Warm and tender, the sotto voce passages
of The Passion of Joan of Arc soundtrack
waft softly through the room,
replenishing the pre-winter glow
of a perfect autumn afternoon.

Deep yellows, oranges and reds line
the cracking, gray sidewalk –
beacons of the inexorable killing to come
in this, the outpatient season.

I have survived many such seasons,
thinking only of what lies ahead,
willing myself blind to what has come before,
vainly trying to grasp what is here, now,
dream upon dream upon dream.

I flee Time, the incorrigible executioner,
who leads each brilliantly colored leaf –
its medical gown gaping – to the lip
of the abyss, forcing it, with
an icy hypodermic shove, over the edge.

At the bottom lie piles upon piles of
fading badges of courage – oak, maple, elm;
crumpled prescriptions;
fraying prayer flags once flown to protest
Nature’s annual euthanasia.

Now, in this outpatient season, let us not forget
the sap of the trees slowly freezing,
let us not forget the mesmerizing harmonies
of angelic anthems urging us to turn away
from the illusory beauty of death.

But let us hear the screams of Joan of Arc
as she is burned at the stake for heresy,
the flames leaping as high as her crudely
shorn head, singeing away her wispy eyebrows:
She, the chief victim of ecclesial euthanasia.

Yes, this is the outpatient season,
the season where autumn goes to die –
stripped, prepped and scrubbed –
and where we strive to survive,
in deep yellows, oranges and reds.

Abandoned, she waits
for her lover's return
across the empty room.
Banks of fear bunch up
behind her furrowed brow.

Loneliness does not dole out such
punishments. Solitude re-creates
reparations for the self, fashions
an unyielding glue that will fuse
together all her shattered pieces.

Inwardly she knows he is not
coming back. The static portrait
a mournful reminder that love
is as fleeting as the wind; it
blows where it will; it razes

what stands in its way. Her heart
is not ready for such defeat. So she
grabs hold of a hope rising behind the
painted walls. He will not return, no.
Still she stares through space, alone

Jeffers’ poetry is as hard as bone,
His windswept lyrics fed by his dark side.
At Carmel, he built a tower of stone.
Wind, sea and storm fostered his rugged pride.
On nature’s fiery force, his skills he honed.
His message bleak, from which he could not hide,
Foretold an elemental strife alone.
He wrangled roan stallions only few could ride.
His wide-winged hawks over the waves would moan.
He joined their wildness with soul open wide.
His poems made me yearn for his coastal home.
Nothing human-made would pull the tide.
His poetics read: Find your heart in stone.
A Zen he practiced till the day he died.

Enervated, unenlightened,
I trudge the path to the Cirque
of Gavarnie, lodged high
amid the French Pyrenees.

Sheep cluster on the *****.
Mud and muck mar my way.
I must will myself forward,
weary unto death,
yet soon to rise up above the Earth.

Lying down
at the day’s intermission,
I listen to Puccini arias,
and am transported to Lucca,
his walled hometown,
with its *****-white streets,
its darkened straits,
its massive cathedral under
eternal construction.

Life limps along in
effervescent flux here,
beauty kept dormant,
or sprouting like a tree
from the Torre Guinigi’s
grassy roof.

A one-time amphitheater
sports cloned tourist shops.
Only one
sells Puccini souvenirs.
La Boheme survives
on note cards and
lop-sided bookmarks.

The composer’s legacy turned
into trinkets made in China.
A vast, discounted reserve
of memory, kitsch and fame.
Still, they provide me
a precarious solace.

Music without words
charts my tourist mood
of endless angst.
Opera is the grandest art,
some critics claim.
The human condition rendered
thick in symbol and sound.

Happily, I carry
the philosopher’s stone
to decipher the soaring
scores.
They say, passion, foreboding,
no regrets. A fluttering
high C stirs the airwaves.

Ululating sopranos,
searing tenors sigh
heavenward.
The last act over,
the curtain rises on
the dull, restless, repetitive
routines of everyday life.

In the background,
echoes of Tosca, currents
of ruin and rust.
We must embrace our destiny
even on the off-notes.
Opera’s solo signal:
Amor Fati.

As I lay dying, I will write poems
on my palm, using a calligrapher's brush.
The ink will dry overnight.
In the morning I shall start again.

Li Po sits beside me, reciting
haiku and clasping his palms.
When I am gone, he will burn the ink and brush
and streak his palms in rich charcoal.

I hurriedly push past myself,
watching my body from above,
feinting with consciousness,
fainting into the Spanish black.

Velazquez's Las Meninas
jack-hammers a tunnel
of ek-stasis, pulling me into
the painter's dark studio,

weighed down by overwhelming
curtains, curtailing the senses'
sense of majesty and control.
This is not trompe l'oeil. This is

tricking the soul into the artifice
of the palette, of paint on board,
of black that illumines perfect
placement: the spectator on the floor.

Stendhal's sensitivity is no virtue
or vice. It suckles the sublime,
sated on illusion, art for art's sake,
delivering a blow to the solar plexus.

I gasp as my body trembles at tremors
of terror, annunciations of angels
bearing paintbrushes as paltry wings.
Their back feathers stained a Spanish black.

Painting owns no one, owes no one
comfort or joy or pedantic instruction.
The cherubs in the foreground radiate
innocence, wonder, humanity's blank heart.

At my feet, my body wriggles skyward,
wrenches for a transplant. Paint on it
Velazquez's black moustache, then part
the velvet curtains. I will rise to new life.

light of sorrow
journey claims its end
red rock stains clouds

(after E. E. Cummings)

ALPHA

time's mightiest dream
fills unspace with lowliest freedom

we
choose
NOW to act
in alabaster innocence
we
yes the day
its
magnanimous
blessing

we
skip through
greenvanishing
meadows
leap to
pale
indifferent skies
(while memory
whittles
away
the past)

we
carry little
people's
humility;clouds
drain heavens
gates
of slippery/silver
tears

languid lovers lie
in curly locked *****
their coitus
the rasping
friction
of IMmortality

BETA

onetwothreefour equations
rewrite relativity, tumble down
puddle-licious
wormholes

Euclid inhabits
an ice-oceles
triangle
draws line
A to be

pockmarked
moonrocks
pummel
Atlantis

the universe dances
to canticles
of calculus
out-Zorbaing the greek
outshining
the starz

God lurks
in
unlucky alleyways
plays dice
with
Einstein's
willowy
hair  today
de-parts tomorrow

clumsy rolls
of
snake eyes
whistle down
celestial canyons
signals bleep
f  a  r.....    a  n  d.....  w  e  e

OMEGA

present's presence
courages the future
of illusions
(the
blind
heart
bleeds)
on a magician's
rickety stage

quarters sprout
behind junior's ears
magic, tricks
cut in half
cambridgeladies
faint from vapors
peddled by the
goat-footed
good humor man

kings horses
pull the velvet
curtains
a-side

sunken sailors
saLUTE:
scribble
on the sawdust
ocean
(a
n
c
h
o
r
s
a
w
e
i
g
h)
floor

schools of
spermatozoa
break-dance
toward
a/******/****

fluids flow
freely
to hard
hoed rows

cherubs:chime
a flowerblooms

time turn
s  in its
s l e e p

freedom
kisses awake
a  N  E  W  dawn

dreams
swirl
in the
mirror

a poet pens
his epitaph
the soul's eyes
BLINK

unspace floods
with;beauty

I welcome the new year
in all its vagrant glory.
Absurdity may follow in 2019,
or a blissful beauty unimaginable.

Either way, we remain at fate's mercy.
Either way, our choices seem anemic, naive.
Yet that is not how time transitions:
It opens ever-new fields of fresh possibilities.

I must commit to plow those fields,
using all the strength and courage I can muster.
Everyone faces the same challenge:
Any clear path ahead wallows in obscurity.

Is this new year really happy, as they say?
Am I only kidding myself that I can choose?
I see a lonely road before me, full of pain.
Even so, I welcome the new year again in all its glory.

Pegasus soars with a golden bridle:
imagination unharnessed.
He performs aerial feats
with composure and grace
high above the buckled clouds.

Pure white scion of Poseidon,
he ascends to the heavens.
Lightning and fire flash
in his wake. His flight
lights the world in silence.

Untamed by mortals,
he metamorphoses into
the constellation that bears his name.
Stars spread across the sky
as his pasture; ambrosia
overflows his jeweled feed bag.

The great winged stallion of
Greek mythology, he struck
the earth with his unshod
hooves and purified
water sprang forth.

He irrigated the cosmic mind,
soaked the bone-dry soul.
Those without wings must
continue to search for his
inspired springs of grace.

Rapture of the imagination,
disciplined by the gods,
he paces Zeus' stable,
free of the weight of
humanity; ridden only
by Olympians.

As he prances among
the coiling clouds,
a solitary feather falls
to the earth.
Look for him in the dark.

(After Emily Dickinson)

The earth has many colors
Where canvases are not
Near the unbounded horizon
Beauty is nature's faith

But dip a fresh brush for the sky
Dip a fresh brush for the sea
The stars are distant arbiters
Of painting's fate for me

Lucretius envisioned the universe
as made of atoms governed by chance,
with a "swerve" reserved in the void to
salvage some semblance of free will.

Breathtakingly, he foresaw the chief
discovery of our age: atomism, which
we harnessed for energy, genomes,
and the horror of Hiroshima.

His brilliance cannot compete
with the mushroom cloud's darkness.
He foresaw the building blocks
of reality; we deconstructed them.

Insight, wisdom and true philosophy
live of one side of the millennia.
On the other, that same wisdom
crumbles into fusion, fission and death.

Good can be used for ill, unwittingly;
ill can rarely, if ever, be used for good.
Lucretius peered into the anatomy
of the universe and beheld the atom.

Science of our age followed his vision
and beheld, unwittingly, the ferocious
power of destruction, all atoms swerving
from their path. Free will would have its day.

Socrates fought sophistry,
the pimping of rhetoric
to win every argument.

His reward: hemlock.
Now he cross-examines heaven.

Berries and cream, Gruyeres’ eternal taste,
Cream thick as wooden bowls you pour it from.
The mountains rise outside the village gate.
The castle, past the bridge, bids all to come.
Walls surround the square, the well, the worn slate.
Outside them gleam the green, vast pastures, some
As fresh as cream; well worth the bovine wait.
Turrets, arches, beams: elements of form.
Traipse the cobblestone at an uphill gait.
Shops sell crafts, art to the beat of Swiss drums.
Time suspends its march: the cadence of fate.
Here, the Middle Ages live on and on.
Gruyeres offers tranquil treasures that sate
The traveler’s wish for a world full of charm.

i have watched herds of buffalo roam free and unassuming around me
their majesty and inheritance innate;
the earth could but tremble when they moved so slowly

and i have seen elk in groves grazing docile like cattle,
their flanks thick with sinew, their heads lifted and turned,
carrying antlers like a crown and destiny

but this,   o this is something new:
i have seen alaska come tumbling from her eyes
bright and flickering like a candle in amber

i have fallen through those amber eyes that turn away quickly
from my face
i have come tumbling from her eyes
to speak:

"there is always hope

i have climbed the mountains of the West
massive, endless, and blue
forsaking the common trail so well-known and so well-defined by
stones painted orange   green   like shrines
rising high and far apart:   forever forward

and i have dug my hands deep into rocky  hillsides
to stay upright and have fallen
to go where no man ever was or will be
trekking cautiously through smoky forests and snow
always higher, gaining so much ground steep and sloping
until both air and trees spread thin
and i would stop  

yes, i would stop
to listen to the wind blowing hard through the pines below
clouds would cover me:   they could go no higher
and i would breathe, with my whole body,
the silent serenity of solitude and half-frozen lakes

time had no meaning here; there was but one day always
and in the afternoon it began to rain
silver beads of water, like tiny clouds
froze upon my beard and glasses:
i could not see nor speak

the darkness would grow cold and numb and cover me
a blanket without warmth

the night afforded no apology
i could not be distinguished from it
i do not remember becoming part of it

part of it shivering beneath the stars
shivering into dawn
alone

i could find nothing there but strength pure and flowing
from within
it was here i built my dream in homage and wilderness
so high above the earth."
having spoken

having spoken
i see my days come tumbling from her eyes
and i am tempted
bright and flickering like a candle in amber
i am tempted
to smear the dripping wax warm upon my forehead   over my body
when it dries it will be tasteless and intoxicating
yes, smooth like wax
like amber

Earth and heaven yield to each other.
Points of light reflect ancient eons.
Stars recede billions of miles beyond.

Koi pond turns to canvas sprinkled
with specks of white. Celestial
expressionism. Mind measures Art.

Infinity reigns throughout the universe.
Eternal patterns swirl in water and sky.
Clusters of starry lights create a canopy.

We live between here and above.
One star shines down mercifully upon us.
The pond pours back its dazzling glory.

1.
Angels with gossamer wings
flit heavenward
like bees nuzzling roses
for honeyed perfume.
I watch the angels flutter
higher and higher until
they grow smaller and smaller.
One of them looks back and says,
"You, too, will fly when the sinking
day darkens; when the moon
circles the Earth one last time."

2.
I think how I must free myself
from gravity, from finitude,
from time. The serious day
darkens. I watch it wriggle
into the sea, as infinite
as the sky, it seems, but a richer
shade of blue. The roses
eject the bees, their transparent
perfume wafts over me
like a mystical atomizer; particles
splaying my face, bathing my eyes.

3.
Beyond the sky, in ethereal Elysium,
the Immortals dwell. I gather my life
and cast it at their translucent feet.
They answer only in Greek riddles.
Oedipus wanders among them.
I am as blind as he, sinking into
a sea of shadows. Like a feathered
coral reef, wings waver over
the ocean floor. When the sated
day darkens, they will alight
on my back like petals on a rose.

Weakness of will plagues the poet:
Misery he can’t slow down.
Find talent; he tries to grow it.
His scratchings issue no sound.
His Muse is mute; his heart knows it.
His vision of art ground down
Like Leibniz’s lens. Sloth shows it.
Light dims, could still come around.
A poem builds steam, then slows it.
His gift a gift the void crowns.
One time he wrote well. He knows it.
Now passion cannot be found.
Whence Dante’s raft? He will row it.
Fragments of rhyme underground.

I fought for beauty, goodness and truth
against your nihilistic violence of love.
All guards down; teeth, claws, hammers, awls;
frenzied, you wielded your weapons of choice.

Your aim was deadly, like a cheetah taking down a gazelle.
It's only necessary, you said, that nature's black palette
be gentle: It obliterates the conscience, paints over all wounds..

I found mine bearable, torn flesh here, black eye
there, a gimpy walk, an endless headache..My energy
level collapsed; I had no appetite, no ambition, no hope
for escape.

Your hold on me was like the hangman's, delaying the inevitable,
yet asking for a little decorum before the bitter end. And still you
fought like a she-cat, black, sleek, sinewy -- God's beautiful killing
machine. You attacked like lightening -- swift, crooked and wonderfully on fire.

You clawed my face, my back, my brain at its soft spot.
You cracked my skull with your nearly 90-pounds-of-pressure jaw. You tore open my chest, ripped out my heart to sacrifice it to
your gods of vengeance.

Then you drew a map in the blood and offal inside the cavernous
room of my beaten body. The map charted a path to the heart no longer there; to the brain now chomped in half; to the claw marks on my face, my back, my tattered torso. Each path you drew left a ragged incision that eventually healed and left a scar.

"Follow the scars," you said; "they will lead you to the soul --
or the blackened morning sun. Follow them and see
how my love is virtue; how it knows no limits."

the seventh angel
carries the book
of days even-
numbered and blue

feral cats lead
donkeys to the
crow's-nest crest of
window-box bougainvillea

an angry priest swings
a golden censer
at pagan worshipers
up early he tends a tiny

garden in the sacristy
stained-glass laurel
trees spring up
over bejeweled pews

i count the orange
fishing nets caked
in cork larger pieces
breathe like fish

gills in neon purples
and greens piscine
hearts anchor
the poet's heart

possessions prove
useless on nudist beaches
flesh presses sand
presses flesh

i chant the cloning
of yellow dawns
the bearded archangel
guards the beads of dna

harbor-front havens
open wide their gates
tourists rush in
laptops aglow

all is even-numbered
and blue on this
endless dawn of angels
and ouzo and open hearts

I cannot grasp myself:
I elide through my fingers.
I cannot face myself:
one pair of eyes eludes my look.

I am intended by consciousness,
still surpassing myself in passion,
still reaching beyond my grasp.
In what is not, I find myself.

From Plato's cave
we rise together,
shirking shadows
for the light.

No longer ours, thoughts
burrow deeply into
the shared, human
kingdom of insight.

infinity reigns
his ways are not our ways
hope blooms eternal

our shadows rise
on the winds
floating like flat
darkened clouds
ready to spill rain
ready to spew specks
of identity
dense as bone

all is hidden
on the pavement
unsteady outline
of a stretched-out
body minus feet
weightless as sight
wobbly as breath
penniless as touch

our shoes demand
new strings
a place
in the picture
wavering lumbering
like behemoth
branches rocked
by the winds

sprinkling
flecks of substance
shooing
voices to silence
sensing
the pluck of music
waiting
in the wings

the surface of the sun erupts
spilling streams of brimstone
into airless passageways
where poets roam

words catch fire orbit the mind
like elliptical rocks mortared tight
they shed more heat than light
pile them high

pick only hard consonants
their Anglo-Saxon pedigree
stirs the lowest impulses of life
use them sparingly

elegance eschews vulgarity
the driving force of the body
the circulation of black blood
swallow it like wine

to name is to own
like landed gentry you parcel out
your words as possessions
****** them from the void

you must climb over the walls
of what cannot be spoken
stitch the sun's lacerations
into the fire of the poem

1.

Edward Estlin Cummings
rode Buffalo Bill’s watersmooth-silver
                                                          stallion
into my high school English class in 1971
and broke onetwothreefourfive lightbulbsjustlikethat
                                                                                   over my head
he was a forceful man
and what i want to know is
how do you like your blueeyed boy
Mister Poet

2.

E. E. Cummings
whistled
the

goat-footed
balloonMan’s        tune
far
and
wee

in Just-
spring
and
      i heard
nothing but
the world as puddle-wonderful

3.

e. e. cummings cut the tops off
his capital letters and i

                                    stayed a little
                                                        person

l(a

le
af
fa
ll

s)
one
l

y

i never signed
                      my name
                                      the same
                                                    again

the simple heart sinks
with the simmering sun
time passes like
a Puccini opera, tragic and bold,
gentleness wavers on the gossamer wind
her delicate touch vanishes
from my vulnerable heart
beauty blossoms by the end of day
clouds swirl in calligraphic patterns
no one dares mention soul

1.
Stone castles float high above the moat,
rising in the empty sky.

Colonnades of clouds pummel the shoreline,
but plunder only Time.

The silver lake reflects the face of God.
Forsake its lifeline,
trace its outline in darkness,
then dive, dive, dive
to retrieve your destiny.

The horizon sleeps at the end of the road.
Light turns, but withholds its blessing.

2.
Pilgrims clamber over slick, thick cobblestones,
combing the ruins of history.
They slip, slide and slither back,
only to lose their way.

A baby-faced mountain bends low
to brush a raindrop off a rose.
The rose reddens, the mountain shudders,
and love blooms —

even as older peaks,
streaked in early snow,
grind their teeth in envy.

Obey your nature.

3.
A crown of fog settles on the silent village.
Wet cobblestones snake back upon themselves,
pooling castles on the ground.

The road plummets to the shoreline; the horizon weeps for no one.

Light turns; Time tires; and infinity seeps into the soul.
Bruised pilgrims withhold their blessing.

Beneath the love-struck mountain,
a lonely traveler gropes homeward.

Patches of empty sky carry scents of welcome:
There, unbidden, tranquility awaits.

I hurriedly push past myself,
watching my body from above,
feinting with consciousness,
fainting into the Spanish black.

Velazquez's "Las Meninas"
jack-hammers a tunnel
of ek-stasis, pulling me into
the painter's dark studio,

weighed down by overwhelming
curtains, curtailing the senses'
sense of majesty and control.
This is not trompe l'oeil. This is

tricking the soul into the artifice
of the palette, of paint on board,
of black that illumines perfect
placement: the spectator on the floor.

Stendhal's sensitivity is no virtue
or vice. It suckles the sublime,
sated on illusion, art for art's sake,
delivering a blow to the solar plexus.

I gasp as my body trembles at tremors
of terror, annunciations of angels
bearing paintbrushes as paltry wings.
Their back feathers stained a Spanish black.

Painting owns no one, owes no one
comfort or joy or pedantic instruction.
The cherubs in the foreground radiate
innocence, wonder, humanity's blank heart.

At my feet, my body wriggles skyward,
wrenches for a transplant. Paint on it
Valazquez's black goatee, then part
the velvet curtains. I will rise to new life.

none of this is new anymore
the writing,
the dreaming,
the happy guilt

how many times have i sat
and listened
to the wet leaves slap
against the cold morning pavement?

how many time have i seen
the trees in wonder
give their smoky shapes
to loneliness,
changing with the seasons?

the seasons keep bringing me
back to the knowing,
time in the moving
moving through time

for many they claim
that this is the triumph:
the nature of return
to the original presence

but who among them
can give force to the anguish,
defy the distance,
there-being,
himself?

surely the answer must be immanent in the asking

it must be the place
that is severed from its project

and not i who am falling
through the horizon of meanings

Mmmmmmoon Lion roars.
The moon swerves in its orbit.
His voice reaches to the heavens,
avoiding omnivorous black holes.

He contemplates his philosophy
of life: poems written with
incorrigible vitality and verve.
He purrs the "m's" in his name.

Auden said that poetry makes
nothing happen. But Lion invokes
humor and thought, the rigor of form.
He holds deep respect for his readers.

They crave to do him justice in the
wake of an endangering diagnosis.
Poetry elevates the body, tunes in
to its hidden rhythms, sings its source.

As in Oz, the lion needs courage
to face the injustices of existence.
He silver-wraps his moments, gone
all too quickly. He instinctively roars

a new way to create poetry, one
that embraces the celestial,
disdains the body's betrayal.
He will win in the end:

His lion spirit soars.

1.
The sky, slate gray, settles
On the horizon.
The Earth, drab brown, buckles
Under the weight.
Trees scrape the clouds
For sustenance, their
Branches like bony fingers
Clawing the thickened air.

                 2.
Sparrows flutter in the lawn.
Heat rises.
This summer ecosystem
Unwittingly
Works together for
The proletariat’s revolution.
Creatures of the world unite!

                 3.
I stare for hours out
My empty front door,
And see
Not a single movement.
The south wind has died
Down. The ideal vanishes.
Grass stands tall in the dimness.
Squirrels perch high on trees,
Scolding.

                 4.
If I could tell Nature
One thing, it would be
Not about its circular seasons.
Not about its intricate play
Of flora and fauna.
Not about its compromised
Beauty decorated in decay.
Not about its exodus of species.
No, I would sing of its
Invisible source, random
And ordered,
Mysterious yet familiar,
The coalescing, pressurized
Source of our water-logged
Globe.

                 5.
I would tell of
The feast of the senses,
Cacophony and all.
The red tooth and claw
Of survival.
The colors of delight
Along a mountain stream.
All in one; that’s the secret.
Harmonious, injurious,
Savage, tame.
Who takes the part must take the whole.

                 6.
The sky, slate gray, settles on the horizon.
The Earth, drab brown, buckles beneath the weight.
I stare for hours out my front door, and see nothing.

sun kisses iris
grass stirs from hibernation
dew rises like rain

Rome conquered Gaul,
erected vestal statues
whose vestiges still stand today,
symbols of the lust for
power that turns all foreign
territories into home.

Romans enforced the
Pax at swordpoint,
built long, straight
roads throughout Provence.

Centuries later,
Vincent van Gogh
wandered among
the ruins at St. Remy
and sunflowers
began to bloom.

St. Teresa swoons
in ecstasy as an impish
cherub punctures her heart
with arrows of divine love.

Eyes closed, mouth agape,
she falls back into marvelous,
wrinkled marble,
Bernini's brilliant sculpture
of genius.

Is it physical or spiritual
ecstasy she feels?
We wonder because
the ****** expression,
the body language
are the same.

No matter.
If she did not swoon
in ecstasy, she would
surely levitate in love

No celestial being will ever descend
the misty ether to complement my
wishing and seeking for its eternal presence.

None who are worthy of such adoration
will stoop to move me out beyond myself,
to send me hurtling down the long, contemplative spiral
of the Self, toward the focal point of Existenz.

Identity is elusive. I find no residue,
no center of recognition and acceptance
with which to make my defense.

Identity is infectious, a virus that plagues
without antidote or cure. As with the Fall,
I must disregard the Delphic Oracle. Who
among us has ever truly known himself?

Perhaps I am too tainted, perhaps I am impure.
Perhaps I would be blinded by the brightness of their glory.

No, I am quite certain that those who stir among the stars
will never be moved by pity or suffering to breathe
the breath of Eros that flings me out beyond
this solitude. None will ever come to bestow on me
the presence and embrace I so passionately desire.

I must reshape my future in the image of the Lamb.
I must leap across the world's murderous, polluted abyss.
I must land on the other side in safety, security,
with nothing bruised save the membrane of my porous ego.

Liquid diamonds adorn the sea,
silver sunbursts of brilliance shine
through the waves, living, heaving,
violent jewels of seaweed and paste.

The sky bares its midriff of pale blue
skin, unmarred like a newborn, a marble
dome of sweetness and smoothness,
restless to immerse the nascent dawn in light.

Under the fierce Aegean sun, we saunter
toward Pireas' port, bags packed, supplies
secure, farewells sobbed, to set sail for Spain,
like Odysseus on his makeshift barque.

The journey demands a lifetime of searching
signs, of casting far and wide to escape
the Sirens' enervating songs, anchoring
the helm in darkened caves the size of yurts.

On the hunt for El Greco, the Greek painter
holed up in Toledo, his home away from home,
his haven of elongated, diaphanous figures,
who rise to the clouds, linking heaven and earth.

We owe the Greeks the fat seeds of culture:
philosophy, theater, sculpture for all, democracy
for the fortunate few, women and slaves stuck
in the kitchen pouring libations for ancient sins.

Shades haunt the past, mounting arsenals of guilt
and accusation. The Greek splashes linseed oil on
canvas, erases his debt, dabs an eerie white in the eyes
of threadbare saints, who elevate to everlasting heights.

Like becomes like.
Mind fashions experience into spirit.
Experience absorbs mind, shapes its ethereal body.
We know more than we see, taste or feel.
The invisible encircles the straining atoms
of thought, expands until there is space
to fill with my mind as your mind.

trees grow birch and pine so thick
some fallen to this forest floor

trunks turned thick with gray,
half-rotting, reclaim the earth once more
roots like gnarled hands grasping
for the damp

grasses green stagger silent in the wind
blades biting sharply through shadows so dense/
space has no measure in dark

the sun rises, their bloodless meat turned dim,
turning circles in the sky
humidity hangs, building like a cloud
seeded silver to rain

struck by lightning, the forest,
no longer ******, flashes with the intimacy
of death's philandering copulation/
stumps cluster sticky with sap
and saplings sprout no leaves

rings rusted upon rings reddish-brown
slow years no longer lived through

birds are never yellow here
melodies float like water, colorless upon the breeze
wings break the stillness, signal home, repeat

the road turns away, red clay and rounded rocks/
too few lichen-painted orange and green
dust rises
small clouds under cleated soles

you would not like it here

He slumps against the charity's steps.
Torn, oversized Army jacket, a ragged
stocking cap, unwashed face and hands.

His arm extended, he asks for a few dollars.
I resist his obsequiousness and answer
that I carry no cash, which is a lie.

I ponder why I am so afraid to associate
with him; his presence a finger of shame
pointing directly at my recalcitrance.

I drive home in my air-conditioned car,
thinking that I had helped him stay off
the *****. No money was for his own good.

Then my conscience strikes me hard: I am a liar,
a coward. That could have been my brother,
living alone on the cheap streets of Costa Rica.

I quickly turn the car around, race back
to the charity, whose doors remain closed.
I search among the grimy faces. He is gone.

the cyan sky shimmers
towering treetops shimmy
all rivers flow heavenward
coyotes yawn at dawn
the sun reinvigorates itself

In my eyes,
the faint light of evening falls.
Soon all will be darkness,
time to envision
tragedy or joy.
No markers lead the way
to my leap of faith.

The old man clamped onto my hand
like a manacle of stars.
I gazed up at his wispy, white beard
and watched his cheeks tremble
as he recited the Iliad in the
original Greek.

Simone Weil, a French philosopher
who starved herself to death,
condemned the violence of the poem
as a testament to the brutality
oozing out of men's souls. Little
to celebrate there. Plenty to mourn.

Hexametric rhythms caught my
hearing: They echoed in my brain
like exhales from labored breathing.
Life or death lost its meaning.
The will to power conquers all.

Swift movements of being, and
broadswords plunged through
finely hammered breastplates.
Black blood pooled at the victim's
feet. Another triumph for Agamemnon.

The old man, collapsed at the poem's
end, shape-shifted to a marble bust of Homer.
I turned to grasp his missing hand,
But the constellation of stars had vanished.
He had instantly become blind.

French revolutionaries guillotined God at Cluny, but He exacted
His tithe all the same: one-tenth of their bad ideas tossed back
at them. The tyranny of terror, cheap dream of heaven, in ruins.

A vast emptiness swamps the nave; stumps of pillars stained black
and gray and black again by age and rain and blood. Only one tower stands intact. I scan the burnished hills behind it; they do not look back.

“The birth throes of liberty,” cried Thomas Jefferson. “Rejoice!”
Despots toppled; authority crippled for a future that never comes.
Terror and waste; waste and terror. The desolation of faith.

On the tiny town square, a high-tech bistro beams. Lights
surge behind the bar, sending out distress signals of the mind:
the throb of synapses firing wildly in the wind. Material infinity.

Old men saunter in to down a beer, and harness their dogs under tables.
Parents and students slurp pricey shots of caffeine. Emancipated energy.
Above the din, they cannot hear the Earth’s foundation crack.

Freedom leaves a sacred void in its wake, watered by the blood
of worldly martyrs. On the menu: égalité, fraternité, fissure and ruin.
Thunder in the hills. Words crash around us like cannonballs.

Liberté lingers outside in the municipal lot. A van propped up
on wooden blocks for the night. No hassles, man. Free parking.
Let’*******another beer to Robespierre. His dog strains at its leash.

Sheep graze the massive green meadows, wholly unaware
of the dilapidated barn I have come upon. Each rotting
plank a page of struggle, then failure, success and more failure.
Oblivious, the sheep have reached Nirvana: endless heaven of food.
I might envy them, except for their muddy, mixed colors of wool.
Paradise does not mean purity for these plump little herbivores.
They baah unknowingly, nature’s mystic vision: bliss of instinct.