Back to the sea

I want to go back to the sea
where light and dark are one,
where I come from.

Back to sea waits and wiggles
where the will to be
(not greed) trumps right and wrong.

I would be a tiny fish, alive one marvelous moment
or a big one, snapping up the little.
The sea sings, ‘the one who doesn't know me is an orphan.'

I will go to the deepest space I can find
and listen to OM -- I want to fly
where my wings first formed.

Reflections (after Rumi)

A cloud passes unseen,
you see the shadow it casts

Pulled from your source
you long to go back

Desire makes your heart skip a beat,
in the lock of your fear a key turns

In time all images are spent
like gold plucked from a sleeve

While you sleep in darkness
something within you shines

While your body fades to dust
you hop from roof to star

Your body is but a shadow
of a shadow of your love

A Reflection (after Rumi)

How does softness leave a petal,
or hardness a stone?
But the parts, when lost bless,
bring you to all there is,
the Friend you seek beyond them.

Killing the Christ within
(written after reading comments by Benny Morris on ethnic cleansing)

Ethnic cleansing is sometimes justified
he tells the crowd
which roars approval
claps and shouts
believing
what goes around
doesn't come around
when you're armed to the teeth,
and special.

St. Peter isn't there this time,
just an old man
sucking on an empty pipe.
A cock crows twice
and keels over.

He sees the cock drop
and tells the crowd he's had a sign
- it's up to them, self-chosen,
to kill the Christ within
- the Beast is still set to rise,
pitiless as a second sun,
at its appointed hour.

It's Said...

(assorted short poems)

It's said, 'You have to kiss a lot of frogs,'
wet wrinkled ones, eyes bulging.
Many do, yet never find a prince;
find grinning frogs in their mirrors instead.

***

A green fish, nearly too old to breathe, rests
under October's thin ice. Early snowflakes
melt above him. Soon fish and flakes will
leave the viewer, who says he owns them.

***

Some have said that Sound and Picture
are more fundamental than the Word, better
vessels for magic, superior tools for the artist;
but, like fire, language is a gift from the gods;
words can create both sounds and pictures
and turn them into poetry. Words are wands.

***

A bowl of cherries is just a bowl of cherries.
A hawk circles over a farmer's hens
while the farmer plucks cherries for his pies,
pops one into his chin.

***

'Impulsive' is said to be
eager without looking
then - surprised!
Some with that habit
age to 'old and wise';
others become old
with a vengeance.

***

Dancer and red fish dream,
one under satin,
one under stone;
glide like fireflies
from their covers.

***

His poem about a perfect lover
is well-crafted, but no one lives there.

***

What is permitted may not be forgiven:
if you would walk scathless through your days,
your own master, blameless,
listen to the still voice within.

The fairies

They study with Merlin's coterie
and honor desires as gods
waiting on belief
like their cousins, the angels.
Their early training
still consists of finding such
as place, age and time of day
to be replaceable fancies.

Knowledge keeps them light
and their wings brightly rainbow,
though much they do be hidden,
and they still appear fully-formed
when today's reality experts
go on their paid vacations.
Some believe the fairies have migrated,
for security reasons, to other planets.

No time is wasted

A catcher of thunder waits under a net
that his friend the spider has woven.
A fire maker waits under a tree
for rain to present an umbrella.
Meanwhile, smoke curls over roasting corn
and the net catches a dream.

Self Image Is Destiny

There was a little girl
with shining curls,
not one in the middle
of her forehead;
daily she was told
they were beautiful;
they grew thicker, shinier
like the coat of a young alpha wolf.

As the girl grew older
she began to hear she'd caused
the hair of her friends
to be thin and limp
because she was claiming
the most care and attention
and she caved in, shrank from view;
her hair dulled, turned limp, fell out.

Then the hair of her friends
didn't look so bad.
(It's lonely at the top.)

'There's something Red Cross about a woman'

A commentator said that on the News last night
about a bright young woman with a future
who had risked and lost her freedom for a loser.

She should have, could have, remained a K-6 teacher
had she kept her own nose clean.
Instead she helped a pirate with one bold eye escape from prison
and now might spend some dozen years in one herself.

At 17 she'd eloped with a gambler, who told her with her help
he'd reform; she was rescued that time by her brother.
She could have lived in comfort, married someone respectable,
retired with a pension;
so what other explanation could there be than
'there's something Red Cross about a woman'?

Red sandals
(a vignette celebrating some dimensions of red)

My color is red, though I've been painted antique gold by Maria, the jazz singer who owns me. Red is her favorite color (red shoes keep dancing and never grow old) but she's wearing gold to see Il Barbiere di Siviglia tonight with an admirer.

Not that she wouldn't wear red - shoes, rose in her hair, dress - to the opera if she wanted to...her favorite song right now is "Hang Tough," New Orleans style, and her favorite flick is still "Something Wild," à la Melanie Griffith.

Maria told me that red is the color of creativity, a glorious color, but it scares certain people. She says she's wearing gold to a place where some of them go to be seen, and drink too much at intermission. Changing my color for the performance doesn't mean she's selling out, she explained.

My former owner was an astronaut who wore my heels down tripping to the moon. I was her 'good luck' pair -- not serious like her, she said, who did look serious in her moon-walk boots. I don't understand why she left me in a thrift shop, after having me re-heeled. I heard her say, though, that she wanted to die like Yeats' wild old wicked man, not at home tucked under pale covers.

All of my owners have been soulful nonconformists. I've had several -- passed friend to friend -- and then there are the eternal thrift shops where my current owner found me. 'Red sandals! Voila!' she cried, then she kissed me. Tomorrow she'll peel this gold away. Tonight we visit Rossini at the Met. I've heard opposites attract (though not for long) and I'm guessing her partner will be dressed in black or gray..

In broad daylight

You see him in the sun's bright light,
a man of indiscernible age
weaving his way towards a target;
he disappears into an alley or building,
reappears, each time closer to his prey.
When he meets up with her,
silent, unseen witnesses watch
the struggle of to be and not.

'Under cover of darkness' and 'fly by night'
became so popular with the romantics
it was forgotten that most predation
still takes place in broad daylight.

For David, the Painter

'Sometimes I want to paint
something as corny
as a sunset,' he said.
'Why don't you,' I asked.

'Maybe you could paint it
like no one else has.'
But he shook his head,
'I have an image to think of.'

He paints abstractly
and, instead of things, an idea
that life is an unending plateau.
His paintings remind me of sunsets.

Holding on

She was drowning,
he felt her presence
and found her,
pulled her from
murky night waters
and wouldn't let go

He grew tired of her clinging,
she of his control,
but both remembered the night
a saviour pulled a fallen star
to safety; she found murky waters
again to drown in,
but he was old.

Some New Scholars
(verse commentary, after Yeats' "The Scholars")

The Scholars
by William Butler Yeats

Bald heads forgetful of their sins,
Old, learned, respectable bald heads
Edit and annotate the lines
That young men, tossing on their beds,
Rhymed out in love's despair
To flatter beauty's ignorant ear.

All shuffle there; all cough in ink;
All wear the carpet with their shoes;
All think what other people think;
All know the man their neighbour knows.
Lord, what would they say
Did their Catullus walk that way?

They used to be forgetful of their sins,
now they seduce their students, pretend they're
young themselves, but can't remember when they
felt love's emotion without self-consciousness;
believe beauty is clever, not ignorant.

The older ones vacation in exotic places, the
younger wear disdain and good will; all wear
the carpet with their shoes; all think aloud
in the same domain of political correctness.
Few in the humanities or social sciences dare
have an original thought that works (I recall
one: "pecked to death by doves"; its source
was speaking of her friends).

All know the members of their crowd; it's still
important to know the right thinkers. In a town
I passed through, those teaching for the local
college bought their uniforms at Sears; the one
with pecky friends asked if Catullus was an
astronaut, then confessed she'd mostly read
classic comics, adding that her specialty was
something else.

some reflections on loss of ethics and power

Ethics is the contemplation of optimum survival;
ethical behavior is always self-determined,
based on reason and belief in one's own honor.
(L. Ron Hubbard)

As their appetite for power took over,
ethics fell by the wayside.
Turning pleasures into drugs,
reveling in blood sport,
they cowered before Tiberius, Caligula, Nero,
and became the prey of sackers from without.

This is history that repeats itself:
when the balance between ethics and power is lost
a downward spiral develops
and for every contra-survival act
there's a 'reason why'
to justify it.
Power itself doesn't corrupt.

In the United States today
the story of George and his cherry tree
is often called a myth,
those who died at the Alamo
hapless drunks.
It is inconceivable to opportunists
who take what others have built
without understanding their vision
that when we were on our way up
there were Americans (sober or not)
able to stand on their honor
at the level of legend.

for John Milton

When we're young, arrogant lambs
with heart and wool
the world lusts after
we preen and swagger
all the way to hell
(called 'the
fortunate fall'
by a poet)

change radically -
willing, totally -
crawl from the fire,
rise to the light
(called by the same poet
'Paradise Regained')

Those who stay home
ask, 'why look for trouble?'
and 'who needs to be a hero?'
as though they have little
left to discover

but you reach
into hell and heaven
for secrets of the journey,
show Him planting His apple seed
that holds the fruit
of divine Knowing
in our Garden

then creating us
His chosen seekers and finders
of Knowledge.

The Works of John Milton

Thanksgiving 2006

I'm not the body
I move, own, am tied to
giving thanks today
as I consume the flesh
of friends Tom Turkey,
plants I love,
along with air and water...
What is this communion,
one form devouring others,
transforming, mind giving credit
for the privilege
to a god?

Gandhi

"The only tyrant I bow to
is the still voice within."

Knowing the difference,
he chose between dying and living.

must and should

A book must be an axe for the frozen sea inside us... (Franz Kafka)

How does one come to write with the power to melt a frozen sea?
With force, daggers invade at large;
flowers penetrate our timid hearts less than they should.

walking stick

God walks straight with crooked lines. (proverb)

A straight-crooked walking stick is perceived honest and reliable
as we know the path has not been straight for us
and the gate has not been narrow.

After all controversy...

there is a winter solstice
carrying the promise
of another spring
and a Christ within
willing to be born

I am Kali from the West

I came into this world
as much from Spirit as any male deity
but am often perceived by the fearful
to be less holy.

In my mortal form, men believe I am flattered by propositions
and pleased when they tell me what to do, who and what to love.
They think I am fulfilled when they try to force obedience,
saying that what they want is what I must want --
like those they hold in thrall.

Few in this drama guess the rage in my heart
and the secret plotting I do to render the bullies harmless,
fighting each other to mutual defeat, shorn of luck.
I drink their blood afterwards, wear their teeth in my necklaces.

Here is my story in a myth:
In a time out of mind a Spirit visited earth
to destroy what is decayed and corrupt;
She carries a snake for a staff, dancing East to West and back.
Between one noon and the next many mortals fall into Her crypt
and all become slaves who would enslave Her.

On the Road

rocks turn to dust, seeds are barren,
a tail of greed wags the dog
(the one who kills
the goose with the golden eggs)

half beasts slouch
toward succor and safety,
fall into fires
with withering angels

never say die
whose path is holy

  ***

not wanting to end up on his horns
she refused his friendship
and ended on a sword

some approach suing for redress
and soon find weakness
with their arrows

in a world ruled by struggle
there are choosers and the chosen,
each depending on the other

  ***

young girls, coatless in winter,
pull in eyes;
the big fish don't always
catch the little

wolves dine on fresh lambs
until the lambs turn into tigers
(the tigers into saviours)

one with great love and knowledge
walked on water
beckoning others to follow
and they still believed in death

Who are you?

You, behind the dark and light forms flowing near,
Behind the mirrors and doors,
Behind the angels and the demons,

Behind this versus that,
Behind thoughts and their frames,
Behind desires and fears...

Who are you
Who teaches that the less there is between us,
The higher I fly on my own wings?

Chinese Formula Poems

Though often alone, I'm seldom lonely.
Born under the sign of the Tiger,
I can spot a demon or thief miles away
but do not close in
unless loneliness holds sway.

After a hurricane
the ordinariness of days.
A woman home from work
puts her children in their beds,
imagines a faithful lover in her own.

Middle Way

I have found the Tao,
coming round full circle
after touring the world
in many pieces
and putting them together.
I can see truth and wisdom
on paths I believed
opposed my own;
what seemed contrary
belongs now in my larger world.
And almost suddenly
I find myself centered.

Hope

(October, 2008)

The leaves on my money tree are full of sunlight
but my IRA is nearly defunct.
Thoughts darken, turning to bankers and other wall street thieves
dreaming up new strategies,
and to greed and self-sabotage;
I look at the gold-lit leaves --
they could be an omen of prosperity,
but then I recall Pandora's safe box.

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