Asunder

Spirit and matter in awkward dance,
Life but collusion, a waking trance,
Proteins carve out a space for one,
Child, Man, Woman, never redone,
Yet so fleeting.

Tenuous hold of mind over matter,
A brief breath, a glass that will shatter,
Ever dispersing the happy assortment,
Of particles, waves, a fated accordment,
Yet unlasting.

As mind doth protest, the body so frail,
Cohesion reneges, cell walls now fail,
As dreams, then memories like vapors flee,
Lost is the stuff that made us we,
Be flailing.

Hardening of arteries, hardening of hearts,
Fire in belly ember’s cool in fits and starts,
Slowing the dance of organs and organelles,
Muting touch, sights, sounds, and smells,
All failing.

Cytoplasmic walls fail, silver cord severs,
Proteins collapse--soul’s naked hereafters,
But love so intense can imprint the pattern,
Of the self, unbound from a darkened cavern,
Now sailing…

Where bodies not bound to the whim of cells,
Where selves are loved from and endless well,
And stories are rewritten and selves reborn,
And held again the ones once mourned,
In healing,
In hoping,
In God.

****Thinking about death, endings...

Shimmer

Groaning within groans and moans

Diaphragm lunging in atmosphere

Ear bones on drum deaf to all tone

Living in the high culture of fear.

Mind numbed with the dumb and numb

Digits curling to palms lustily grasping

Luridly coveting for a dusty crumb

Gaping, hoarsely and blithely gasping.

Warlord rumors blood thirsty war

Victory measured in widow barrenness

Murderous rage of the murderous whore

Undertaker logic, death grins -- more is less.

Waning ozone, waning trees, spirits and sprites

While short lived fat cats sated and satiated

Beauty chokes as stale laughter opiates the fight

Blase-lazy, never filled and fully sedated.

Crystaline shimmer hope shimmering

Slivering dark sky in crackling webs

Bullet whole light presence glimmering

Tide rising on a hope that flows, and ebbs.

Eucharistic life, wine, bread, body, blood

Dying, rising, bleeding, breaking needing

From the fresh dew upon a new rose bud

True parable of living swallowing dying.

****Another poem from about 1 year ago.

Love in the Dusk

Morning's mist begets the song

The winged chorus of the dawn

When horizon bleeds morning light

A new longing that all be right

And undivided.

Evening comes and daylight fades

And long grow the lines of shade

Horizon bleeds its fading light

The red hues will fade to night

And quietness.

Life ever continues in circling days

Like carrion birds whose only prey

Are creatures whose life is beaten back

Whose bones will whiten with the lack

Of fleshly life.

Youth and passion's embers wane

And love is lost when it is sane

Then age begins to take its hold

And death sculpts life into its mould

Of formlessness.

The embrace of love withholds this tide

The kiss of lovers that can abide

Side by side in life and death

Holding fast to every breath

Of otherness.

Constraints

Rolling, folding, ageless spaces,
Water and rock, earth remade,
Emblems of love's beatific traces
Colliding, collapsing, till Shiva is stayed.

Why can love not heal?
Why do we have to feel,
This weight.

Corneas, minds, yeah cells abhor,
Boys morphed into serial killers,
Sight of endless hate and war,
The bloody price of endless thrillers.

Why can life not gain?
Why this bloody refrain?
So numb.

Magic beasts now dumb retreat,
Smitten sprites vapors disperse,
Before the techno march of feet
Hungry void -- the endless curse.

Why are angels so quiet?
Why no heavenly riot?
Toward change.

Rumors of light beyond the cloud
Midwives mystics, and innocents,
Taste and see before bold and loud,
Squelch immanence and transcendence.

Why is what is most real,
Beyond what we can feel?
One hope!

***A Poem About the space around me...closing in...so it feels like sometimes.

Amen

Elliptical wonder of space and time,

Spinning stars, nebulas sublime,

Dance macabre, dark matter specter,

Substrata presence to sweet nectar

Of photons to eyes,

Of sound waves to ears.

Birth, death of stars and simians,

Breath measured in years or eons,

Star dust, bone dust, shine down, gaze,

Souls lost, found, wander, graze,

In unwarranted beauty,

In states of ecstasy.

Proteins fire neurons at speed of light,

Selves, memories, dreams, will blight

As cartilage, bones, and tissues fail

Curbed spines, shrinking minds, so frail,

Await to close the lids,

Await their story's end.

First kiss, first lover, first epiphany,

Sacrament soul in polyphony,

Intimate as Oxygen within - without,

Grace to be gazing, aging, on this route,

Towards lands unknown,

Towards love unbound.

Pierced, despised, much maligned,

Worship, whisper, fully entwined,

Fire in the belly, fire in the equations,

Terrible in passion and in persuasions,

Towards faith,

Towards hope,

Towards love.

Amen.