Tuesday, June 25, 2013

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.

Monday, June 24, 2013

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.

Saturday, June 22, 2013

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.

Thursday, June 20, 2013

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.

Wednesday, June 19, 2013

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.

Tuesday, June 18, 2013

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.

Monday, June 17, 2013

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.

Sunday, June 16, 2013

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.

Saturday, June 15, 2013

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.

Friday, June 14, 2013

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.

Thursday, June 13, 2013

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.

Wednesday, June 12, 2013

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.

Tuesday, June 11, 2013

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.

Monday, June 10, 2013

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.

Saturday, June 8, 2013

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.

Thursday, June 6, 2013

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.

Wednesday, June 5, 2013

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.

Tuesday, June 4, 2013

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.

Monday, June 3, 2013

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.

Sunday, June 2, 2013

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.

Saturday, June 1, 2013

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.