render unto Caesar his due
but the rest, claim!
in truth,
he can only charge for crossing
a river, though he names
and through locks and dams, constrains
is already,  it's whole length through
only you!

;-)

i just realized
i am noise
that's it
the extent of it
simply noise

for like noise, i must huff and puff
to maintain form
but also like noise
collapse into silence
so quickly!

and so quickly become
so nothing
just this breathing
this walking
in the fog...

 ;-)

though a bastard, twice-orphaned child
knocked through the halls of men like a gauntlet, coming up
i have come to understand
(though this has not come cheap!)
that all men are my father
when i need him
that i really have no shortage of dad

i found yet another yesterday ;-)
an elderly with lots of spry
and we flirted just fine
so fine!

(he showed me how to take a pulse
with a "secret" handshake ;-)

so, now
i don't know where to go
to lose my father ;-)

and my brother is there, too
everywhere i look
my buddy
my pal
and my scrapper!

and when i need that deep pool
i can find that too
it arises everywhere i turn

i have no shortage
and never have ;-)
this is what i have learned!
i see that the torment of this orphaned child
was only in the denying of that

funny
how the mind is a reflecting pool
a mini-holograph
only existing in the criss-crossing of itself
twin beams of no-thing
creating all of us by its descriptions
and certainties thereof...

~

and so now this non-orphan child
learns herself anew
in that toddler way
that clumsy puppy way

would that i could only heal,
and never harm in the healing!
but i find that to be impossible
evidently
as i can only witness my arising
as i arise
and by that time it's too late

and i grieve that beyond all that is known

yes, i do.

bless us all!
because i know
that if i can't do this
there is no hope for the world!
for if i can't learn to bind the wounds
with my nearest neighbors
how could i imagine it so between nations?

and who has that kind of time to waste, in turmoil?
life is so precious!
and i swear, sometimes
i simply can't find the problem anymore
i forget what was so important
those lifetimes ago
and kind of just sit
agog
at the wonder of it
as it emerges ever fresh, ever wild
and seeing that all else is in the mind
and all the rifts simply constrictions around
a painfully embedded lie

how i wish i had known this all along!
and wonder, if i would, or wouldn't
if i had been the actual daughter of
my kind donor ;-)
(whose gifts i gladly receive!
even this awkward gift
of learning who i am
without him...)

i feel the roots of the earth reach into my veins
as i am claimed like a vine
into the fecund moulder of soil
and this happens even as i walk
as plasma exchanges through invisible lymph
clear as it is black, and deep as space

i cannot leave her, this mother of mine
though i may lay my body down beyond the milky way
this mother
permeates beyond all knowing

and my father, oh! he is in my walls
as we breathe each other, in concert
clear and cold, like winter sun
we are delight!

the light!

the one-eye, all seeing
this eagle has no mercy
all truth is flayed to marrow
and thrown to the mother
in the kitchen, stirring her
dark belly

and nowhere can i go beyond love
i look behind and within to hear only the wind
echoing some lost chimes of me
echoing lost sentiment through forgotten chambers
of a heart long since dismembered
and burst asunder

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....

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

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!

;-)

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...

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...