Love

If life were made of light and laughter,
How be? How does this sacrament play?
Part improvisation, part cacophony,
The movement, the music, the muse.
And in the lengthening of the day —
Soothing in symmetry of fear and beauty,
Not a science, but a magic, an alchemy,
Angels conjure red from skies of gray,
Ever beckoning souls, each to the other.

If we be tapestry of diamond and dirt,
How be? For each, 'tis every other thought,
Part angel choir, part wolf's moon howl,
The cry of dereliction, a blushing swoon.
Here — the formation of souls are wrought.
Within love's longings and love's losings,
The fire in the equations of our mythology,
Beauty and truth imprint; such is the lot,
Of creatures oft formed in a world of hurt.

If love burn brighter than faith and hope,
How be? That lovers 'oft pine melancholic,
Tristan and Iseult, Lancelot and Guinevere,
Archetype brother and sister to every heart,
As if every love were born of the diabolic,
Yet love in longing ever loves to beckon,
'Til love itself is worshiped in sacrament;
In places wild, kneeling in a spirit bucolic,
Love is metaphor, parable,truth and trope,

Eternal.

Winter Waking

Breathing deep the ghostly January air,
A dozing mind cool breath will spur,
Though numbed in winter's den, will stir,
And skin will taunt and goosebump hair,
Awakens me.

Silver rays evoke a gaze one New Year morn,
Clouds bleed light into smoke gray sight,
And a cold faded world bittered in blight,
Reveals its hues and sheds its coat forlorn;
Unforsakens me.

Stepping in light, as light to souls alights
Tears crystal ducts moved in angel symmetry,
With beasts, Saints, sinners in strange amity,
This sacrament washes my soul in dawning rites,
Enquickens me.

Crystal light,
Clears my sight,
Reborn,
Reborn,
Reborn.

Shades

And night shades make dour company,
When dreams lack fuel and pitter out,
My breath -- too spare to pray a doubt,
This, the dark quiet, so void of amity,
Enfolds.

Shadows congeal the strands of fear,
Inweaving the night in mistral cold,
And lo, a feeling flows of growing old,
When only ghosts whisper in your ear,
Reproach.

Alone, with the watches of the night,
The heart joys to see the auroral seep,
Sunrise bleeds such beauty -- so to weep,
And shadows don colors, anointing sight,
Reborn.

Leaves

What begins in gentle germ,
A twisted embryo cocooned,
A lost one in cave marooned,
Chlorophyll bairn 'ere to term,
To the song of the sun attuned,
A fragile bud — then ballooned,
In unfurling, extending squirm,
Is born.

And in the sun and breeze and dew,
Such endless dabs of brushes green,
Branches paint lattice canvas scene,
In endless flutter, an endless queue,
Inweaves cool verdant canopy screen,
Shading beast, bug, any who convene,
All that must the August sun eschew,
Safely sorn.

Autumn's cooling foreshortened days,
Fields will gold and breeze will zephyr,
And the foliole will dance tarentellar,
'Til waning in vibrant beautiful malaise,
In reds, golds, browns, pitch then propeller,
In luminous cascades. Once a tree dweller,
The sod adorn.

Blowing and crinkling in around our feet,
Crisping stockpiles cushion child-play,
Till from their veins fleshy cells decay,
In sallow dust petals ground into the peat,
The empty bramble mourn in shades of gray,
Yet drink the dust that will one day defray,
The leaf reborn.

3 more poems

Kitsch

The pious heart longs saccharine,
And sacrilege upon the heel,
An aryan Jesus, blond and pink,
Pink kinfolk — grin and squeal,
Amid a jumble of Jesus junk,
That uphold this strange ideal.

Measure of his love measuring cups,
Mints testify bad breath to hell,
Cruciform easy chair for the game,
Bible land snacks for the hard sell,
Tees and tunes, biblical board games,
Blessed assurance that all is well.

Where the prophet the powers put down?
Where the cross that must be carried?
Where the love that enters the darkness?
Where the Lord Jesus, bold and bloodied?
Precious moments capture cloying belief,
Anti the Christ resurrected and gloried!



Zulu

Apple of my eye,
Why oh why oh why?
Sprite, not yet ten,
As red as cayenne,
Folding your frown,
Your world upside down,
My little animal,
Going aboriginal,
Sent to your room,
There you will fume,
My wild thing...
My Zulu warrior...
My little boy.





Dark Chocolate, Spaghetti and Meatballs

The lines furrow deeper in the brow,
As each day brings grief upon grief,
Nothing on the horizon brings relief,
And with such weight upon the bough,
Cracks.

Then the thoughts, like a renegade weed,
Burrow deeper into the troubled brain,
Parasitic — filling the days with pain,
Until each breath breathes to concede,
Defeat.

It seems dark specters will ever possess.
Yet simple are remedies to such melancholy.
Taste dark chocolate! Does it seem such folly?
That such could be a salve to dark distress?
Cheers.

But if the rabbit hole falls ever deeper,
A stronger salve, fettuccine and fellowship!
Better, meatballs, spaghetti and friendship,
And you will once more escape the reaper,
of all joy.

Feast,
Food is sacrament,
Friends are sacrament,
Love is holy,
And eternal.

Metacarpus

Lines of elegance bend in space,
Contract in a gnarled boulder
Twisted bone, sinew, and skin,
Endless wonder to the beholder,
Like a sprout from a husky seed,
Then to rest, as a poised spider.

Grooves in-fold like a river bed,
Endless tributaries tell a story,
Of work, wounds, or simply years,
Palm lines tell as if divinatory,
Not fate, but of brooding the past,
And something of the weight of glory.

And endless are the words of hands,
Caressing, holding, or raising fists,
Enfolding prayer, clinging to love,
Or cupping a face that ever persists
Questioning, with arms extended high,
Fingers tremble in the morning mists.

Empty cups rest upon a wearied lap,
Tears slip through finger and thumb,
Caught one moment in pores and pleas,
Until nail and skin release the sum
Of breath and pain in bended palms,
Resisting not more what will become.

The sacrament seed,
The true ending.

Memory

There is a place where clouds scramble,
Hungry to swallow vale and wood, and I,
Lost spaces and memories in misty bramble,
Cool as death, as a life lost in a sky,
Without stars.

And in pointless wanderlust, feet shuffle,
Like a vagabond stream without water bed,
Shades of shrines suggest, and voices muffle
A troth, a truth, that has long been unsaid,
Without voice.

Suffer the soul that can't remember its warmth,
Blythe to the longing that leads to praise.
A presence in pace walks through the glomth,
In death, in communion, in life, will raise,
Without scorn.

And a dream or a memory of a place never seen,
Dispels and displaces the ghostly horizon,
And places, and people, as breath into gene,
Retells the story as the grace will emblazon,
With friendship.