Dream Wanderer

Intoxicated with children's thoughts

I wonder,
why are souls so deep and men so blind?
How can souls be eclipsed
by such tiny minds?
Do we love the damp passageways of Hell?
Where every drop of pale water
that falls from the cavern walls
is unwashed music etched in silence...

My favored dreams have disappeared
astride the backs of eagles.
With wings sweeping downward, lifting upward,
they are carried away like finespun, elegant seeds
on a crystalline wind.
Without them
I am divinely barren
like an empty vessel denied its purpose.
I can only stare into the silence
ever listening for heaven's murmur.
Knowing that behind the darkening mist
angels are building shelters for human innocence.
Shelters torn from something dark
and gravely wounded.
Havens resistant to all disease.

I thought I was endowed
with a promised beauty
that would free the neglected dreams of a demigod.
That would untie their feeble knots
and release them into light's caress.
But the glorious reins
that had once been mine,
tattered and stained with blood,
have slipped from my hands in disuse
as a web abandoned to a ghostly wind.
I can still reach them.
I can feel their shadow across my hands.
Their power, like an electric storm
wandering aimlessly without fuel,
soon to be exhausted.

This piece of paper
is torn from something dark
and gravely wounded.

It is the mirror I hold up to the blackened sky.
A devious sacrifice.
Leaping from star to star
my eyes weave a constellation.
My thoughts in search of the endless motherload.
My heart listening for the sound
of unstained children dreaming.

The dream wanderer looks back at me.
Calls my name in a whispered voice.
Beckons me with an outstretched wing.

"Fly! Your favored dreams await you!"

The voice boomed like thunder swearing.
My wings trembled with forbidden power
as they searched the wind's current
for signs of release.
Currents that would carry me
to the high branches of trees
suckling the sun in fields beyond my kingdom.

In a moment's interlude
I unfolded my wings and vaulted skyward,
into the blue vestibule.
Sheer speed.
Rivers beneath were brown veins
swollen on earth's legs,
or savage cuts that bled green.
The sun sliced holes in the clouds
with tender spears of crimson light.
The moon was rising in the eastern sky-
an oyster shell
pitted by time.
Lonely winds would rush by
searching for an outpost of stillness.
The earthen dungeon
peered up at me with contempt
like a nursemaid relieved of her duty.

I forgot the ground.
I canceled gravity.
Balanced against aboriginal hopes and fears
I became the shaman who dances
in the spirit waters of ancestors
plucking words and meanings from the cumbrous air.

I thought only of the dream wanderer...
the holy wind that rekindles
my exquisite longing for raw truth.

To seize it like medicine
in a sleepless fever hoping to be healed.
The halcyon spire!
The dusty places of purity.

These wings are torn
from something dark and gravely wounded.
They carry me to my favored dreams
and choke the inertia of indifference dead.
Their strength is perfectly matched
to my destination.
One more mile beyond these trees,
I would fall like a fumbled star
into the moat of a starving world.

My favored dreams will wander again.
In time they will soar to trees of a richer kingdom.
My wings will again follow their flight,
track their heartbeat
and build a quilt of a thousand dreams intermingled.
One more turn of the infinite circle.
The dream slate revivified.
Navigable-
even in the murky waters
and cloudy skies of the itinerant traveler.
The dream wanderer reveals
(with a flip of the hourglass of heaven),
as above
so below.
Create your world and let it go forward
entrusted to the one that is all.
The leavening will prevail.
It is the lesson I learned
with my wings outstretched beneath
the glaring sky.
It is the rawness I seek
untouched by another's polish.

The Nature of Angels

Midnight in the desert and all is well.
I told myself so and so it is,
or it is not,
I haven't quite decided yet.
Never mind the coyotes' howl or
the shrinking light.
Holiness claims my tired eyes
as I return the stare of stars.
They seem restless, but maybe they're
just ink blots and I'm the one who's really restless.

There is something here that repeals me.
In its own abundance I am absent.
So I shouted at the desert spirits,
tell me your secrets or I will tell you my sorrows.

The spirits lined up quickly then.
Wings fluttering. Hearts astir.
I heard many voices become one
and it spoke to the leafless sky
as a tenet to earth.

We hold no secrets.
We are simply windows to your future.
Which is now and which is then
is the question we answer.
But you ask the question.
If there is a secret we hold
it is nothing emboldened by words
or we would commonly speak.

I turned to the voice,
what wisdom is there in that?
If words can't express your secret wisdom,
then I am deaf and you are mute and we are blind.
At least I can speak my sorrows.

Again the wings fluttered
and the voices stirred hoping the sorrow would not spill
like blood upon the desert.

But there were no more sounds
save the coyote and the owl.
And then a strange resolution suffused my sight.
I felt a presence like an enormous angel
carved of stone was placed behind me.
I couldn't turn for fear its loss would spill my sorrow.
But the swelling presence was too powerful to ignore
so I turned around to confront it,
and there stood a trickster coyote
looking at me with glass eyes painting my fire, sniffing my fear,
and drawing my sorrow away in intimacy.
And I understood the nature of angels.

Bullets and Light

I am adrift tonight
as though a privilege denied
is the passageway to keep body and soul together.
You have kept so much at bay
I wonder if your enchantment is to tame passion.
Cornered by your savage artillery
you sling your bullets like schools of fish
darting to a feast,
and I surge ahead tired of being the food.
When I look back
I can see fragments of you
hiding in the underbrush,
stubborn remnants of your vanished heart.
I can still love them.
I can still hold their fragile nerves
clustered with a welder's tongue
seething light as pure as any ever beheld.

Perhaps I drift away because of the chasm I see.
Bullets and light.
How strange bedfellows can be.
But you will never confess
nor shed your doubt of me.
I will always remain an enigma hurling itself
like litter across your absolute path.
A sudden shaft of light that begets a deep shadow
that temporarily blinds.

Hope-stirred eyes have always sought to steal
you from the simian nature that collects at your feet
and pulls at you like derelict children.
My unearthly hunger drew me away from you,
even against my will, or at least my conscious will.
There was always something calculating
the distance between us.
Some cosmic abacus shuffling sums
of bullets and light
looking for the ledger's balance,
but never quite locating its exact frequency.

Of Beckoning Places

Of beckoning places
I have never felt more lost.
Nothing invites me onward.
Nothing compels my mouth to speak.
In cave-like ignorance, resembling oblivion,
I am soulless in sleep.
Where are you, beloved?
Do you not think I wait for you?
Do you not understand the crystal heart?
Its facets like mirrors for the clouds
absent of nothing blue.

Invincible heaven with downcast eyes
and burning bullets of victory that peel through flesh
like a hungry ax, why did you follow me?
I need an equal not a slayer.
I need a companion not a ruler.
I need love not commandments.

Of things forgotten
I have never been one.
God seems to find me even in the tumbleweed
when winds howl
and I become the wishbone in the hands
of good and evil.
Why do they seek me out?
What purpose do I serve if I cannot become visible to you?

You know, when they put animals to sleep
children wait outside
as the needle settles the debt of pain and age.
The mother or father write a check and
sign their name twice that day.
They drop a watermark of tears.
They smile for their children
through clenched hearts beating
sideways like a pendulum of time.

And I see all of this and more in myself.
A small animal whose debts are soon to be settled.
Children are already appearing outside
waiting for the smile of parents to reassure.
The signature and watermark
they never see.

Of winter sanctuary I have found only you.
Though I wait for signals to draw me from the cold
into your fire
I know they will come even though I fumble for my key.
Even though my heart is beheaded.
Even though I have only learned division.
I remember you and the light above your door.

Easy to Find

I have often looked inside my drawers
without knowing why.
Something called out.
Seek me and you shall find,
but when I obey I'm confounded by memory's fleeting ways.
Hands immerse and return awkwardly empty
like a runaway child
when no one came after them.

I know there is something I seek
that hides from me so I can't think about what I lack.
It is, however, and this is the point, too damn powerful
to be silent and still.
Besides, I know I lack it because I miss it.

I miss it.
Whatever "it" is.
Whatever I need it to be it is not that.
It can never be anything but what it is.
And so I search in drawers and closets absent of why,
driven like a machine whose switch has been thrown
just because it can.

I miss it.
I wish it could find me.
Maybe I need to stay put long enough for it to do so.
Now there's a switch.
Let the powerful "it" seek me out.
But for how long must I wait?
And how will I recognize it should it find me?

There must be names for this condition that end in phobia.
Damn, I hate that suffix.

It all starts with a sense of wonder and ends in a sense of emptiness.
God, I wish you could find me here.
I'll tuck myself in a little drawer right out in the open.
I won't bury myself under incidentals.
I'll be right on top.
Easy to find.
Do you need me for anything?
I hope so because I need you for everything.

Transparent Things

There it is then, my open wound,
eager for forgiveness.
It comes with age like brown spots and silver hair.
Shouldn't age bring more than different colors
to adorn the body?
I think it was meant to.
It just forgot.
Old age does that you know.
Too many things to remember here.
Both worlds demanding so much,
one to learn, one to remember.

If there was silence in these waters
my wound would dance open
and separate itself from all attackers.
Even this body.
It would look at you
in the orphaning light, diminished of features,
and lead you away to its place of sorrow.
It would ask you to lie down beside it
and wave goodbye
to the coiled currents that tug and pull
to separate us from ourselves.
It would hold your hands,
so masterful in their wisdom,
so mindful of their glory
that it would disappear inside.
In the future, someone,
a friend perhaps, would
read your palm and notice
a small line veering off in a ragged ambush.
Unchained from the rest
of your palm's symmetry.
A lonely fragment waving goodbye
to everything between us.

There it is then, my prayer for you
to close this wound
and draw the shades around us.
Deep, black solitude enfolding us,
the kind found only in caves
that have shut out light for the growing of delicate,
transparent things.

Final Dream

Strike the flint that burns
a lonely world
and opens blessed lovers
to the golden grave of earth's flame.

Listen to the incantation
of raindrops as they pass from gray clouds
to our mother's doorstep.
Dreams of miracles yet to come
harbor in their watery husks.

Stand before this cage
splashed with beauty and stealth
and arranged with locks that have grown frail.
A simple breath
and all life is joined in the frontier.

Here is the masterpiece of creation
that has emerged from the unknown
in the depths of a silent Heart.
Here is the laughter sought
among rulers of death.
Here are the brilliant colors of rainbows
among the spilling reds that purge our flock.
Here is the hope of forever
among stone markers that stare through eyelids
released of time.
Here are the songs of endless voices
among the heartless dance of invisible power.

There is an evening bell that chimes
a melody so pure
even mountains weep
and angels lean to listen.
There is a murmur of hope that sweeps
aside the downcast eyes of hungry souls.

It is the fragrance of God
writing poems upon the deep blue sky
with pin-pricks of light and a sleepless moon.
It is the calling to souls
lost in the forest of a single world
to be cast, forged, and made ready
for the final dream.

Memories Unbound

I have this memory of laying atop
a scaffold of tree limbs
staring out to the black, summer blanket
that warms the night air.
I can smell cedar burning in the distance
and hear muted voices praying in song and drum.
I cannot lift my body or turn my head.
I am conscious of bone and muscle
but they are not conscious of me.
They are dreaming while I am caught
in a web of exemptible time.

My mind is restless to move on.
To leave this starlit grave site and dance with
my people around huge fires crackling with nervous light.
To join hand with hand to the rhythm of drums
pounding their soft thunder
in monotone commandments to live.

I can only stare up at the sky
watching, listening, waiting
for something to come and set me free
from this mournful site.
To gather me up in arms of mercy
into the oblivion of Heaven's pod.
I listen for the sound of my breath
but only the music of my people can be heard.
I look for the movement of my hands
but only wisps of clouds and crescent light move
against raven's wings.

Sometimes when this memory peeks through
my skin it purges the shoreward view.
It imposes on the known predicament
with a turbulent bliss that bleeds defiance to the order.
There is certain danger in the heritable ways
of my people who send me the chatoyant skin
humbled and circumscribed.
My white appetite leached of earthly rations.
Misplaced to the darshan of the devil,
the very same that maneuvered my people to reservations--
the ward of the damned.
(At least I have no memories of a reservation).

Perhaps it is better to lay upon this mattress of sticks
with my wardrobe of feathers and skins
chanting in the wind.
Perhaps it would be better still
to be set atop the cry shed and burned
so prodigal memories would have
no home to return to.

I have this memory of escaping the pale hand
of my master that feeds me scraps of lies and moldy bread.
My skin yearns for lightness,
but it is the rope that obliges.

I have this memory of holding yellow fingers,
large and round, dripping with ancient legacies.
Of seeing the rounded belly of Buddha
smiling underneath a pastoral face
in temples that lean against a tempest sky.

I have this memory of dreaming to fly.
Stretching out wings that are newly attached
with string-like permanence
only to fall in the blunted arms of obscurity.

I have this memory of seeing my face in a mirror
that reflects a stranger's mind and soul.
Knowing it to be mine, I looked away
afraid it would become me alone.
I am patchwork memories searching for a nucleus.
I am lost words echoing in still canyons.
I am a light wave that found itself
darting to earth unsheathed seeking cover
in human skin.

Afterwards

I've set loose the guards that stand before my door.
I've let cells collide in suicide until they take me.
If there were stories left to tell I would hear them.

Behind the waterfalls of channeled panic
spilling their prideful progeny I can stay hidden in the noise.
Being invisible has its cameo rewards.
It also keeps visible the durable lifeform
murmuring beneath the wickedness.
This is truly the only creature I care to know,
with luminous ways of sweet generosity that suffers
in the untelling universe of the unlistening ear.

When I am found out-after I am gone-by a stranger's
heart whose drill bit is not dulled by impersonation,
I will open eyes, peel away skin, awaken the heart's coma.
I will set aside the costumed figure and redress the host
so its image can be seen in mirrors I set forth
with words bugged by God.
When these words are spoken,
another ear is listening on the other side
beaming understanding like lasers their neutral light.

The common grave of courage holds us all
in the portal of singularity,
the God-trail of rebeginning.

Somehow, so seldom, words and images
thrust their meaning into heaven and conquer time.
But when they do,
they become the abracadabra of the sacred moment.
The pantomime of the public's deepest longing.

Afterwards, the improbable eyelid glances open,
the skin folds away,
and the heroic eye awakens and remains alert.
Afterwards, the words eat the flesh and leave behind
the indigestible bitterness.
The emotional corpse shed,
an insoluble loneliness.
The cast of separation.

Nothing Matters

Space is curved
so no elevator can slither to its stars.
Time is a spindle of the present
that spins the past and future away.
Energy is an imperishable force
so permanence can be felt.
Matter flings itself to the universe,
perfectly pitiless in its betrayal of soul.

You can only take away
what has been given you.

Have you not called the ravens the foulest of birds?
Is their matter and energy so different than ours?
Are we not under the same sky?
Is their blood not red?
Their mouth pink, too?

Molten thoughts, so hot they fuse space and time,
sing their prophecies of discontent.
Listen to their songs in the channels of air
that curl overhead like temporary tattoos
of light's shimmering ways.

Am I merely a witness of the betrayal?
Where are you who are cast to see?
How have you been hidden from me?
Is there a splinter that carries you to the whole?

If I could speak your names I would call you to my side
and take your hands so gentle you would not see me,
feeling only the warm passage of time
and the tremor of your spine moving you to weep.

Space is curved so I must bend.
Time is a spindle so I must resolve its center.
Energy, an imperishable force I must ride.
And matter, so pitiless I refuse to be betrayed.

So I stand naked to the coldest wind
and ask it to carve out an island in my soul
in honor of you who stand beside me in silence.
Lonely, I live on this island assured of one thing:
that of space, time, energy, and matter; nothing matters.
Yet when I think of you in the cobwebbed corner,
hoveled without wings
like a seed planted beneath a dead tree stump,
I know you are watching
with new galaxies wild in your breast.
I know you are listening
to the lidded screams smiling their awkward trust.
All I ask of you is to throw me a rope sometimes
so I can feel the permanence of your heart.
It's all I need in the face of nothing matters.

Signals to Her Heart

Out where the ocean beats its calm thunder

against grainy shores of quartz and sand,
she strolls, hands pocketed in a flowing gown
of pearl-like luminance.
I can see her with hair the color of sky's deepest night
when it whispers to the sun's widow
to masquerade as the sickle's light.

So this is she.
The only one who knows me as I am
though untouched is my skin.
The world from which she steps pounces from mystery,
announces her calm purity
like a willow tree bent to still waters.

In this unhurt place she takes her body
to the shoreline listening for sounds beneath the waves
that tell her what to do.
How great is her love?
Will it take her across the sea to me?
Does she hear my heart's voice before the translation?

She scoops some sand with her ivory hands and
like an hourglass the particles fall having borrowed time
for a chance to touch her beauty.
Her lips move with prayers of grace as she tells
the wind her story;
even the clouds gather overhead to listen.
Her gestures multiply my love with the sign of infinity,
disentangled from all calculations,
adorning her face with a poetry of tears.

I am unsummoned though I hear her voice
so clear it startles me.
I watch her because I can.
I know her because she is me.
I love her because she is not me.

In all my movement, in the vast search
for something that will replace me,
I have found her on this shoreline, her faint footprints,
signatures of perfection that embarrass time with their fleeting nature.
I am like the cave behind her watching from darkness,
hollowed from tortured waves
into a vault that yearns to say what she cannot resist.
A language so pure it releases itself
from my mouth like long-held captives
finally ushered to their home;
jubilant gods dancing away from sorrow's reach.

She turns her head and looks past me as if I were a ghost unseen,
yet I know she sees my deepest light.
I know the ocean is no boundary to her love.
She is waiting for the final path to my heart to become clear.
And I am waiting for something deep inside
to take my empty hands and fill them with her face
so I can know the rehearsals were numbered,
and all the splinters were signals to her heart.

Separate Being

Waking this morning,
I remember you.
We were together last night
only a thin sheet of glass between us.
Your name was not clear.
I think I would recognize its sound,
but my lips are numb
and my tongue listless from the
climb to your mouth.
Your face was blurred as well,
yet, like a distant god
you took your heart and hand
and there arose within me
a separate being.

I think you were lonely once.
Your only desire, to be understood,
turned away by some vast shade
drawn by a wisdom
you had forgotten.
So you sang your songs
in quiet summons to God
hoping their ripples would return and gather you up.
Continue you.
Brighten your veins
and bring you the unquenchable
kiss of my soul.

Drunken by a lonely name
you stagger forward
into my nights, into my dreams,
and now into my waking.
If I try to forget you
you will precede my now.
I would feel your loss
though I can't say your name
or remember your face.
I would awaken some morning
and long to feel your skin upon mine
knowing not why.
Feeling the burn of our fire
so clearly that names and faces
bear no meaning
like a candle flicking its light to the
noonday sun.

Wishing Light

Sun walks the roof of the sky
with a turtle's patience.
Circling endlessly amidst the black passage
of arrival and retreat.
Moon can shape shift
and puncture the confidant darkness.
The weaker sister of sun
it bleeds light even as it dwindles
to a fissure of fluorescence.
Black sky like a monk's hood draped
over stars with squinted eyes.
Stewards lost,
exiled to overspread
the dark lair of the zodiac.
This silent outback where
light is uprooted and cast aside
beats like a tired clock uneven.
It dreams of sunlight passing so
it can follow like a parasite.
Tired of meandering in absence it
wants to live the speed of light and feel its directness.
Wishing to stay alive in light years
and not some recumbent eternity.
Desiring the sharp pain of life
to the dull, numbing outskirts of ancient space.
Darkness follows light like a tireless
wind that pours over tumbleweeds.
But it always seems to outlast the people
if not the light.

Empyrean

He walked a higher ground
like a soul untethered to human flesh.
Darkness implored--
demanded his searching stop
and match the drifting gait of others.
But his pathway unwound like a ball of string
sent upward
only to fall in a sentence of light.
Collisions with fate would unrail him
and send him the wishes of obscurity.
The lightning of desire.
The curse of empty dreams.
The witness to unspeakable horrors.

He would laugh at the absurdity,
yet aware of the dark ripples
that touched him.
Humanity was a creaseless sheet of blank paper
waiting to be colored and crumpled
into pieces of prey for the beast-hunter.
Why did they wait?
The palette was for their taking.
The "distance" betrayed them.
The shallow grave of the deep heart
killed their faith.

He knew,
yet could not form the words.
Nor draw the map.
The ancient casts of the empyrean
withstood definition.
Paradise lost to the soundless blanket
of the clearest thought,
of the loneliest mind.

My Son

son is two.
I watch him walk
like a drunken prince.
With his body bare I can see
his soul better.
His shoulder blades
gesture like vestiges of wings.
His features stenciled upon pale flesh
by hands that have been before me.

He so wants to be like me.
His every movement like a dusty mirror
or awkward shadow of a bird in flight.
Every sound an echo heard.
Every cell pregnant with my urges.
But my urge is to be like him.
To return to childhood's safe embrace
and certain honor.

If I return to this place
I hope my eyes will look again upon his face
even until his blades are wings once more.
Until I have circled his creaturehood
and know every hidden cleft
where I have left my print indelible
unable to be consumed.
Until all that he is
is in me and our hands are clasped, forged,
entwined, in voiceless celebration.

Until we are alone like two leaves shimmering
high above a treeless landscape
never to land.

Nameless Boy

Beyond the frontier
where borders blur into unknown thoughts
there is a nameless boy--
a drop of pure human light.
Through narrow cracks in the splintered fence
I watch his innocence with envy,
searching for the right meaning of his movements.
The twilight of his smile
nourishes my heart
like crumbs of God's light.
A longing in my mouth to speak,
to weep,
and gather this child into my arms
and encipher his nature into mine.
Through the exchange of eyes--
glances, purloined and routed into blindness,
our language annulled.
I can only grope towards him
with antenna thoughts
that dance in praise of his youthful beauty.

I am waiting for stones to bloom.
For venomous skies to wander into oblivion.
For tracks to emerge like dust in a beam of light.

Life's clever poison
is closing the gate.
The cracks are mended--the vision expunged.
And the nameless boy dissolves,
for there was no earth inside him.

WingMakers

I am destined to sit on the riverbank
awaiting words from the naked trees
and brittle flowers that have lost their nectar.
A thousand unblinking eyes
stare out across the water
from the other side.
Their mute voices seek rewards of another kind.
Their demure smiles leave me hollow.

Am I a perpetual stranger to myself?
(The thought brands me numb.)
Am I an orphan trailing pale shadows
that lead to a contemptuous mirror?
Where are these gossamer wings that my
destiny foretold?
I am waiting for the river to deliver them to me;
to lodge them on the embankment
at my feet.

My feet are shackles from another time.
My head, a window long closed
to another place.
Yet, there are places
that salvage the exquisite tongue
and assemble her wild light
like singing birds the sun.
I have seen these places among the stillness
of the other side.
Calling like a lover's kiss
to know again what I have known before;
to reach into the Harvest
and leave my welcome.

These thoughts are folded so neatly
they stare like glass eyes fondling the past.
I listen for their guidance
but serpentine fields are my pathway.
When I look into the dark winds
of the virtual heart
I can hear its voice saying:
"Why are you trapped with wings?"
And I feel like a grand vision inscribed in sand
awaiting an endless wind.

Will these wings take me
beneath the deepest camouflage?
Will they unmask the secret measures
and faithful dwellings of time?
Will they search out the infinite spaces
for the one who can define me?

Wings are forgotten by all who travel with their feet.
Lines have been drawn so many times
that we seldom see the crossing
of our loss though we feel the loss of our crossing.
We sense the undertow of clouds.
The gravity of sky.
The painless endeavor of hope's silent prayers.
But our wings shorn of flight
leave us like newborn rivers that babble over rocks
yearning for the depths of a silent sea.

I have found myself suddenly old.
Like the blackbirds that pour
from the horizon line,
my life has soared over this river searching for my wings.
There is no other key for me to turn.
There is no other legend for me to face.
Talking to flowers and gnarled trees
will only move me a step away--
when I really want to press my face against the windowpane
and watch the wing makers craft my wings.

Awake and Waiting

Child-like universe emerging from darkness,
you belong to others not I.
My home is elsewhere
beyond the sky
where light pollinates the fragile borders
and gathers the husk.
In the quiet of the desert floor
my shell lingers in the pallid dusk
of a starved garden.
What holds me to this wasteland
when others clamor for shadows
and resist the vital waters?
Where the ripening magnet
holds us blind.

Far away,
kindling the presence of a timeless world
hunting for memories of a radiant love;
wingless creatures
tune their hearts to the key of silence.
It is there I am waiting.
Alone.

O' Paradise shore
give me the heart to bear.
Give me the lamp that sings at night.
Give me the wings to strive against wind.
Give me the smile to translate life into light.

Time obliterates the human moment.
No one is absolved
while beauty burns to charred ash
too frail to last
too secret to call.
I will see clearly again
past lives coarsened by time's reign.
My light will retake its wings
its evergreen roots will embrace the sane earth
once again.
And this tiny fragment,
spinning in silence among giant orbs unseen
will resolve my soul and help me find
the one heart awake and waiting.

Circle

I have found the ancient mirror

that leads me.
I have seen its ruthless eyes
that always stare,
burrowing their way to the crown I wear.
I have sensed the holy fire
like a blazing cocoon
that offers no judgments
amidst its power strewn.
I have felt the innocent light.
Of clarity in flight over native land
where we are birthed apart
from one command.

I have touched the gentle eye that outlasts me.
The huge patience upon my brow.
I have offered all my earthly wisdom
for the symptoms of its tongue;
to drop its seeds into the fields that I plow.
I have seen destiny's path
gathering its flock
for the journey of endless spaces.
I have watched futures fall with eyelids closed
and the gnawing tears of torn places.
I have seen the Tribe of Light
return the clock to the black pocket
where all divisions occur.
Where weeds secure the humble land
of fires unlit, yet pure.

I have heard the masters of masters speak
to every cell of my body;
cutting new pathways in flesh
like fear's executioner.
I have watched the galaxies twirl
like star wheels that spiral to the thought
of a holy vision.
I have felt my spirit follow
the one sound that is free.

I have vanished before.
I have taken this body to an inner place
where none can see.
Only feelings can hear the sound of this space.
This sacred place alone
has brought me here to recover the thread.
To see the weaving dance that calls my name
in a thousand sounds.
That draws my spirit
in a single, perfectly round,
circle.

What is Found Here

What is found here

can never be formed of words.
Pure forces that mingle uncompared.
Like dreams unspoken when first awoken
by a sad light.

What is found here
can limp with one foot on the curb
and the other on the pavement
in some uneven gait
waiting to be hidden in laughter.

What is found here
can open the swift drifting of curtains
held in mountain winds
when long shadows tumble across like juries
of the night.

What is found here
can always be held in glistening eyes.
Turned by silence's tool of patience.
Like feelings harbored for so long
the starward view has been lost.

Downstream

Open me.
Take me from here to there.
Let the wind blow
my hair and the earth's skin touch me.

Open me like broken bottles
that bear no drink
yet think themselves worthy of the trash man.
Open me to the clans from which I sprout.
Are they colors separated, cast apart
like memories of drunkenness?
Open me to Africa, Asia, America, Australia.
Open me like a package
of mystery left on your doorstep
in the sweetness of laughter.

Open me to the crudely made lens of love
that screams to be of human hands
and lips.
Open me to the glance
that comforts strangers like the tender overture
of a mourning dove.

Is the wisdom of horses mine
to harness?
Is the muscle of wolves
lawless or the healer of sheep?
Is the black opal of the eye
the missing link we all seek?

Open me to the authors of this beaten path
and let them flavor it anew.
Bring them flecks of the rumored and rotten
slum that waits downstream.
Show them the waste of their watch.
The shallow virility that exterminates.
The ignominy that exceeds examination.

Open me to the idols of the idle.
Let me stare open mouthed at the herdsmen
who turn innocence into fear.
Is the plan of the sniper to uncivilize
the nerveless patch of skin
that grows unyielding to pain?

Open me to the stains
of this land that original sin cannot explain.
Let these symptoms go
like dead, yellow leaves fumbling
in swift, guiltless currents downstream.

Downstream where the slum
lies in waiting.
Downstream where the idols' headstones
are half-buried in muddy rain.
Downstream where animal tracks
are never seen.
Downstream where
the lens of love is cleaned with red tissue.
Downstream where the herdsmen
herd their flock and beat the drums
promising a new river that never comes.

Downstream there lives
a part of me that is sealed like a paper envelope
with thick tape.
It watches the river like the underside of a bridge
waiting to fall if the seal is broken.
To plunge into the current when I am opened
by some unforgiving hand unseen.
To be drawn downstream
in the gravity of a thousand minds
who simply lost their way.
A thousand minds that twisted the river
away from earth's sweetness
into the mine shaft of men's greed.

So it must be.
So it must be.

Open me to the kindness
of a child's delicate hand when it reaches out to be held.
Let it comfort me
when my bridge falls and the swift, guiltless currents
pull me downstream
where all things forgiven are lost.
Where all things lost are forgiven.

Of Luminous Things

Of luminous things I have so little experience
that I often think myself small.
Yet when I think of you and your luminous ways
my being swells with hope and prayers
that you will permit the flames to grow.

In mercy, we are torn apart into separate worlds
to find ourselves over and over
a thousand times aching for the other half.
To dream of nothing but the One between us.

Of luminous things I have squandered none
nor have I held them to my heart and asked them
to dissolve into me.
Yet when I think of you, I desire only this.
And if you disrobed your Self and watched it
watch you, you would see me as clearly as I am.
Not small and unworthy.
Unafraid of fear.
Not uncertain like empty space.
But luminous like white light before the prism.

In my thoughts I hold your heart
sculpting away the needless
for the essence.
And when I find it
I will hold it to my heart and ask it
to dissolve into me.
I will know of luminous things
that hurtle through time
bringing us the uncharted, unfathomable
desire we have never spoken.
Words are not curious enough to say their names.
Only love can weep their identity,
and I am so perfectly defenseless to its music.

Forever

Memory, like a root in darkness,
piercing light with its stem has found me.
Ordering my world
like architecture of feelings
bound to you,
held for you as shields of hope.
In the dispersion of love,
identical throbbing
has been our call
answered in the sweetest caress two can share.
And you wonder if ecstasy will diminish us
like rain the sun or
wind the calm.
When we know one another
in the deepest channel of our hearts
we can only utter one word
cast from this stone's mind: forever.
Forever.

When winter calls my name
in the highest desert of light,
I will not despair because I know you
in the deepest channel of my heart
where I understand the word, forever.
Instantly healed by your caressing lips
that unmasks all that has tortured me.
The panting of mouths
tired but astir in passion's flame
can only cease when I have entered you
forever.
I carry you in this flame,
emerald-colored from my dreams of you
beneath the trees within
where your beauty consumed the sun
and snared my soul so completely.
I cannot truly know you apart from a throne.

Spirits made to shine beyond the din
of boorish poets
that strike flint below water and cry without passion.
I have known you forever in lonely streets
and the thundered plain.
In wilted villages and cool mountain terraces.
I have watched all of you
torn open to me speaking like a river
that moves on forever.
And I have waited
like the greedy mouth of an ocean
drawing you nearer to my lips
so I can know you forever
as you empty into me abandoned of all fear.

Longing

Longing, when the eyelids open

upon the deepest stimulus held by your lips
and the amorous kiss becomes my orbit.

I ache and long to have you with me
so close our skin would melt together
like two candle wicks sharing wax.
I only know that what is of soul
is of longing and ache.
It delivers me to the edge,
the precipice where I look down
and see myself inextinguishable,
longing to be consumed by you.

And in that glittering place
let me stretch with your heart
at full speed, blind and intent.
Let me dwell in you
until I am so familiar with our union
that it becomes part of my eyes.
With memory full,
we can imagine home,
in the permanence of longing.

So much a part of the other
that the "other" does not exist

Another Mind Open

There was a fire where smoke gathered
and danced like rivers without gravity
to the rattle of drums.

Sometimes I would look inside the smoke
but it curled away and covered itself
with a cloak so opaque I could only cry.
It became the mask of its consumption.
The dream of its new life.
The victorious skin always changing
yet everlasting.

There was a fire last night
that proclaimed news of a newer testament
that drinks tears, lies, vile words, even
the deep fears that linger underneath
the turncoat.

I usually lurch away when it calls.
To me, it burns too cold
like a skinwalker lost in a body
devoured by time.
Sometimes I would dream it alive
and it would blaze--a vibrant sun--
more durable than a grave.

In times of stillness
it would speak like a codicil of some lidless dream
that words could not preserve.
"The time has come to lift your gaze
from the fire's brightness
and cast shadows of your own."
The words would echo into oblivion
like stars lost in the swell of the sun's awakening.

In these flames I see my
consumption fit and proper.
In its smoke
I am stored away like so many jars
in a broom closet.
Waiting to flee.
Drawing my feet to oppose the floor.
Struggling to reach the door inside these jars
of sealed air.

Stories escape the writer's hand
and pursue me as though I alone held their vigil.
Their very soul.

When indeed these stories have never been told.
They have never found words
to hold though they ceaselessly try.

Fires blind nature.
They invest their life in her death.
But the end is always beginning
toward another end.
And the dreams of the untold
are always pursuing another mouth,
another hand,
another mind open.

Sometimes I look to the errant expression of hope,
and ask it to bring its flames deeper into my heart.
To burn a clear sense of purpose.
To burn away the fool's crevice
and enshroud me in its skin of smoke.

Sometimes I offer myself to these flames
and know they listen.
Devising my world.
Reality coalesces around their finery
like a tower of glass enclothes a shell of steel.

Sometimes I feel the flames send me
words, notes, tones.
Enchantment.
Products of another kind.
Tiny crucibles of earth that burn so brightly
they can blind the sun's creatures of whimsy.

And sometimes, without even thinking,
I peek into these flames
when the smoke peels away for an instant.
There, behind the mask,
is my future.
Our future.
The future.
The present in another world.
Calling out for another mouth,
another hand,
another mind open.

Like the Songs of Whales

Your voice lingers when it speaks
like rippling heat over desert floor.
It draws my heart and I find myself
leaning toward its source
as though I know it will take me
where you always are.
It draws me near to your breath-the spiracle that
holds the words of home.
It draws me to the blanket you hold
around your soul you so willingly share.

If you were to dive below the waters
where the whales sing their songs
into the gathering of deep currents
that pull our courage along,
channels that flow free of worldly levels,
you would find me there.
Listening to the voice I hear in you.
Feeding my heart in the waters of deep blindness
where currents flow
mindful of you and your spirited ways.

Sometimes I listen so perfectly
I hear your soft breath forming words
before they are found by you.
Before you can bring them from
the deep blindness to your heart.

I wish I could take your hand
and let it hold my heart
so you could see what I know of you.
So you could know
where we live where we always are.
And you could pull your blanket of words
around us and I could simply listen
to your voice
that honors words
like the songs of whales.