coming home

Interrupted life.
Having you, protects me from my own web.
Return to me, as you thaw,
Weathering away to smooth edges.

We are at the center, of this expansive disk,
Glimmering prism,
And the line we follow is just a circle
Contained at some distance from the edge.

Stop, wait for me,
let’s turn and head for the horizon of
Incorporated memories…
That’s what coming home to you is like.

Pale ashes accumulated behind the magnesium smoke,
of discarded memories bending in relinquishment,
Behind the afterglow of the spark,
as it burns down the shaft of time.

Of talus and terminus.
When the last ember sleeps, the stars are free at last
To provide all the light, engulfing the past
That is what coming home to you is like.

Traveling anywhere,
Is just a fancy of the earth below my feet.
Go back and be the mystery you were.
Where your chrome softens into pastel.

I’ve seen the reasons I miss you.
A broken moment collapses into eternity.
The world is peering over my shoulders and it makes me nervous.
As I trace a line along the coast from here to anywhere.

I am

I may chase my losses around with a magnifying lens
Trying to figure out what went wrong.
I wonder what went right,
I’m sure it was nothing that I had anything to do with.
I thank god for the tenacity to create
It is not a process, it is the result.
People, get up and face the light
Feel the warmth, let yourself go and bless me, bless us
Who you are is who is truly loved, what is truth?
What is truth?
It is the highlights at the end of the suns ray before it touches the ocean.

I’d rather be lost in your heart then
Discovered in the sureness of wealth.

I need peace.

“You’ll never stop me,” he screamed as he ran into the night,
Faster than the darkness could take.
The silly envelope that cannot close down the acceleration of me toward you
Let me love you to the point of being unreasonable
Do not question.

In a tender yet torrid way
I’ve seen love creep like some shadow
Running from the sun
And overtaking each and every being.
Scanning eyes – moving over the world
They talked and I watched their eyes.
I’m supposed to be with you
As sure as I’m recognized by a stranger
Befriended by an acquaintance
And betrayed by a friend.
Betrothed by a soulmate.

I will be the one – the candle flame,
The world, the cabin walls.
Golden glow, shadowy glower
Scuffling feet over the wooden floor
At some chalet in a wanna be alp.

I’m a ….hm.

The Fall

The chatter of leaves
As they blow over the trail
This is the Fall of my life.
Every breath shivered
and twirled on the air,
Fogging the glass piece
Through which I stare
At lions at play
in the depths of my soul,
fierce and gentle
On other ethereal fields.
Sunrays softened on the curves of your hair.
And now stars on their nightly procession
Clatter like leaves
Across my path,
They will all join the Fall.

A godawful astronomy lesson

How many times have I looked up in the sky
To feel a tear roll back

I never saw you, but I knew you were there
Obscured by the fog of a bad day,
Engulfed by the sun
A sailors moon
Hearing nothing, never sounded so bad.
Darkness, giving up, are you there?
If so, leave me alone…
I’ll find you later, it’s better that way.

Falling star, beautiful as it burns up in the atmosphere,
maybe making it to earth, or just becoming ether.
That last falling light, disappeared, plummeting into the ocean of your soul.
And exactly how many stars fill your heart?
Was it gravity, Failure to fly that put them there?
Or a homecoming for the those that have never been home?
Arranged, placed gently in the heavens by the angels
Shuffling with the music of God’s solar winds

The waters rippled
Thrown silken blanket
Catching the stars
Reflecting in dew drops.

(Poem goes no where, I need an extension, I have anthrax—-)

Suspended in their infinite depth
The light reaches us lots of years after the flame ignites
And we smile and muse at these tardy dispatches.
Odd, that only long after we are gone from this world
Is the moment of our acknowledgement reciprocated,
reaching the void where the since-extinguished star once was.
So this comedy of mistimed love affair continues with the heavens
We, exchanging smiles with a face we know is gone from existence
The conundrum of returning to a sender who is no longer there.

And here by the fire
In this sandy pit
I listen to the waves run to the shore
Tattling tales from far out on the ocean
Who’s great arc bends the seawater over the distance
Around the horizon
Where whispers from distant shores are heard in our imagination
Lost at a sea,
The Transcontinental chasm of misshapen, asynchronous anecdotes.

And you and I are mired in this mud ball
A human conglomerate
Spinning around one star
while so many others beckon from beyond
And out of nowhere, I love you
Illuminates, the rise and fall and rise and fall
of the sun light
Like the end of an intermission.

The sun sets, as the encore begins
The audience of stars rise, clapping not loudly
Yet their applause flickers in the distance
As my light plummets into the western ocean of you soul
Yours rises majestic in the east
And for a brief moment,
The runner from the dusk sun is connected
To the glow of dawn
The gap lessens and we don smiles
Not for the fathomless distances of interstellar space
But for our closest star,
a mere 93 million miles
We are as close as close can be

Like the bespeckled heavens
We make patterns, we forget them in the day,
until the darkness comes

Prey Animals (12/20/06 coming home from Australia)

In the long field, the creature stood –
adorned in a bristling mahogany coat,
dusted with honey and java.
I could only stand their swaying
imperceptibly on the dying grass.
From his flanks, a slight swirl of steam
lifted into the winter air and
without a note, disappeared into the heavy sky.

How inconsequential his state,
than the legacy of his stance.
How endless was the moment
that only 20 paces
separated us in time and species.
Yet connected, not understood.
How inconsequential my stance…
Was he dreaming what I was?

Still as the blades of grass poking through the frost,
he stood,
and I followed the contours across steep pasterns,
climbing strong foreleg,
rolling over the withers
and then across to the only sign of life
flickering in the fields that dusk.
No stone could have rippled the source of his long lashes,
the quiet waters of his eyes -

These almond pools with a shiny sliver on black,
A gold shard that reflected off a terracotta sun,
somewhere melting over the bush country of another continent.

If it were not for the fury in my heart,
I’d not have heard a pin drop into the Indian Ocean
We stared endless not in time, but in depth.
And it was so quiet, I could hear the hissing of the grasses, \
He could hear the rushing of my own blood.
But Neither of us stirred as we moved,
the missing words from this monumental sentence
transcended the message.

It was a moments on it’s way out
From the time it arrived.
And no sooner had I reached out my hand,
Then he was gone.
With only that familiar cadence –
Thundering across the pasture.

And my mortality and limitations
Lunged upon me
Ripping the subconscious from the bone
Gnawing on the flesh of simply being human.
When talking of the spirit of a man and horse
We are all prey animals.
And so we run.

Promise to be Safe (the old boat prose)

Promise to be safe
Ponder with you heart
Breathe deeply and fill your eyes
Be clarity in the sands
Venture with your mind into the white caps

An old remembrance of a boat, adorned with palm fronds and dusted with fine white sand
Resting like a native islander, who froze in mid-sleep while catching his breath
Curls of sun-bleached blue paint barely clings to the hull.
The gunwales pitted by caked sea salt and crumbling barnacles
And in the foreground, the dead keel lying in state held up by two saw horses,
On top, a bucket of shellac lying on its side, its contents spilled and dried
with a crusty brush glued to the lip - unable to roll
Nothing moves in the sea breeze, except a few ribbons of shredded gray canvas
Caught on the ragged edges of sprung planks and tips of rusting nails.

The pouring moan of the tide harmonizes
with the fine rustling grass skirt in the breeze just over the berm.
The deposited waves rush back to the sea
tumbling shell fragments, sea glass and paint chips like a tiny maraca
The thick mingling smells of palm husks, sea grass, and salt condenses in matted locks of her hair – which waltzes impersonally with the ripped canvas – flapping like the torn tips of an unwilling pirates pantaloons.

Even as every wave lifts and hoists a piece of the weathered wood out to sea,
the sand laden slumbering mass never reminds her of anything but
bright white sails catching the wind,
the glistening blue bow cutting through the water with a hiss
the lively vessels wake reflecting a burning orange sun
melting on a curved blue horizon
Free to be on its own on the endless ocean – beginning only on this beach.

Ironically, unable to renew itself
This sage of a sail boat is a modern statement to a pair of displaced romantics
For now, parted by the ocean.
Unable to lose each other along the way,
Their love, is like this boat.

Alone

Alone,
I create the perfect pose,
I’ll sew a bounty of unheard prose.

So proud of my cups,
so magnificent
Ornate, but filled with discontent.

We look for toads
and kettle bearers
and the quenching kiss of wayfarers,

Who catch the drops
of saccharin rain
In hand formed vessels thrown in pain.







Love does not pour from Grecian urns
But is the absence in what we believe,
Embrace all you have
and are able to give
than all you’d hope to receive.

So Close (song me and the Boxcartel are working on)

So Close

It won’t be that much longer then
Just another lost day as dusk roles in
And the sun exhales long shadows
From a heart red far horizon.

I know getting too close to anyone
Is something you could not bear
But I’d not be here alone writing this song
Were it not for the company of your being there.

(refrain)
Because being close to you,
is the furthest thing on my mind…
and getting ahead of myself (with you)
just leaves us farther behind.

I’ve watched the endless pageantry
From the curbside like a child
These rock-a-by days as I drift off to sleep
Tracing the softening curves of your smile.

It’s way too close to a memory
Too close to a once-upon a lifetime chance
You’ll both forever hear the music,
But never again get so close…
close enough to dance.

(bridge/ refrain)
I never thought I’d get this far
was the furthest thing on my mind…
When she left, I was sure it was me
Being left behind.

And the buildings press against the streets
Etched through New York City
When the sky goes cobalt blue
and your eyes go soft as the stars peak through,
That’s as close as I’ll need to get
That’s close enough to feel you.

Just promise to keep your distance
From the hopes you’ve left behind
And love within in yourself,
What another lover seeks to find.

(Refrain)

Those Who Cannot Trust - Who Fear Love

We feel the forest most in its darkness – and it is the saplings of fears that grow into tall trees that we can climb to see the stars above the canopy.

And through the obsidian blackness – an occasional beam of light threads its way through the trunks to meet our wincing eyes. Somewhere the glint of that reflection is seen by another… and then lost.

The torch you carry does not provide the light by which you search, but by which you are found. If you keep it glowing – whether fueled by the laughter of your children or the love of your family – yours will catch the glint in the eyes of another.

May you find happiness in giving thanks for all you’ve received.

Infinite Paths, But One Way to Go

There are infinite paths, all of which are only crossing briefly at a point. It is best to make each encounter count, each breath last, but always stay on your path.

Theory of Creation

Why do we sometimes lose focus on those we care about, and obsess with the reasons why others don’t care about us. When process overcomes reason, when gentle gradations become black and white, when you no longer value HOW you do something because WHAT you do cannot be valued by others…you have become a machine. We as humans are not manufactured, we are created…so it is our nature to create, everything around us…good or bad. Please, go back and find the inner source of your creativity, and you will find the oneness of “how” and “what.” You cannot produce if you cannot care for yourself. You have no greater value than that unto yourself…create where it is you choose to go, and your path will appear for all to follow.

Autumn Left a Note

She mounted the breeze
And shook the trees
Bringing our love to its knees.

“I’m not jaded,
Please look at me,
Look deeply and say goodbye,”
She rustles the rust from the waving limbs,
“…Here’s your beloved azurite sky.”

It’s raining saffron and crimson leaves
As Autumn throws on her coat
She’s gone again,
And all I have
Are the tears she left on this note.

Veterans Day 2011

Sadly, half as many more U.S. servicemen and women were killed on our own soil during the Civil War as were killed in World War II. I am certain in retrospect that not one loss of a single life in any war effected a change that wasn’t in some way deeply regretted. This regret ripples and amplifies through time. With little heed to it’s lesson. The biggest conflict in world history is that which teeters on the thin edge of our individual consciousness…balancing between what is in our hearts and minds and the power of the masses armed with bullets and bayonets … It is the political ideology of winning that makes the loss of life most easily accepted - we will forever lose the war - so long as a battle is won.

Belletristic Bellicose

The following poem is inspired by FB friend Aaron Cook (a brilliant and witty thinker and writer) who posted this picture and caption…

“Hand,foot-less man accepts fate, slowly descends into Hell….I used to know a bellicose man that, when laughing, sounded like he was downing, choking or gargling keys from an old “Oliver” typewriter. Each is tone-spicific. Whith enough typewriters and strident type-set vomitus, I’ll write the great American novel. It’s like reading tea leaves. But I say too much again…. Now I will go light a candle to Mr. Mani-Pedi.”

As with many things I’ve written, I took it a bit further in “Belletristic Bellicose”

I used to know a bellicose man
Who each day fought for a line
That led to the sputum
Of an American Novel
Gagging,
“Once upon a time.”

His pen slashed at sub-consciousness
Enter sanguine patriot
Sinew torn and bleeding ink,
Till all but exsanguinate

His body stripped of ebullience
Yet all the more cantankerous
The mind ascends the spoils of
Men
In a porridge of type-set vomitus

A tempest blows from the open novel
of a periphrastic angry man
That snuffs the lantern at Dante’s door
Without lips
or a foot or a hand.

Eternal Eye for a Flash in Time

Hang on to these moments of our youth, for they become the trusted handholds and firm footing for many a slippery slope as we cross into our later years.

autofox

A friend asked, “…were you listening to what I said just now?” To wit I quickly and quite honestly replied, “no - I wasn’t, I was listening to what I HEARD.” And that’s the way it is…alas, the closer the voice gets to our ears, the less we listen to its source. Perhaps, in seeking to know someone, we begin with what we seek to observe within ourselves.

Two Effects of Fear - Cause for stasis or "fearless" behavior

“we so often lose sight of the truth through our fears…. so much so that our fears begin to create the truth for others. Your ultimate responsibility to the world is to be fearless… do this for me and my children and I will do it for you and yours.”

I wrote this in my mind as I listened to conversations among strangers, lamenting and wallowing in doubt and desperation over the economy, the environment, the socio-political state of the world. Not one action considered except to duck and cover…this fear is a contagious form of compulsion to do…nothing. Even when there is little to do, the willful choice to do nothing, to submit, is far worse. The fearless few need only undertake a little to embolden the masses to do more; even if it’s just a vote, a word of encouragement, or a Facebook post. The world is a chorus temporarily out of key….a few beautiful voices with a little more volume and the willful harmony of others will go a long way. Some just say, “QUIT YER BITCHIN!”

A friend accurately cautioned, that “…we need to be fearless for the right reasons. To be fearless for the wrong reasons can be unconscionable & sometimes outright dangerous. Embracing equality in my opinion is key. Awareness of when, why & how should be taken into consideration…”

And I thought a bit more…

I thought, “were the terrorists that flew jets filled with people into buildings filled with people, fearless.” Some might say they exhibited fearless “behavior,” but even if so, I think they were completely filled with fear…and not of dying. From early in their lives, they “feared” encroachment upon their inner values, they feared leaders, they feared the choices they faced between their moral values and those of others, who also feared. Sound minds, ill morals, and fearful to the point of being incapable of anything but loathsome reprehensible behavior - ironically carried out “fearlessly.” It is a personal, internal, moral, fundamental, and native choice within ourselves to be “fearless.” (aside from those with psychosis, who are fearless!) And I should have been more clear on that. My fear has brought me to many fearless choices…one made to take up arms against a foreign nation and culture that, albeit never visited, became representative of all my learned fears. The precise opposite of fear is fearless… and if the opposite of fear is love (which I choose to believe for myself), then love is fearless. And maybe that is the better message…

what we do, we are

Many times, we stand on the fallow banks, transfixed before such a sullen river. Some remain fixated with a distant vision of the opposite shore; others see just the abysmal current that sequesters them slumbering by; and then there are those with imaginations drawn to a proclivity for action, who cannot help but see a bridge.

On Trust

Trust is the blend of belief and action…belief in motion, motion believed. It is not just given to another, but also earned and accepted with both emotional and intellectual acknowledgment. If trust were just a voice, it would mean little without ears to hear it. There are many forms of trust and each requires “self-awareness” before the “awareness of other.” Trust is a sphere, an ethereal world between two people with their own latitudes and longitudes of permitted change. A world, where secrets, promises and contracts are merely contrived words that approximate trust, but there is something immeasurable and beyond the bond. An indescribable glow in a snow framed window of a cold dark night; whenever you go there, no matter what, you just know they’ll be there too - you need not ask. To be entrusted BY another, you must show your true self to them and you must open your eyes to how they value themselves, their beliefs, their feelings - this is the real estate of their existence - with it’s gardens and shelters. It is the turning up of ones cards first – the boxer who first drops his gloves when the bell ends the round…they trust you, they can be trusted. It is not the revelation of a vulnerability with expected protection, but the demonstration of strength and capacity to protect. The seal of trust marks the gates of love…and even when love has run out between two people, trust is willing to remain. But, once out side the gate – love is lost, unremembered, unhonored.

on 9-11

If every objects matter were no different than that of the next, but for their arrangement of atoms. Then truly all we can distinguish and behold with our eyes, is the play of light on the world. You can knock down a building, but you can’t kill it’s spirit. Peace on earth.