Ashen

I once asked
how close to the earth must I sway,
sweeping in the wind
like a broken tree?

But I have grown a bit
since that time.

That question was centered all around
me;
my struggle; my need.
As if the world
should work for
me.

A better question may be–
how close to another person can I get,
to know love
in every breath?

The world has riven
me, and will continue breaking
waves against any stance I assume.
But I can bend, and learn, and grow.

In the end,
I want there to be found nothing
but gratitude in my heart.

Paths to Divinity

It could be that spirituality is best defined by restraint.

Depth is attained by holding ones breath.

If I am to be a part of god, then I must be attentive.

Practice, and struggle, and work–

these are the only paths to divinity.

In Passing

If I could just stop

everything

to put you in a frame,

to capture the light around you,

to glorify and rhapsodize you

in exactly the way that you were meant to be seen,

apart from the grime and glitter of the washed up

everyday surface,

then I would get down on bended knee

right here in the middle of the street

to take the picture.

But who will believe in it?

Am I the only witness?

I will simply watch

without taking

a thing.

Moon Drop

The moon, shimmering

beneath the surface of your understanding,

a weighted pull towards the inevitable.

Tell me that I am something more

than what I allow myself to be.

Let me be that glimmer of translucent

mercury in the deep sea bottom,

trawling for subsistence.

A watery unseeing eye,

opaque from your desire.

Uncompromising in lonely despair,

an empty surface

of shapes.

Beachhead Formations

The passing of time in its essence defines what is set in stone; the shoreline that divides the breadth of pulsing frenzy from self-preservation; a sculpted passage that unveils only the inevitability of change, the patient endurance of suffering.

In depth of feeling there is danger, the danger of loss, of jealousy, of possession. The surface of the tactful shark looks deceptively smooth. It is amazing, however, how unbarbed our interfacing can be when our immediate reactions are withheld. Behind the face of the dragon lies the warm embrace of wisdom.

Armies are built to fight for causes unknown through daily existence. How cold, how distant our understanding of ourselves. We must struggle through the thick heat of others blood.

Is it to accept everything? Or to reject everything? The shore is broken and built and fallen and resurgent. The sea thinks of nothing, terrifying in its heartless ineluctability. The land is pressed into suffering awareness of the light, shadows bulked across its battlefields. Hold onto this memory of the sunset, even as it sits before your eyes. It is already gone; it has already been resurrected into misunderstanding.

Babel

(1997)

And the Lord came down
to see the city and the tower,
which the children of men built.
And the Lord said,
Behold, the people are one,
and now nothing will be restrained
from them, which they have imagined to do.

The tower rises in the midst
of the destitute city, reaching
out in one solitary tendril stretch
to penetrate the heavens.
Like an infinite flower it builds,
striving forever for perfection
as a line struggles for the asymptote.

A river runs by the bright city,
its flowing surface reflecting
a million points of light.
Slime and trash shiver darkly
upon its pitted face–polluted
by the very lives its virile waters feed.
Deep from within the churning river,
where the glaring manufactured lights
cannot reach, where the corruption
cannot penetrate, comes the Voice.
The Voice speaks through movement:
in intangible whisperings of leaves,
in glistening cries of budding flowers,
in the incessant gurgling of the river.

The inhabitants, blinded by their
artificial lights, deafened by their
loud machines, can only hear the river
speaking at night as they lie
curled naked in their beds.
But even then the Voice is indistinct
and detached, and becomes
distorted into extremes.

Chaste and eager boys
with rapt eyes and ivory hands
grasp at the high notes in the Voice,
twisting their tongues
in pretentious articulation
and drool, dreaming of perfect worlds.
They write dry manifestos of idealism,
and march, singing fervent songs
of victory. Fill the void! they cry, aroused
by thoughts of fulfillment.
Fill the void! God is dead.

Seasoned and wrinkly women
with sagging breasts breathe in
moist whispers behind glass,
their stained faces pressed
together in dread, their tongues,
dried and withered, licking their
crucifixes in devout resignation.
They hear only the low notes.
It will fall, they murmur, excited
by masochistic thoughts,
It will fall, and He will return.

And always from outside the city gates–
if you listen closely, deeply, quietly–
moves the trembling notes of the Voice,
the stirring indifferent notes of the river Euphrates.

O beloved earth the river cries how I love thee how I adore thee how I love the mist that rises in thy morning’s breath and how the wind so delicately brushes back the hair of thy leaves and o how so true so true thou ist o earth thy sunrising heralds the fires of a new day and a new day glistens in the morning air and this and this is time slipping bubbling and frothing over into waves that tumble and race for infinity only to fall back only to rise again and again and again endlessly endlessly gurgling like a baby in innocent ecstasy.

And why dost thou strive so for climax?
And why dost thy wind and waves beat
steadily into the soft earth?
O nature, O conflict, O mother of humanity–
because thou must, thou must fight forever,
thou must–to become passive were to die.

The actual fulfillment is not the point,
no–that apocalyptic end of everything
leaving only emptiness–
one final, meaningless, apathetic
resolution where the world means nothing,
where you are nothing, where the tower
stands for nothing but as a reminder
of barren dreams and faded hopes.

It is rather the heat, the spark, the friction,
the continuous rhythm of brick upon brick,
the eternal beating of two restless hearts
melded together in a molding fire,
that keeps the fire burning.

Believe, believe in my mystery,
in my endless offering of hope.
Babylon the Great–
even in your abomination and filth
you have risen this tower.
Have faith in what once was,
now is not, and yet will come.
Perfection, destruction–love, hate–
stillness, movement–you are two and one,
melded together in a molding fire,
fighting forever, yin and yang.

So the tower stands like a phallus
without a head, rearing its
senseless shaft of creation, craving
enwrapping folds of consummation,
aching to penetrate the universe.

And in this lies the brutal splendor of life–
the whole ecstasy of it all
waiting patiently within that simple swelling
of emotions, that building friction
between two embattled worlds–
not within the hopeless burst,
the trembling, shuddering screams
of selfish pigs over slop.
The whole meaning of life
dwells humbly within
drops of anticipation
that dribble out of a word
or a look, or a touch.
The whole beauty of life is
that pulsating heart that pumps
heatedly, the fire thickening
as swollen tongues battle
endlessly for that perfect,
profound revelation of the universe
building up inside like a tower.

To Live

(written in 1996)

I

The drip, drip, dripping of time runs in rivulets down
the gaping wound on the side of the eternal boy.
The scabs continuously rub against themselves,
pouring forth new pain from the deep caverns within,
from the hungry depths of resentment and anger,
cutting away at the corpse of the man,
eating away at the decaying walls of the man,
the pain possesses, the snake entwines the host.

His bloody eye, ever roving for release,
settles upon a passing child, a little girl
who reminds him of a forgotten part of himself–
and the storm of suppressed feelings
rages into his mind, the winds blowing past
into his hands–beating, beating, remembering now
the anger, the hatred released upon his head–
he feeds upon the pain–hers–his. To make
another feel this pain, to release, to fill
the hollowness inside with another’s heart
stolen, ripped out with his bare hands–
he flies away crying hoarsely, a dying boy,
a living man.

II

I brush my hands–lightly
against my bruises,
feeling the vestiges
of another’s hurt–I
have always believed
in god until now–now
it is a hollow steel image
nailed above my bed.
I hate him.
I see strange things–
in my dreams–
barren landscapes,
charred by the fires
of wars, ruined
by the havoc of storms.
I hate myself.
Why do people turn
against themselves?
I rub my hands together,
feeling a warmth
only outside.

III

Time, the eternal lacerater, flows forever,
washing the wounds of the injured
in the blind waves of deceitful memory,
leaving restless scars in the belly
that must be stoked with the fiery touch of hope.

But what is the world without hope, where
does one fall to be saved, what is the world
without hope but emptiness and death
and pain and pain and endless pain?
Cut off from herself in the past,
she tries to reunite the shards, the pieces–
blood seeps out the cracks formed
by the forced union–never to be whole again.
There is no hope for one who has already died.
She casts her hands out into the dark space,
groping, and feels the cold rigidity of the crucifix
above her head–the hollow steel image that is him–her–
sparks fly and she wonders if there is a chance–
tobe reborn?.canI. canwe. . .
No–there is Nothing.
But a fire once started cannot be stopped
except by time and time and death.
She looks in the mirror and sees nothing–
and that is the world–everything, anything–
beautiful, the world is horrifyingly beautiful
and it was there all along, before and after
the snake–it takes death to know life–
a shattered image, broken to emptiness,
is life itself in truest form: piercingly aware
of death and its encompassing futility.

IV

I am nothing, nothing,
but part of everything;
I am nothing, nothing,
but the world, the universe;
I am nothing, nothing,
but life and death–
I have tasted the blindness
and now I can see;
I have touched the judgment
and now I can sing–

I am nothing–
nothing–
and I am beautiful.

Where are you?

Where is the beauty of the sunset?
Where is the subtlety of the wind rustling through a thicket of leaves?

Nothing means anything without our participation. If I am shelled, walled with numbness,
then I am a bitter god.

So desperate for the world to see our beauty. To buy into it, to make it grow through collective agreement.
Where is this place where money has no meaning? Where is this place where we are known completely?

The future is destroyed and resurrected daily. The sun is an apocalyptic fire that gives us everything we need from a certain respectful distance.

I want to throw away everything that I own and eat from dumpsters. I want to manage a small village full of folk music festivals. I want to be happy in my confinement. I want to be loved by everyone. I want to be invisible and undefined.

Who am I? What is this world that would skin me, name me, place me? The sunset passes unnoticed except by a happenstance glance. The wind blows unheeded, another subconscious occurrence like refrigerator noises.

What more could they be? I am trying to look and listen, but missing something inside of myself.

Words written out of a necessary desperation.

Run On Spiralling Tonic

You go out into the world, far away, distant into the all. Then you come back, dressed in darkness. You come back to me to give to me a light that you had been keeping, that you had been molding hidden from the world, building upon itself like of clay, of hard-soft snow, collected, you give it to me, you bestow it unto me, you place it into my heart like a light into a light, two lights turning blue, the most quietly intense of flames, burning without flicker—and you give yourself back to me, and here in this place far away from everything, far away from yourself, close to me, you give yourself again to me—taking me far away from myself, close to you, far away from both of us, close to divinity, close to something unnamed, unplaced, imperfectly slidingly slipperingly slopingly beautiful. Here, in this place, we are affirmed, confirmed, firmed, fitted, whetted. We were meant to be apart to come together like this to break apart into something new, surprised, glistening in newness, shining in compound simplicity. We go there to know that it has been there, will always be there, for us to find again, for us to forget, to renew, to discover, to share, to shed, to find again. Again, and then again. To go away to return dressed in darkness, to unshroud the light, to build the light, to know the light. Back and forth. The light dancing the shadows of the tree in the wind against the blinded windows into this night. Up and down. The journey of the droplet to its source to tear itself into the earth to know of the ocean. Like this. Just like that.

Loving You is Loving the Universe

Loving you is more than loving you. It’s loving strangers on the street, women passing by, couples holding hands, ocean spray in the breeze. It’s loving the feeling of the sun pressing down on my skin, the way ivy climbs up a wall, the way a baby is constantly amazed by attention. It’s loving everyone who has come before, it’s loving myself, it’s loving my family, it’s loving everything in the world that has served to bring us together, that keeps us together, that witnesses this magic to be true. It’s loving the caress of breath out of my lungs, the sense of consciousness leaping across synapses, the vision that filters through my pupils to flip into sensory information, chemical conveyed thought cloud evolution. Like waiting for the rain to come sometimes we sit around, dry, desperate, fighting one another with hope. Then like necessary revolutions of the earth around the sun love breaks into our hearts, undeniable, flooding through to our fingertips, our lips trembling with life force. Loving you is loving nature, loving the cycles of nature, the pull of the earth, the tug of the moon, the kiss of the sun, the blood of the month, the night and the day and the rain and the drought and the leaf and the fall and the wave and the shore. Because through you I am glimpsing insight into all of the universe. You concentrate the power and beauty and might of existence like a lens directly into my consciousness. I love you—and that is enough.

Of Each Other

Every single day, you are there, ready to move our lives together forward. I feel like sometimes I force us to squabble, simply to reassure myself that we are still separate, distinct individuals. But by now we are more akin to meshes, blending somewhere between us to form a oneness that is also a trinity–I, you, us. Through you I see not only deeper into myself, but into all of existence. We form together a lens that focuses the light of divinity to a single point of vision. There is nothing beyond this. There is nothing that is not included in this. There is only this love, and all of the world is shaped by it. Like glass blown bubbled worlds, love breathes through our singular hollows to craft harmonies containing everything and nothing. Whole lives are decimated and rebirthed in this song.

I eat, sleep, and write through you, with you, beside you. To even claim that I could exist outside of you would be, by this point, a conceit. We are each other, as the moon on the surface of a stream is still only the sun.

Recognition of Space

1

I am one
who is afraid
of flying.
When I am born,
it is of a legacy,
of a dream
wrought in the imagination
of the window waves.

I am One
Without Myself,
a pig in a blanket
of solitude;

A God
within a demi-
monde.
A man
on the water.

2

I unwrap
my pieces into a cloth
from which I dangle
into the night

like a child
escaping from
Daddy.

I am born
everyday that I die.

I must speak,
I must move.

3

I am a legacy,
of a legacy,
from the sea
and beyond
the sea.

4

But who will listen
to a dream?

Last time one of Them
came around,
we incorporated Him
into the System.

And so it’s not a matter
of listening any longer–
I will sing of trees,
and of blossoming
buildings
reaching up
to fuck the sky.

5

I am one
who is afraid of crying
loud enough so that
anyone
could ever listen.
When I die,
I feel squares of concrete
screaming in my bones.
I trip in a car,
one block after another,
until it takes me
to where I forgot
I wanted to go.

I am One
Within Myself,
a fish
in a school
of fish;
a sea
that can never make
an unclouded sound.

A rock
within the swaying
break of the earth.

6

I wrap
myself in sheets
in order to preserve
this order of the sun
that has issued forth
from the bellies
of the drums

of the dirt.

I die
every night
that I live.

I must sink,
I must
stop.

7

This peak is climbing me
up up and into the wind
seeping through the space,
tossing the duds on the line
to a smooth dreamy dance.

I feel such gravity
that I feel as one who flies.

The strict buildings
move into the clouds,
creation of man
and sky.

This earth and this sea
within me
makes me tremble in ecstasy–
or is it fear–
at the sight of the sunmoon
rising down
down
against the windows,

just as the darkness
forms into
a
tear.

Tear Drops

A thousand teardrops
are worth every moment
you hold me close.

A thousand nights
of solitude
I would gladly surrender for every drop
of suffering from your long black lashes.

We hurt each other to remind ourselves
why we are inseparable.

Two faces, each portending to be one,
draw away from each other,
crafting a mirrored distinction,
all the while tied to the same nurturing root–
the picture of a heart.

The heart is not simply a bloody vessel,
working to sustain our motion.
The heart is a symbol
of life’s struggle for unity:
two spheres at the top–one point at the bottom;
a metaphor for emotion.

Our love is beyond
anything.

In the approach to this open understanding–
this terrifying, beautiful unknown–
we fight,
we dance,
we crash our unshaped differences–
until a shore is formed,
and the waves are freed,
and what was once turbulent pain
is seen for what it always was:

playful, wonderful
bliss.

A thousand tear
drops are worth
every moment
you hold me
close.

I Will Watch The Heart

It is strange how quickly I can change. I watch myself through a veil of colors falling like tassellated stars, comets of fear and insight between the thing and the soul. The only thing I have become certain of is that my strength is found in permeability and steady state shifting. An armor of waves, a wall of movement. A warrior will tell you to watch the eyes; eyes as a window to the soul. Forget the eyes. I will watch the heart.

Burning

Love is an everchanging,
up and down sine wave ride–
sometimes I push you away
just so I can find the space
to breathe–
only to find that I am suffocating
to think that I could lose you
so easily.

I know when I’m being unfair,
when I’m being mean–
which is as much to say
that some part of me
hurts you deliberately.

I watch myself doing it,
loathing myself.
I can only theorize
that I do it because I am scared
and I am looking to make something up
against you, so that I can run away.

Don’t let me run away, beloved.
Fight me, be aflame with righteous anger,
put me in my place–
which is next to you, with you, for you.
Be strong in yourself.
Don’t let me wallow in my fears
by digging into your insecurities.

I can be so cold to myself–
and now that you are in me, in my life,
in my every movement and thought,
I have to learn to be better
to myself, to all of the life
which resides within.

Don’t leave me alone.
Keep me burning, love.

Maya

Of how there is this,
only this,
a sensory awareness akin to bliss,
a blossoming of creation,
words and consciousness strung
to a loom of desire so intense
it could never hope
to be satisfied.

In the moon flow of our nature,
we know there is nothing but learning–
all a lesson,
all a student before love,
all a teacher before weakness,
all an unreclaimable glory
pointing its way to beauty
like a sunset–
just like any other,
never to be the same.

Words are necessarily cryptic
in order to say exactly what you know
I mean.
Your body never lies.
It is what lies outside of your sensory understanding
that is illusion.

Buildings

Watching the buildings from the balcony,

I reflect how everything is movement

standing still.

Outsider II

Acting based upon stone—

thus will you fall.

The night will shield
he who opens his mind in arms

of stillness,

tearing your thoughts
to that which is eternal,

personal, and externally

internal.  Therefore, move

in rhythm to your heart
and when it beats hard,

let it go.
Because when the time comes to fight,

you must be able to breathe,
you must be able

to breathe.

Loveliving

You are incredibly brave,
you who place your safety on the line for love.
You who decide to give up your future
for that which you aren’t sure that you can hold.

There is nothing higher than to live your life
based on love.
It might mean giving up everything that you’ve ever had.
It might mean gaining everything you’ve ever wanted.

There’s an easy way to tell:
look at a person who has lived their life
based on security, money, and success.

Then look at a person who has lived their life
based on love and an incurable desire
to be free.

Then look at who is happy in themselves.
Wherever they go,
whatever happens to them,
who holds a light that shines through the darkness?

Love, love is the only way to live.
It is the only way to die.
It is the only way to do anything worth something
in a world that is dying to live.

Pachamama

There, in that pocket of light
called the flesh
sits the one they call
yourself.
Who is you?
They tell you what you are
until you start showing them
that you go down so deep
that your leaves are feathering flowers,
always dropping heat–
phoenix–
always spitting flames,
always and everready
to take on anything and anyone
at their own game.

The treasure that shines outwardly
comes through from somewhere sacred,
drawn far up from your roots,
the silent toil that none can see,
the everyday hungering effort
to make another person happy.

To be rooted
does not mean to stay in one place.
It means to be forever seeking,
to traverse boundaries
in the name of ecstasy,
to burn to know, to learn,
to touch the other side
of the moon goddess’s face.

Here, the water flows
beneath the surface
of everything,
Tierra de Pachamama.