Holidaze Poem Swap

I traded for this poem in a poem swap arranged by Alexandra Naughton! Happy Holidays!

Haiku by Matt Margo

i am so sorry
thank you for forgiving me
and being my friend

To be, or not to be: the world's a stage

To be, or not to be: the world's a stage
with the fume of sighs. Love is not love
told by an idiot. O brave new world:
now is the winter full of sound and fury!

To sleep: perchance to dream a summer's day
where love is lost. If music be the food
of true minds then let slip the dogs of war
unto the breach! But never doubt I love

to entertain the time with discontent.
Good night! Out, out! Thou hast not loved
my mistress' eyes! Love is a smoke raised
by any other name—that is the question.

Where love is great no traveler returns
to die before all sins are remembered.

I love what I am not. I'm not the ocean

I love what I am not. I'm not the ocean
under a thundering cloud, not the moon
whirling in a narrow ecliptic. I'm not
the righteous man praying myriad times

to a terrific personality. I love what I
may never be. I may not be the cypress
tree waiting for Sunrise, I may not be
the perfect man who doesn't trade in sin.

The awful trials of being have confused
me, left me disoriented in the madness
of a decadent and suffering tradition.

Yet I wish to be saved like the acorn
resting in the soil, waiting until spring
to breach the surface finally liberated.

I write to bring the lazy clouds within

I write to bring the lazy clouds within

the reach of tongues, to give the tall trees

breath, to reveal the mystery of a bayou

or gulf extending quietly to the ocean.

I write to give the heavens a vehicle

for their glory, to bring the mountain down

to the height of a child, to represent

the infinite love that I can't understand.

I chant these high things despite the trials

man has always known, with the knowledge

every utterance will be an awful failure.

But how am I to spend the oblivious days

enamored with the library of existence

if not by giving voice to the unseen?

Clear and cold, the winter night

Clear and cold, the winter night
obscured the moon. A violet wine
poured through the trees like words
or senseless phrases. The long night

chased the devils out of my sleep
and withered the trees. These words
disappeared as quickly as the wine
that kept me warm. She was asleep

in the turning spectacle of sky.
The clouds moved as the Sun rose
and lazy winter trees stood still.

Clear and cold, the winter sky
revealed a golden planet rising
between tall trees standing still.

The taste of fruit, the taste of water

The taste of fruit, the taste of water,
something to make me feel better.
The art and words I cannot master
despite the years of study, after
the myriad libraries I have entered.
She tells me I should come back later

just to see her. Then when it's later
I can't remember the taste of water
or the way the golden light enters
her room like a liquid. She's better
than whatever pleasure I knew after
my first love. I have yet to master

memories, I have yet to master
form and color. It's getting later
in the evening, a little bit after
nine. Her skin is covered with water,
she showers so she'll feel better
than earlier. She sleeps to enter

dreams, I dream that I have entered
her the way the violinist masters
strings and sound. I'm feeling better
now that I've put it off until later,
now that I've cleansed her with water.
But misfortune confounds us after

making love, I'm confused after
she sits quietly listening. I enter
rooms like air or light, I'm water
flowing through a stanza, mastered
poesy recited. Yet now or later
she reveals herself as the better

writer, better thinker, better
sleeping creature. I am after
knowledge and faith, but the later
it gets I don't know which enters
and which exits. She is the master
of the terrible taste of water,

I'm no better even when I enter
communion with her as my master,
when later I still taste the water.

The labyrinth is lost. The incessant mirror

The labyrinth is lost. The incessant mirror
reflects a turquoise sky that was created
by no one. You are the indefinite dream
beyond perception, unrevealed by the suns
of imagination. The unknowable stars
revolve as an elaborate, mysterious puzzle

we cannot solve. The labyrinthine puzzle
of love presents me with a hall of mirrors
that fills the infinite space between stars.
Who is the person that at once created
earth and fire, wind and rain, golden suns
and empty moons? I'm lost within a dream

of repeated vigils. You won't find the dream
in utterances of truth, nor in the puzzles
of mystics. The labyrinth is a purple sun
obscured by a veil, or the eternal mirror
of an ocean holding heaven. I've created
nothing, the bright moon is a sleeping star

of fate. The labyrinth is a lonely star,
or the poetic interpretation of a dream
following a modern program. You create
seasons, months, calendars, lunar puzzles
that occult the faithful servant's mirror.
Take a look at the dazzling, idle Sun

revealing lovers and poets—the ruined Sun
that rules the sky, removes the other stars
and seems to have no ending. In the mirror
of a friend I apprehend the ancient dreams
of priests and prophets enamored by puzzles
or muttering mantra. But who has created

these words? Whose waiting face created
a verse that eclipses the terrible sun?
Whose prayer saves the oblivious puzzle
of time? Whose eyes resemble endless stars
repeated in the impressions of a dream?
The labyrinth is lost in restless mirrors

created underneath the wandering stars,
but suns disclose the incessant dreams
we puzzle over holding up the mirror.

10,000 notes of vainglorious spilled ink

10,000 notes of vainglorious spilled ink
theorizing about alternative literature:
another meme that's Robert Frost-esque
in Helvetica font. I found my true love
in the archive of a blog between "I hate you"
and another juvenile stupid love poem.

But wait! I found another stupid love poem
in my GChat, in the awful spilled ink
of an email conversation. She said, "I hate you
and the way you write, you're literature
I don't care about." That's when true love
revealed itself as a Walt Whitman-esque

song about mad bodies. The fluxus-esque
shares fill out my feed, stupid love poems
show me what a kid thinks of true love
with the tattoo on her arm. The spilled ink
of a digital artist, experimental literature
shared on the Internet, another "I hate you"

in a comment thread. I thought I hated you
before I read your blog of cummings-esque
nonsense, before the modern literature
became so underwhelming. Stupid love poems
sustain me, I remember the spilled ink
of Yeats or Petrarch, the pure, true love

of prophets singing aubades. My true love
is not love, but the marriage of hate
with common tags. There isn't even ink
in all these shares, Emily Dickinson-esque
poems lie forgotten. A stupid love poem
is hidden in the extant literature

just waiting for a remix, the literature
before this technology. Yet, my true love
yearns for a simple and pure love poem
that reaches far beyond any "I hate you."
O no! Let me not write a net art-esque
diatribe about my brand! Let the spilled ink

of literature forget I said I hated you,
disclosing my true faith in a flarf-esque
love poem that's much more than spilled ink.

I must not be afraid

I must not be afraid
of death and bane. She is
wearing so many rapiers
that play. I'm not afraid

of death—this bane governs
then saves my life. She is
a play that I'm not afraid
to hear. I meet a deity

that saves my life—she's
the master running mad
who hears another deity
dwell in its musings. I

am a master running mad
that has awakened. She
dwells in a musing that I
must not be afraid of.

The orange Sun is obscured by dense clouds

The orange Sun is obscured by dense clouds
bringing a sleep of death. What dreams may come
are foretold by the prophets who have sought
to entertain the time with thoughts of love.

For in that sleep of death what dreams my come
are scattered bits of rhyme. The poet seeks
to entertain the time with thoughts of love,
but is dismayed by vain hope and sadness.

Are scattered bits of rhyme that poets seek
the omens of an ancient imagined calendar?
For the dismay of vain hope and sadness
brings shame to the heavens which delight

in omens. Yet the ancient imagined calendar
returns eternally to those glorious trials
of shame, and the heavens rehearse delight
as the orange Sun is obscured by the clouds.

I looked beyond the glassy fever

I looked beyond the glassy fever
and awful mirror into the frail
burnt offering. She moved over
the soiled earth like a soft veil

of dark clouds imbued with disease.
I looked beyond the ancient healer
to find the deep, terrible crease
of time. She moved like an unreal

prophet, the prayer we all suffer
despite tradition. I am impure
and have no scripture to offer
that might present a final cure.

I told her that I couldn't sleep

I told her that I couldn't sleep

Without her there. Her auburn hair,

The sound of dreams amongst a deep

Mystery. She had a pair

Of eyes, of ears, of hands, of breasts,

Of thoughts that didn't know rest.

I told her that I couldn't keep

My heart for her. She didn't care

If I believed enough to take a leap

Of faith. She had to share

Her weariness as if the western

Sky was all that we had left.

What may be known is plain to them

What may be known is plain to them
and rational creatures cannot worship
the laws of the first. The last apostle
begins to show the works he has made,

and even idolatry without excuse
must have been lost. All, more or less,
do hold the truth till all false traces
of the gospel favor God. These show

that men have the most absurd idolatry,
and facts cannot be denied. Gentiles
are left without excuse, for whatever

may be pretended degrades themselves
by abominable deeds. Invisible power is
manifest in them because he shows it.

The poet sat and counted up the lines

The poet sat and counted up the lines
of the song despite a terrible mania;
he thought about the quatrain as a shrine
where the bodhi tree is doing yoga.

The subtle way the tired Sun shines
between the gross branches of a sutra
reminded him of her clothes: the refined
tapestries that seemed from another era.

By the time he reached the number nine
he felt the heft of modernity that Kafka
knew, then battled the existential rhymes
and thundered into a confusing volta.

But this form is a strange web of time
and space, and the ever-elusive aura
is not something that we easily find
in the concrete systems of a stanza.

I am what touches

I am what touches

the land, what smells

the oceans and tastes

heaven. I'm what hears

what we have seen,

or how the birds see

overseas. I've touched

rivers and I've heard

trees that can smell

Sunlight. I taste

God like flowers taste

soft rain. I am seeing

the ground that smells

rich. I have touched

her limits and I hear

the breath I heard

before I could taste

anything. She touches

me now that I see

how divinity feels.

Eventually, I will turn to dust

Eventually, I will turn to dust,

leaves will dissolve, bindings rust,

and words will not look the same.

Throughout the course of awful time

my grammar will not fall in line,

and scientists won't know my name.

Despite my simple turning pages

no one will remember the ages

when I had a legitimate claim.

Before the valley of oblivion

I'll apprehend the dull horizon

that wanders toward a timid flame.

Yet, the mysteries of eternity

have made confusion very plain.

At first, we know the very road

At first, we know the very road
that winds toward the quiet mountain;
the ribbon of footprints, the broad
blue sky that no thought can contain.

And then, we know the silent clothing
stirring underneath the fountains;
the heaven that abstractly glows
beyond the limits land maintains.

At last, we know the cloud floating
above what we have known for certain;
the unsure pathway, the bulky coat
that falls over her like a curtain.

Finally, we are pilgrims who know
that the way must remain uncertain.

She's standing there. Her face is upside-down

She's standing there. Her face is upside-down

And a couple rocks are scattered in the water.

It's black and white. Her feet are in the sand

That holds the memories of land. She's looking

Through the doors of my mind and down into

My heart in ways I can't explain. Her dress

Is loose and she hides behind another veil.

She's terse around the waist and she's balanced

Delicately on two legs. She's standing there.

The earth knows her toes, the ocean knows

The craggy cliffs, and the air knows her face.

I'm wondering what is lost when an image

Captures her, resolves her to a few colors,

And selects only a few things to frame.

It was your lovely eye

It was your lovely eye
that bound me. The halls
of tears became the doors
to woe. The Sun's passage
seemed to be the way
of misfortune. My heart
was clear, and my heart's
suffering began with eyes
of pity. I went on my way
securely through the halls
and fearless passages.
Love went through doors,
and I was caught in halls
whose rays turn the eye.

Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon

Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon
who is too bold. I never felt a wound
more fair than she, her soft eye discourses
with all the admired beauties of Verona.

Two of the fairest stars in all of heaven
are pale with grief. That she knew she were
the twinkle of the spheres, another word
in a letter. She speaks, yet she says nothing

that birds would sing. The business disclosed
in the language of the walls: it is my love
that will answer it. She leans her cheek

upon the monologue, and none but fools
do wear the daylight as a lamp. Her eyes
shame the stars that break through the window.

Who are you again? How am I to know

Who are you again? How am I to know

If you're my sister or brother? Which sign

Should I believe? Which mysterious witness

Harbors the long-forgotten evidence?

How am I supposed to know if it's you?

Perhaps you are my father? Or my son?

What is it that these antecedents refer

To essentially? And who are you again?

I don't believe I know you, but these eyes

Are known to play games and to persuade

Me into accepting facts like opinions.

But am I to trust my own understanding

Or to follow the person beyond the names,

Who has dared to make my paths straight?

I could not deal but with the cruel hand

I could not deal but with the cruel hand

That ruled me. A feeling of strangeness ran

Down my fingers and between thin strands

Of falling hair when a right-handed woman

Performed actions independent of the plan.

She could not deal with the blessed land

Governed by disease. A willing fate and

Wit oriented the limb and gave commands,

Such as rubbing the eyes, discerning bands

Of light or wiping the face. She couldn't expand

Upon it further, especially with the grand

Sensations coursing through both hands.

For when this mysterious affliction began

It appeared to take on a mind of its own.

He left the settlement to the mercy of

He left the settlement to the mercy of

The cataclysmic weather. Another juror

Fabricated a history of amusements

And distractions for neglected workers.

He left the territory to the wrath of

Religion and the whim of a capricious

Politician. Another relic legitimated

A doctrinal belief for hallowed citizens.

The imminent theme moved in spite of

Nothing, while the studied astronomer

Prepared a prophecy for the sovereign.

The instruments themselves witnessed

An article of faith professed, the principle

He took with him when he abandoned this.

Whose rays reveal a foundation of knowledge

Whose rays reveal a foundation of knowledge

A canopy of stars or a sky stretched out

Like a tent from horizon to horizon

Whose light gives object to the reaching flowers

Tremendous trees, proud plants, terrible storms

Seeking the new in the practiced old

Whose triune project is beyond believing

Or in a mysterious realm where the view

Is religious disbelief in some method

Whose glorious policy extends in language

Over oceans, meeting every shore with life

Reflected on the surface of the water

Whose divine understanding allows clouds

To leave teachings on the tender grass

Vanishing in the distance she is revealed

Vanishing in the distance she is revealed

Whose architecture is littered with symbols

Obscured by the always-changing weather

Whose name resounds in the remembered halls

Of prayer or the forgotten doors of worship

That welcome the wanderers on pilgrimage

Whose music bathes in pentagonal windows

Where warm Sunlight pours across her body

Between her calligraphic breasts and thighs

Whose mysteries unfold in narrow pathways

And labyrinthine maps of foolish history

Whose politics acknowledge metaphysics

Yet declare the heavens a glorious god

Proclaiming the honor of her wise hand

He's laying in the bed. She's standing in

After Munch's "Death of Marat"

He's laying in the bed. She's standing in

the space between him and the table where

various spheres lie. Is it just an illusion

of blood and lust? A confused dark gesture

in the contour of an expressed nightmare?

She sees herself: her golden hair turns red

like the insides of a body. The man swims

in the obscure psychology of imagined

boundaries. Suggestions in the intimate

shadows render their violent appetites

on linens, cover them in the warm life

of terrible intercourse with the beloved.

But who is to say if the confessed scream

reveals anything beyond what we dream?

The sound was this overwhelmed liturgy

The sound was this overwhelmed liturgy

Of light filtered through the open windows,

Percussive rain and birds arranging themselves

In the wide branches of the old pin oak.

The sight was this disoriented library

Of music moving across the open threshold

Of the mind, disorganizing new grammars

In the leaves of an unreal old book.

The very nature of her was confusing

Despite illumined experience, despite belief,

Sure testimony and deliberate science.

But the sound didn't move without reason,

Nor the sight disclose what is unknown

Without inspiring more of this nonsense.

I went to the bayou to breathe in the Sunrise

I went to the bayou to breathe in the Sunrise,

To observe the wading of herons and egrets,

To study the weather, the way that the clouds fly

Into the horizon without any regrets.

I went to the edge of the water to listen

To bugs and to birds and the whispers of freedom,

To myth as it was in the very beginning:

Obscure and mysteriously recollected.

The sky seemed to be the dull color of grasses,

The water reflected the turning of heaven,

The golden, enlightened Sunrays had gone past me;

This threshold of knowledge and burden of reason

Determine my seeing, but hopefully—at last—

I'll know the oblivious morning's soft breathing.

The still surface of the muddy water

The still surface of the muddy water

Lies at the obscured root of the flower.

I squint when I am looking at the picture

Of her, the one where she's bending over

The fire, her clothes are loose and disordered.

The curve of heaven knows me as a lover

Of weather that moves in uneven measures,

Of the iridescent undulating clouds

That wander over the rolling pasture.

At the root of the flower is the mover

Of doctrine in soft rain, is the teacher

Bringing knowledge about the beloved.

The moving limit of the muddy water

Hides in the occult history of flowers.

This moving surface of reflected water

This moving surface of reflected water,

The vaulted sky slowly revealing something

That's very mysterious. This old picture

Of her in tight blue jeans, the boxes of things

Forgotten or remembered in an order

Prescribed years ago. This wandering nothing

Without name nor figure, the simple measure

Of silence. This revelation of anything

Thunders mercilessly across the pastures

Of the mind, obscures the labyrinthine things,

Obfuscates the blossom. This patient teacher

Created in the image of everything

Confounds me, but I believe there's something

More than the unclear surface of the water.

To save me from the danger that may come

To save me from the danger that may come,
I hide myself within you. When you go
from gulf to cloud, you don't even know
the many kings who've fallen. Then some
horrid hell assails you, rises up from
the depths of the mind; vile things slowly
take your hands, the passionate Sun glows
on the lip of the horizon. You're the sum
of my long weary life, and I can't touch
you without trembling. I love you so much,
but are you willing to lay the ripe plum
before me? As the strange news rushes
about us, I breathe humbly and I trust
that, like the great morning, you'll come.

In sooth, I know not why I am so sad

In sooth, I know not why I am so sad:
the Sun has risen, the birds sing songs,
the tide washes over the white shells
to lick the knees of tall cypress trees.

Soft clouds populate the tired skies
with careful grammar, or complete thoughts
in the guise of meaningful sentences,
while verses remind me of a lost love.

But how I caught it, I am yet to learn;
how the tumult of loose feeling sways
the vessel of my being under stars

so white! And how the tossing of a sail
has wrecked my ship upon the rocks! But
I know not where this tempest was born.

You're beyond reality, unbelievably imagined

You're beyond reality, unbelievably imagined,

you're without sense, you evade the scholars

with humble arguments, you serve objections

to then annihilate what is but measured.

You're immaterial, you're without an equal,

you're within the triune identity of God

so thus enlightened in a pure nonsense

that's beyond reality. You're impossibly realized

in the incredible fictions of the classical

heroes, priests, prophets, teachers, kings of kings

and artists conjuring a foreseen son of man.

But when the charlatan's task is completed,

I remain unconvinced of your sovereignty

despite the overwhelming evidence.

You're transformed into something beautiful

You're transformed into something beautiful

before our eyes, you're transformed into stars

revolving in a truly mysterious language,

indecipherable in the spectacle of heaven.

You're transformed into arrangements of figures

in composition, you're transformed into music

resounding with a holy, justified belief,

inexpressible in any scattered verses.

You transcend our ideals and understand

the trials of love we know, the vain play

of words muttered before your utter brilliance.

But, though you shift with the dutiful seasons

and escape our most careful apprehension,

there remains something further to be revealed.

My beautiful treasure whom I adore

My beautiful treasure whom I adore,

the half-dressed woman standing at the door

and breathing in the air lit by the Sun.

The creature whom I love, the only one

that quenches my overwhelming thirst.

The love before whom there is no first,

the body that can't hope to be found

in the churning clouds nor on the ground.

My beautiful treasure whom I devote

myself to, whom the historians wrote

into a system with repeated movements.

My glorious secret whom in a moment

obliterates my pitiful sufferings,

reveals herself, opens her mouth, and sings.

You aren't real and that's why I believe

You aren't real and that's why I believe.

You wander like the air between the leaves

or light that plays on the revealed bayou.

I know of nothing other than you.

I have observed a plethora of things,

the shells a rolling tide faithfully brings,

yet I have found no definitive proof.

You are somewhere beyond the mindful roof

of the world, beyond the collected data

or theorems on the behavior of matter.

You're not something my mind can wrap around,

a text, despite my learning, I have found

an incomprehensible scribble. But I leap

into your void to dream of infinite sleep.

You're this maze of rooms I'm wandering

You're this maze of rooms I'm wandering,

a dozen houses in an illumined order,

the dancing stars that symbolize something—

no matter. You're this maze of wild meaning

in various graphemes, an articulated spirit

accompanied by elaborate hand motions.

You're whatever I've forgotten of the past

in a flash of delicious thunder. You are

unbound by refrains and inexpressible

in the obsure languages of antiquity,

or the confused libraries of oblivion.

But the halls and doors that I worship

resound with the music of many prayers

wherein I find a home amongst mysteries.

There is no translation for this content

There is no translation for this content.
There is no word to represent the feeling
that I get when I am with my beloved.
There is no figure that can hope to express
the mystery that I have found within her
movement among the secrets of the trees.
There is no language that can apprehend
her ridiculous grammar between the pages
of a forgotten illumined manuscript.
There is no cycle of sonnets that exhausts
the love I feel between the breaths I take,
or in the rolling fields of fragrant flowers.
But despite these inadequate artifacts,
nothing seems more present than her being.

But whether she governs them or turns away

But whether she governs them or turns away,
there is no longer any love that blazes
like a treasure without walls. She may
shine the rays of her eyes upon the ways
that guide us; she may create before you
obscure thoughts of love and words that move

the halls and doors of time and space. You
may wonder and wander about her designs,
about the rays her lovely eyes have seen.
But she's the Sun among this heavenly time
that descends and clothes the world spent
unknown, and she adorns with banishment.

Keep it a secret, keep it behind the veil

Keep it a secret, keep it behind the veil
of clouds that hide the ecstatic morning,
keep it under wraps and obfuscated by
the nonsense of grammar. Keep it a secret
before your lord, before the traditions
of your oblivious ancestors, before your
foreign language on a beautiful tongue.
Keep it a confused succession of words
and meanings, keep it in a book of hearts
or the books of philosophy. Keep it in
an obscure koan that a monk is meditating
on beneath the shade of the broad tree.
Leave it not forgotten, but remember it
in everything that you are glad to see.

You're the cycle above and about me

You're the cycle above and about me.
You're the doctrine that is my sustenance.
You're the uneven end-stopped measures.
You're what I remain oblivious to.
You're the lord of my confusing feeling.
You're the hours that pass intoxicated.
You're the reality that I'm terrified of.
You're a vision that I can't comprehend.
You're the judge of my pathetic heart.
You're the oblivion that's beyond death.
You're the ruler who holds me captive.
You're a silence that isn't listening.
When I awake in an astonished madness
you're spinning endlessly around me.

You're rolling land that stretches to the gulf

You're rolling land that stretches to the gulf.
You're mountains, valleys, the fan of a delta
that meets the infinite and nameless ocean.
You're the clouds that float above the horizon
and change their shape. You're the sentences
that blend together in the spoken narratives
of blind poets. You're the confused painting
of writers, the confounded verse of an artist
who remains misunderstood. You're the image
suggested by the pigment on the canvas.
You're the idol that my eyes have reassembled
from the chaos of strokes in composition.

But as soon as the last artifact is finished,

you reveal yourself as something different.

The sweet mouth that invites you to taste

The sweet mouth that invites you to taste
the glory of the Sun, the interpretation
of a mystical scripture from long ago
in a delicately rendered translation;

the honeyed mouth inspiring you to sing
the majesty of deities, the situation
of the light on the broad vault of heaven
peopled by a fragrant panoply of stars;

the cloying mouth that lures you to see
the argument of paradise, the figure
of speech or figure of thought that knows
the personal identity of the beloved;

but the delicious secrets of divinity
remain eclipsed by an inadequate word.

The shadows seen

The shadows seen
wander the eye
of the lazy green
trees. Her alchemy
slides and rides
the sky to face
the west. I hide
within disgrace
beyond the shine
of gods. My brow
is no longer mine,
she moves me now
without disdain
for heaven's reign.

I show the wear

I show the wear
of my wasted
life, and I bear
the heavy taste
of sighs showing
an old memory.
What is unknown
of this eternity
isn't contained
in words. I find
my echoed brain
uncertain, my mind
unkind, then look
beyond the book.

Among the vaulted heavens or the halls

Among the vaulted heavens or the halls
and doors of tears that we have adored
in the sorrowful library, in the full
vowels of the rich carpet on the floor,
among the whirling night housing a tall
star of freshness, in the fateful store
of angels beyond the flight of seagulls:
for me there is no vessel I can pour
myself into that may receive the swells
of feeling more completely, with more
knowledge of the way that the tides roll,
or the sorrowful night comes to the door.
But the senseless burning stars that fall
will bring my shipwrecked prayers ashore.

The morning light begins to stir the Sun

The morning light begins to stir the Sun
about her crimson dress, and before noon
she reveals herself. I have been stunned
by what she has disclosed, and I am soon
confounded and confused within her funny
brilliance. Like the flowers, I've swooned
in the heat, listened to the water running
down the bayou in an ever-delicate tune.
She's the possible meanings of the pun,
the playing words, the blanket of maroon
that covers me in dusk. I have been shunned
by what she keeps hidden, but I am soon
redeemed and justified: the stars are spun
about me as I reflect on the white Moon.

I seek my native Sun today to light

I seek my native Sun today to light
the path of pilgrimage with a thin candle
that breaks the faded night at dawn.
I orient myself about the bright bulb
that rides the sky in a flicker and flash.
I'm blinded by the overwhelming glare
of white rising quickly, by the glowing,
glinting orb that has left me flustered.
The lamp is raised to define the morning
with the emanation of the revealed rays,
the dismissal of darkness by the shine
of a sovereign that is unlike any star.
But obscurity remains within the bright
beams that constitute this glorious Sun.

These wandering lights begin to invent

These wandering lights begin to invent
a script that contains scattered verses,
labyrinthine propositions, the excellent
exegesis of philosophers, the rehearsed
argument of the artists surrounding me.
These various patterns moving in sight
of the reading eye, between the oak tree
and the colorful iris drinking in light;
these artifacts demonstrate the worth
of that which we desire, what we invoke
in the ridiculous prayer moving forth
from our lips: a word quietly spoken
in still nights and in enlightened days,
that fills the air with trembling praise.

That beyond the sphere of the usual

That beyond the sphere of the usual,
that remaining finally incomprehensible
despite the mutterings of discourse,
that without a discernible reason;
that without a name or a symbol
that represents its form adequately,
that decoded and deciphered poorly
then given an heretical interpretation;
that beyond the sense of sound, beyond
the ideal of beyond, transcending us
in a wholly majestic display of grace
that resists many modes of study.
Thus the spirit inspiring my belief
is the innocent laughter of a child.

My heart is shaped like a flawless lotus

My heart is shaped like a flawless lotus,
a forgotten dream, a confusing illusion
that unfolds in the leaves of the trees,
or a flower that I cannot recognize.

My heart is shaped like a terrible prayer,
a welcome sneeze, a symmetric pattern
revolving discernibly in the heavens,
or a false form that I cannot understand.

But I have no way to see the shapeless
truth of my own being, no way to feel
the perfection in an obscured blossom.

Thus love reminds me that you are inside
my self, dressed in many different guises,
shaped like a goddess that is dancing.

What seems to break from the scarlet morning

What seems to break from the scarlet morning,
whose white seed pierced the clouds and rose
in the heavenly canopy, is the vermillion rose
that blooms because she blooms. The morning

whose artifice is sewn by hand in the rose
and violet hue of flesh, the strange morning
who sends down rain is a sighing morning
without a why. I am like the Sun that's rising

as large as a god, I am like the small hands
that cannot be above me. The clouds of cloth
obscure the spectacle that receives the hands

of the prostrate man. The morning is a cloth
beneath us and the heavens open their hands
to apprehend the pilgrim in tattered clothing.

The sky flows into the house

The sky flows into the house
and over the reflected water.
I am a forgotten old boat
that is filling up with sky.

The purple and blue skies
hold birds above the house,
and breathe about the boat.
I can taste the fresh water

in the air, the soft water
giving color to the skies.
I am a forgotten old boat
moored by a weary house
in serenity.

Who will believe my verse in time to come

Who will believe my verse in time to come
if it were free? I wandered in the deserts
of inconsistent measure, between the tombs
of new troubadours forgetting the parts
that hold the whole together. The wise eye
of the critic finds convention full of grace
and very beautiful. In natural speech lies
the musical pattern that poets have faced
in every remembered era and every age:
no verse is free on the expressive tongue
of the dutiful man. These limitations rage
and tax the sound and sense into a song.
But, be it prose or poetry, in due time
we find that true freedom lies in rhyme.

There is, amongst your light

There is, amongst your light,
one that speaks of the heart
as a kingdom that we find
within ourselves. I'm home

in the golden dawn, I'm home
in the place that the light
enters you. What you find
is finding you in the heart's

bewilderment. In your heart
I will dance my way home,
in your beauty I will find
how to make poems of light
and love.

Before the scattered roses

Before the scattered roses
cover the lovely verse
in novel dress, the garden
breathes in light, and shadows

meditate. Behind a shadow
and a dim lamp, the rose
asks not why the garden
blooms; a muttered verse

discloses secrets, verses
linger in the deep shadows
of a mysterious garden.
But the blossoming rose
doesn't ask why.

The heavy air, and the oppressive cloud

The heavy air, and the oppressive cloud
disclose a distilled doctrine in the torrent
and tempest that assault the curving bayou,
that speak a mysterious language of their own.

The changing colors of the whirling heaven
describe a drama that has been told several
different ways over the wandering centuries,
but somehow always finds a new expression.

Thus the mere aesthetic of a brief dream
confuses both the poet and any thinker
while hinting at an eventual exaltation.

But the loose association of false images
gives the flavor of an unspeakable truth
which has eluded us in what is observed.

The distant curve of heaven starts to blush

The distant curve of heaven starts to blush
behind a veil of clouds, behind the lush
trees and wandering bayous. Under just one
moon the birds awake to the cold and wet
day and spread their wings inside my mouth.

She opens herself up, takes in her mouth
a gasp of air that makes her cheeks blush.
I've grabbed her and begun to taste the wet
corners of her insides. I enter the lush

church between her thighs, sing in the lush
cathedral devotional hymns with my mouth.
The vault of stars has twinkled in the wet
reflection of her eyes, and she blushes
through the intercourse that makes one.

Before religion became the strange color

Before religion became the strange color
of the eleventh hour which we all know
mysteriously reflected on clear water,
it was the motion itself. She moves now
and then among the bright sphere's power
articulating something, and breathing so
slowly she seems like a blossoming flower
or a heavy, undulating thundercloud.
Let my teaching fall like gentle showers
on new grass, let my speech be the proud
plants giving their ear to the very hour
the ridiculous name of god was shown.
But I publish the great name of another,
and ascribe you wide heavens that glow.

There amongst the ruins of a vast fiction

There amongst the ruins of a vast fiction,
the grandiose vault of parallel narratives
holding each star, unveiled by purple clouds
which occult the names of a confusing story;

there about the error of the argument
obscured in foreign texts, forgotten libraries,
and the unclear mirror that reflects itself
in each leaf of the unfolding Pin oak tree;

I'm the silence that is understanding each
of your branches, moving over you like clouds
and falling upon you like a gentle rain.

But your melody comes and goes, changes
as the spectacle depicted in the heavens
reveals a language of remembered art.

I lost the words somewhere between my mouth

I lost the words somewhere between my mouth
and her ear, somewhere between the pillows
of the sofa or the wild sheets on the bed,
and I just can't seem to find any meaning.

I lost the sense of the verse between stars
and enjambments, between end-stopped lines
and concrete depressions, between sensation
and the vainglorious expression of poets.

But the spirit found me lazing in the heat
of summer, sleeping under the turning clouds
that bring a teaching to the tender grass.

This mysterious spirit filled me with air
as if I were a lowly, hollow instrument
that merely needed to be played by gods.

The little prince wanders mysterious dunes

The little prince wanders mysterious dunes
and finds the pilot with flower in hand.
The arbiter and magician inspects runes
and symbols written in the turning sands
for secrets of the end that's coming soon,
or so it's said. The camels wander lands
in search of vibrant pyramids, under moons
that give them calendars by which to plan.
But the pilgrim's hand shakes the poor spoon
as he raises it to his lips, and the grand
Sun rises above him. Wide oblivion looms
below him, but he still does not understand
its labyrinthine halls and doors, the doom
obscured by time's thinly hanging strands.

Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly

Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly,
the canopy of the flowering pin oak,
the undulating clouds in distinct patterns
wandering toward the undefined horizon.

In a field of Sunlight between two pines,
several horses whisper secrets amongst
themselves in a language that I don't know,
but the wading birds somehow understand.

The flies and the mosquitoes swirl about
the summer air making a distinct sound
when they swing like comets by my ears.

But the chicken hawk floats in wide circles
as if it were a luminary looking for home,
while I remain the poet wasting my life.

It does follow a fairly simple pattern

It does follow a fairly simple pattern
for the repetition of a fixed word
in each line. The words occur as end
words in a set order in each line,
but you can think of it as a repeated

composition. It brings us back to repeat
a bit of the history of the pattern:
it traveled throughout elaborate lines
and difficult styles in the court of words.

But, the most powerful of the words
started as an oral tradition repeated
in sound and meter. That is how a line
enters hearts: when you hear the pattern
begin in the words, then change and end.

I think of where I saw the burning dawn

I think of where I saw the burning dawn
illumine the pasture with an orange Sun.

I think of where I saw the turning Sun
disguise itself behind the cloudy dawn
and enlighten the rain. She is the day

that rises over all, the unfailing day
that is given definition by the Sun;
she is the shifting color of the dawn
between the burdened branches, the star

winking in a dim light. I think of a star
wandering in patterns, counting out days
and weeks and months. I think of a dawn
of endless love for all, wherein the Sun
blesses the fallow and forgotten earth.

I traverse the sky from planet to planet

I traverse the sky from planet to planet
because my passion runs high. I realize
the fault of the stars in a careful Monet
painting that the work of critics stylized.
She works within the heavens to dualize
the triune persons and reveal the sudden
veil of beauty. Then she runs to radicalize
my heart against the harms that are hidden
in the day and night. The maker's garden
adorned with his dazzling discerned anger
cannot be true, he has begun to madden
my sweet sight with an issuance of danger.
But everything with which the world laughs
weakens the mere wandering of my youth.

What is hidden from all others is clear

What is hidden from all others is clear
to she who sees all my thoughts spotless
and without obstruction. I have forgotten
the way the vowels in the sky appear
and disappear as the hours turn to years
and years turn into lives. But if she's not
disclosed in the lines that the planets jot
on the horizon, I know not where to steer
my self for peaceful shores. I have to ask
her to protect what I have kept hidden
in the depths of my heart. She is a task
that's never finished where I now reside
and suffer. Yet, I am consumed by masked
symbols, with longing as my only guide.

Wherein I sing about the man and arms

Wherein I sing about the man and arms,
explain the time, occasion and then cease
to invoke fate; wherein it had first pleased
me to be hurled about by endless harm
on land and bay, by the remorseless charm
of long suffering war. Yet, first from these
came the virtue of obedience to the seas
and my own inclination to make the warm
altar a heavy weight. I felt myself lower
in the vainly believed shipwreck of spare
assurance, anchored under the tossed tower.
But, by their example, I kept fast to air
and the tranquil shoreline of inner power
remembered in the book that she had bared.

They overlaid the spheres with golden rings

They overlaid the spheres with golden rings
and ornaments. Then they explained the praise
presented as an offering would have amazed
the angels. Pursued by the work of kings
she hid among the best that the Sun brings
forth, and then waited for the call to raise
the dead. The cloudless morning has displayed
the plan and method of her outstretched wings
as they searched for flight. I hold out a hand
and seek the love of things eternal, the seeds
of wisdom that have graced the land and freed
the flowers from oppression. I leave brands
and marks behind to listen to singing reeds
reverberating across the secular lands.

The stream of heavenly water which flows

The stream of heavenly water which flows
in the midst of his tortures was kept
by certain governors. She was tormented
and strengthened by the joy of martyrdom

in the early times. The children of joy
died in prison, disturbed particular places
that were terrified into apostasy.
Even the heathen marked a cruel death

by a kind of peace which flows from the side
of Christ. Many confessors who had fallen
rejoiced when she saw her children live.

But let us lack strength before the Roman
victory, to sweeten suffering and temper
fury till we enter into earthly joy.

The whispers of vapor on the horizon

The whispers of vapor on the horizon
seem to spell out words, I'm learning your
surfaces and looking through the mirror
into a story that reflects the light

of a face, of a wandering luminary.
Her traveling hair reflects the lamp light
and gold sparks trail up into the heavens
from a flame that shifts without a sound.

But the theses of the fire, the argument
of the water, the rhetoric of the rain,
the propositions of wind are meaningless

in the mysterious grace of the beloved,
whose library extends beyond perception
and is the reservoir of our salvation.

The soft rain that finds the morning air

The soft rain that finds the morning air
perfect for its teaching, the thin mist
obscuring her sharp eyes and secret face,
the clouds confusing us with their meanings;

the ocean knowing different shores at once,
communicating in a variety of languages,
using a script that seems incomprehensible
but somehow holds a very elaborate meaning;

the circular cycle of the air masses
that whirl about us bringing definition
to the trees and flowers lining the canal.

But eternal Sun showers and endless seas
would not be vast enough to hope to contain
your essence, which remains inscrutable.

So many books and dreams, so many hours

So many books and dreams, so many hours

under the whirling ceiling fan, so many

works and days when she is upon tasks

while he is about us in spirit. So many

dials of years lost, so many obligations,

laws and limits, so many vibrant lights

confound and intoxicate my vain body

and render it such a figure of decay.

But the organized pattern has returned

after three days of rest, the unwitnessed

argument of inspired bewilderment.

Thus lines of text and prophecies become

an improvised recital that is happening

around us in strange administered ritual.

I'm going to get high

I'm going to get high
and fuck her at Sunrise
deliberately. The low
clouds moan, she is setting

herself on me. I set
it aside and get higher
inside her. She lowers
about me as I've risen

to meet her. The rising
Sun has gone and set
light free on her low
body. I'm getting high
and coming.

Love isn't like anything else at all

Love isn't like anything else at all.

Love isn't like the woven canopy

of stars whirling in patterns, isn't like

the retrograde motion of the planets.

Love isn't like the wise interpretation

of dreams, grammars and symbols, isn't like

the written clouds, the growing ocean, eyes

illumined in the oblivious library.

Love must love without a figure rendered

in definition, a minister dictating laws

with obscure formulations of scripture.

Love moves us to praise the precious secret

within, where our one true friend is hidden,

remembering himself in restless nothing.

Whatever I see and hear

Whatever I see and hear
becomes obscured by tasting
her. I'm moving to touch
the sky like flowers smell

the heavens. The mere smell
of her mystery is heard
in the verses that I touch
reluctantly. What I taste

is blushing fruit, it tastes
like a brief dream of scent
and secret. What I touch
becomes a prayer I hear
poorly.

The day in night, the bottom in the top

The day in night, the bottom in the top,
a word of nonsense, spirit in material,
fire in ice, sweet bitterness, an opposition
of harmonies, suns reflecting their moons;

the subject in the object, the second person
confused with the first, the lesser vehicle
seems greater, the semblance of illusions
resembled in deconstructions of delusion.

I slept and woke, I dreamed while awake
of a dawn at Sunset, an image of ideas
or a figure representing the holy ghost.

But contradiction, juxtaposition, paradox
and riddle are the only means by which
we may believe in what escapes knowing.

Is it love or a confused mental illness

Is it love or a confused mental illness
that draws me to her unidentified face,
that finds me intoxicated with an ideal
spun about me in bewildering symbols?

Is it love or an intoxicated testimony
whose rays assail me with gathering tempests,
whose name betrays me in the mutterings
of the theologians and forgotten poets?

Time goes by and continuing obsessions,
delusions, addictions, and pathological
afflictions invite in awesome oblivion.

But is the truth of love a simple thing
beyond mere words and sense, and is love
the astrolabe of God's terrible mystery?

He was no more than a mere man in whom

He was no more than a mere man in whom
the word dwelt, in whom scandalous crimes
converted the catechumens to the faith,
and he himself obtained glorious eternity.

He was no more than a temple in whom
many gross errors concerning the mystery
of the trinity operated, being clearly
fearless of danger deposed in his place.

But he baptized the weak, governed the church,
strengthened the episcopal house, had recourse
to the emperor who gave an order to him.

He ought to encourage us under all trials
to begin to feel the tread of a god-man,
and find him sharing the burden with us.

At dawn I dream of hands

At dawn I dream of hands
reaching for me. The top
of the sky counts the feet
of a verse from the bottom

of the ocean. Her bottom
gasps at the touch of hands
and lips. She puts her foot
on the wall near the top

of the bed. Her lucid top
gathers under the bottoms
of her two enduring feet.
Under the yoke of her hand
I awake.

Thus not a star will remain in the night

Thus not a star will remain in the night
clothed in the veil of a thin, low cloud,
and expressing the sum of the universe
in the rich violet of a ripened plum.

Thus the navy dye will wash over us
in movements and will obscure the vault
of heaven with it opaque layers, a work
gestural in its secretive impressions.

For now a white moon is peeking through
the thin sleeves of atmosphere, revealing
the nothingness of light beyond limits.

Those suggestions of color have testified
to the creative power of a resplendent gaze
that realizes images in brush strokes.

Poetry is sent in by you, is everywhere

Poetry is sent in by you, is everywhere,
is powerful, connected, published, sacred,
banned, increasing, plucking at the women
built like that. Poetry is driving me mad,

is redundant, often understood to be about
the objections of an academic pursuit,
complete nonsense, a useless political act,
a destructive force, the drug of choice.

But the sudden process found in passion
is for real people everywhere, is more than
words, is written from a shameful disease.

Thus poetry is your life, is driving everyone
crazy, is the wordless strength of real people,
is the place for you to build something.

I believe in one movement, the existence

I believe in one movement, the existence
of love, creator of the sky and the ground
and of all things visible and invisible.
I believe in the only-begotten universe,

begotten by the true love before all ages,
by whom all things were moved; who for us
and our salvation came down, was adored
and revered by those receiving his love.

He set, was buried and then rose again
according to the mystics, and sat at the
right hand of the ghost. He came in glory

to know the living and the dead, and his
kingdom shall have no end. I believe in
the hidden name of this holy movement.

The stars, the sky, the elements employed

The stars, the sky, the elements employed
all their light to limit the oak trees,
the yellow flowers, the banks of canals
and the broad bayous stretching to the gulf.

The work, so noble, graceful and so rare
as to slip through the fingers of a poet
searching images, to remain mysterious
despite volumes of trusted propositions.

The air, the church of the bending rays,
the declining Sun, and the blinking stars
render a figure that is incomprehensible.

There no desire can be felt, no appetite
can be satisfied by the whirling light
descending spheres so musically arranged.

Your restless eyes had first deciphered her

Your restless eyes had first deciphered her
in a sequence of graphemes, in the grammar
of a complete thought, in the organization
of light on the leaves of a water oak.

Your restless eyes had first comprehended
her in the various chapters of a story,
or the footnotes of a Maimonides comment
from a culture obscured by the centuries.

But the faith that you had in your knowledge
was tested by the mystery, by false witness
rendered in a poet's scattered verses.

Thus the only reasonable thing to believe
is that an apprehension of her is not
possible within the confines of reason.

Instruments played by none but the wind

Instruments played by none but the wind
and the changing weather, without time
nor measure. The songs begin and end
in intervals between the bell's chime
and the call to prayer. I hear sounds
and melodies, triangular sets of notes
in harmonies that the musicians found
representative of character. She wrote
her music in such a way that it touched
my ears and heart at once, she's singing
a knowledge beyond man. But I have much
to learn from her soft silence that brings
unfailing love. The spheres are spinning
a phrase that travels on a changing wind.

A wash of blue or brown, a mist ascends

A wash of blue or brown, a mist ascends
the weather in degrees. I see a subtle
line develop contrast on the horizon
as the symbols revolve in the heavens.

The marsh grass and the trees stretch up
into the endless sky, a messy contour
confuses the eye and I can't apprehend
the sense of the image that is built

with a suggestion of color. Her hand is
moving quickly, always upon some task,
yet performing without any effort.

Thus what is rendered is more than the sum
of its parts, is more than the analyzed
surfaces of a quickly painted canvas.

We've shown clearly the signs

We've shown clearly the signs
to a certain people. The hint
in riddles, proof in symbols,
faith in the disclosed clues

comes to us. She is the clue
behind the clouds, the sign
rehearsed. Within our symbols
is guidance, concealed hints

of instruction. She gives hints
in moons and stars, gives clues
in suns and verses. A symbol
sanctifies us with clear signs
as evidence.

In the name of the father

In the name of the father
he is realized. The son
rises redeemed as a holy
pyramid, an ascendant spirit

referenced. In the spirit
and power of the father,
we go on despite an unholy
utterance. His dear son

wanders without reason
or rhyme, within a spirit
passing. He reads a holy
sign, remembers his father
praying.

I've never seen so beautiful a Sunrise

I've never seen so beautiful a Sunrise
as when the vapor whispered between leaves
of pines and oaks, between the limits of
the quiet bayous lined with yellow flowers.

I've never seen so beautiful a canopy
as that drawn out from horizon to horizon
and filled with dazzling stars: blue, red,
gold and yellow luminaries revolving.

But the broad spectacle of sky that hangs
above us as a screen cannot be described
nor comprehended in a scattered rhyme.

Yet figures abound in a vain attempt
to render this elusive beauty faithfully,
and I still long to see it done somehow.

The expression on her face

The expression on her face
with the parting of her lip
was a secret. I have wasted
my life between her thighs

as testified. Her warm thigh
has been justified by faith
alone. I grab her soft waist
and taste her parting lip,

her closed eye. Blushing lips
separate, I am the highest
cloud pressing into a waist
of sky, unveiling her face
adorned.

On the day that I took up

On the day that I took up
this burden, I looked down
into waters that had left
me confused about right

and wrong. She took my right
hand and then held it up
to the light. We had felt
the soft rain falling down

upon us, rain falling down
gently. Thus I was rightly
transformed by love and left
without words, so caught up
in feeling.

I'm not alone in growing

I'm not alone in growing
old. The seeds I plant
turn into trees related
to your Sunlit body

parts. You are the body
of text that slowly grows
into a god. I relate
to the flowering plant,

to the turning planets
in the sky. Your body
is a calendar related
to ages hence, growing
unnoticed.

I am the brown, wet earth

I am the brown, wet earth
under her feet, the wind
that stokes a tongue of fire.
I am the flowing water

that knows her, I'm the water
that carves the wide earth
into valleys. She's a fire
that feeds on a hot wind

and glows. I am a winding
bayou that houses water
from a cloud. She's on fire
cleansing the humble earth
completely.

The story of a god that I've imagined

The story of a god that I've imagined
in a set of propositions, in a verse,
in a koan or a riddle that's perplexed
a litany of monks. The story of an

author, a creator of splendid refractions
and reflections of light. A story written
but never told, a story told without a
language or a reasonable translation.

This sequence of discrete happenings
realized in some order, the story of
an idol in the figure of a grapheme.

There is no god without you, the breeze
is your messenger, the various books
disclose the surfaces of your mystery.

I see the wandering stars

I see the wandering stars
write words across the sky
after night rain. The Sunset
reveals a crescent Moon,

a prophecy, a new month
described by angels. A star
starts to conjoin the Sun
mysteriously, the skies

turn purple. I see a sky
disclose the white Moon's
reflection, the gold Sun's
focus, and her blue stars'
pattern.

Thus vapor rose and a wading bird flew

Thus vapor rose and a wading bird flew
when the Sun began its rituals. She sang
before the vault of heaven, the declination
or situation of the other stars resolved

before my eyes. The water had reflected
the thought of poets and mystics attempting
to describe the infinite. She had a dream
before my ears, a song before the canals

in various measures. She's the mist that I'm
without, the cloud I'm within, the poem I'm
making of the holy spirit. Yet, the Sun is
robbing the night of various stars, images

and epistles—then a great blue heron decides
to spread its wide wings and begin to pray.

Before the golden one

Before the golden one
had set above the two
of us, we counted three
persons within the four-

sided god. In her five
fingers were the six
repeated evils, seven
classical planets, eight-

fold path. After nine,
the Sun was in the tenth
degree amongst eleven
stars, calling to twelve
disciples.

Some of a violet hue with a thick skin

Some of a violet hue with a thick skin,
some tints of greens and yellows on the edges,
some gradients with pinks, some ochre shades,
some so sweet and so cold, some colorless;

and when the pines stretch into the tall sky
where the luminaries are rising, I am
but a poet without purpose singing within
all these clouds of various spectral color.

Your flavor and your nectar, the fragrance
richer than that of jasmine on the breeze
of a wide gulf; I can taste the value
and contrast of your composition clearly.

Wretched is the poverty of thin branches,
all robustly contoured yet bearing no fruit.

No book that turns a whirling rhetoric

No book that turns a whirling rhetoric,
no nonsense narrative, no set of chapters,
no plot diagram, no storytelling arc,
no situation spelled out on the canopy;

no library that's organized by systems,
no categories, no dense encyclopedia,
no set of volumes alphabetized backwards,
no deciphered graphemes in some order;

no artifact can ever begin to render
the drama of her sense, the creative spiral
of her existence which remains mysterious.

For poets have spent centuries attempting
to write her out or put her into forms,
but none exhaust her confused infinity.

My teacher asked me what I thought poetry

My teacher asked me what I thought poetry
was, what constituted a literary work
where a "special intensity is given to
the expression of feelings and ideas;"

she asked me whether poetry always rhymed
or what different kinds of poetry there were,
and I wondered if the plain language of
a song or a conversation could qualify.

But the rebellious dadaist inside me felt
giving an answer was doing a disservice
to the humble artists singing around us.

I don't know whether poetry should be
something rhythmical and metaphorical
or just the language we're always using.

The language that we use on the corner

The language that we use on the corner,
on every Twitter, in the blogosphere,
amongst ourselves in Gchat conversations,
and in the images we share on Tumblr;

the lyricism in the songs we hear
on the radio every day, in the Bieber
tracks, in remixed mixtapes, in the epic
convolution of a television series;

the ways we look to put a frame about
the things we see as beautiful, the ways
we authorize ourselves in our poor art

obscure the beloved we each remember.
But what is poetry if not a means
by which we realize our future feeling?

When the Sun rises from the purple language

When the Sun rises from the purple language
of night and begins to color the sky red
and orange, my love sighs in the middle of
a brief dream that doesn't make any sense.

When the flowers open as the spring begins,
their yellows, purples, whites, all take in
the light of the governor of the spheres
who every day is upon tasks and in control,

my love sings a song that recalls the voice
of books and scriptures that a foreign hand
has devised with the use of classical figures.

But she is more than rising orbs of light
or opening fragrant petals, I can't apprehend
her in these mere illusions I perceive.

A thin line of gray smoke is moving up

A thin line of gray smoke is moving up
toward the fan, the butts and bottles, chairs
and music ring in the corners of the room
that's littered with inappropriate vowels.

A thick and fluid song flows in between
her lips like water, in between the banks
of a strange river that began somewhere above
the horizon where the mountain touches sky.

I'm without meaning in the versification
of modern poets, in the copyrighted material
and dazzling array of self-published books.

But smoke and water, fire and clouds bring
change to this architecture, and I see her
disclosed in every task, though unsolicited.

Had a vision of circular ruins, copyrighted

Had a vision of circular ruins, copyrighted
material, docents and editors proliferating
at the end of an indeterminate consciousness
realizing itself through social networks.

Saw solicitors publishing content, critics
becoming legitimate, authoritative language
and versification wandering narrative texts
in decadent patterns from without modernity.

But the media were recalled to the texture
of her garment, her voice, to the unveiling
of her reality constructed beyond threads.

The rise of a personal savior of illumined sun
annihilates a bad poet's artifacts, leaving her
in essence beyond the poor vision of prophets.

I rolled over from a serenade into

I rolled over from a serenade into
the pages of a dream, the leaves of trees,
the water in the canals flowed between
the bindings and the syntax. I rolled like

a cloud within the sky, the wheels of a
celestial sphere, the syllables on her
tongue that spell out sūtras. Mudrās were
illuminated by the dawn, illusory

mysticisms rendered fictions. She turned
the page, the leaves, the verse reversed
itself and seemed to mean something. She

was hidden in the corners of the room
obscured by shadows. I rolled over in
her mind as if a nonsense of images.

This changing face of a reflected light

This changing face of a reflected light
that sometimes seems a crescent, sometimes large,
sometimes small, sometimes a growing orb
that waxes and ebbs with the ocean's tide.

This arbiter of weeks and days, of months
and years, this cyclic receiver of light
from the father, this nurturer of emotion
that is rejoiced in every calendar.

Your face has mystified the ascetics
of every tradition and your eyes have held
the attention of poets and theologians

of every faith; for theories do abound
which explicate your secrets, yet I'm lost
within the confusion of propositions.

Now anxiety, depression and obsession

Now anxiety, depression and obsession
assail my heart, guide the tattered sails
to awful shores; now indifferent feeling
destroys my ethics and my orientation.

Now joy and devotion consume my heart
as if it were the kindling of a fire
burning eternally; now various emotions
flood my subtle body without precedent.

Shall I not see the end of oppositions
in my appetites, the end of conflicts
and turmoils, of a changing temperament?

Shall I not see repose and rest as promised
in the scriptures, in the turning poetry
of our faithful, arduous predecessors?

The glittering trees in the subtle dawn

The glittering trees in the subtle dawn
seem to breathe with the dew on their leaves,
the branches are the hours of a clock
the oaks, pines and ashes serve to count

The little birds awake before the dawn
and whisper secrets, songs are made in nests
and water reflects formations of flying
creatures moving above unfolding bayous.

My love for you is beyond time and sense,
is beyond poetry and metaphorical expression,
yet I am compelled to engage in reading;

the egoless and selfless words of flowers
do more to express your immeasurable
quality than even trees beautifully exposed.

These various dreams whirled about my mind

These various dreams whirled about my mind
as suns and other stars in various patterns,
schemes the prophets attempt to interpret
despite the imperfections of their knowledge.

These brief dreams remind me of her eyes,
her hands, her lips, her thighs or her gaze
that reads through foreign scripts and has seen
my sufferings as if they were material.

But I am not the devoted, simple ascetic
meditating in the caves, remaining reluctant
to indulge in the desires of the physical;

yet I pretend to praise her in new ways,
ways no poet has been able to imagine
within their numberless illumined verses.

My treasure made of sugar, my warm heart

My treasure made of sugar, my warm heart
filled with illumined love, my tall vault
of heaven whirling about us in immeasurable
cycles, my pet and ancient hidden scripture;

my heart made of the sweetest barley sugar,
my chocolate, my treasure made of verses
devised with words, my final recipe
and humble student whom I faithfully serve.

There is nothing that satiates me like
your hair and arms, your eyes of glimmering
golden-browns, your gaze that finds the lines

in the composition. There is nothing that
fills me but your love, my perfect treasure
whose beauty is at best incomprehensible.

A fool that suffers an unfailing love

A fool that suffers an unfailing love,
a confused poet that can't tell the difference
between the ocean and the sky, a charlatan
that writes and sings to capture infinites;

an artist that composes several figures
in the style of a xenophile, a rain-loving
writer and philologue, a serious fellow,
a lover amidst the awful trials of being

muttering praises. We yet chant the high
things of God despite our failures, songs
and rhymes, tropes and lines, strophic schemes

of meaning litter the media. We have sung
a verse repeating incessantly, for we
may know her through it and begin to love.

These are my poems for you, the mere words

These are my poems for you, the mere words
carrying scents of flowers, the wide beach
and white sand. Is that the scent of nectar
in the air? The texture of the jasmine

tickles my nostrils. The shadows of her hair
and shoulder write a new language in leaves
and branches. The green is vivid as my love
turns through the pages of the manuscript

from centuries ago. I can't forget her
despite my constant singing. Here are my
vowels in order, my hopes and dreams, my love

in muttered syllables. She is the smell
of deities beyond words, of the jasmine
whispering between the delicate petals.

She took the idea from him, he took it from

She took the idea from him, he took it from
her old book with the folds across the pages
in triangles. He took some words from the
old manuscripts, the parodies of epics

and the metamorphoses. They borrowed text
from a fabric, metaphors from a different
discipline, analogies of mixed media that
were only illusorily dead. She took the idea

from a picture she saw in a magazine that
was on the table at the doctor. He took
his inspiration from a dictionary, conceits

from the classics. We're the borrowed text
of a post-modern admixture, I can hear
the ideas that she hasn't authored returning.

No whirling nonsense of content extends

No whirling nonsense of content extends
further than the interpretation of your
folding verses; no sure hermeneutics
or critical theory may apprehend your

mysteries; no confluence of different
media may illumine your labyrinthine
secrets, your confusing propositions
and delicate demonstrations; no verse,

no poem, no prose selection, no name,
no symbol, no calligram nor diagram
may guide us in a reading of you. I'm

doomed to failure in trying to decode
your infinite majesty, yet I continue
devising strategies and attempting it.

I dreamed I apprehended in a strand

I dreamed I apprehended in a strand
of hair her glorious name spelled a way
that I couldn't recognize. Her soft hand
pronounced the graphemes of a prayer
in another language. I couldn't say
what I had seen yet hoped to immortalize
her grace and beauty. The ruin and decay
of diacritical marks confused the wise
men enmeshed in scripture. I've devised
a script aspiring to give broad fame
to her eyes and lips, for to eternalize
her image beyond myself. Her old names
surround me and the poems can't subdue
my feeling as I imagine her renewal.

No overwhelming shadow, no thick night

No overwhelming shadow, no thick night
can obscure your essence; no hard rain
nor whirling tempest occulting the light
of the Sun can hide you. In the lanes
and alleys you're more obvious than beating
drums and hearts. I can't begin to explain
your ubiquity: you're underneath my feet
and in my lungs as air. The birds cry
into the morning from above the streets
that hold your name. No thundercloud may try
to dissolve your image which the height
of heaven discloses. You're infinite sky
and indefinite meaning. I look to the right
and left and perceive you despite the night.

The spirit in me misses

The spirit in me misses
her body. I have missed
her misnomers and missives,
her soft epistles miss

the point. I start to miss
the sky like rain gone missing
from a cloud. The misshapes
veil her mistakes, I miss

her arguments. The missing
scriptures hold the mission
we forget, a miserable
misguidance. I'm missing
her message.

She turned the page to press

She turned the page to press
the flower. This depression
weighs heavily, compresses
my shoulders. I repress

the meaning that's expressed
in scripture. She's depressed
beneath the standing cypress
knees.The fires oppress

the trees, this life depresses
me. I search the expressions
rendered under the pressure
of air. She smells of pressed
flowers.

I'm drawn to this destructive, violent

I'm drawn to this destructive, violent
intoxication of the 12th house. I'm
without place without madness, without sense
without obsession and addiction. I'm

repeating mental illnesses, crazy
reiterations of weirdness, nervous
neuroses and delusions. I'm moving
toward the flame like a moth that doesn't

care for its own safety. I mutilate
myself, annihilate identities
I used to depend on and find value

in. O god release me from the turmoil
inherent in being! She is a mess
but still I somehow believe in our love.

I'm not trying to invent a new way

I'm not trying to invent a new way
to build a house, to fashion walls and doors,
to inlay windows, to orient a home
for the first rays of a rising Sun;

I'm not trying to pretend that I
can sing without another's trope, can speak
with words that are just mine, can sigh
about a trial of love that no one knows.

I am an instrument of spirit that
dances as it speaks, is filled with the
breath of all breath; I'm inspired to live

neither in temple nor in mosque, to be
without a thought or word: I am servant
of the form that extends beyond me.

The lights wander the sky

The lights wander the sky
in cycles, summer skies
surrender to the skylit
tropes of autumn. Her sky

is limitless, her disguise
confounds poets. The skyline
draws in the gaze of eyes
that are not free. A sky

reveals her thigh, a sky
defines her heart. The skylight
opens to a wide skyspace
defining God—her sky
unfolding.

The recitation elaborates again

The recitation elaborates again
the consequence of Sun rays. The air
is colored by a fog, is yellow then
an orange tint. I remember her there

and here, somewhere within the broken
memory of language. Her skin is fair,
hair an ineffable shade, she is chosen
as the object of creation. We share

images and riddles rendering the gravity
of her fire. I am the dial that shares
her light with trees, with the broad sea

and conspiring rivers. She is the place
I cannot visit, the object that I bear
wandering through a limited space.

Synecdoche, metonymy, cacophonies

Synecdoche, metonymy, cacophonies
of artistry. Remixes of a Petrarchan
virtuosity, the sighs and figures
of literary forgery. The fictions

populating leaves and trees, admixtures
of theory, hypotheses, synthetic
arguments and rhetoric. Spenserian
repetitions in the fractal geometry

of solar systems. Her soul investigates
reverberating vestibules. The entrance
to her heart is restricted like temples

that monitor their witnesses. I invent
narratives, mysterious philosophies
that don't make sense to anyone else.

Why do you close your hand to me despite

Why do you close your hand to me despite
our suffering? Why do we wail apart in
madness, delusion, immeasurable addiction,
seclusion, isolation and depression? Why

might the night pass restless? I plead
and pray, I am not the ninety-nine men
that don't need saving. Is this salvation
ever granted? Do we toil on endlessly

without respite from sin? Without refuge
from the howling, serpentine storm that
assails us? Sometimes it seems an unfailing

love cannot exist. Why do you close your
self before my confession? Am I losing
faith despite long and tremendous effort?

By the mysterious functioning of some

By the mysterious functioning of some
figure of speech she's revealed. I read
between rhetoric and aesthetic a folding
of mirrored garments. She is the context

that gives the phrases and the sentences
meaning. I've divined the sacred sense
of the ridiculous secret that's disclosed
in subtle choreographies. The gross

epistemes, anecdotes and allusions
populate her songs. I am intoxicated
by similes, alliterative sequences

of sound. By the mysterious functioning
of some figure of thought she is known
in the confusing verse of every poet.

This vision in a half-dream I remember

This vision in a half-dream I remember
because I tell the story. She possesses
fire, water, power, air, the ether
thunders with her measure. I'm seeing

her colors and contours, the gentle rising
of her breast with breaths. I've assembled
a figure to represent her curving body,
a horoscope that notes the situations

of planets at her birth. This vision in
the half-awake morning is punctuated
by a few birds singing. She illuminates

and enlightens the narrative, I have
lost my way about her. She is telling
the truth about an ancient mysticism.

She moves disinterestedly away from the

She moves disinterestedly away from the
curator's program. I'm the artist stating
sacraments and rituals, relational
performances of vanity. She is moving

beyond facility, aesthetic or merit,
beyond concept and context. I perceive
an admixture of administered color
that is of no clear artifact. She is

an effervescent love, I feel the spirit
moving in her language. I compose
an engaging instrument from material

transcending the medium. She meditates
and radiates this energy, the rhymes
revolve about her eyes in epicycles.

I oppose the Sun regularly as if I

I oppose the Sun regularly as if I
define its intervals. The complements
build contrast, form is telling stories
within the revolutions. I am counting

her surfaces, her fingers, in her eyes
I'm lost finally. There is a rich blue
or purple tint in the sky before she
falls asleep beside me. I'm in love

without ideas, without images, without
names or symbols. I might participate
like a tritone, a triune god, a trial

of unfailing love. The freedom I feel
comes from service, her tables of worship
illumine the irregularly turning Moon.

The curved path of the Sun

The curved path of the Sun
determines how the day
is shaped. She is a noun
I pronounce in the rays

breaking leaves. Her funny
surfaces are playing
with my eyes, her sunny
limits reveal the way.

The truth is being spun
about us quickly. I'm saying
her name as the light runs
beyond horizons lying
obscured.

I'm the mysterious light

I'm the mysterious light
she pronounces lightly
on her lips. The lighter
breaks as we enlighten

the trees. Her Sunlight
denies my gaze when light
escapes me. I am lit
like the thin candlelights

in bedrooms. The twilight
invites bugs to lightless
corners. I am lighting
the pasture with a light
unmeasured.

I knew it was beginning when the flowers

I knew it was beginning when the flowers
bloomed yellow on the roadside. The day
was wandering with the ladybugs, showers
were undulating. I waited through May

and June to see the fresh opening buds,
the fragrant iris. Her wet eyes shine
beyond her dark hair, and the dark mud
receives her pilgrimage. The decline

of the Sun stretches the tree's shade
toward the horizon. O reveal your face
to me! Never may knowledge of you fade
in seas of inattention! The graceful

petals disclose color. I've breathed
over the surfaces that we both see.

I'm the movement of water. I'm playing

I'm the movement of water. I'm playing
a game of light and space, rendering ways
to square the circle. I love you more
than the monk loves the moments before

Sunrise. I am devoted to your reign
and bask in your dogma. I have drained
the mountains of their color, nations
of their waste. She devised salvation,

redemption, consecrated beyond dispute
and worshiped in all prayer. Her absolute
authority is scattered about the spare
corners of the temple. I am there

in the air like clouds, in the skies
pronouncing mysterious blasphemies.

It was like she was a book. I'm everywhere

It was like she was a book. I'm everywhere
at once, I'm nowhere fast, I'm nothing known
justifiably. I'm what we haven't seen
reflected in the ocean, the full Moon,

her two exposed shoulders. It was like her
mysteries were eternal, in her flowers
I wandered as if the fields were libraries
of ineffable grace. I'm everywhere seen

yet inexplicably forgotten. She understands
persecution, oppression, intoxication,
obession and denial. I'm what we have

interpreted incessantly for centuries
yet never may exhaust. For she's a text
beyond measure of our consciousness.

I'm vapor gathering in the vibrant air

I'm vapor gathering in the vibrant air
on the side of the mountain. I've heard
her art, her heart, the serpent moving
in the shallow grass. I am falling rain,

I can't explain, I adore the sovereign
cycles. Gather me in rivers, streams,
lakes, gulfs, bays, in between islands
and in narrow puddles. I am playing

between the various trees. I architect
homes, I gather Sunlight, I am Sunlit
in the morning gloriously gold. She is

the mineral receiving me, the landscape,
the valleys are her back. Her rolling hip
cascades with thunderings of rich color.

I see

I see
her being
extend.

I intend
a true
love due

to wit.
She commits
to lay

in praise
of an art
departing
fast.

Nothing

Nothing
in Spring's
wild rain

gives, again
her parts
are art.

Her mind
is behind
surprise

Sunrises,
where trials
of sky
meet.

I am blinded

I am blinded
by light my mind
reflects. The rule

of obscure fools
reveals a denied
faith. In my pride

I cannot find
peace. Her soft wind
comes to my defense

at last. The sense
of a straight way
eludes the day's
sight.

The blue bird sings a note

The blue bird sings a note
that rhymes. The pasture slopes
because the water writes
across it. Within the scope

of time resounds the quote
of spirit. The same tropes
repeat, denote and connote,
allude to Alexander Pope's

essays. I check footnotes
for renditions of a hope
unfailing. A cloud floats
and occults the telescope's
vision.

He has delicately mixed

He has delicately mixed
majors and minors, mixtures
of notes fixed. Blues admix
with yellows, a mixable

verse tricks the remixed
artist. Instruments mix
fibers and textures, she mixes
pitches on her face. I mixed

up the words she is mixing
per a recipe: the mixture
depicts her. Timbres mix
until there is no sin mixed
any more.

I am understood by water

I am understood by water
and soil. I hear rainwater
falling, flooding waters
wading under her watery

weather, moving water
on her waist. The waters
filled the watercolor
gradually. I'm watering

her flowers, cool water
moves where the groundwater
gathers. Her soft water
bathes me, I pray water
saves me.

The clothing that she wears

The clothing that she wears
without her. I have wasted
my life, I cannot bear
to bleed within her taste.

The ways that she shows
herself is a memory
too obscure to know.
I've wandered eternity

wide as the contained
crescent Moon. I find
her disclosed in my brain:
demystified, her mind
reading.

I delight in brief dreams

I delight in brief dreams
and madness. The dreamy
surfaces of her dreaming
reflect me. In a daydream

I'm revealed. We that dream
know figures of dreaming
clearly. I have a dream
of rhymes, I am dreamless

yet asleep. We that dream
find talk of the dreamlike
trials of love. I dreamily
taste the nectar of dreams
appearing.

Where do you seek me servant

Where do you seek me servant?
I am in temple serving
you in rites. If I serve
do I get what I deserve

finally? I freely serve
all, and thus I am served
as lord of all. I serve
as a true seeker and servant

that meets you. I am serving
breath in moments, serving
renunciation. We serve
as subject to the service
applied.

The unit seems to apply, also, to

The unit seems to apply, also, to
its meaning for the purposes of the
hearer hearing sounds. The latent meaning
unit already present is the real-

ization irreducible to parts.
As this scholar differentiated
a kind of mental perception which is
new sentences as wholes, we analyze

by splitting it up into words. Oneness,
prefixes, suffixes, the linguistic
view of learning sentences at stages

indivisible. A recognition,
an instantaneous flash whereby the
sentence emerges to express meaning.