I love the evenings, passionless and fair, I love the evens,
Whether old manor-fronts their ray with golden fulgence leavens,
In numerous leafage bosomed close;
Whether the mist in reefs of fire extend its reaches sheer,
Or a hundred sunbeams splinter in an azure atmosphere
On cloudy archipelagos.

Oh, gaze ye on the firmament! a hundred clouds in motion,
Up-piled in the immense sublime beneath the winds' commotion,
Their unimagined shapes accord:
Under their waves at intervals flame a pale levin through,
As if some giant of the air amid the vapors drew
A sudden elemental sword.

The sun at bay with splendid thrusts still keeps the sullen fold;
And momently at distance sets, as a cupola of gold,
The thatched roof of a cot a-glance;
Or on the blurred horizon joins his battle with the haze;
Or pools the blooming fields about with inter-isolate blaze,
Great moveless meres of radiance.

Then mark you how there hangs athwart the firmament's swept track,
Yonder a mighty crocodile with vast irradiant back,
A triple row of pointed teeth?
Under its burnished belly slips a ray of eventide,
The flickerings of a hundred glowing clouds in tenebrous side
With scales of golden mail ensheathe.

Then mounts a palace, then the air vibrates--the vision flees.
Confounded to its base, the fearful cloudy edifice
Ruins immense in mounded wrack;
Afar the fragments strew the sky, and each envermeiled cone
Hangeth, peak downward, overhead, like mountains overthrown
When the earthquake heaves its hugy back.

These vapors, with their leaden, golden, iron, bronzèd glows,
Where the hurricane, the waterspout, thunder, and hell repose,
Muttering hoarse dreams of destined harms,--
'Tis God who hangs their multitude amid the skiey deep,
As a warrior that suspendeth from the roof-tree of his keep
His dreadful and resounding arms!

All vanishes! The Sun, from topmost heaven precipitated,
Like a globe of iron which is tossed back fiery red
Into the furnace stirred to fume,
Shocking the cloudy surges, plashed from its impetuous ire,
Even to the zenith spattereth in a flecking scud of fire
The vaporous and inflamèd spaume.

O contemplate the heavens! Whenas the vein-drawn day dies pale,
In every season, every place, gaze through their every veil?
With love that has not speech for need!
Beneath their solemn beauty is a mystery infinite:
If winter hue them like a pall, or if the summer night
Fantasy them starre brede.

The quiet August noon has come,
  A slumberous silence fills the sky,
The fields are still, the woods are dumb,
  In glassy sleep the waters lie.

And mark yon soft white clouds that rest
  Above our vale, a moveless throng;
The cattle on the mountain's breast
  Enjoy the grateful shadow long.

Oh, how unlike those merry hours
  In early June when Earth laughs out,
When the fresh winds make love to flowers,
  And woodlands sing and waters shout.

When in the grass sweet voices talk,
  And strains of tiny music swell
From every moss-cup of the rock,
  From every nameless blossom's bell.

But now a joy too deep for sound,
  A peace no other season knows,
Hushes the heavens and wraps the ground,
  The blessing of supreme repose.

Away! I will not be, to-day,
  The only slave of toil and care.
Away from desk and dust! away!
  I'll be as idle as the air.

Beneath the open sky abroad,
  Among the plants and breathing things,
The sinless, peaceful works of God,
  I'll share the calm the season brings.

Come, thou, in whose soft eyes I see
  The gentle meanings of thy heart,
One day amid the woods with me,
  From men and all their cares apart.

And where, upon the meadow's breast,
  The shadow of the thicket lies,
The blue wild flowers thou gatherest
  Shall glow yet deeper near thine eyes.

Come, and when mid the calm profound,
  I turn, those gentle eyes to seek,
They, like the lovely landscape round,
  Of innocence and peace shall speak.

Rest here, beneath the unmoving shade,
  And on the silent valleys gaze,
Winding and widening, till they fade
  In yon soft ring of summer haze.

The village trees their summits rear
  Still as its spire, and yonder flock
At rest in those calm fields appear
  As chiselled from the lifeless rock.

One tranquil mount the scene o'erlooks--
  There the hushed winds their sabbath keep
While a near hum from bees and brooks
  Comes faintly like the breath of sleep.

Well may the gazer deem that when,
  Worn with the struggle and the strife,
And heart-sick at the wrongs of men,
  The good forsakes the scene of life;

Like this deep quiet that, awhile,
  Lingers the lovely landscape o'er,
Shall be the peace whose holy smile
  Welcomes him to a happier shore.

I tell you hopeless grief is passionless,
That only men incredulous of despair,
Half-taught in anguish, through the midnight air
Beat upward to God’s throne in loud access
Of shrieking and reproach. Full desertness
In souls, as countries, lieth silent-bare
Under the blanching, vertical eye-glare
Of the absolute heavens. Deep-hearted man, express
Grief for thy dead in silence like to death—
Most like a monumental statue set
In everlasting watch and moveless woe
Till itself crumble to the dust beneath.
Touch it; the marble eyelids are not wet;
If it could weep, it could arise and go.

Your chest pains
and elephant weights
outweigh her puppy eyes.
but I feel bad
a human
turned bridge troll
banished
exiled
stay on your island, napoleon
you give the country heart attacks
and it will fire back

but I am emotional
are you cold there
lonely
do you cry as much as I?
we will ignore your smoke signals
moveless like rigor mortis.
for once
France does not surrender

I run for years, I run from fires
And frowns and harsh words and barking dogs
I run to love and away from disenchantment
I rush to judgment and retreat from skirmishes
I run headlong into many arms and bounce from chest to chest.

I fall spinning over cliffs and across boundaries
I swim fervently up tributaries and tumble over falls
The longer I go, the farther and faster I run
Almost as if the distance in itself were an achievement
Still at the end to be moveless, and not one remembers me.

Oct. 15 2010

And so then.
A continued perpetual reach toward a critical mass.
Always sufficient and far, hoped to implode.
It’s reached for.
One life or maybe more.
Eternity has been sectioned and assigned VIP
Points invented.
To say there’s some place to where we can never go back and
Here, where we are, is an empty parking lot.
Here, where we arch
Down to look but never past our laps.
Short tried gazes expendable and cheap.
Our pupils have become tiny.
We’ll never again see in a dark gone extinct.
We’ve been beaten beyond recall,
Aged different,
And no one can seem to remember what was ever even called.
The city doesn’t move.
Here, the babes are weak.
Where we are.
For one life or maybe more.

lacking all doubt choices unmade we scream
into the noon the sum of all our fears
not caring much about the weight of dream

on every several head until the beam
of milky light reveals the open tears
lacking all doubt choices unmade we scream

not only terrified but eyes agleam
with anger so this long hard tale of years
not caring much about the weight of dream

has caught each up in both the milk and cream
and blended in the message of our cares
lacking all doubt choices unmade we scream

all of our secrets in one clouded stream
while all around we feel the touch of stares
not caring much about the weight of dream

in middle day when the truth reigns supreme
denying mercy in the moveless airs
lacking all doubt choices unmade we scream
not caring much about the weight of dream

Where else to begin

but from a repetitive scene where
light smothering the fractured windshield
is the face of a mother

and the brute agony
of a totalled vehicle, the countenance
of a father?

But which ruin takes its station
amongst all moveless damages?
What narrative to assuage than appall
    which has not been drawn before,
 say a line to daze the day into genre?

In transit we have no words for it,
  nearly giving meaning to a god and
  fray itself drunk with a lesson.
What space here remains vacant and is
  an invitation to a marred face,
 pressing against the upholstery but makes
 final its formlessness?

 What space is here that sits
     with in an acoustic? This silence again and again,
  a sign of a spectral dawn again and
      again released from what they spit at me

   those who are but vigils in pried open yesterdays
         decomposing from where I lay with them.

Listen to the story of a wise man's challenge
With his king who was afraid of any tiny change

In the realm of stupidity that its king had become old
Grew a young lad who had nothing but to be bold

People kept talking about him and his likely fate
To find his head one day the sharp blade's mate

To make a deep change the lad left his clan
A young boy dreaming of tomorrow with a smart plan

Well-learn'd boy 'bout the dislocated bones
Gained the name of a doctor among all the crowns

Life's nature awaiting the right time helped him
The way a shrub grows under the mellow sun's beam

One day when the king's daughter fell off a horse
World changed the king's happy life and lovely course

His days turned to night, nights to day
His food tasted tasteless as a pile of hay

Desperate king looked for the boy here and there
The pain of the dislocated pelvis was hard to bear

A week or so the boy was present before the king
To cure his daughter's dislocated pelvis caused by a horse fling

The boy had the right cure for the bones, but
Could be offered under one condition, no fight

The king accepted the condition whatever would be
To set his daughter from that killing pain free

The boy asked for the horse that had caused the pain
And stopped feeding it food for a month plain

No food, no water, the horse became too thin
Having no clue made the king so keen

Summoned the lad hastily again to his court
To explain the wisdom of his actions to his lord

The boy chose silence to words to explain
Asked him to sit and behold the right claim

Brought the king's daughter and set her right
On the thin horse's back and fixed her tight

Mightly tied her legs together under the horse
The moveless girl out of pain shouting froze

Kept feeding the horse plenty of water and food
Making it larger and fatter than it no more could

The bones arranged and the pelvis healed
The boy invited by the king, dearly mealed,

Asked for the favor that he had done to him
By any reward offered by a king would satisfy him

The lad asked for a land accord to skin horse
And the king gave it to him with no force

Cut the horse's skin narrow in a line
To occupy a large land with water fairly fine

Invited his young folks to be his mighty force
Raised, sheep, goats, camels, and a favorite horse

Enraged with the dull tyranny of old kings
Engaged with a bald campaign against many old beings

Erected a strong realm of love and freedom
That was governed by young flexible wisdom.