One star from the innumerable has fallen
But I will not let it die
The beauty and the memory shall not depart
In mine heart will it dine  
The seed has fallen from the sky
And my tears have watered the ground in which it will root
The soil is fertile now
And everything you have planted in me will surely grow

She said "I'm falling in love."

I said "I'm falling apart."

steam-roller log-pipe and blackberry moonshine, granny-apple moonshine--straight-potato-thwack... three firelit mason-jars of lighter-fluid fire, balanced on a railing; our Rumpelstiltskin host at length shouts, "Hide it! Hide the shine!" as headlights dim the moon, "Cops" is mumbled each to each; but no, wait--it's his buddy and his wife, come to sell some ginseng weeks before the violent umbel-berry date, a pretty $50,000 supplement to living, breathing mountain dirt

breathe when steps up the climb redden.
see deep true endlessness forming waves.  
many abjurations will cloud alone,
to never green again.
taste dust sometimes,
enjoy sneezing--
cry.
play the moon;
know selfish worlds darkly,
grow flying genders into acts
sensing beneath ground live stars resting:
freely read to recall ancient ways to poem...
hidden wisdom gone stale speaks past
as poetic forests fall wilting.

when i write a love sonnet
i want it to be about love
and not just ancient alcoves metered to a tailored rhyme
stirring depths of who we aren't.
i want so much to see your hate
transform, in flicks of pleasure
rise to meet entwined
our loving of each other's source of love
seeded even in a waste
remake the vital bloom
display what meaning pours
the vision: this is it
another meaning we can live for
sing for







.

on the way
to return sociology
to the library
i couldn't read the parking signs
so ended blocks away
at a salvation army

the kind with no books for sale
but an elevator shaft
running up, down
behind a drum-set altar
and a stage i didn't buy.

half-expecting 'the war room' ads
posted here as well
i let a stranger lead me to my muse
saying none would mind

Chuck asked me if i 'needed to pray this morning'
before unlocking -
i said, 'every day'  but thought
  not in his way
- i'm just begging him to play.

i read a psalm and kneel to test hypocrisy.
lotus palms connote release from suffering
wellness for all beings

and then  
i am here now
at the keyboard again
playing music i will never forget
even when my chainsaw body stiffens  creaks
the keys a saving home still  though shy
they hammer heart strings
broken, born -again again again.

praeludium, goldberg, well-tempered
minuets conjure Bach
in his stone church
and i cry for lost souls
my own lostness found
though convinced there is no static single 'self'
no 'soul'-rewarded other-life to justify our own
no 'god'- or science-demolished mystery
no metaphysic causa sui to separate
contempus mundi from the mundi...
no tidy verbal 'beyond beyond'
but that of Thales  Sappho  Gautama  
Laotse  Yeshua
Nagarjuna  Shankara
Duns Scotus  Hume  
Blake  Whitman  Darwin
Nietzsche  Du Bois
Tolkien  Stein  Merleau-Ponty  Sagan  Jong

but i will say we've sung the music of the spheres
in host-guest handshakes
stranger  xenophilic tunes
my earthling family hums my heart anew
as i begin  again
to sing my being into fingertips

skyward breath to lid-closed harmonies of hell redeemed
in Peter's vacuuming
request for 'Dixieland'
and Stacy's parting thanks
for 'we three kings'
Ruth's morning-making compliments and invitation back
my wish to share with them the love i feel
- from them, Gaskell's book
from deep within where no words win
authentic ownmost ocean depth of
less contingent love
historically embracing love
of errancy and freedom in our different loves
an atheist in love with vacuums
saucha and the music of human kindness
receiving gifts in giving thanks








.

onus of science, or dream, to all explain;
the inexplicable remains dismissed:
being here or there: exactly arranged
and no one yearns to know of nothingness
between the emptiness of meanings each
with labeled names, boxes tightly-packed--
towers darkly lined, well beyond the reach
of but a few, lost, scattered minds...
xe shouted through hir lungs a greener hue
that we could live beyond the concrete grey
die in love despite our evil ignorance,
our rainbow cutouts crying for the sun
  --posthumous teleologies begun
  in kinder dreamers, earthly songs enhanced.