]

I leap these giant salmon falls
like a vertically charging bull

wild eyes wide and blinkless in my
brute determination to get home

though it cost me my life
to bring life to life and the afterlife

and the whole world is doing the same
in my eyes

Look at it urging upward against the
downrush leap after leap its mouth agape

pulsating crouch springing forward
against the eternal wall endlessly ascending

Where’s the music to accompany this striving?
Is it the sound of these tons of water against me?

Is that the sweet symphony to my soul?

When I fall back with all my strength
I haven’t lost ground as much as

tested the resiliency of my intention
against all odds

Hear the held crescendo’s solemn chord
in the distance?

The exhausted but victorious serene
and greater knowledge come

in the spent muscle of arrival
the last glad spasm

of success

_____________________________
5/14/08
(from The Fire Eater’s Lunchbreak, in progress)

AUDIO POEM: The Only Real Life

The only real life is the soul life
say what you will

The only real world is the next world
we’ll soon know

The bicycles of the sky disperse into
cloudy drifts

their spokes farther and farther apart

The famous hills and dales of
the earth fall and rise rise and

fall

throwing up snowmen and fire demons
in their congenial upheavals

Once one footing’s established
the rug is pulled the bridge

cranked to the side into shadow

The only true sun is not this sun
blazing contentedly though it

warm vegetation to feed and clothe us
season after season

Past the blues and greens
other blues and greens more

vividly ablaze await us

And the cool drink that allays our
thirst complete and is passed around

God’s pin drops to earth through the sky
and lands point first

exactly where we are
moving or still

and the pinprick and the ache
are His glory in its purest form

_____________________________

4/22/08 (from The Fire Eater’s Lunchbreak)

We all must have our song of departures

for when the long shadow down the road we’re on
coming from in front of us

catches up with us

and covers us like an amorous lover
from head to toe with sultry kisses

then we know we’re going where
all caps are worn backwards

and every window looks in rather than out
at the world

Pools reflect more than sky with clouds overhead
they also show our watery roots
and the purification of our desires for
One Beloved alone out of Whom

all others fan and into Whom all collapse back again
singing to us their own song of departures as they

slide into His Single Sovereignty after all

There’s a tree here
that would also like to beckon us goodbye

and it has rainbows around each leaf
and faces in the shadows of everyone we’ve

ever known but as it’s the tree of life it has for
each of us only faces each one of us

has truly known yet they’re all the same Face
and sing their own song of departure among the
leaves as they fall or as they blossom
each spin of the cycle we’re in

slowly saying goodbye to it all

so slowly at first we’re not saying goodbye
at all but hello and every

conversation in between

but each is a departure

and each is a song

9/18/2006
(from In the Realm of Neither, in preparation)

four-gardens.wav

FOUR GARDENS

Everything’s velvety dark and
warm furry and fuzzy in its

particulars each new vista or room full of
people or not empty or crowded with a

large polished grand piano silent in the
middle and four huge windows on the

four walls looking out into gardens each
one of which is different

One Oriental with a humped bridge over
purply lotus pools

One thickly brushy and undergrowthy
with toucans clacking huge
bills full of red berries

One plain and cactusy all silvery and
cobalt and turquoisey bluish

And one exclusively roses of all
shades hues and shapes exploding
riotous color

And at the sight of each garden someone
plays a sonata mazurka or waltz on the piano

and the plants come alive and showers
arrive from both above and below to

irrigate our hearts so in need of
God’s waters

                        2/29/08
(from The Fire Eater’s Lunchbreak / in progress)

SILVERY RADIANT SONG

Suppose we start with what’s right in
front of us

Piles of books and a blue thermos full of
water

How can we reach from this to a
medieval ship on the high seas full of

levitating saints whose vestments
flap like clouds

or salt flats from the wastes of
Africa where the sea once stood

on all fours like a lowing animal
but sank into the sand at last

leaving only its crystally salt skin behind?

Or how to reach from this place to

a simultaneous multiplicity of places
each with its particular

flag and its own coral lagoon
with soft music wafting through swaying

palm trees?

How do we get from where we
are to where we aren’t?

From our circumscribed mortal being to
full flight before God’s endlessly

Beneficent Face beyond all clouds and
hills all conflagrations and sweet

resolutions of both conflict and
harmony where only choirs inside

grassblades clods and eyelashes can be
heard ascending scales of

jubilant praise?

Our mortality can’t define us
but our divine contract can

whose heartbeats constantly sign on the
dotted line before His Majesty

at the beginning not only of our own
short lives but also at the beginning point of the

earliest millennia of shade and
light across earth’s billowing waters

where levitating saints whose vestments
flap like clouds float now on waves of

silvery radiant song

2/27/2008 (from The Fire Eater’s Lunchbreak, in progress)

MOUSE FEET

Teeny-tiny mouse feet run along my ceiling
in rapidly fluttery pitty-pats

God’s dimension is so vast all the
ticking clocks face sideways

There’s a sound in the universe so pure
only one of us can hear it

Way at the end there
that silhouette of someone
standing against the moon

When you lift pen to paper
the savannah floods with light

If we’re only visiting for a short time
will our echoes elongate behind us?

There’s a shack blown down by the wind
all its nails shrieking

When the scrolls are unrolled
everything will come clear

Will we be there?

(There go those mouse feet again above me

Is he in such a hurry
to find my mousetrap?

If he pokes far enough in
he won’t be able to get out

I let them loose in the woods
at the end of our street

Little tiny creatures
with delicate finger-and-toe nailed feet)

1/30/2008 (from The Fire Eater’s Lunchbreak, in progress)

PEWTER MOONLIGHT

Old men are writing poems
by pewter moonlight

They live in different parts of the world
but their pen unites them

Their blood is as thin as rivers
after winter floods and the
springtime dries them

Each of them writes his ode
to pewter moonlight

Their eyes ache from peering deep
into lamplight

They’ve seen the comings and goings
and sheep led to slaughter

The night no longer holds any
terrors for them

One ray of moonlight from the window
is enough to save them

The Holocaust is over and slavery and
cries of despair

New chains are on their way
with clanking regularity

Humankind often finds its better angels
disposable

Old men are writing poems
on rickety tables

Chrysanthemums wither in the
vases before they are done

Everything in reality takes place
by pewter moonlight

The sound of their pen scratch
is enough to heal the world

2/15/2008 (from The Fire Eater’s Lunchbreak /
Tall Tales in Short Takes, in progress)

THE WINE WE LOVE

The wine we love is the wine of the spirit
The wine we avoid is the wine of the body

Though the wine of the body lead to spiritual bliss
its dregs and bitters are magical temptation

Shattering the glass is the way to the pure wine
though the glass itself is the wine and the

wine itself the glass
and the lips that sip are also the blesséd drink

that we think by simply sipping we’ll be
able to drink

And we drown in the world of what is
always drunkenly around us

whose otherworldly bubbles of light always
drunkenly surround us

                        11/25/2007 (from The Fire Eater’s Lunchbreak — in progress)

THE DRUNKEN SOLDIER

The drunken soldier broke down
the wrong door

Inside was a circle of saints
lifted off the ground

To the sound of gunfire
a really supernal yellow light
shone round them

His jaw dropped
and his heart stopped

In the dark of the room
he saw his place

At the cost of so much blood
so little decency

The saints admitted him
to their convocation

The rest of the world went
dizzily into the background

The rest of the war popped in his
ears like distant fireworks

The young soldier
lifted off the ground

Suddenly his age didn’t prevent him
from becoming ancient

The hearts in that room
were made of bronze and
royal copper

In their burnished surfaces
the Face of God shone resplendently

The drunken soldier
broke down the wrong door

Inside was a family of saints
huddled together

In the death of decency
so much bloodshed

The circle of saints
admitted him to their company

The drunken soldier
broke down the wrong door

Inside they
broke bread

1/22/2008 (from The Fire Eater’s Lunchbreak / Tall Tales in Short Takes, in progress)

LAKE ON A HILL

Is a lake on a hill closer to God than a
lake on a plain with its

bright reflective waters?

Is the dial on the watch of a saint
closer to true time than the

dials of the rest of us?

Is the night longer or shorter for
one who believes or one who disbelieves

that at the farthest end of it a glorious oasis arises?

(Slender palm trees there bend and tremble in the
sweetest wind)

Is the voice of the Beloved
licked inside our ears

clearer than our own voice and the
voices of others on the outside?

Is outside any different from
inside in God’s Eyes?

                        1/15/2008 (from The Fire Eater’s Lunchbreak, in progress)

LADDERS

for John Heron

Some ladders go up some ladders
go down

It’s true! Of course all ladders intrinsically
go both ways

both up and down
though we prop one up to climb out of

somewhere or
put one down to climb down into somewhere

But in both cases we’d climb back down or
back up unless we can keep

going at the level we’ve climbed up or
down to without needing to return

The tall wind-blasted fairy-castle caves at
Capadoccia in Turkey have ladders going way up

then precariously down

We had to climb down to prophet Daniel’s
supposed tomb on Prophet Daniel Street in Alexandria

then had to clamber precariously up

It all depends where we begin
down or up and where we need to go

up or down

Oh and take a ladder when you leave this poem
would you?

Climb up there and see if
anyone’s listening?

12/29/2007 (from The Fire Eater’s Lunchbreak, in progress)

GLORY IN THE DARKNESS

“Glory in the darkness” says the clock on the wall
“as your ship goes out through the ice”

“But the walls and floors obstruct us”
sing off-register voices from emptiness

“Charge inside lightning that dances at midnight”
calls the grass out the window still damp from dew

“Nowhere is without His activating Grace”
screams the fire truck siren hurrying down the street

Then the abiding silence laps back like surf
and the small noises pick themselves out of it again

The hand that writes this is as mortal as a moth
though in the script that flows are glimmers of first light

All our hearts are poised on eternity’s picket fence
watching both sides at once for signs and wonders

But to stand in the darkness with arms outstretched
is the ant’s way of glorying in the all-encroaching grandeur

And love’s way of holding us close to its mouth
to hear its single heartbeat reverberate past death

12/19/07 (from Tall Tales in Short Takes in progress)

A QUADARY OF GORGEOUS SONG

The Prophet Muhammad’s arrived again
with an entourage of saints

Birds are flying in such a way
the sky is streaked with gold

He settles down to a cool murmur
and everywhere rivers flow

None of our words are anything
but his messages of silver

Their light is like a thousand universes
with a thousand burning suns

Once seen he can’t be forgotten
Once heard he can’t be ignored

Beauty denied is
justice thrown down a well

Justice denied is
beauty left bleeding on the road

He’s left us with ourselves at last
in a quandary of gorgeous song

11/28/2007 (from Tall Tales in Short Takes)