(An Oath wrtitten during the Dawn Meditation)

Aiwaz! Confirm my troth with thee ! my will inspire
With secret ***** of subtle, free, creating Fire!
Mould thou my very flesh as Thine, renew my birth
In childhood merry as divine, enchenated earth!
Dissolve my rapture in Thine own, a sacred slaugther
Whereby to capture and atone the soul of water!
Fill thou my mind with gleaming Thought intense and rare
To One refined, outflung to naught, the Word of Air!
Most, bridal bound, my quintessentil Form thus freeing
From self, be found one Selfhood blent in Spirit Being.

From time to time, lifting his eyes, he sees
The soft blue starlight through the one small window,
The moon above black trees, and clouds, and Venus,--
And turns to write . . .  The clock, behind ticks softly.

It is so long, indeed, since I have written,--
Two years, almost, your last is turning yellow,--
That these first words I write seem cold and strange.
Are you the man I knew, or have you altered?
Altered, of course--just as I too have altered--
And whether towards each other, or more apart,
We cannot say . . .  I've just re-read your letter--
Not through forgetfulness, but more for pleasure--

Pondering much on all you say in it
Of mystic consciousness--divine conversion--
The sense of oneness with the infinite,--
Faith in the world, its beauty, and its purpose . . .
Well, you believe one must have faith, in some sort,
If one's to talk through this dark world contented.
But is the world so dark?  Or is it rather
Our own brute minds,--in which we hurry, trembling,
Through streets as yet unlighted?  This, I think.

You have been always, let me say, "romantic,"--
Eager for color, for beauty, soon discontented
With a world of dust and stones and flesh too ailing:
Even before the question grew to problem
And drove you bickering into metaphysics,
You met on lower planes the same great dragon,
Seeking release, some fleeting satisfaction,
In strange aesthetics . . .  You tried, as I remember,
One after one, strange cults, and some, too, morbid,
The cruder first, more violent sensations,
Gorgeously carnal things, conceived and acted
With splendid animal thirst . . .  Then, by degrees,--
Savoring all more delicate gradations

In all that hue and tone may play on flesh,
Or thought on brain,--you passed, if I may say so,
From red and scarlet through morbid greens to mauve.
Let us regard ourselves, you used to say,
As instruments of music, whereon our lives
Will play as we desire: and let us yield
These subtle bodies and subtler brains and nerves
To all experience plays . . . And so you went
From subtle tune to subtler, each heard once,
Twice or thrice at the most, tiring of each;
And closing one by one your doors, drew in
Slowly, through darkening labyrinths of feeling,
Towards the central chamber . . .  Which now you've reached.

What, then's, the secret of this ultimate chamber--
Or innermost, rather?  If I see it clearly
It is the last, and cunningest, resort
Of one who has found this world of dust and flesh,--
This world of lamentations, death, injustice,
Sickness, humiliation, slow defeat,
Bareness, and ugliness, and iteration,--
Too meaningless; or, if it has a meaning,
Too tiresomely insistent on one meaning:

Futility . . .  This world, I hear you saying,--
With lifted chin, and arm in outflung gesture,
Coldly imperious,--this transient world,
What has it then to give, if not containing
Deep hints of nobler worlds?  We know its beauties,--
Momentary and trivial for the most part,
Perceived through flesh, passing like flesh away,--
And know how much outweighed they are by darkness.
We are like searchers in a house of darkness,
A house of dust; we creep with little lanterns,
Throwing our tremulous arcs of light at random,
Now here, now there, seeing a plane, an angle,
An edge, a curve, a wall, a broken stairway
Leading to who knows what; but never seeing
The whole at once . . .  We ***** our way a little,
And then grow tired.  No matter what we touch,
Dust is the answer--dust: dust everywhere.
If this were all--what were the use, you ask?
But this is not: for why should we be seeking,
Why should we bring this need to seek for beauty,
To lift our minds, if there were only dust?
This is the central chamber you have come to:
Turning your back to the world, until you came
To this deep room, and looked through rose-stained windows,
And saw the hues of the world so sweetly changed.

Well, in a measure, so only do we all.
I am not sure that you can be refuted.
At the very last we all put faith in something,--
You in this ghost that animates your world,
This ethical ghost,--and I, you'll say, in reason,--
Or sensuous beauty,--or in my secret self . . .
Though as for that you put your faith in these,
As much as I do--and then, forsaking reason,--
Ascending, you would say, to intuition,--
You predicate this ghost of yours, as well.
Of course, you might have argued,--and you should have,--
That no such deep appearance of design
Could shape our world without entailing purpose:
For can design exist without a purpose?
Without conceiving mind? . . .  We are like children
Who find, upon the sands, beside a sea,
Strange patterns drawn,--circles, arcs, ellipses,
Moulded in sand . . .  Who put them there, we wonder?

Did someone draw them here before we came?
Or was it just the sea?--We pore upon them,
But find no answer--only suppositions.
And if these perfect shapes are evidence
Of immanent mind, it is but circumstantial:
We never come upon him at his work,
He never troubles us.  He stands aloof--
Well, if he stands at all: is not concerned
With what we are or do.  You, if you like,
May think he broods upon us, loves us, hates us,
Conceives some purpose of us.  In so doing
You see, without much reason, will in law.
I am content to say, 'this world is ordered,
Happily so for us, by accident:
We go our ways untroubled save by laws
Of natural things.'  Who makes the more assumption?

If we were wise--which God knows we are not--
(Notice I call on God!) we'd plumb this riddle
Not in the world we see, but in ourselves.
These brains of ours--these delicate spinal clusters--
Have limits: why not learn them, learn their cravings?
Which of the two minds, yours or mine, is sound?
Yours, which scorned the world that gave it freedom,
Until you managed to see that world as omen,--
Or mine, which likes the world, takes all for granted,
Sorrow as much as joy, and death as life?--
You lean on dreams, and take more credit for it.
I stand alone . . .  Well, I take credit, too.
You find your pleasure in being at one with all things--
Fusing in lambent dream, rising and falling
As all things rise and fall . . .  I do that too--
With reservations.  I find more varied pleasure
In understanding: and so find beauty even
In this strange dream of yours you call the truth.

Well, I have bored you.  And it's growing late.
For household news--what have you heard, I wonder?
You must have heard that Paul was dead, by this time--
Of spinal cancer.  Nothing could be done--
We found it out too late.  His death has changed me,
Deflected much of me that lived as he lived,
Saddened me, slowed me down.  Such things will happen,
Life is composed of them; and it seems wisdom
To see them clearly, meditate upon them,
And understand what things flow out of them.
Otherwise, all goes on here much as always.
Why won't you come and see us, in the spring,
And bring old times with you?--If you could see me
Sitting here by the window, watching Venus
Go down behind my neighbor's poplar branches,--
Just where you used to sit,--I'm sure you'd come.
This year, they say, the springtime will be early.

My father once told me
he wouldn’t hold it against me if
I were to fall in love
with a woman

And I asked him how he’s so sure
it’s going to happen to me
He looked me straight in the eye,
stopped peeling my apples
and pointed at me with his knife,
“Duks, it’s because you’re me.”

And that terrified me to no end.
Not even because he looked
ready to stab me
but because I didn’t want
to be like my father

Yet here I am
seven years later
following every little footprint
he left for me in the sand
because he may be a lying,
cheating, fickle-minded swine
— but he is a good man
and he is half of me

And this half of me
left me a breadcrumb trail
leading to the part of myself
I will offer to you

He once told me
to never let someone you love
walk out the door angry
and I met this girl
(because there’s always a girl)
who walks in the room
and plants sunflowers in fields
of goosebump-riddled skin and waters them
with the tears of boys who think
their shark-grins and googly eyes
would make up for their
inability to hide their ****** during her shows
and they still have the audacity to think
their half-assed existence
would be good enough for her

This girl —

She picks the best and brightest
sunflowers and hands them to me
wrapped in a peach-colored smile
on the days the sun doesn’t shine for me
and even after the longest days,
I’d tiptoe through her field
until she hugs me goodbye and sends me off
with petals tangled in my hair
and pollen clinging to my fingertips

She turns me into a haven
for bees and hummingbirds alike.

My father once told me
I was named after a revolutionary
and that if I were to love another,
I would have to raise my banners high
and shout over the cries of the crowd
I would have to prove
I am worthy
of my namesake — I am the fulfillment
of the prophecy left shattered
by a hail of bullets

Dad, I’ll tell you now,
I won’t be starting any wars
for this girl — I won’t be
risking my life to save hers

She’ll be at the battlefront
already going head-to-head
with the pigs in blue while she’s red in the face
and she won’t have a problem
if you shove her against the barricades
and blast her with the water cannons
but no god will save you
if you so much as touch her eyebrows

Dad, if you’re looking for revolutionary,
I’ve found it
in the way she says my name
when we’re standing on the cusp of change
and just about ready
to claim justice
from those who so gleefully
took it from us

My father once told me
that I should appreciate classical music more
when we watched an orchestra play in the mall
and the musicians that poured their hearts
into their craft

At the time, I didn’t see the appeal
of music without words
And I wish you could see me now, dad,
because I finally appreciate
the little things that I never noticed before —
like how Botticelli’s Birth of Venus
is just a painting
until you tell her you never knew
she was Botticelli’s muse
(because who the **** looks like that
without being mistaken for a goddess
meant to be immortalized through art and poetry?)
like how poetry is only poetry
if you take the mundane
and turn it into something grandiose —
a pretentious way of saying
you have to be pretentious —
but honey, you already do this
well enough on your own
(so are you really the Muse
or the Poet?)
like how love isn’t always trembling —
sometimes it’s just staying still.
Root me into place
and tell me there can be nobody else
and I’ll tell you, dearest,
there hasn’t been anyone else
since I found out you want to be a teacher
since I held your hand in prayer
and simultaneously turned into a devout Catholic
since I told you promises are meant to be broken,
but not mine —
never mine.

Dad, it takes the right person
to show me what’s there to love
in the most minute of things.

My father once told me
to love with everything I am
till I have nothing left
“To hell with it!” he’d say.

Until now, I still take the last
slice of graham cake on Christmas Eve
even when I’ve taken more than I can stomach
I still give away
the stuffed animals that are broken and tattered
because I don’t want to be left with
things I no longer find the beauty in
I still find myself in relationships
where I have one foot out the door
because I know the exact route
to the fire exit and I’d only planned
to stay until intermission

But then, there’s you —
you take from me
only what you know I can give.
Without even noticing, I’ve given you
more than what I thought I had in me.

If I could, I’d tie a string
around the sun and carry it around
with me like a balloon
so when I come home,
your sunflowers would grow and by then
I’d have picked the ones that bloomed
on my way back to you

If I could take you to the moon,
I’d build a rocketship that uses my words
for fuel so, honey, you’ll never have to worry
about making it back home
I can take you to the Milky Way
amusement park and make
a merry-go-round of the planets
and I’d still have enough words for you
to keep as souvenirs when you land back home

Honey, I’ll never run out
of things to give you
and I take my time savoring what I have
because I know it’ll take me three times
asking you if you want the last piece
for you to try and take it from me
without me noticing
(You always fail.)

Dad, I am the end of your trail.
Let me tell you now
that you have led me to my death —
indeed, I am doomed!

Here lies the body
that was once your selfish daughter!

Now, father, watch her lay
sunflowers on my grave:

Dearest —
here rises the body
of who’ll love you
with all the tremble it took to get to you
with all the honey still sticky
and seeping into the pages
with all the faith one could afford
to give with arms outflung

Dearest —
here is when I tell you
there are no accidents.
You were meant to find me
in this exact spot.
Now, come take me home
and root me into place.


//A.Z.//

white noise of satin murmurs out the mouth of a cave
commotion of leaves from future prosperity
slightly groggy rapids run out of gradient

constellations
quick talking personalities echo out of range
would devoutly expose not long gone gods
as a couple of trout
swirl one cool consciousness, under the steambed
purple dye placid predawn violet arises out of darkness
a brief moment slips over surface level
nudging cedars

sole icy blast bounds over the cliff
arms outflung with all the danger
onto sand
then stepping into a kind of stoop
as earth conjures jagged brink
chronology of the continent, crisp cuff
old corrosive tides
chipped lines

bones of oak are swallowed by gold
dust’n’feather shift in pollen soft sand
under inevitable sunrise

planetary geography and fragrance of history
oceanic compassion embedded in dna

the current held a tune coasting by
transporting possibility
a sigh to slender side
who sits a fragment of its imagination

a mood, a body
rises all powerful arms
tinted with contradistinct textures

polar bear primes
full sized
squints scowls scratches
sticks out its tongue
exalted tongue
bright strokes through the water

in the tiny cove there swims a tiny fish
water clear reflecting sky
lapping over small shells
steady cleansing sun-bleached driftwood
home to tiny *****
trailing over seaweed
on their way to cooler shadows
sky smiles down
finding sparkling reflect in the mica fragments
sifting through the scattered fronds
of over arching palms
day shimmers on the water
in my memory
gold and brilliant and casting my smiles
in shades of warmer blue
my outflung hand
burning sweetly in the suns fiery kiss
I was there
I dreamed
I am still there in
memory