1.
What peace from a study of gray facade
Or the gaiety of absent quiet charades
For a young blind boy in beauty wrapped
Yet strung on by an eidos of untold lies.
What... voice soft like the breezes of enclosed tombs,
Still, like the security of his white draped room.
Sunshine streams from his open mind,
No reason for his quietness to find,
For none had stirred, nor uttered ill word
To the youth as fair as kind.
The walls whisper still
Like lost whipporwills
Singing to the blood cold night,
Dismal with the threat of fright,
While the young poet smiles,
Rhythmic breath a singular delight
As blackness works its unuttered guiles.
The gray is bereaved,
His smile was conceived,
The long quiet broken only by whispers,
Not of magick or thickest gloom,
But of love in the white draped room.
2.
The Prisoner
Alone in a dungeon of self one cries
For welcome release from his hated flesh
He cries in a darkness devoid of light
Weeps to the ceiling of his prison cell
The sky the only ceiling to one so tried
Truth, then, the cell must be the world
No place to go and when place to be
Weep in the dungeon of self, do you see?
Run through the dungeon, believe the untrue
The only escape has to come from you.
3.
It comes
A rushing of water over the world
A silver drop glistens in a corner of mind
A corner so obvious even priests can't unwind
The hopes of the white stag
Proud and alone
With all the world to call his home
Alone amidst discord, free from Pavlov's spite.
A rule so thick as to be called night
The weeping of planets rains down
Even the wealthiest will one day knock
On the door of yore, of tomorrow year.
The heart of gold shines through
From the only pit the world can't be.
Home.
4.
Flying
The world became pale ( as milk -- fly free )
One stood on a cliff (shout to whispering rocks)
The cold sea below the crimson veil
A suicide may not hide his face
The sky dark red, immune to thanks of palsied hands.
Such hands sweep too close, the every man rule.
One man sees all, too late to fall.
The colors are moods to us all
Did the rocks throw him down?
Do any believe in unholy ocean,
That the sea is the serpent
With which Adam drew out incest?
He leapt to red stoned destiny.
The fool he was we shall not be.
5.
The Atheist's Gift
To Amy:
Thinking of a free heart
The windswept beach of mind.
One thought unites;
Nothing to give we need
Nothing, never mind, we never see
All our love of mind between
On the sandy blown stream -
A true gift this time (spoken softly).
I give you nothing.
6.
Lines on Dreams
I once had a dream
In that dream there was life
I awoke in the morning to insanity
With visions so real they were me.
Dreams are the thoughts of God
Drifting across seas of fate and eternity
Tall ships in the mist of man.
7.
The End
The waves leave me on rocky shores
The sea and wind my eternity.
Alone I look to the sky.
The rocky cliffs expose the night
Sun gone I wait for the certain end
Of my short belonging to another small world.
The rocks and sand, it comes (the end)
My soul flows, comes to take me away
To the shores of yet another sea.
I killed myself so now I lie
In the embrace of only wind and sea,
Alone yet again with ethereality.
Dead men speak no rhymes.
8.
Of Kings and Cattle
They fall to the king in his splendid deceit
Smiling in all too welcome defeat,
While he merely laughs and mocks his fools
As they embrace their pain like grinning ghouls.
The palace promenade of loathing and gold
Only promises to king and country seem to hold,
And mock them he does, though loyal and true,
The birds of the palace who never flew.
Not granted wings or finer things
As the tyrant spill she wine of kings,
And forsaken the pride of royalty spoken
Like a golden thread through and through.
9.
The Girl Child
The girl child alone walks
Singing dark love songs
As she laughs like a nymph
Midst spectral shade trees.
The chill air of morning and silky skin
Sketch an eldritch country lane
With a slow dance of mystery.
The world rushes by in her innocent smile:
Could it be a window to the free blue sky
Or a web of lies to catch you and I?
Her song sings of ages and never
And the blue of her eyes seems to scream forever.
10.
Some words are like poison
To the lover's tortured mind
Some words are like pain
To the innocent and vain
They burn, and his youthful cry rips forth
To stay and yet go, alone above all
Words to burn injustice away.
So they run from the set of a too long day
Warmth of sunlight and embraces by night
No comfort found in remembrance of woe
Now alone, once spurned, twice wept
Only the lovers through time are swept
The sun sets the ocean to steam,
Steam and poisonous words
From a place where there are no lovers
From a place where there are no dreams.
11.
The ages have brought down to me
A vast amount of poetry,
Poets who spoke with golden tongues;
On the written page they are to some
Heralds of a bygone age.
Would not to speak with time lost word
Bring sunshine to gray,
For in language show no shame,
Whisper of legends unheard,
Gibber insanely, yet wax only true.
Never wavers the golden rule.
My words may be abomination to those with soft ears
And commercialized hearts.
I speak the truth to all I meet.
The edge of sanity is the city street,
The edge of home and the jungle's place.
The house of glass belongs to one,
The truth must be heard by everyone.
Awaken to the beauty of harshened words.
I have no legends which go unheard.
12.
Shadows of the Moon
A glimpse of the world behind the pale veil,
Draped between thoughts like ebony rails,
Staircases, balconies, dreams wafting on,
The vanguard of sleep in unknown song.
Push on, I vend... a salesman of fear,
As the elusive nightmare draws near.
Catch it if you dare,
But if so beware,
The doors to the night are never empty.
Come and see
No more me
Instead terrain of wonder and terror.
Glitterglow sown in eldest night.
Ruby red lips have stolen my will,
Lips without form though my sight lingers still.
Glitterglow go from my place of woe,
Your fright hungry soul is unwanted here
And my wares have gone to a place unclear.
Away!
Away!
I must be free,
My soul must not fly away from me.
The thin veil rips away at last,
Nightmares and dream freed by a chilling blast.
Away glitterglow, my mind is free,
And my soul has certainly become me.
Landscape wanes and thoughts strain,
They rush past like the wind of time,
Engulfing all, myself in kind.
The mansion of dreams washes away.
As laughter chases (look glowing soul, again no more me)
At last is revealed harsh destiny.
Dreams can't be sold, and I am too free,
Blind to the world of dreams within me.
13.
As Gaia Mourns in Gladness
The earth weeps
The shards of Gaia's tears have no duration
Time fades like shadows in the storm
A seeming wellspring of sacrament
That which eludes men so mockingly.
The soft caresses of the sky
The earth drinks thirstily
Yet more thirsty my soul as my drenched skin sings
Tremor, sacred stuff of origin
The rain seeks out the recesses of my heart and soul
As a majesty of soaked fields stretches out before me
Curtains of life squelching sound
Thundrous like the thoughts of man's creation
-- or destruction
And the pains of the world are blanketed
The visionary lives on
Arms outstretched to the lightning and wind
Revelling in the feel of the lives on earth
The earth weeps rain like gladdened souls
Dissolve, and the gladness washes away
I laugh for as Gaia mourns in gladness
So do I.
14.
The Dragon
A dragon sleeps in carved out halls of steel and stone
Scraping cold claws
Across concrete walls
In the night, in the heart of the city.
A dragon stirs in hallowed halls
The halls of businessmen and money
Roaring with the sound of a falling angel
At the dawn in the heart of the city.
A dragon awakens in the catacombs of life
Thundering in the voice of a generation
Sick and tired in their poverty
In the morning
In the heart of the city.
15.
Laughing Black
A little girl cries in a room out of sight
In an apartment
Only a thousand rooms on the street.
Outside the soft white moonlight falls
To be torn by the dirty city streets
Only the empty stairways seem witness
Hushed bubbling sobs never the worst.
The streets have seen much.
Never the worst.
The phantoms of day cavort downtown
Light and familiarity blind them
and money; the streets had seen worse
As slivers of her soul slide down her cheeks
Only the sounds of the night comfort her.
These tales go untold in the waking hour.
Hush, that girl ain't our business
The knocks and wails and other frights
They tell her tale with her
The addicts fill the alleys
Can they hear her now?
A large old man sits rotting
Never a thousand apartments, only the city like his jet heart
He's the stealer of hope, tattered and torn yet laughing
Laughing, laughing his name is Black
Her cries reach out like tentacles
He hears the meaning like stagnancy
Laughing, laughing black.
16.
The Gathering
Faces stream before me
Another yes-yes function
Chatter for nothing
And lights for comfort
They do glow beautifully
My only delight
A visual repast for in fear I sit
Never close to the center
Never far from impasse
I sit in fear of this alien caste
So enmeshed with false idols
Pleasure and mingle
The floating phantoms
They all spring from the same river
And trickle through your fingers the same.
In the nightmare flow
Too much glow after too much glow
My vision awash so too many know.
Where in electric altars
In the flow of drunken faces
Where goes the poet and gentler races
They fade away and I lose myself
Tonight the pretenders prey.
17.
Victory
The words I write may be forgotten
Left on a wayside of time's procession
Strewn down man's passage
Though never the message, the sigh of contemplation
To sing, rhythm that English ribald
It will be and will remain.
When the nightingale stirs
A thousand years hence
So stir such words, a song of hope and grandeur
Therein lie all poets forever.
18.
The Spinster's Frown
Tell me once young lady no more
Tell me once to be true
To whence have flown those golden curls
Replaced by the frown of the village churl,
Where that fickle young lass who once broke hearts
The giggles and grins of youth apart
From time itself, eh, beguiled nymph
Where are your charms today?
As the grim, unwholesome frown
Wears at your face and drags you down
Is it her curls waxing softly
Or merely the song in the trees.
Notice, did she smile at me?
19.
I.
The girl had been blind since birth, poor lass,
When one day something gave way
She complained of her new found sight's real worth
For then it was too bright to find her way.
II.
The boy was thought deaf for many a year
When the bubble burst over his head
The found he was merely full of dread
At the silence that was too loud to hear.
III.
The man had perfect senses for sight and sound
A businessman was he
And in taste, touch and smell precise.
Yet when tested by scientists, what could this be?
He had no mind that they could find
Luckier than he are the deaf and blind
At lest they think the old fashioned way
And respond to kindness in kind.
20.
Yonder Lies Goliad
Look craven jackals
Yonder lies Goliad burning so bright
As you sing lamentations for one seventy-nine
They died here too, a valorous kind
Died for the dust the cities stand on
The dust of their graves, that sacred trust
Do they sip herbal tea
Glibly quip about history
Do they fight little paper wars
While six feet down the memories drown
In complaints of dust and heat
And sweat they really know nothing of.
21.
The Devil's Advocate
A man once walked a path straight to the heart of nowhere
He walked it, strangely by his own decision
Stumbling down hallways of blind ambition
He met a fell demon there.
A demon that maketh you lie down to sleep
In mansions, and gives you green to reap
Sheer bundles of the stuff, that man felt keen.
He now owns the hallway by demonic insight
Where once he stumbled blindly he now leads the way
"Come collect fortunes, all yours today!"
As flames lick around him with evil delight.
22.
The Soldier's Cry
A soldier cries to be a bird
He cries again, his cry unheard
Quoth the blackbird, none! No more!
"Take me from this place of war,
Take me back to my house and home,
Back to the place where I belong.
Grant me the wings to fly away,
To fly to freedom, to fly away."
23.
The Outcast's Song
Cut by a razor to my very soul
Exposed to the elements, on my own
I vainly seek comforts of house and home
For cut have I been, to my soul kind friend
Look now, the wind does mock me so
As I stumble and don't know where to go
I wish in my heart that I'll soon know
Why that mean wind does mock me so.
My feet and fingers bleed, it hits the ground
I searched and searched for comfort unfound
I won't speak a word or make a sound
As my guitar weeps and my blood wets the ground.
Free me lord, free me, from this life of pain
Free me to live, to love again
Outcast from my baby, my only home
Hurry, lord, hurry, I've been banished from my own.
24.
The Edifice
There is a building quite near my home
With nothing inscribed on the front door.
Behind the door is merely a hall
With twenty doors and nothing more.
The hall is brightly lit and long
And deathly quiet always
And every door is locked up tight
By night and dreary day.
To stand alone in that long hall
Where no soul seen has come or gone
What a feeling of all that's vast and unknown
It draws your mind to mystery, to seek and find.
Near my home a building squats
Where thoughts are set a-roving.
If you listen it might be found
In the silence is still the sound
Of all the unknown pressing down,
And the door still calls to you.
25.
The Rich Man's Love
A man loved a woman more than life itself
To heaven was she near and to him
The beauty of the sky was captured in her eyes
And she was surely twice as cherished.
He looked to her with uncertain eyes
A look returned in loving sighs
But he had no money at all.
Grieving he asked her to go away
He would ruin her within one day
Says he, "I've no money at all."
But she replied, "You alread gave me everything
All I ever prayed for."
***
The Poor Man's Love
A rich man bought his dear sweetheart
Diamonds and pearls, he played his part
Oh so well, and he loved ‘tis true
But somehow his part he came to rue.
She loved him every single day
And made him happy in every way
And made him poor and took his things
Then left in search of a prince or a king.
26.
To give when nothing is wanted
Is futility for the lonely heart.
To give when all is trickery and lies
Is bribery for a seeking soul
To give nothing when so much is needed
is the end, is the end, is the end
27.
I reason in a voice not wholly my own
Why not the peace of rolling waves?
Nobody hears me: alone with completeness
I lie with scorpions only I know.
There is no peace for the one who craves
Only strength and more and more mind
Look around at the world you make
Make your own waves and peace will not forsake you.
In a voice wholly my own I scream
I must have been blind for now I see
And the ocean seems to be inside me.
28.
The Razor
Look before
Nay, look again
You leap into murderous arms
Screaming all the while
Please, please more pain
Barbs so sweet
Touch me
Refrain gentle heart
Does the wisping music call you names?
If you call in horror you call in vain
I love you, I love...
The forests flee, unwelcome boy
Earth has a savage mercy
Scaffolded love has no place near
In the garden, fountain of beauty
No, never been -- Why not? Why not?
Yet no, never been
Can you touch the sky?
Can you? Can you?
Tell me no lies and I'll ask for nothing
From you
Tell yourself to fly
Reach not for a razor
When the flowers stand oh so near.
29.
The souls of the earth revolve again
A spiral of seething humanity
The voices roar a requiem
A gothic moan to live and live
Do we walk on earth today
When storms of reason cloud the sky?
Faulty to be thrown between you and I
A rain of knowing pelts the dust
Something to hold onto, hard and lean
Sometimes knowledge is too vast to be free
The prison that follows you is your own
The freedom some reap must first be sown
The door is open as the ground washes down
Rivulets of time and mud we found
Nothing, the water will not melt our bones
As we walk the earth, does your prison door slam shut?
Do we learn to learn today?
Knowledge and freedom should be the same
Reason like an anchor to the ship of fate
The fields can't stand in the rains
The music of resting souls
Floats to creators, so righteous and bold
Listlessly we weave our own melody
If true all songs are the same, the same
And my lessons whisper much of me.
So the souls must return home,
The rains do not wash all away.
30.
Whirl clatter clatter my thoughts away
As dreams and hopes shatter with hot molten ease
The day sinks deeply and sight doesn't fade
instead waxes vicious and fluid
The crowd drips on to madness
The dance, pray, the frenzy
The honeyed altar to earthly delights
They worship the moving away
Nothing but throes in the heat and themselves
Nothing but death, in a way
31.
In a faraway mind
So close to home
In the age past never yet always now
There dreamed a young wizard
And dreams were his love
Yet even the lovers in dreams betray
Gigglingly running through his fingers
Like sand, try to understand
If dreams are love then in between
Perhaps ripple time
Perhaps clearly seen
Be it by Stygian night or day
In the time of ancient ways
The worlds flow by as he speaks and says
The stars come inside
When there's nowhere to go
But home to a friend, and a friend they know
Come inside, come inside this home to mind
And dream some time away.
***
The first and only
And all are one
Caressing young hearts
With delicate words
Murmured songs soft and lonely
Like morning dew
And the breath of this love
Is a mist on the world.
32.
Time and space
And you and I (the human race)
To live, to die
To scry the inside of your mind
A nobler deed is hard to find
Just look and wait
Never early and never late
In the forest of these tails
Or in the cobwebs it never fails
To be a secret or two
The truth never lies
Baby, how about you?
There is no more wall
What you see here is eternity
The inside come alive
Outside of all time
The center flits like a sparrow
Try to catch it
Close your eyes
Eternal thoughts will never die
The goal doesn't move
Let the beat come inside.
33.
Crawl along the inside of a big glass ball
A face starts to form at the end of the longest hall
Somehow in a side of the sphere
But a ball has no sides nor halls, nor time
Does the crystal in your hand reflect too true
Let me see, let me see
In your hands a ball with a surface of thoughts
We wonder at the horror of absolute truth.
34.
Flicker, flicker
candle show the wandering letters
wander on, thoughts away
page aglow
my thoughts don't know
the words never say
never said true soft
meander on oh heart
oh no
and not to breathe
in caverns unknown
how hushed
or wash ashore
my hidden thoughts
like words of yore
lap lapping
sweet slush and slap
the waves of words
twinkle little black
oh solemn one
skitter like a spider
sure and slow
a wasted home, the too thin wire
trick the outside
too sharp to read
slice me mend me all at once
my words won't go away
thoughts whisk over empty graves
and empty minds we never made
not for me
diver drowning far away
35.
Noon
Another growling car slides by
Today the rain didn't come again
So we sit in the coffeehouse and sigh
While outside the masses kill and die
We slowly pass the time away.
The walls are like wine from yesterday
Our weariness moves the faith along
The faith drags on and pulls behind
A sorrow filled tale of dreams denied
So weariness comes again to shift the soul.
Yesterday slunk past the watchman's nose
Hiding plainly in the arms of today
While surely the future no one knows
But today it didn't rain again.
As another day drapes the roof in age, but not quite decay
We sit and sip coffee as life slides by
And sigh and sigh and sigh.
36.
Along in my time in a time long ago
In the spiders web of my memories
There rests forever a girl whose eyes
Shines with the light of knowing lies
And knowing of a different glow
The glow of the know of seeing souls
And she spoke to me back then
In a palace amid the stars
Or in my room, or in my heart
There lives a quiet and darkling hour
When our eyes met and fiercely loved
Yet her eyes told lies, intricate tales
Of a love that could not be
Even the lonely candle cringed.
Today I went back to the room again
Leaned sadly against the wall and yearned
For her voice or her smile
Or our love she forsook
Or the stars that spoke from her eyes.
37.
The voice of an earthly angel
Speaks words like a diamond in the rough
And that river always flows on
This time to a flood
That voice a trickle I love
A flood of emotion
Drip dripping sensuous sound
Know too often the sound of that stream
Bubbling away from my home in yesterday
But not today
Today her voice, that angel, and no tomorrow pray.
38.
Sunset
The girl looked to the western sky
The sun always sets and she smiled
Wonder in laughter as the moon rises
Do we kiss when the stars never die?
We wait for sobs in the sound of the rain
Or the trick of a maddened lover
The baby was a man before
The man was reborn, he would not be blind
And the rain is a laughter unto its own
And the owner will take the soul
But the orange and dying colors
Are the triumph of a balance
For at last light and day and dark and decay
All the ways of the world unite
The union is a testament of the rainbow
The wind is the law, our marriage decreed
In the sigh and the sweep
An hour so cherished as a lifetime
To pass in glory is never to die
The sun will rise again.
39.
Frenzy through the shadows
The shadows of her hair
Creation basks in shimmering locks
And chaos also dwells there
Like the breathing of a dragon.
Nightmares will come
Why does she wallow in her own
Ruinous like the turmoil of too much time
As men's blood boils for her
And simple rhymes of dreams pass on
In the electric hush of corruption.
40.
The Landing When I Left
She called I came too quickly
Down the stairs
To the inclined plane I am wheel
In the end I laugh too harshly
Ruined and jagged, I barely feel
It will return though senses reel
The sky is a fickle lover
My wings have melted
And this wheel won't roll home
Are the hearts of men merely balls of twine
To snip away at the end of the day?
The open door at the landing
A pinnacle of fleeting emotion
As the dimly glowing lamp dispelled the damp
And the embers warmed my heart as well
Return sleeping laughter, I ran up the stairs
Laughter slit the night away
A slit a slip a whisper whipped
Leaves me whole in another way
For she said it softly,
"Come inside"
Our eyes stretched the night
Windows with no light, for me
The staircase twisted deep
And the window merely our mirror of heat
As a blistering slow took me back
To the landing when I left
When my wings deserted me,
She was smiling and at last I felt free.
41.
One:uno
This world is a small wood encrusted bos
In a stack of boxes, in a world devoid of spheres
At night machinery whines down to me
The whir brings peace to my troubled mind
These levers and gears a portrait of life
the men come and wreck this world
With metal claws and talk of trees
They ruin the world with spheric insanity
At least two times old
When a window set my mind afire
A window to another world, moving just like me.
My demonry then smiled back at me.
Two, buckle shoe, dos, numbers, true
We laughed, my reflection and I
The floor a panel of circuitry
The ceiling full of diodic stars
Three: we: tres, I've seen the sky
And an angel with healthy blue eyes
When I came near she ran away
Through the corridors to never return.
Today the circuitry whirs and dies.
A place inside of me cried
At the loss of my only friend.
Quatro: four: close the door.
42.
Twilight
Another warm red autumn sunset
Thoughts float down like falling leaves
Close to the heavens yet closer still
To the pent up joy in my longing heart
Those colors of the evening life
Newly awakening like the wonder in a child's eyes
And yet no solace for my lonely aches
Mere charlatans were all I saw
And dreamt, and scarce could breathe
For the deep soft brown of the soul behind your eyes
And the shades of the darkening sky
Transfixed like warmth in your hair.
The cold wind may blow before end of night
And the stars may not look so bright
But my love for your ways will never fade.
Your grace and your features by pale moonlight
Live on, autumn dusk of innocence.
43.
Another world has just been born
Turn right round and back again
The thread of truth, the thread of lies
The tapestry of human lives
The scream on the edge of nothing and I
Pray to the moon by gay sunlight
And cry to the stars by graying night
Years of light away from one
A pinpoint of light in the ocean of night
I cry for the stars for the stars we are
And the moon is my only lover.
44.
A stone mansion stands on an icy loch's shore
A bastion of elegance gone by
And a sentinel of the wealth of time
That age of the wealth of sickly greed
In a stone mansion built to do away with needs
Witness to legal crimes.
In the winter a mist fills its gardens
As the spirits of the water flee the loch's comfort
Flee before the icy crystal gaol
The frozen waves suspended in futility
On the shores in the north where the sentinels stand
With timeless impassion over thrice stolen land.
This winter two men come to justify
With eyes on their foreheads signed
The gray walls hear their undying sighs
Their ageless heraldic calls.
The old arches yearn and then stir for them
The fireplaces roar with burning rage
As the chill of the north fights to win an age.
The granite moans sorrowfully, never undone.
This time the faceless rich have won.
The mists choke the garden.
Father time again comes to cry.
The burning wood con't choke him out,
For cold stone never dies.
The clouds and the sky and earthly wisdom surely
Partake of the poisons of pale farewell
Again the rustling leaves float down
The clouds swallow the world
It seems the low hills will certainly drown
In the icy knowledge
The sky cries tears of stars
Yea the earth shudders frosty farewells
As the wine overflows and memory is shorn
Men with fine precision, cars well clean
A mansion for the taking, the barley they glean
They preside over dusty festivity
As the wind whips the banners in elegy
A symphony, a requiem of cold
They've grown to love their own, inside
Foreheads signed, but when again comes time
Perhaps an age away
The piper will collect his pay
In the north, on a lake no one made.
Spring will come.
Roses grace the garden beyond men's gloom
The ice will break, the shores will delight
To forget the mansion's doom.
45.
Lines Written in Despair
On a Bridge, Autumn 1988
Last night all vestiges of innocence bade goodbye
By wavering candlelight, hypnotic and gentle
A misty recollection passed across my features
Like the words strewn on the table
Only memories to fill my time
For the flickering glow burns up thoughts and ideas
The chill wavers at my smile
Chill from the stone walls
Damp from the ancient earthy style
Glowing art calls to me.
The masive oak furniture, dusty from my distress
A rough hewn legacy, a kingdom only I made
Silk of the life that breathes and sighs
Or music amid the prattle of predator words
My window looks out into a valley of desire
Hunger to embrace the eidos of lofty spires
The trees and shaded moss covered lanes
Call me like a lovers lips
And hers draw mine like eyes of fire
Twilight merely affirming wantonness, and night
Beckoning eyes that promise but never fulfill
Candlelight becomes shadow
My shadow smiles, black or white, no difference
As the vestiges pass me by
Gibbering thoughts in lonely time
Endearing my words to at least the wind
As silky soul softly rustles.
To fill the gulf between uncaring and love
And then between love and time
Grasp the love that is a whisper and a tremor
Firmly and hold on tight.
That valley always stirs
If you listen somewhere, anywhere, strike true
The earth is vast, but a heartbeat burns from me to you,
A love of learning and all friendship.
Soon garment and sage will cover the page
The called musty breeze of ancient ways
Will desert us, but never you mind.
The idiot savant, silence entranced
Gibber for the floor is mine.
Last night my innocence stood beside me
Caressing my youth with tenderness.
Tonight, alone, I make love to words
And candlelight, asleep in the solace of rhythmic weeping
No walls to hold my time.
46.
Flying II
The world awaits expectantly
On the other sid eof my window of words
A misty realm of purchased fables
Can you hear it wafting like lullabies
Just outside?
Hurry, it never waits.
Allow me to fly, please, outside I might die
For I am so small
Like Icharus I hope to never fall, suspended by thoughts
But then go to a splendid end
The written page shows a fool poet's rage.
My wings burn as if I sinned against heaven.
Even now God seeks to quiet my voice
And really I have no earthly choice,
The flames are a beacon, but they burn my sighs
Flying as high as I can, then denied
Rejoice, I never waited to fall
When the rocks seemed to catch them all
That sly beacon luring fools to their death
Obey the rules or lie quietly in scholarly graves.
Never!
My heart is a lullaby
And my window is open to a world inside
While somehow the fool seems to have managed to die;
Rue, rue the rules, only angels fly
Opaque reality rises like a tide
A transcribed sleep and a quiet goodbye.
47.
Spring
When you hear that craven springtime ring
Of love and doves and finer things
Or when the world wears a cloak of quietitude
When the sounds be not echoes of multitudes
Like the doe eyed matriarch
The ewe necked creature with feminine spark
Endless storm of time arrives
The last winter snow will not deny
As the mating doves swoop through the sky.
Spring is eternal rebirth, read on
Calling you out of concrete halls
The dragon must be dead
Or a daedaelus of awakened dread.
Cats out the misery
Turn, gracious prince of eloquence
And embrace the lofty clouds.
All must unite to weave winter's shroud
That beast who was too proud
We must bring the sun up to dispense justice
To make a day for the childlike ways
To soar, in flames baptized.
If endless caresses have you hypnotized
Then heed that springtime thing.
48.
Glass
I.
Friday found us all strung out
Washing our eyes like ghosts::kiss it
The ruins where we live
The home of hollow perversity
A dead parade of dusty memory
Wrench the portraits from the walls
A shattered dream in the sitting room
Shattered by too many shards of mind
The palace of unsaid emotion
laugh, sickly charmer::kiss it twice
The ruin will take you like a sacrifice.
I dwell here in pale gray robes
With a mirror looking into my sight.
II.
At dawn the sinner awoke
His feet upon an ebony floor
The black soothing smooth of refinery
We never strung... out where?
We know none of those razor dreams
Of mind unclean and little white lines
Merely taking time, he said
Such languid ironic thought
Ah to rule the world from the drawing room
A small, small world, then smaller still
As if the world had become dust
The dust in his mind a ruling force
Betrayer of hidden trust
With feet upon an ebony floor
The sinner can't wake up at all
He just stares at the wall in silence
As the ebony changes to washed out tile
And the snow stops falling inside.
49.
Eyrie
The eyrie is a place beyond normal ken
A parlor in perpetual springtime sin
A liaison weeping, yet all the while
A natural, healthy glow.
I shudder, but let them come to me
A never say when but always know now
The end of love always ken somehow
One end never comes, change faces, change time
Gimmick, show me, show me
With a lie show the present, yes, sell the lies
Or truths from a future unrealized
The future never comes when the past won't die
The eyrie is mind.
On to unwed wonders strung along
Mothers of the yet unborn
Lovers of the loved unkind
Deeply into long goodbyes
Or short hellos to waking sighs
Awake with another, or is it the same
Depart from your life of horror in shame
And go to the eyrie, memories quickened
Quickened by warm blood and drink forbidden
Savor the taste of the young girl's milk
A shame in the making, a fair, pale ilk.
Choose life, perhaps a mother's arms to some
The struggling bane, that eager, blind hope
One drop of blood for past sacrifice
A river for the present, of yours and mine
An ocean for the future no one can provide
Turn the key that opens the door
And gaze beyond the pale
Beyond the curtain of silky lies.
50.
The Desert Song
There's a castle in the sand
Where you can hear the reptiles writhing
In the desert's flaming kiss
Is it spiritual bliss
Or torture for a deep desire?
Will you submit to the sands
Hot caress of yearning hands?
Give in to the fire.
Time can never be denied.
Burn baby burn
We could go even higher
In the sands we could learn
To quench our desire
Burn baby burn
As my body writhes
At last you have the answer
Oh beautiful dancer
My yearning isinspired
Gruesome craving howl, howl, howl
In a corner of the land
There's a castle in the sand
Where words become reality
It's a nexus no man ever made
Oncoming disaster
The master is the slave
Run from the truth
Feet sliced open by blades
The truth is the only answer
Quench this thirst for fire
She dances on the flame to inspire
You know I am no liar
51.
Simply Blue
You know I screamed so loud
When they took my guitar away
I screamed so loud
When they took my guitar away
They had to give it back, babe
To wash my blues away.
I said don't you see, baby
What they tried to throw at me?
I said hey, baby
They took my guitar away
But they had to give it back, baby
It was like a hole beneath my feet.
Let's get to it now.
I said the earth looks after me
When I lay in the grass the earth looks after me
That baby on the inside
You know they could not see
I screamed out from the inside
When they brought that hell to me
My guitar's gonna say it now
I'll rest when I reach the grave
I'll never hafta leave.
52.
Stone trellis sing a song for me
A lament for the passage of souls entwined
Sing as the crimson sun slips away
Bids the land of nightmares goodbye.
Roses grow through your unfeeling arms
Brushing your cold cheek with scented delight.
Do they torture you with their blooming life
When they flee at the coming of night?
Sing to me in the voice of the earth
A song no ears can hear
An elegy for flowering tenderness
And the things we once held dear
As the moonlight takes my marble seat
The dirge drones on in my heart
Roses won't grow in my cold heart, no
So I weep in silent defeat.
Sing to me not stone trellis
I am your shadow by day.
53.
Stalking the Nightmare
Stop it
You're hurting my dreams
Loose your iron grip and away
a Satan from Sparta's day
clutch weak flutterer
I grow weary of serpents and flames
Why won't the people go away?
My dreams are bruised
By the words they use
The pain of sight
They burn with delight
My books and tomes
The flames of nightmares
Little red demons
Death slithers around in my breath
Stop burning my words and wake me up
Or at least close my watering eyes.
[A Tribute to Harlan Ellison]
54.
Poise upon the spider web
Pluck the breath with sharp suspense
Cut the distance with scriven art
The treasure trove of the black baronness
With a velvet soft creeping
A reminder of grace and lo
See her whisper and draw you close
To her bosom for comfort
Resistance devoured in her fragrant curls
Ensnaring you body in silken robes
Dancing the dance of the ticklish tread
Wash away in her lullaby
The feast draws nigh
The spider web shows in your glassy eyes
Poise, for soon she strikes.
55.
Wood in the Fire
Run down the junctures, escape the moon
Sweating in the cold dawn, look into my eyes
Frost in the vein of feigning swoon
Or stand hoping by ill begotten fires.
Creak round the inside in darkened rooms
A hollow voice mocks the terrible scream
Life in ragged cobwebbed dreams
Look not for inspiration here
This dream is in real time, my scream is a plea
Look for tomorrow in lolling arrival
That trick of those sick with the killing disease
Of the rolling of the oceans, the rolling is forever and final
Choke not the mind to catch a glimpse of survival
And fetter not your soul to me
Spill blood and bleed to resemble relief
You're giving a fever to me
No more, no feigned swoon
Happily the lovers meet death tonight
Like wind that takes a dandelion
Glide, glide, death swiftly slides
We stand hand in hand to embrace our fell plan
Like wood in the fire we are warm tonight
The fever will end the pain.
56.
The touch of true love
The sound of my soul succombing gives way
Chased by a choir of angels traced
Not by a blackness of disunity
Disappear in the flood of invisible touch
Touch me gentle rainbow, the lover I can not see
Your song soprano mystery, telling secrets over time
The world on my shoulders is spinning in rhyme
A crystalline grandeur
And I am sure
Slide all the souls down through you
When coming and going, all one, plain to see
That expanse of understanding
I see from behind your eyes
The rising sun a victory
Of the mockingbird, sing your song to me
For an instant I see your face
Before I break the choirs soft chains
And fall to my bed from imagined sky
Time came and passed me by
Touch the sound of a hidden voice
A lover unfound
57.
The Tell
The lackey of chat
Vernacular slinking
The sound of mere breathing
With no words to call his own
At the edge of perception
He traps with deception
A teller of subtle lies
He'll say he took you
When he really forsook you
And took your money besides.
Where did all the people go
Who believed in hope
I honestly don't know
But I'll hold on
When the lackey has gone
Remain with open arms
I am no machine
While the prattling queen
Seeks to dismiss heartbeat as tryst
And pretends to worship art
Perhaps he does, yet when art is trust
The journey is always free
I'd give it away, the thoughts, the ways
And give with never a doubt
The demon before me must be glory
A juxtaposed shout
Of pleasure and pain
And never again
Intensified passion remains.
Take not the lackey's route.
The truth makes a stand
For the serpentine man
The lies will come around
His caress is the sound
Of something sensitive found.
Can you see the clouds,
The billowy gray?
Not a plan of decay or fright
Heed what I say
The serpentine man is devout
So sure of himself
He makes his own route.
The sun will shine again.
Trace not the gout left by truth's decay.
To love and leave no memory
At least grace the sky
With our passages of fire
Like a shooting star
Hold the lofty spire gently
Hold and never tire
Severed from any home I know
Severed from self, no place to go
Back to the hush to chase pain away
Hush nightingale, please don't say
The words that chase my soul
To a lonely grave in the clouds.
Forget the sound and hold me now
Like a memory of yesterday
Would you feel the same?
Would you think this was a game
If we talked and plotted forever?
Break through the silence.
No more tears.
Viciously sever
Slice away the years
Fill the never
Before we fall back into reality
Live on together in some secret place
Or live together unveiled
Not living merely to die
But living to talk and measure
The depth of life's greatest pleasure
In release scream for mercy
It is no game
To worship pain
To chase rocks and streams, and heavier scenes
[Another diversion well placed]
The lackey's plan is fell
He traps the human race
With words, it is the tell.
He seeks to read us
On the written page treat us
To his unwholesome punishment,
As the wheel on the wall revolves.
This song hasn't freed us
We are trapped, can you see this?
I'll tell you the truth
I know you can be this
Come touch me
Words hypnotize.
Blow the house down
Forget the last plan
There's a devil behind my eyes.
58.
I once had a friend
A long time ago
Who gunned a law man down
In a dusty street of the town
Where wild men had come and gone.
My friend came to me
To find some relief
For his trouble and his soul
But he wouldn't give to me
His trust, you see
So I looked at the friend I once knew
I winced, but then I spoke
"I can't ease your soul brother.
Don't you know
That law man was family?
This gun's gonna kill you
It's got to be,
But don't worry
Jesus wore a thorny crown."
The rain beat hard upon the roof
The night after he was dead.
All the townfolk shut their doors
When the bullet hit his head.
The trigger pulled, the thunder crashed,
There was nothing more to be said.
Now I spend my time looking at
The world through an empty shot glass
Cause nothing born is meant to last.
They both died on the dusty street.
Lord take me down
From that gunshot's sound
Let the whiskey take my trouble away
Let me sit by the fire
At home for awhile
Cause lord I am so tired.
59.
The finish of the mountain
It's sad and windy cry
It works into the sunlight
As trees give last goodbyes
The sky looks down upon its peak
The earth moves up to the sky
The mountain sobs into the wind
"The end of the world and I."
60.
Will: the planets follow me
Lust
The lovers were murdered
Lowered, a person and blasphemy
Hearts and stars to light my flight
Three viewpoints to see an ancient rite
Diadem follow my questing hands
In truth no place to go
I stand here so all might know
I didn't forget tomorrow.
61.
The ground had grown cold when I awoke
"Never," the wind cried
I yawned my sleep a last goodbye
When I was sixteen years old
I dreamed I followed by the moon's pale side
To a temple of silence
The ground grows colder
My dreams had warmed the earth
When nightmares bid farewell I rested
It was in my days of youth
Now I rise, and stumble, and cry out
All for nothing was I devout
And in between
I lived and died an olden shout
With nary a breath of fame
The earth has a heart of stone
Gaia, the lover sure of her own
Then with a sigh
A final call of pale departure
The end a victory song
the cold earth my last bed
moon flames flicker over my head so brightly
As someone else comes to carry the night.