11/17/18
Others
On other people I will speak to the frail light I see,
temporary and menaced by fear,
they endeavor to make permanent something
ever becoming something else,
and struggle to make themselves full
and cover their oblivion
with firm ground so that they may reach for the sun,
like flickering nameless candles
extending from the wick,
all these flames waving with the winds of circumstance
seeping through the unclosed openings of their houses,
menacing each given purpose.
The flame maintains the glow so long as there is the wick to feed it,
and there is darkness to enjoin,
and a house to shield it.
11/17/18
Gifts
I measure my time against the bloodless clock,
in tiny rebellions that mark where I have been, now here
recalled as moments of no definite duration.
I make this temporary thing with other real temporary things,
like a chisel at the outermost edge of my mind
I chisel into and out of the fluxus
of all the moving parts
and strike for something that is my own.
To give freely is to not know:
gifts live on the inside,
and grow or fade like seasons,
they grow and fade as living monuments to a passing moment,
their lives measured by every tiny step.
Who will receive this temporary thing?
I give to moving forms made from light and shadow,
who know and don’t know their gifts,
who see and don’t see their own lights and shadows.
In full rebellion I strike against the surfaces made hard by hardened hands,
hardened in the light and shadow of the clock’s futile measure.
In soft and imperfect moments each bidden gift
springs to be seen,
to be received against the false fluxus
imposed by that unbending tool,
and gives freely to the air;
each gives of itself, like the air, impossible lightness to each tiny step
which springs from a single immeasurable moment,
to be bidden in another more distant,
impossible to know for the one who is here and now.
11/18/18
On Love and Loving
Pleasure and pain dance in the midst of a shared cohesion
captured by many hands from the mist in between themselves
to at last cast wide around them a brand new dimension.
Out of longing I am seen propelled as will’s charge flows
towards a different light in likeness,
and stopped in firm captivity by Pleasure’s light reach,
impressing a lasting reign over all I know and don’t know.
With Mystery closing on this given day, ended landing fully in darkened air,
you alight in my reflection atop all those known held captive in the dance
who have forgotten,
in the towards and the away,
to look for what is missing.
11/19/18
Desire
Do I see myself in you?
My blind pushing and probing, with hands and sharper things
I extend, and extend again from the extension.
What am I looking for?
To be viewed,
to see with the same eyes myself in you.
11/19/18
On Being Small
You have won
This glowing orb of flying blades became useless one fine moment,
My time crushed like so many eggshells,
trampled on by the army of your distaste,
you thrust your coldest hand past feeling ribs and living blood
and in victory left lingering heat to receive the rising ground.
Force against force, leaving unequal impression to live on in each,
hot and cold bargained for days over what remained above ground,
nested in living warmth,
against the blades and bugs,
and above the primordial burrow
of my convalescence,
there was found a pulsing poet’s heart.
11/21/18
Depression
If only…if only this or that were believed or not, or known,
then this or that would be known to then do the next,
the next depending on this, which is known or not.
To be sure, or not, this comes from this, the thing after this
will be sure, depending on what there is when that becomes this,
which is uncertain, but maybe, if only this were that.
But new things emerge, always, and maybe then if only that
other thing will stay a that and not be this when that time comes,
because I know I’ll do anything to make that stay a that.
11/22/18
On Embodying Tradition
I do not possess this,
the words and deeds assist and point time’s arrow back on itself,
and is aimed beyond all the countless forgettings that have kept this day,
past the stream of moments
felt by breathing bodies beginning and ending,
this moment here remains purely observed against all that it is not.
My sustenance is theater,
the holy imagination on this day serves memory through each revealed moment
before all the living, contained in every deliberated deed
meaning to dispel all it does not seek to be,
in projection and impression that can be nothing other than new,
this meaning will live as long as the memory.
Bramacharya
The whole wide world is full,
full of everything you see and don’t see.
It reaches out and up and in and yearns like mad
to close the ache
between the spaces you and I make.
It aches at every edge,
at those impossibly small planes,
at every depth and number
which you may plumb or utter
to anything known in the whole wide world.
There is no remedy;
you will still find that the ache of missing unity
remains in all the observed things.
There is no remedy except to continue, in found ways forged
between all the things which will not unify so long as they are observed.
So long as they are observed
in this whole wide world
there is only letting go.
11/24/18
Satya
I know where not I know,
Science versus the Heart
in battle high and low
within culture’s rampart,
each internal and determined
where to put what and why
for the rest to comply.
What guides this hard shell? In
or out? Machine Logic
in hard formed intention
ever to bring Magic
low, disenchanted fall
pressed by Flatland’s thrall
to make the One be All.
Truth’s discerning blade held true in the senseless solid hand’s
moneyed precision, programmed against soft life.
Memory pulled from timelessness and compressed in hot bands
of one’s and zeros, heat rising in record digits rife
with obscure accountancy; true life will outlive them all.
Life’s prime living light
inside each wise ape
guides, between love and
oblivion, towards
them both; turn and
uncover the dark
of all your long harm.
11/25/18
Muse
What is this voice?
Rising from deepest dispersed illusion
it does not stop but moves
like water around a stone.
It is as real as sound.
Words appear by chance or emergence
in every present listener.
The way water leaves memory penned across the land
in rivers and streams is the same as the Muse speaks.
Words are like the leaves on a tree,
they ache for the impossible sun
and find their place in this world
by way of fleeting felt perfections.
11/26/18
Water
Fills every corner,
sinks down into all the cracks,
Always flat on top.
12/01/18
Illusion/Delusion
Dug into the unknown all else
where many digits more than all possible fingers greet the darkness,
names clutch and begin their real work.
Some names become the furniture, and fewer are sacred places
where the mind fits fully, completely inside like an actor taking a role,
saying the same names faithfully each time.
Mystery’s eternal new darkens the long inside
where the impossible becomes the necessary,
shown in flashes back by perfect screens
to protect the shame of incompleteness.
Clutching again, anew, each time building with imaginary hands
onto the old, like leaves layer the ground, or words heard from the screen,
projected speaking faces impressing through layers of endless falsity
made by creative real hands clutching after real impressions.
The unity of every received name defends itself with uncertainty, desire
cast out against the screens to protect the shame of incompleteness,
to retrieve a certain name directly from the sun.
12/9/18
Anger
It begins all fucked up.
Doesn’t matter how far deep
you look, truth spills over the cup
and soaks hot; steam’s a slow creep
so know it’s all fucked up.
You keep saying it, like a pin poke
through paper it’s all fucked up,
across the day’s offered yoke
puffed vibrations that truck
steam past some unwritten joke
told between the clouds and muck.
There is no you to swing cool
blades at, only your shared eyes,
held captive in the same pool
as the moon and all that dies
and all their truths, in witness
to what is the same under
the moon unholds bitterness.
My Portable Habitat 