oct 7, 2015 at 11:38 PM UTC
Are names telling of something?
When you were young, you were taught to name shapes,
count figures with your tiny, slender fingers,
read text like creed, memorize facts like incantations
so that when it is time that you are already raw
and machinated into the fullness of your body,
you are ready. Ready like the gull darting
into the deep blue to filch the marine.
Ready like artillery to fray.
Ready like genuflected children
in contrition – left the peccadillo aloft, canopied
by a thumbed down word of prayer;
Are names telling of something?
What do they delineate? A sense of ownership?
A demystification? What machine does
it pledge allegiance to? Sage of old?
A frantic fretting of sensibilities? Erudition, or at the very least, obscurantism?
If we leave a thing without a name, what will
that thing be?
It cannot be held – to what extent?
It cannot be owned – for what reason?
It cannot be classified – for what? to saturate it with comprehension
to ensure a fate underneath a conceptualized bent
of attestation and abomination?
If I left you without a name and only held you in my hands like
a thing waiting to be used, to be fondled,
what will you make out of it? Will you darkle and then dissipate
in the thinnest air? Or will you remain? Are names exacted so that
when a thing leaves the body, when an abstraction leaves a moment,
there is a device we can use to drone it into coming back? So that we know
that in addressing it, there is a sure claim that it will move back
and retrace tractable errors? So that in the aftermath,
we are certain of the weight it casts upon our sorry and aching
bodies that refuse to make love? So that there will be words to be written
and voices to be launched in form of song
with identities assured to match the thirst?
Why does this deserve a name? Why are these hands undeserving
of territories? Why is there dissent when there is desire?
The answer lies in the silence of every passing day famished by
evidence: this thing that has no name will remain
as punishment for being – so that when it is time to
prosecute, there will be no
firm basis for eulogies.
Apr 8, 2016
Apr 8, 2016 at 11:11 AM UTC
Four monks,
black robed,
stood on the beach
in the grounds
of the abbey.
I sat and listened
to the old words
of Father John:
it isn’t easy
living amongst
so many men
from different backgrounds,
with different personalities,
he said
An old clergyman
cross over,
Father Joe
later said.
The young monk,
bespeckled,
crossed over
from the cloister door,
genuflected,
looked at me,
then went
on tip toe
seeming
to the bell tower
to ring
for the office
of Compline.
May 19, 2014
May 19, 2014 at 2:08 AM UTC
UNCLE MICHAEL - ALIAS GOD
His hands
(tobacco stained)
twisted & gnarled
knotted like an alive
piece of wood
scrawled gestures
across my mind
as the sick calf
bucked in his arms
& his quiet strength
- calmed:
'Shhhhhh... shhhhhhh...suck...suck! '
he crooned
& the sound
soothed.
And the veins
(like vines)
ran up & down
his arms
pumping crude life
like a sudden sketch
to suggest the gist of
rather than the meaning of things.
And he walked
(& I ran)
towards Granny's garden
(like God tending Eden)
& the gate(a little hoarse)
sighed at his hand and
the leaves murmured
(like worshippers in a church congregation)
& the sunlight
genuflected through the trees
and the trees wore socks & apples.
A tablecloth was laid
on a logan berry bush.
And the young tree
gave herself to him
broke tenderly in his hand
and, the knife whistled &
out of the branch came a man.
And he told me
(& I believed him
'cos he was good as God & strong)
that the little wooden man
(the silent statue)
had been waiting
(all the time all ready made)
waiting to be released
from his prison of wood.
'All things...'
he whispered
'all things are
waiting for you
to call them.'
'Call them to come out...'
'Awake them...'
'Create them...! '
The rhododendrons
were blue with amazement
- at this revelation -
a dragonfly walked
upon the water.
A butterfly became
infatuated with a flower.
Me...?
I watched
as his hands
talked...
...explaining things that
could not be...said.
And he took
my hand in his
and I understood
flowed
like a little stream
into his big river
felt God
(close)
near at hand
and...smiling.
Sep 3, 2017
Sep 3, 2017 at 4:28 AM UTC
I am a sheep in Wolf’s clothing
With a silver-lined tongue
Looking everywhere for the one place
My sharp-toothed mask may be hung
My habits are more suited
For the habitat I inhabit
Thank my truest sense of self
Who longs to love the lonely rabbit
I speak words of poignant truth
That effervesce unbidden
From within my deepest reaches
The parts of me which I keep hidden
Sometimes the things I say
Are so bold and unexpected
I realize they were not needed
Only once I’ve genuflected
I see myself, since being here
And like not my pale façade
A man of faith, extended Grace
Pretends to be something he’s not.
Mar 10, 2016
Mar 10, 2016 at 1:57 AM UTC
Who can hang with the flow
None so suckas don't wanna go toe to toe
Blow for blow we shuttin' down any shows
Yo I be rippin'and then dippin'
Tearin' up emcees
Like slams of Scottie Pippen my clips in
Begins mad *********** static the stations
Once I step to the nation makin' innovations
My team's basically waiting invoking Satan
Many not Makin? Their moves ya vital signs leakin' homes
I'mma keep rappin' til in a funeral home
I'm makin' rap mortuaries to every body who get buried
And married into the afterworld it varies
Scenarios carry easily we hurry hotter than jamacian curry
Lookin' at my right hand my pistol grip pumpin'
Increase hearts ya jumpin' ivs dumping
Tryna keep you alive bumpin' all jive yo we always into something.....
My ****** rate dominate in all states undercover I'll annihilate
And humiliate to those that wanna test thier fates
I'm makin' casket crates three in a row seven each
That means twenty one bodies leach I preach
What I teach never a leech ya contracts breach
Eulogy given flows hit like Julius Jackson stickin'
Uppercuts from ya head to gut ya know what
We bout to do **** ya crew like soundview
Feel the blast spin around adversaries like Taz
Leave a destructive path death gets the last laugh
Powerful paragraphs that entice blood baths
Master the craft still layin' my grande shaft
A **** ero sick with the turntable beatin' labels
She feelin' on my cables my necklace ain't no checkin' this
Yo this ****** Ludacris number one spot I keep locked
Like an Alcatraz prison spiritually risen
Ya mentals genuflected from the music that christens
Who can hang with the flow
None so suckas don't wanna go toe to toe
Blow for blow we shuttin' down any shows
Sep 16, 2018
Sep 16, 2018 at 5:18 AM UTC
SMALL GOD
Time was
cheap.
It lay scattered
all around
like shattered
Spring sunlight
tangled in hedges
or hung from trees.
There was almost
too much of it.
As if one small boy
could ever use it all up.
There was no end of it
as if there was only now.
Now, this
forever.
And so appeared the world
when I was 7.
A heaven
here on earth
that didn't need to be
prayed for.
Sunlight genuflected
to me
as if I were
the small God
of this
very moment.
Dec 10, 2020
Dec 10, 2020 at 12:03 PM UTC