Garden

Moonbeam coreopsis along Superior

in a maze of rose gardens

where we wander past Mister Lincolns,

Ingrid Bergmans,

Seashells,

French Perfumes,

Betty Boops,

Excerpt from "A Conference of Ghosts"

The Moths and the Flame

They gathered together fluttering in the night

To decipher the truth about the candle light.

Many went and came back with news,

One about the window through which it viewed

The glow of hope, another singed its wing

Against the lips of the flame, but still they

Could not tell the nature and the abundance

Of the fire that consumes with eternal delight.

Oblation

"Your prayers are your light;

Your devotion is your strength;

Sleep is the enemy of both.

Your life is the only opportunity that life can give you.

If you ignore it, if you waste it,

You will only turn to dust."

---- Rabi'a

 

The terror that brings me to these words,

The horror and sickness I feel that words

Are not enough, the sin I make in speaking,

How can I rail against the pain without

Pain itself balling in the gut and forcing itself

through my throat? I’d fly in the wind

Slake Thirst

He always went out on yellow alert,

this cabron with the .45 snug

against the small of his back. The barrio

in decline, he'd run off thieves and junkies

in the night. We said we'd write a film

about right-wing extremists stealing

a warhead but never did. His sad corrido

Poetry, Politics and Religion

Of the primeval Priests assum'd power,

When Eternals spurn'd back his religion;
And gave him a place in the north,
Obscure, shadowy, void, solitary.

Eternals I hear your call gladly,
Dictate swift winged words, & fear not
To unfold your dark visions of torment.

-- Blake. "Urizen"

I missed a posting on William Blake's 250th birthday a few years ago. Sadly, because I cut my poetic teeth on Blake. I respected his poetry and vision so much that my second son's middle name derives from the poet. Due to a very busy schedule and some anxiety about the future, I couldn't get off the floor to say thanks to a person whose work formed much of my adolescent psyche.

Santa Fe, 1979

The Birth of Venus, Botticelli

Grotesque, in love,

spiritual, in decay,

I wrote love’s necrosis

in morse code from the grave,

love's half-shell.

Exposure

In the untracked snow

fallen since Christmas,

I pull the husky

in the child's

blue sled to the copse

of birch. He froze

in the night

after I lugged him

from the dog house

where he struggled for

the warmth that

cold and snow

Sheep Head Dog Meat

At Sam's Club, I scour the aisles for the plastic elbow

to stop the leak under the sink. It's got a thread

that winds in and out of the universal joint and fits just

right into the space it needs. Form

fulfilling function. Nothing more, nothing less.

 

People push or pull flatbed carts jammed

full with a month's worth of supplies. Pet rocks,

flatscreen TVs, choppers and grinders

fill the shelves to the ceiling.

The guts of an electromechanical paradise

complete with digital anonymity and an order

that defies death, slay, dismember, and organize

chaos into beauteous wax floors.