Video poem: Timetable 1

TIMETABLE 1

All the historical pantomimes
that spelled out subtitles in fractured rhymes
under the movie that unrolled forwards or backwards
were resolved in a blink by the spark of the falling swords
as they clanged into the tree-trunk at the end of time
to signal the cut-off point of the nonsensical pantomime.

A large round table in a large square hall
where men in uniforms stood before their fall
and unrolled a map of the world laid flat
and passed a pencil from one hand – fat
and pudgy with excess of pork in their diet –
to another to draw outlines in a universal riot
of borders and frontiers and nationalities crazed,
then shook hands and sniffed importantly,
leaving the peasantry dazed
for decades in hemmed-in contraptions of death
that counted off heartbeats and charged rent for each breath.

Kaisers and kings and presidents and führers,
shoulder to shoulder under portraits of ancestors
in a chandeliered hall in Vienna, Austria,
an old world country with shelves full of china
and invisible cobwebs behind beer-mugs and plates,
and visible dust on the map of new states
as they left the table to the drawing-room cigar
as flames caught its edges and began the scar
that ran its wound through the human heart
separating mankind into one cubby-holed part
next to another, like several square pigeon-coops set on the globe
as it turns slowly eastward in its cloud-lined robe.

The life of this world
is just a series of skeletons dancing in the dark.

The life of this world
is a series of skeleton keys opening different doors.

_______________________________________

THE FEW WITH ELEGANT MANNERS

The few with elegant manners came as if alighting from horses,
they stepped down and gathered folds of radiance around them
as their feet hit the ground which showed no footprint below them
for it was not solid ground beneath them
— the footprints in dirt were for those
who saw it as gross and solid beneath them —
they went on, straight-backed, to their places
and stood patiently waiting, but their waiting was bird-flight,
wings in the wind, all the flurry of wing-tips that ever
flew in the world down below
fanned now in the air of their waiting.

Their faces were moons assembled on cloudless horizons,
their eyelids were shields drawn down over inward gazes,
their hands rested at their sides, relaxed and pulsing,

no terror shook them, as promised,
no last-minute griefs or regrets,
no sudden anxieties to go back to do something differently.

They cast no shadows as the sun bore down upon them,
shaded by the Throne that stood
immaterially before them.

These were the Chosen Ones

Video & Poem: from The Chronicles of Akhira

THEY CAME DOWN FROM THE HIGH AND LOW PLACES,
they threaded themselves along
through the intricate threadings,
the ancient ones and the new ones,
all the famous were among them,
all the shining stars,
all the historical glory-grabbers, the great thieves,
all the inventors with their psychological quirks,
the nobodies came as well, the flowing multitudes of the anonymous,
the endless dissatisfied housewives, authoritative bureaucrats,
gas-station attendants and couples with no children,
philanthropists and the workaholics,

they came through the sandy pass,
faces were indistinguishable, differences unnoticed,
naked they came and assembled,
fear for their own state kept their eyes on the ground,

they came and made ranks,
the noble and notable next to the hardened criminal,
the saint in his glow next to the shrew in her darkness,
all the Chinese came, all the Australian Aborigines,
some who had never been clothed came,
and some who had never been out of them,

important socialites were bereft of their diamonds,
the scholar with references bereft of his briefcase,
the policeman with his beer-belly pitched on his heels,
the priest with his miter now gone, lost in a haze,

well-known faces recognized in the earthly crowd
were lost in the mass now, shaded by the one standing next to it,

no Rolls-Royce stood ready for the king,
his feet made dust-prints with the rest,
no helicopter hovered to take the millionaire away,
he felt the weight of his reconstituted body now with the rest,

as they awaited the setting-up of the scales,
as humanity assembled on the plain under a blinding sun
and awaited the judgment to fall

that would decide each one’s place.

Even the sainted were afraid, the ones whose hearts
glowed like a sunrise
through the transparency of their rib-cages,
even they were covered in sweat to their eyebrows,
the camel-drivers of the edge,
the caravan-leaders at the margins of the earth,
the destitute, delicate, daring hearts who
stayed up nights calling out in hope
and spiritual derangement,

they took their places in this place of no-place
and awaited the click that would tell all,
the sinking or rising of the pan
with the light or heavy scales registering
the forever of their moments
lengthened out now along a line

visible from the beginning to the end of each life
like a straight narrative, or a string with knots in it.

No flaws in the universe,
and the universal memory has no lapses.

Each dwarf or giant of sensibility and care
came to the jamboree

at the beginning of Eternity
and wondered in its echoes

what its final fate would be.

Poem: The Lover the Beloved

The lover lowers her gaze and the Beloved
raises it

until lover is engulfed in oceans too vast to
circumscribe

and around their margins fly continuous bands of
singing birds

The lover closes her lips around silence the way
light enters a room and obliterates darkness

and the Beloved suddenly starts singing inside the
lover’s mouth until even the stars like wandering animals
in their constellational shifts bleat and bay across
vast astronomical distances making them as small

as the moisture bead on the lover’s lip and the
Beloved’s eye-gleam from as far away as
deep undersea

The lover stands to embrace the Beloved
and the Beloved stands to embrace the lover

And the lover stands to embrace the Beloved
and the Beloved stands to embrace the lover

and the echoes from their movements blow rainbow
lights stuttering against earth’s canyon walls and icebergs
break off and slide into black waters

And the Beloved stands and the lover
shrinks within the microscopic compass of all her
insignificant acts until each breath
obliterates her
and the Beloved stands to embrace the lover
until the whole world rises to a standing position within that embrace

An Ant gnaws at a redwood tree and it
falls in a straw across a single heartbeat

We’ve never left God’s glorious dimension and need only look

not within us nor around us
but through the sphere of that Glance the Beloved takes and
blows into a ball of sky and crashing waves

which is all the lover offers through the paucity of
her multifaceted “I”

The singular embrace
__________________________________
4/2/2005 (from Holiday from the Perfect Crime)

Poem: Videoku #2 Pray Afghanistan…

A late-night videoku, extemporized before hitting the video button (I will confess), but only a moment before… and responding, May 7, 2009, to sad, gathering clouds… done

Pray Afghanistan
be allowed to breathe easy
among the living

Poem: Videoku #1

Video’d haiku in the moment of its making… with one false start…

Haiku: 5/7/5 syllables,
a momentary noticing, a flash, succinct, over in an instant.

Here in its raw freshness… inside on a rainy day.

(Actually, in the moment, I miscounted, and “washing machine noise surging” is actually 7 syllables after all, but I prefer the second try, without a repeat of the word “noise.”  Though I do like the word “surging” there with its present-day ovetones… )

Why be a stickler for the 5/7/5 form, when poets today, in Japanese as well as English, often catch the Haiku spirit of momentary noticing with even one or two lines, and disregard the exact syllable count?  Perhaps it’s both a challenge to me and a little respite from my usual Open Form poetics… otherwise, hey, one may do as one wishes…

done

The house is noisy –
washing machine, dryer… ah!
Outside, the gray sky –

Poem: Bird Song / & Olivier Messiaen

I’ve been preparing another book for publication, this one from 1988, called The Perfect Orchestra (whose title poem sees all of creation as “the perfect orchestra,” waterfalls, traffic noise, etc… all God’s creation lending their instruments to the total sound…

And came across this poem to the music of Olivier Messiaen, my favorite 20th century composer, a true mystic, who actually envisioned being among the angels, often by putting actual bird song from the entire world’s populations of birds, into his music (as the poem mentions).  This video clip from YouTube has him playing the organ, a little improvised piece (so it says) which sounds like it is based on a birdsong motif.  He was a major cathedral organist while still in his teens…

In the 60s in Berkeley I attended a concert with him in person, and because of the overflow crowd, was seated on the stage, actually behind him at the piano, about five yards away.  He was much older than in this clip, hair wispy, and he had on one of his signature florid bright-colored shirts with the pointed collars outside his jacket.  I’d first heard of him from a Life Magazine article showing him in the country, with sheet music and pen, notating birdsong… his beret on… and it fascinated me.  That we should all be so situated in the world, to be able to hear and make use of God’s direct manifestations…

BIRD SONG

I envy Olivier Messiaen
stalking early mornings in the
fields of France, in a
magazine article I saw
years ago, with a

notebook, notating

bird song!

He is said to be able to orchestrate birdcalls
just by hearing them, write those
trills and
watery runs with

tiny black dots on lines a musician back in a
musty room might play on his clarinet!

Notes, out of
tree-wilderness, out of
bird language, one to
another for
whatever reason, bodily
companionship, territorial
rights, mating calls, thrills of
pleasure in the plumage, beak

gabble, sunlight
delirium, a bird’s sense of
entertainment, some
floating on updrafts,

whatever reasons God gives them for responding the
way God’s made them
respond over a

silken wheat field at
first slants of
dawn, gold

light along
dew blankets,

the world waking
up, birds
registering the
waking,

Messiaen with his
stubby pencil attached like a

seismograph to the knowledge of his
ear making

dots with or without little
black flags attached someone

back in a room can play on his
clarinet, or a

whole

orchestra, celestas, flutes, hitting those

high note-clusters, enraptured –

for no reason!

___________________

3/30/88 (from The Perfect Orchestra, in preparation)

Poem (video + text) A Breath of Fresh Air

A BREATH OF FRESH AIR

A breath of fresh air
sailed over the highest mountain peak and
down into the valley enjoying its
nonchalant pace over grassy plains as
green as unripe apples and the

breath of fresh air turned with the prevailing
current through a massive gorge and
just above a river where tumultuous waters as they
hurled over rocks resembled storm clouds though no
storm was brewing and the

breath of fresh air saw a city ahead and
pulled itself tighter though no less fresh
as it looped in a little air-pocket for a
short while which slowed its pace and
gave it some rest so that when it

began again toward the city it was going at a
much more leisurely rate and could really
take its time over outlying fields and across
meandering herds of sheep and goats that never even
looked up to see the fresh breath of air pass overhead

and the breath of fresh air descended slowly as it
passed the first thatched cottages dotted almost
haphazardly along the hills and it
skimmed along their brown roofs and lifted a
little as it headed toward a more concentrated
cluster of buildings and streets and now some
converging streets down below and traffic and even
noise like its memory of ocean surf

and the breath of fresh air pulled itself more
tightly together over children’s playgrounds and
a group of people sitting and eating under a
tree which the breath of fresh air slowly
circulated around admiring the massive
trunk filtering past each shapely leaf

and the breath of fresh air from the icy peak in the
far distance over the horizon finally sailed through an
open window in a tallish building with
green shutters where a sweet maiden was
sitting at a computer growing drowsy after a
long morning typing statistics

and as she turned her head and yawned
the breath of fresh air sailed happily into her
mouth and down her throat into her
filigreed lungs and she didn’t know why exactly
maybe it was the mystery of yawning
but she suddenly felt
uncannily refreshed

and her topaz colored eyes glittered for a
moment almost seeing the last few
rivering miles of movement the

breath of fresh air had taken to its
momentary dark destination in her blood
_______________________________
4/8/2002 (from Where Death Goes)

Poem: I’m More Concerned

(Note: I’ve been editing a book of poems  called Shaking the Quicksilver Pool, and came across this poem written in February of 2000, and it resonates with the present real and illusorily psychic flood or earthquake or tsunami that is shaking us in so many ways, with old Father Noah invoked, navigating his way to the dove who doesn’t return to his arm. May we also all see our way to dove’s light, no matter what.)

I’M MORE CONCERNED

I’m more concerned
I’m more concerned he said
of how these next few years
these next few years will affect the small and

perishable things that dare to poke their
poke their heads up through the
permafrost that confronts us all that
confronts the big and small as we

battle against the very inertia that drowned
the unconcerned of Noah’s time of the very old
time of Noah who very
successfully unsuccessfully built the

boat but failed to save his
people who were too busy being unimaginative though all
though all the signs were there for them
to see

the small and brave of us as well as the
big and strong

facing the wall of water
the mile-high wall of water that’s just now on the
brink of cresting and rushing down with all its

absolutely every ounce of its impact wondering what
hit us
as if the earth itself were raised like a
wrecking ball and swung against itself

shattering the continents and splashing the
seas into space like a dog shaking itself

like a dog bounding onto the shore from a cascading
rush of water and
shaking itself dry
_________________
2/16/2000 (from Shaking the Quicksilver Pool, out soon by The Ecstatic Exchange)

Poem: Light of the Shadowless One

(Note: This is a poem for the Mawlid, honoring the Prophet Muhammad’s birth. In devotional poetry the honorific, “peace of Allah be upon him,” is assumed. There is another from this Mouloud collection posted on my website: www.danielmoorepoetry.com)
________________________________________

LIGHT OF THE SHADOWLESS ONE

When an object casts no shadow, what does it mean?
That its light is over all other lights
and no light can
come from any direction
and be stronger, cutting silhouette
outlines of form and laying them out
on a ground into which
all forms must go at last?
But Muhammad was such a one.
They said
he cast no shadow.

O Muhammad!
How can we find you here among the ruins?
How can we see you?

The catalog of his attributes can start from
anywhere and continue forever…
the way he parted his hair, the way he
greeted the poor and fed them.
He once filled a valley between two mountains with
the sheep of God’s bounty, until a
hardhearted bedouin who could only see sheep
had the eyes of his greed put out by the
dazzle of such generosity,
and he turned from
being greedy for world to being
ecstatic affirmer of God
carried away on the backs of fleece
soft as the hair of angels.

O Muhammad!
How can we find you here among the ruins?
How can we see you?

One man, longing to see you, nearly fell out of a date palm
when he heard you had come.
He had gone from teacher to teacher, each one
telling of your impending arrival.
Sweet date meat of a man, the lightningbolt of your
presence struck
and threw him down while collecting dates,
for his longing by then
had matured the meat of his
innermost sweetness, and his
pure heart
saw you at once!

O Muhammad!
How can we find you here among the ruins?
How can we see you?

Or is it that we’re not in ruins enough?
Is it that our fortified walls
have not yet toppled down?
That the glass we erect to see through and think
is so limpidly clear
is in fact
the opaque screen of our selves set up
for the magic lantern to throw its image on
with an illusion of movement and
the assumption of purest transparency?
But are we still too coarse, too thick, not
subtle enough in this

haggard age with its tapeloop rumors of
war?
The absolute nuclear outbreath
that deflates the entire material
system down to the last
particle, even this still
too dense, too
cartoon to contain
the spiritual emptiness needed in us to let
your pure Muhammadan
nature show clear?

O Muhammad!
How can we find you here among the ruins?
How can we see you?

The maddest love for the biggest diamond
is nothing compared to the
love your companions had for you –
they saw your truth was true,
your step sure, your word an opening into
God’s domain,
and one man spat out the grapes he was eating
and took the sword you offered
when he heard you say
that whoever took it and plied it
until he was killed in the way of Allah
would gain the Gates of the Garden, and enter it –
no doubt troubled him, no shadow cast
from your presence, only light –
so what is this
heartbeat one thousand four hundred years later
full of love for you
by people who never saw you

walking like a shadowless
mountain among them?

O Muhammad!
How can we find you here among the ruins?
How can we see you?

Your compassion for an ant trail, a thief, a wretched man
with one piece of rope in his household
and no other possession!
Take that rope, you said, and gather firewood which you can
tie with that rope
and sell it in the market. Then with the
money you earn buy more rope which means you can make
more bundles of firewood
and be on the increase, O always be on the
increase! –
the flow of creation which goes with the flow of
galactic billowing, opening its
giant petalled corolla
through eternal darkness,
our galaxy itself floating through space
like a flower opening,
constantly on the
increase!

O Muhammad!
How can we find you here among the ruins?
How can we see you?

Our galaxy opens its rose-like corolla of light
out through endless darkness,

and sight itself is
stunned when it

sights your sun!

O Light of Muhammad,
O shadowless one!

(from Mouloud, 1984)

Video Poem/Embedded in the Velvet is the Thorn

EMBEDDED IN THE VELVET IS THE THORN

Embedded in the velvet is the thorn
and at the tip of the thorn choirs

When you take off your face and sit down
something happens to sunlight bright silver envies

I have never been here before though the doors on the
corridor are locked I can
see right through them to the
multi-colored horses standing behind each one

Here’s where the harmonicas go
no identifiable tune only the reedy texture of their sound

God left the way to Him open to even the
faint of heart
a shepherd lost in the fog with his twenty goats walking in
circles or the elevator operator in gray jacket and hat
in the same building for twenty years
up and down

I’d count the number of streaks tears make down cheeks
from eyes brimming over at almost nothing at all
a memory suddenly spotlit among the tightly-squeezed
coats and trousers of an incident thought lost forever
among the shapeless sand dunes of time oh ho!

Look at where the city casts a shadow on the sky
from all the lights day and night
each comment across a table capable of illumination or not
and if not nothing’s changed
and if so some of those horses behind those
locked doors whinny and paw the ground

There’s a lion in the deep jungle who wears a
papier mâché mask of a really ferocious beast
but who only wants to be loved
belied of course by the length of his claws and the
sharpness of his teeth
and the burp after supper that sounds like “goat”

Samson didn’t test the pillars first he just
went ahead and pushed
and the entire temple celebrated critical mass

I’ve never been here before but I’m going to be
sorry to leave if
leave I must

Those zebras and those black and white stripes over there
which came first the event or the
explanation?

Nothing’s happening here that a good merry-go-round at
triple speed couldn’t fix

Nothing gets in the way but the things we’ve set up ourselves
brightly colored cutouts carefully nailed to the floor with the
photographs of friends and relatives friends and foes for
faces

their real heads just bobbing above the horizon but never quite
peering over

Nothing quite feels right just before the end of the world
and then the lights go on and the place fills up again
with the sweet murmur of excited souls

If you think getting born is bad try dying!

Afraid of Dying sat down with No Fear and tried having a
conversation but ended up sharing a
neon sandwich

I think the time has come to say goodbye to these
popped-up sentences
it’s past their bed time

And I have nowhere to go I must go to

With a song in my heart and a
shine on my shoes
and a fresh handkerchief jammed in my
breast pocket

Let go of the rope and you never know what’ll happen
but give it a tug and a campanile bell might ring
or a mountain climber hoist you up to
new heights

I wonder if it’s later in Timbouctou or if the
sun is shining and
what’s happening to the worm-eaten manuscripts in all those
dust-laden libraries no one’s read for a
hundred years or more

Ink be my mariner tonight across the open sea
the sound of pen scratching on paper a faint heartbeat on the
Way to God

and God said it’s worth far more than the
sword
and twice as sharp

See how these worlds are revealed as it
passes on leaving its
reality trails behind these
tumbling sentences like acrobats in His
happy circus?

I want a rose right now to disappear into
forever

Shout to me from your distance

Whisper from your nearness

Listen with your eyes coming to flower

Nowhere’s coming this way
and no one’s there

5/2/2003 (from Psalms for the Brokenhearted)

POEM: SOULS

There are so many souls worth saving
the face wreathed in roses whose eyes tell tales from
before civilization when trees were sturdy giant ferns cut from crystal

The grandmother with ten white horses on a steep green hillside
whose middle name is a secret she calls on to heal
the cut finger the burnt tongue the earache the limp
the mental hesitation

The twelve old men from the remote mountain village
all brothers from the same mother and father
all twelve so filled with natural goodness and so
physically alike the townspeople call each one of them
Joseph

So many Lord on this raw earth of sharp ice and
wild flame saw teeth and soft rollers

The shy schoolteacher in the ghetto
who smuggles her paycheck money into various lunchboxes

The girl of six who stands up for the boy in class who peed his pants
against the taunts of the others

The fireman who hears a cry and suddenly sees
the Celestial City shimmering through columns of flame
and walks through them to his Lord

Lord the cries of endurance and laughter of terror
these human souls You fashion out of
red dust and divine breath on a
mountaintop we may never see
then lay them into wombs and later into
tombs to be assembled before You on that Awesome Day

No cranes cross a bronze sky

No dust mote floats in the still air

And our souls stand out like diamonds on black velvet

Like trumpets in a library
____________________________
10/18/2001 (from Where Death Goes, in preparation)

Poem: A Thousand Armies

(Note: I may have posted this poem somewhere some time ago, but I am posting it now with a lifelong lament at the violence of our human history, with its resorting to armies so callously and often irrationally when it is a matter of individual human bodies and individual souls, and the destruction of life. True, you can sometimes never get someone to say “yes,” but it seems again and again that spilt blood is the signature we require for appeasement or coexistence.  Have you seen the bumper sticker with the word COEXIST spelled with a crescent and star for the initial C, a peace symbol for the O, the Star of David for the X, and the cross for the final T?)

A THOUSAND ARMIES

And the hapless Soldier’s sigh
Runs in blood down Palace walls
— William Blake

A thousand armies sat on a wall and
everyone of them was dead

eating sandwiches out of little tin boxes
yellow broken teeth and considerable chewing

But their eyes were not that interested in seeing
their eyes didn’t follow anything moving in front of them
or look as they pulled the waxed paper away from their bread
or broke open their bottles of water or sat with their friends

There was a constant murmuring like a stomach churning its juices
a constant scratching like animals caught between walls

They sat on a wall overlooking an orchard and
each one of them was dead

But they watched the seasons come to life on the
vine in the vineyards and down the long
crop rows though their eyes barely took it in
and when the crops were harvested and the
snows came they barely blinked they barely noticed

Thousands of armies dangling their legs bootless in heaven
eating sandwiches out of little silver boxes
their eyes transformed from burning buildings and people
running into the streets to
green fields full of lions and lambs and other wingéd animals
lying together

though their eyes were always elsewhere

and their hearts were as round as the world

3/23/2003 (From Pslams for the Brokenhearted)

Still Eyeless in Gaza?

I think many of us are still in a state of shock over the Israeli powered holocaust in Gaza against the Palestinian innocents. The utter horror of such death and destruction, people living with such horrific wounds, in rubble and ruins, in extermination camp environment, barely subsisting, dying. It’s cold in Philadelphia but our old steam heater works, our table is always spread… I can’t just imagine their suffering.  Our hope in President Obama is still strong, and his presidency hopeful, but his silence on the Gaza tragedy is deafening, in spite of his extending a hand to the Muslim world, a good sign, but muffled by an increasingly irrational fidelity to the protection of Israel. Why are we so afraid of condemning the outrageous actions of Israel, when we don’t hesitate to do so with regards to Russia or other sovereign countries? Why has Israel made no attempts to harmonize with its (yes) belligerent neighbors all these years? How does Israel always get away with such egregious behavior, and effectively no one says “boo!” Or holds them accountable in any real way?  When will beating the drum of their own Holocaust finally be drowned out by the one they are inflicting on the Arabs? And I’m never satisfied with the usual answers. Humans simply can’t be this inhuman… though history consistently disproves it.

___________

Meanwhile, I also mourn the passing of a great Mexican poet, Marco Antonio Montes de Oca (1932-2009) whom I first met in Mexico City in 1962 when I was learning Spanish, and whose dedication to a particularly inspired and imaginal poetry has been an inspiration to me throughout my life. I’d lost touch with him these past years, but recently made a greater effort and found he was very ill and often hospitalized. He died on February 7th. May God grant him ease and forgiveness and nearness. Here is my translation of one of his better-known poems:

INSPIRATION’S FOUNDATION

O singer inspiration, you pierce the dome of trills
with highest noise and most avid song!
Your power is the sunrise that thins out above the hill,
the firmament that dumps its purple baskets over a ravenous precipice,
the foliage of bells you hang in the enchanted wood.
For you, who illuminates my faith,
I clear brush from the path and remove its verdant traps.
For you, who flows on a giant groundswell
as frail as a turtledove’s bones,
as vulnerable as geranium thatch
and as fragile as the warrior who defies an avalanche
with the single bright wafer of his shield,
I now braid my enamored offering.
For you who possesses the required password to reign in the Southern Cross,
the first to hurl yourself between creaking rafters
and escape from the night of the world by a frayed cable,
for you, unique word, solar incarnation of all miracles,
I stretch the stalactites of poetry to the ground
and kindle the heart of mankind with strange light flashes.

Poem & Video: World Split Apart

The façade of a building falls away and
reveals a man praying

A bakery loses its show-window showing a
hundred weddings who’ll have to
wait in the next world for their cakes

An Orthodox cathedral split in two
revealing a solemn baptism that’s now become
more like a drowning

A synagogue smashed like the tablets of Moses
the dust of the Torah continuing to
rise for years through the lunar cycles

A medieval mosque’s minaret struck into rubble
and the muezzin’s call going out bodiless
a hundred times louder

The road rutted with machinegun fire
and ghost cows dancing with their dazzled cowherds

New houses and old houses collapsing like cards
and the surprised furniture giving up their
inhabitants like birds released from their cages

Windows of government buildings falling into streets
revealing some making secret deals and others
receiving holy light for works of self-sacrifice
anonymously accomplished

A firehouse going up in flames and no
nozzle quenching it

A police department getting flattened and no
police whistles piping through the roar of falling plaster

Trees just coming into bud turning as black as
pokers their fruit both present and future
now gracing the fresh tables of the dead

Hillsides turning as black as ash
revealing lairs of tiny mammals
tremblingly shielding their young

This earth sliced apart like a unripe melon
revealing both incandescent fury
and radiant secrets of redemption
incomprehensibly intertwined

No one returning with a happy face at the
end of the day or followed by children like the
Pied Piper to safety beyond the rocks

The soul of man split asunder at the
first crack of unjust death and unjust retaliation

revealing a person naked drenched in
original water coming toward us surrounded by
anticipatory angels anxious for an

outcome already known to Him
who benignly created us

and Whose Voice rises inaudibly
above all other voices

saying over and over
the single word:

Peace
______________
8/2/2006
(from In the Realm of Neither, Ecstatic Exchange)

Poem: Great Cruelty and Heartlessness

(Note: this poem written during the 2006 Lebanon invasion is sadly too cogent now as well…)
___________________________

We’re living in a time of great cruelty and heartlessness
where instead of a sun they’re throwing up
anvils

Instead of sunlight there’s the sound of
hammers beating

Instead of walking there’s kicking

Instead of thinking there’s talking

It’s almost as if there’ve never been times like
these before

Even shadows thrown by cartwheels on dirt roads
resemble the grimaces of armies as they
slide across rocks

In the palaces of power clocks go off but no one
wakes

Decisions are made by pouring acid down drains
or waiting for nightfall in a room lit by
neon tubes

If anyone speaks all eyes are upon them

I saw a sparrow fly over a fence

An ant stop and not go on

But laughter has turned to pebbles
falling on zinc

And children have been torn from their futures
____________________________________

7/19/2006
(from In the Realm of Neither, Ecstatic Exchange Series)

Another ‘Eid Poem: More Feet

Sitting facing the Ka’ba
like a flat black kite
bobbing in the wind, or rather

the flat black square of the kite is
stationary, the world is
bobbing –

a thousand billion feet stride past, going from
left to right, feet of whole
nations it seems, feet hitting cold marble,
heels and toes passing endlessly,
feet of emperors (who knows?), feet of accountants, feet of
women filled with grief,
feet of brand new innocent children, small and
eager,
all shapes and colors and sizes of feet
in stately human procession,
feet seen and feet unseen, feet maybe
of the dead, not knowing they’re
dead, sometimes only
one to a customer, sometimes none, ghost feet
passing always to the right

taking their owners in blissful bewilderment
around their own hearts,

black kite as still as the
deepest pillars of the
world, the world

bobbing in the wind. Finally

cast free!
_________________
12/30/95 (from Mecca-Medina Timewarp)

‘Eid Poem: What Are Feet For?

What are feet for
but to go around the Ka’ba?

What are eyes for
but to look upon God’s House?

What are lips for
but to kiss the Black Stone?

What are hands for
but to supplicate our Lord?

What’s the heart for
but to open to His Light?

_________________

12/27/95 (from Mecca-Medina Timewarp)

Poem: The Grand Fete

Audio reading of The  Grand Fete:

THE GRAND FÊTE

At the Grande Fête everyone’s invited to
people start arriving by aerial gondola

Shape-changing twins arrive
dressed in tuxedos

Lady Godiva comes dressed
as a smudge-blotched charwoman

Historians come with inky thumbs
in suits made of parchment

Serenaders arrive on whiffles of song
neon red cummerbunds like those worn at the Vatican

Various woodland creatures arrive
in human disguise and no one’s the wiser

Orpheus comes with his head firmly on
wearing a snake costume since

that’s what bit Eurydice
and sent her to Hades

(he’s trying to reverse it)

Dressmakers priests pompous
diplomats aristocrats

arrive on gold bicycles
with playing cards in the spokes

A forest fire arrives dressed as a fireman
a drought totters in dressed as a skeleton

Even the End of the World
though he’s not been invited

Dressed as all and everyone
who ever walked the earth

but even
wiser and more beautiful

Then the Next World arrives
not long afterward

wearing the exact same Apocalyptic
costume but in reverse

Conversation bubbles
everyone dances the

standing-still vibration green dance of
everything living

Pretty soon distant stars come and
far constellations

Then the entire cosmos comes
just before dawn

and at one point (some say drunk)
turns inside-out completely

And we all land here as
naked as day

Alive at last in a new constitution
ethereally nourished by stream waters

direct from The Source
as well as

bowls of ambrosia and lotus flowers
floating in air

though air is no longer
it’s something else altogether

God’s Presence taking place
where our place is left vacant

and only song remains
trembling among

high boughs
of nothingness
________________

12/1/08 (from Sparks Off the Main Strike)

Poem: Illusions

(Note:  After a year of joy and nail-biting in the worldly realm, with its political crescendo of sweet possibility, this reminder of the reality of things…)

Optical illusions abound in the optical field
aural illusions abound in the

sound realm

That waterfall you hear is just
someone walking toward you

That wall rising up and that sky falling down is
just your own eyelids closing seen

from inside

The world evaporates and reappears
inside a fish tank

entwined in goldfish grass

Our loved ones also undergo illusory
transformations

sometimes as fleet horses leaping turnstiles in
synchronized equine unison

other times as lone silhouettes in a white
paper moonlight sitting under a gnarly

black tree

Our own souls color what we see
and what we see when we see

is our own souls

To get out of the way to see what
God sees isn’t for every ant and gorgon to

accomplish in one lifetime but it’s a
commendable goal

and worth every once of our
strength

That window opening onto that

snow crystal hillside with the
slanted birches on it rising

all the way into heaven

That white rabbit there between them
leaving whiteness and

entering it again

whiter than
before

______________

10/21/2008 (from Sparks Off the Main Strike, in progress)