the door flaps aimlessly in the wind
punctuating silences with hard knocks
where once tinkled chimes
and sheets, billowing

it was only one day
the first in a very long stretch
that no one checked the mail
and soon after, no mail arrived
and soon after that
sparrows nested in the tin hollow
strangled by morning glory
and marbled 'neath that wicked moon
on all-saint's eve

bones in the cellar collect straw and dust
where once memories were held in rows
of pearly auburns and burgundy jars
now uniformly gray and shrouded
as sarcophogi

written in the stars
far above the soughing pines
are constellations of hope and the promise of resurrection
held away away in a distant dawn
as if time could be forever

but no it cannot be
she breathes through all the cracks
sifts bones into powdery piles
scurried by rodents

on a knuckled-down three-legged desk
just inside the door
the phone never rings anymore
messages on brittle film
now cracked and yellowed
and lost to eternity

some things can't be reclaimed
across too wide a silence
we are lost and slip away away
in no time
forever

did you leave me a message, calling me sistah,
and letting me hear the ocean?
or was that a dream?
and now, i feel you, receding? falling?
as the tide, or from the cliff,
from where the ocean roared
all the way to here?

i want so much to touch you there, in those tangled middles
i know i can soothe you, ease the snarls
just by thinking them calm, barely a whisper passing between
and given time, could turn your eyes to Love
not love of this form, this wrinkly mess
nor love of any form!
but love of all form - as perfect expression of the divine
who ever pours for you

but to a heart cleaved, these words may ring empty
as the hollow-belly ever grumbles for substance
the warmth and beat beat beat of another breathing soul
cupped in a gentle eternity
filling the deeps and shallows with sweet sweet succor
as the night draws long, and sheets settle, so smooth
upon the hills and valleys of us

you toy with my hair, thinking i sleep
and i try not to smile
i know you are dreaming me
feasting upon the shadows of moonlight
obscuring the crows-feet and worry-lines
gravity has pulled kindly toward the pillow
with its pale satin sheen, and shadow-dance of
sheer curtains, languid on moonbeams
which fortune smiles to frame this midnight moment
in your heart
as it breaks, and pours its lament
silently, so as not to stir
this waking dream….

what is known
is naught but tracer, sparked through ocean
dark and vast primordial
clamping like skin to bone, the unknown
to imagination
which plops meagre stone across inland sea
into a semblance of knowing
barely coalescing before it crumbles behind
as we dreamwalk this plank

to the dancing-tune of Caesar's pirates
who hold truth hostage
and treasure even the innocent lies
for their value in spanning the mighty gulf
between pale descriptors, bound by words
whose virtue is only in forestalling
the endless silence
and just homage to the fullness of things....

even now i feel this skin within my skin
this heaving whoosh and flow
restless, and barely contained
in corpuscle of blood and bone

soon enough, cold and putrid
this body will be, and food for hungry ghosts still
elaborating upon, articulating, and embellishing
their own sarcophagi

all pinnacles achieved, not for naught!
but clearly not forever
as we are not a hairsbreadth away
from breathlessness

even the tears will pool, only here
where rivers run, and stars fall
and life presses forth from within and within
a belly full of eidolon

now, trapped in skullbones
and swirled in the dreaming-keeps
my ghost stretches, yawns, nonplussed
pummeling and kicking walls

and wondering what film obscures her eyes
that she can't be free'd, to see this world
with unblemished sight, clear as death
this world emptied of significance

but to know that, is peril for
no man would hold himself so cheap
without a warrior's rise to keep
his accruals, in citadel and crown

all primed and pumped for life's endeavor
to give one's all, this king to conquer
to rise upon this lofty throne
and seat this future eidolon

to eat, consume, digest, excrete
this stuff of life, all mine to matter
battle-finger'd, clutching air
carving a claim on forever

but forever silence peers, unmoving
cold as polar sky, storm crackling
arcing spirit into skin
sweet and wild, from ghosts within

now trapped and tunneling, worm'd through flesh
so full-forgetting, forgetful yet
and truth's shade, she's such a nag!
golden key concealed in rags

muttering down the cellar stairs
spiders crawling in her hair
ghost-drums pound in hollow ear
a warning, crook'd and beck'ning there...

yes, a conundrum!
but for life, He is but silence
and without dilation, His vast potential
nary stirring
but a whisper
a word
a lyric
a song
a dim echo in long-forgotten cathedral
a deep stirring down the catacombs there
mind within mind, blooming
cascading, NOW!
into the vast forever-gone
as if as if it never were

we are holy tear, traced
like liquid lightning, in His eye
as He delights
enraptured, hot stone to brook
in our tender passing

we crest His moment
breathe His beyond
and rise upon His mighty storm
to know Him knowing himself
as He grinds our mirror-glass to lens
tunes our pipes
and flutes our trembly reeds to perfection

i am become crescendo
in His gilt chambered heart
my voice raised to Him
that He may sing...

yes we do spin from the ether
from the merest seed of dream
all the plagues of mankind
virile and reconstituting
from slightest mention
the least transmission igniting like wildfire
the foul reach of authority

in this unruly garden
of murky swamps and brambles
the dead of many wars lay
hollow-eyes beseeching:
O' fair brethren, ye left standing!
Keep the Standard! Fight the Fight!

... for which they were but fodder and loam
incubating this splendid madness
so tenaciously incorporating, while
leeching blood from slumb'ring host
to explode like incubus through the dreamlands
clouds of locusts, clouds of lies
penning history with the blood
and damnation of fools

yet nested in the thorns are blooms
unsurpassed in time and grace
unequaled in spontaneity and grandeur
splashed upon the cosmos to pale the stars
lining the inside of god's laughing eye
as we storm all the gates of heaven and hell
even as we dream them into being
armed with only our Word
and our will be done, or be damned!

yet this is our claim and our glory
as we are ever unchanging becoming
put to the task of moving worlds
with naught but a whisper to guide us
through this garden of dragons and thieves
with forked tongue and sufficient desire
to lay waste to civilization

blackened seed to beguiling vine
truth is reduced to a dowdy stump
beneath a most vigorous pretense...

oh! i see the danger, and the awesome power!
of this tiny vector of madness
spinning its stories
and working it's word into deed
and as the gun has no mercy, nor a murderous heart
the mind can only enchant itself, so willfully!
as the truth curls, a tightened bud
of the inner-eye, yet dreaming

nameless and good
this golden flick of potential
this nectar of the infinite
is so liberally bestowed!

innocent
we drink it down like poison
and dance with the very devil till dawn

but seasoned
we turn water into wine
become wiser with the wishing
and wish very, very well!

;-)

only mind crashes mightier than the sea
sculling mortals on the reefs beyond the breakers
where the word pearls from the deeps
bursting worlds asunder and hearts aflame
with the sheer majesty of their passage
through the void

sails plumed on forgotten wind careening
lost in thought
lost in the ocean of you
running hot, like a current
disseminating mind like lava
through the unknowing dream of us
rich with nuance, ripe to unfold
from ripple to stream to torrent
it pours forth from the pages written
upon the wind and tides
that pound a drumbeat upon the hearts
stretched taut across the abyss
cutting deep through time and space
beyond the marked channels, arising
into realms dissolved of meaning
of such suchness we are cleaved and run aground
off the shores of forever

i do feel myself tooled through words
that would press and probe the mettle of me
to stamp me with indelible tooth
in a loose cross-weave, like a gunny-sack
for hauling grain to the front line
across a battlefield full of grand stagings
lost in the splash and panache of history, which i see
pools like blood in the furrows

and i am made whole by the rending
gut-shot and impaled
it is only the ghost of me that loses her skin
while the essence, trapped in the castle-keep
is loosed to greet the smoldering dawn
to meet her demise, her final dissolution
in the boundlessness that lies beyond
all fields of endeavor

and isn't it ever thus?
that we live and die by the word
as well as by the sword
and need the warriors who flick steel from their pens,
for the spewing of epics from roiling deeps
where heart and mind, body and soul
clash for supremacy
all thundrous proclamation
and armor-piercing diction
to quiver those boots mired in bedrock,
knowing only the mundane path
to ordinary victory and defeat
which passes ignobly between the lines
of unuttered truth, and freedom
those merest of glimmerings from the silence
between volleys of harsh retorts
and thundering lies....