Sunday, October 20, 2024

CONCISION

    `Language, all gussied up, eased  
into hours talking with itself - 

a Texas drawl,

Wild Turkeys

   twisting away

         the orange rind.

Always the last to leaf

(in) leave taking.

Damp silence

mudding clarity.

 

You bring your sweat to the job,

the art of hanging sheets

between gravity and the weave of clouds

   chasing the drift

 

It happened because we left the window open.

I slept with a woman

who synchronized clocks

with the tiniest whims

of reciprocity.

 

Rhythm guides the body’s placement,

Image moves it on.

Vocabularies

break down their construction,

nouns become verbs,

resurrected.

Samuel Johnson’s dictionary 

had rocks to roll.

Or a measure of music was heard

within one discordant vowel.

 

         *

Two centuries ago, 

Fiction couldn’t survive secrecy.

A chair was thrown across the room.

A carriage pulled away from the house

and into fog.

Rhetoric climbed atop grammar.

 

Look at what you have to say at dawn,

ticketing a stop sign

your tongue consumed 

in a slow poke’s

Speakeasy.

 

         *

The hand moves to cover

inaccuracies

My face, wincing

 

I trample the way

Soft, vulnerable growth

In the moisture 

 

Teeth cut short

And lips

-       Babble on

 

*

Noon sun honeymoon 

Passing through the cerebral

exactment

where sweethearts flourish

Thursday, October 3, 2024

THE GOD LEFT BEHIND

To do a runner

means to outdistance

the voice of conscience

coming from the castle

 

We arrowed through 

the toll booths

without getting shot

 

Tunnels cut up the sky

Guests offered giddy congrats

anticipating hoofing back

 

I sorted the hierarchy

(me on the bottom tier

    of obligation

 

    living in a trailer

somewhere sixties

before we missed out

 

Enclosure revived deprivation

"truth-being"

nears belonging

 

    *

Did I mention Vajrasattva?

Deity on the scene 

cannot be real but feels

absolutely real

 

   turbulent scales

    laid open

to this or that

                  deafness

 

    *

climbing the ladder 

reaches into the attic

yes, you may

 

squeeze through 

the soft spot

on top of your skull

Friday, September 20, 2024

OTHERWORLDLY


Hugging the wall

As if a shadow

He sees in the dark, sure

hinted motion

converged the guards

 

My head tilted 

toward the feet

His voice strong, 

Singing, on the Fourth Way

A fakir’s timeless mantra

 

Return to the saint

adornments, to the homeless

land, then steal  

from within

a beggars’ identity

 

Wonderworker

at the gates of a nation

his re-entry barred

stood calling out

God’s hundred blinded names


Thursday, September 5, 2024

 LOVE, JUSTIFIED

 

The absence of death

is lostness of memory   

 

The imposture 

quickly justifies himself 

 

Sad, that consciousness 

Devolved

 

“A specific capacity to be redeemed”

 

   *

 

What’s funny about love 

You forget the details 

remember the fall

   that one day, you first

loathed yourself

 

You never had recognized 

truth being Less

Human 

drawing the animal 

Spirit Card

   

seeing clouds as thickets

tall tree limbs climbed

to pry holes open 

for leafed cleansing

the moony sky’s sin

 

   *

 

The horizon is a mouth opened wide

Its hunger paves the asphalt sky

Oiled seas’ rustproofing sticks

Shorebird feathers to bodies -

A smoke aggrieved diffraction

 

Pulling myself up and over

the overwrought boardwalk

At the vacancy of doors

(its society teeming)

fairground rides invert

the undercarriage

 

You find the mailbox empty 

This being the surface of our greetings 

Its irony repose of laughter

 

   *

 

The museum keeper sorts and labels

Objects entrusted him, changing

Shows weekly, hoping visitors will not tire

of returning.

         As they observe

objects, he observes them,

hearing a voice outside his head

“unbalanced” whose?

 

   *

 

What I miss other than you

   is also you

 

Thunder God

   indelible Lightning,

         totem


each with a claim

on a thin electric Wand

  of interruption


Piercing the fruitful

petroglyph

with a lot to ask

 

of elders, and a populace

   poverty-stricken

 

*

 

I picked some lovely flowers for you.

 “Don’t bring them by.”

 

Forests are the home of the imagination

Couldn’t get around it No matter what

 

Your life

Needs to approach

Your shoes

 

 

                                    09/05/2024

Friday, August 9, 2024

WORLD OF THE LANDS

Medicine

being sop

absent you, 

with you

evasive

 

a red wolf

recovering

communication,

intuiting

danger

 

Chaos, spirit, 

and light

share their centered

diminution

fitted

 

for all equations

of the heart

the dead

have an anechoic

tom-foolery

 

shoot some hoops

laces pulled tight

above power

another’s fuss

advancing crustacean

 

its potential

of an olden

weight-bearing

authority

toweled off

Friday, July 19, 2024

THE CONTINENT IS YOURS


Binoculars adjust for the eyes.

On a nearby hilltop

a business economy watches 

the normative close in,

circling like raptors 

 

The fire      of repudiation     having been lit

dancing commenced

 

Land rent   not to be

         collected    

                           slavery, tenancy, capitalism

evicted       

from this world   

(its place of progress)

 

w/nu hope 

w/out enclosure   laws of protection

for people,        not property,      freed 

 

*


The sky spits on me

I congratulate myself

feeling nothing

no anger, nothing

no spittle

 

I thrive alone

ignored

perfecting wisdom

while others go blind

forgetting the sutras

 

Let the text have its life

I recall the child

awakened by Mother

over no intention

but sweetness



*


Trust me

goes further

than prove it

 

a la carte

sins in stars

Spinoza’s Monism

 

   coming apart.

No man will tell me 

what to do

 

when I fly away

I’ll ask for Biscoff

Cookies if I please

 

  We age into frailty

cling to the few

distinctions we yet

 

uphold ashamed

and glad to be

forgotten

 

 

  *


I embraced a blind man

Walking his cane through the dark

When his head came off in my hands

 

Morning, and the head was back in place

Hair jelled up like the peak

Of a wooden fruit picking ladder

 

Uniformed, charged with reparations

On a continent stuffed with stowaways

Escaped from their cabins

 

No more heavy lifting

Slavery (Egyptian)

The whole population 

   building pyramids 

 

   or captives taken in war

Slavery (Roman)

The emperor’s face

Stamped on his coin

 

Patricians putting plebians to work

Taxes going up with interest

Into feudal dispensation

 

By strength, for fealty

Land parceled 

Tenants farming

 

Waiting for capitalism’s

   evening out.

Revolutionary

         motivations abound

 


  *


The soul has no connection           to Realty Drive

Pawn your security key       

    deficits, decibels, descriptions

belong to resist - 

                  beyond self

                  combat we

                  recognize

                  the body,

                  recall it’s

                  person

                  now without

                  origin

                  or bardo

                  lights - 

                       the voice    of your   thrown-ness

 

   *


Three disciples climbed

to the full reveal

of the transfigured

form

that can’t be looked upon 

and seen

 

Three disciples

         holding out

                  for a peaceful mind     

         the God-Man

         having promised,

                           “I will send it along     later”

   

Form you desire

                  Beauty       composed          restored

                           to original           face

 

 

                       01.02.2024 – 07.17.2024

Friday, June 21, 2024

IN BACKYARD TREES

Desire, Conception,

    Malignancy -

Wind picking up

out of nowhere 

 

When we knew the body,

  we knew the person

 

Wanting the best 

   Pleading

Please, recognize who

         we really are

 

  *

Yamantaka, Conqueror

   of Yama,

“Ender

    of Death”

 

Each of life’s transitions

Appropriates an ancient offering

 

The head has shifted

   A path to enlightenment

 And below, 

bared shoulders

 

  *

My dear friends,

in Narsaq

the one Jew 

arrived on Green-is-land

with wife and dog

to wilderness

 

I have books

Eyeglasses

I read, study

 

Sometimes, at dusk

I sense the child

clutching air

without shame

  as if wisdom

were an afterthought.

That was my mother’s hand.

Have you noticed her?

She dances, in shadows!

 

  *

The news is good.

The house of the Lord we built

         still stands.

Icebergs ferry sheep

across the fjord

Musicians negotiate 

  the music

of the mouth.

 

 

 

         06/19/2024

         Essex, VT

Sunday, May 19, 2024

A LOOKING AT, WITHIN

Guardian, custodian, teacher:
Another damned tutor to get past
Before the intuition.

        - De Quncey's "estrangement from Wordsworth" attributed to the latter's
           pride, arrogance, and rudeness - 
                "the whole theory of picturesque beauty"
agitating the taxed cognition

                    *

Vanished thoughts resist retrieval,
the pitch of words
No more.

"seen from within"
            "watched over"
                        "contemplated"

each new thought
            lobbed
                    a volley of cannonballs
                                                My Way
                              (fort's re-enactment)
                                   patrolled

"to perceive directly without reasoning, know by immediate perception"

a paradigm    
        ghosts    
                tossed about     on lake waves    

                    *

Follow the breath                further out                than can be watched
            Sit        w/the feeling of finished "to do"

Intimation
            Admonishment
                                   Done

                        for Romance you shall quest

                     *

The child never "safe, safe and sound, healthy"
            Left alone       (toying) with hand-me-down
                        Needs    himself        "to be strong"