Children from Africa

Radiant like yellow rock
Beneath the clear skies of four-square purity
I wait, by the coasts emptying
Myself of summer, the karma

Passing from me like a world
Of bright flickers and whispers
I want freshness, the love that separates
Sun from night, time from self

To build an Eden from green leaves
The foliage of belonging that reaches
Past all temporary acts, perceived turmoil
I search for rhythms of the forest

Through light, burning on the water
My ears trance-like and open to
The liquid wings of silence and words
On both sides.

Photo Courtesy: http://www.deviantart.com/art/Coast-of-Wonders-58617903

So that our sleep might answer all the sky’s starry questions

Love is a bewildered nest
Branded by comfort
Time propagating in the shared darkness
I untangle my confusions here
Unlearning solitude

Like a secret creature in the fire
The day’s net has extinguished
All goodbyes, all labors unfulfilled
In the slow bedroom of the moon
Breathing with the gentleness of gold

Touching lasts a lifetime with you
Simply a pulse of a long slow-river
Our blood mixes, we become
One celebrated organism, one unit
A family where your hands move

Autumn on the march, thriving
Like a crazy woman sings
To the evening vines, the salad-tulips
We bend towards our nocturnal bodies
Rejoicing like an ultramarine couple

Steam-breath coming from our joys
And blue frost clogging up the mirror
We are a four-sided constellation of light
From some distant star, and we are home
Love is a bewildered nest, full

Of eyes like the dearest diamonds
And the wine, the ruby-juice
The sap of our decades of care:
That never got drank completely.

Photo Courtesy: http://www.deviantart.com/art/–410025029

Fragments Beneath Eternal Trees

I am a fragment on the white clouds
Of Apollo, Vishnu see himself in me
I am the Autumn silver of first snow
Washed on my morning face

I am the stubborn silence that accompanies
Too much happiness, the foreign
Country love. I am the last request
Of a golden heart gladdened to be poor

That the purity persists despite that
With a prayer book full of lyrics
Sutras of the melted precipice of self
I am a fragment of all that was once divine

Set in empty volumes of diamond flesh
I am the end of an invisible dynasty
Poetry dies with me, as a window
To the gray-maned mythology of italics
Where words became monuments of Autumn herself.

Photo Courtesy: http://www.deviantart.com/art/she-409922245

Poem from the 21st Century

My inner artist burns
to build a new world
past the last revolution
for something special like

Freedom and equality for all
from an umbrella of social concern
it is the youth that change
the status quo, certainly not

The hooks of flowers, the marriages
family builders, who must
play their accustomed niche
the biological imperatives

where years blur in ancestral worship
descendant divinity, evolution’s
meditation on forms: self-replication
my inner artist burns

For this corrupt economy to fail
past the years of anarchy
for something special like
an ethical communal setting

It is the youth who envision
a better future, the elders
no longer have the courage
to act upon once lofty ideals.

Photo Courtesy: http://www.deviantart.com/art/Revolution-91757837

Ode to Writing

I bring to the table
That which arrests the sun
I am a writer, to raise a finger
To my weary mortal lips

What I speak has been spoken before
What I say, will never
Be said again – I am
The vowel attempting

To pronounce, metaphors unknown
On the table’s wilderness
The writer pretends
Enough failed ascension

For a lifetime to know
My pen has tipped over the page
Spilt the ink in a trickle
Of heart to the goose quill

That which once said:
Can never be quite said again
Representing a moment
Unique in the history of art

I bring to the table
That which the light can attest
I am a writer, to raise an eyebrow
To the stars sunk in the air
That hang low across the sea.

Photo Courtesy: http://www.deviantart.com/art/Writing-49291934

Ages Beneath a Yellow Sun

I felt a Springtide, in my heart
And Celebrators to and fro
They kept treading summer
Even beneath the Autumn’s glow

I felt a Funeral, in my brain
And Mourners to take part –
That sense was breaking through
In departing friends of youth

I felt a Quiver, in my fate
And service to the choice
Of freedom and love’s satiety
Making a Crease across my soul

And all the Heavens were a Bell
That run O’ so clearly in the silence
Where I am solitary, undiminished
Finished knowing, I check my pulse

With a pencil, larger than Serenity
I felt all the problems bending low
And a Scarlet prison of the World’s ills
They kept perpetuating history

While a few of us chased
The Delirious Charter of futurity.

Photo Courtesy: http://www.deviantart.com/art/Kuroshitsuji-funeral-200633429

God Permits Industrious Angels

Time, too much, too little
I do not want to live forever
Forever, composed of recurrent nows

There is no exception
To this simulation
Time changes everything

Except for Infiniteness
Those latitudes of home
That we can imagine past biology

Removes the dates, duality
Of mind, faulty perception
There are dimension beyond time

These months dissolve
Into further months, the years
Give way to an exhaling them

And the seconds pound like
Heart-beats of forever now
I do not want to live forever

And I won’t, though miss these weeks
Maybe, without internal debate
Or external pause, life is what it is

Celebrated days among the tragedies
No different from the stuff
The years themselves are made of

Time, too much, too little
You have executed memory
And composed a crystallization of “I”

Though I know it’s not real
There is no exception
To this simulation.

Photo Courtesy: http://www.deviantart.com/art/no-time-48613390

Another Elegant Poet’s Rite

I heard you became a poet
After many miracles
Of the power of words
You decided to take on

A magical identity
a mythical persona of renown
to pause at the door of art
Before stepping through

I heard you became a poet
After finding ancient sanctuary
With many old books
It was a transfigured community

Of self-teaching the way
To universal truth, where
A few pagans found in nature
All that was needed for songs

It may be placebo, but the idols
We create last a lifetime.

Photo Courtesy: http://www.deviantart.com/art/poet-59036603

Bounty of a Mandarin Candle

My wife, your hands they fly
From my eyes into the day
where the last sunshine
touches my face in throbbed

Turquoise where the ocean
Meets the sky in barenaked syllables
A flower petal found of sunsets
My wife, we live together in

A honeysuckle celestial capsule
Absolutely in our own world
My wife, how the darkness has
Swallowed us in the mercy of

her closed wings of grandiose shelter
My wife, I love to watch the
miniature empire of your face
With the characteristics of my

eternal notebook, the lift of perfume
and laughter, the garden-dream
of your tenderness of blue material
Where life seems prosperous & lucky

My wife, the last crazy sunbeam
Of my open heart, has arrived in your form
As the flare of corn in the soil
Or the gift of rain to the natural world.

Photo Courtesy: http://www.deviantart.com/art/candle-for-every-soul-102428705

By Night, I Love language

In Night travel I go back to verse
The poesy behind sleep
at the root of subconscious origins
the purest motion of evolution
some constancy of sharing

That beats in my chest
when I was just a fish –
In Night travel I go back to the word
The poesy behind rapture
at the root of superconscient bliss
with starry questions as a single key

To sunlight infinity, there I will beg
The one voice to spread through
all creatures until I feel her eyes

staring back at me from all sides
that sleep might answer, all the sky’s
lovely shadows and queries:
By Night I travel back to the dawn.

Photo Courtesy: http://www.deviantart.com/art/night-165133165

Beholding the Lovely body of a Sunbeam

I yearn for completion
In the abstract tapestries
A beauty as soft as music, as wood

That sends a freshness
against the waves
of lights from a distant region

of the Universe, the shape
A new measure of mind
I yearn for completion

In truth and beauty
Of another world, with
The fragrance of unbroken springtime!

I yearn for some language of substance
Beyond the biological cravings
of flesh, sniffing twilight

the pangs of the hot heart
Which hunts the barrens
For some savage harvest
Beyond color, above sound.

Photo Courtesy: http://www.deviantart.com/art/glade-nik-II-409224733

Magnetic transience of our blooms

If your eyes were not the
color of lightning, of a day full
of loving hope, this world of
faces, work, play, politics

If you were not the chief grace
of my little years, amber weeks
golden months, clogged with
moments of clasping anticipation

I would have gone mad long ago –
If, my dearest, you had not come
into my life like sand, trees, rain
everything is so alive that is to

live with you, eat with you, move with you
if our arms, legs, noses did not touch
each night in our beloved sleep
your life and my life would not

be so good, so happy, and now
I can see everything that lives
and loves in you, so easily, held-in
as the water that shatters the

restless rock; the breeze that caresses
the most ancient fires, you were there
and we drop into the future in
blue salt, falling in sea-circles of
another world, of permanent tenderness.

Photo Courtesy: http://www.deviantart.com/art/War-of-roses-408847420

Poem on Beauty

My Art is no art
I seek to submit to nature within
That the heart’s streaming tears
Might praise that which is holy
Abiding by a sacred partner

A fullness of life, my companion
The heart of my Art
Has bangles of poetry
Necklaces of pure music
Whose verses & notes are extremely
fond of each other

They love each other deeply
They have no self to interfere
Sleepless and wondrous & pondering
They climb divinity and need
Each other so constantly

As I need to paint, write, rejoice
Even if my technique be wanting
In qualification, education, specification
My Art is no art
Needless to say, my love includes

All manners of healing insignificance:
The moment I stop writing
I face earth’s beauty, and
She tells me to write some more!

Photo Courtesy: http://www.deviantart.com/art/Elation-V-408683972

Art is my Self-Giving Friend

My Art is no art
It is the simple flowing
Of my humble being
I sit in a mood of reverie
Desires and sensations beautified

I subscribe to beauty
For a version in harmony
For a way out of suffering
Art strums completion
By thriving creativity in life

When I paint or draw or write
I am playing mysticism
In my private dream world
This hide-and-seek suggests
My soul illuminates with nature

Let me submit to art
Blending impressions without a name
For the sake of distinct
Eternal memories that are replayed
In every artist-painter-poet-writer’s soul.

Photo Courtesy: http://www.deviantart.com/art/Cold-summer-morning-408822206

A Brief Definition of Longing

My longings died for the youth
beautiful bodies aged and with
roses by the head, jasmine at the feet

time did not save anyone, longing passed
like the words of the dead, who lived
in the presence of sensual pleasures

so fleeting, temporary, the vivid aches
but radiant mornings drove us on
the timid imaginations of a lifetime

in blood flesh and hot striving for survival
exalted young sensualists have to become
something else, mystical longings

that have a difficulty defining the goal
a forbidden ecstasy of meditation otherworldly
where synapse kisses the universe

my longings died past mid-life
the beautiful angels did not age
the spirit would never die

love’s height lifted above a person
we would become separated forever

Photo Courtesy: http://www.deviantart.com/art/autumn-408633691

V

Voices, cherished and most dear
of those who we left behind
they are too lost for us like the dead –

Voices, loved and so idealized
of those who formed our minds
they are there, sometimes

in our dreams speaking glowing alphabets
deep in the heart of our self-prophecy
when sleep cleans our neurons

Voices, remain, loving and old
as the first dawn of our being –
and then, the sound of their poetry returns

as life’s first cry of language
like music in the night, sweetly fading
a chorus of moments returned

all at once, spontaneous synchronicity
Voices, the cherished melody of being human.

Photo Courtesy: http://zemotion.deviantart.com/art/Motherland-Chronicles-37-Masked-407999452

Abandonment of Sensation

He lost him completely, himself and desperate
He tried to find his soul in the
Thoughts of each new friend, each new lover
He tries in the union with
Each new experience, every passing year
To touch upon the essential
Act of feeling alive, that so elusive
The Spark that sometimes flees with time
The forms of pleasure no longer
Convinced his body that he was young
No longer gave his being the ultimate high
It is as though he never existed, and that
Is the irrevocable fantasy and hallucination
Of existence, he can no longer feel the passion
Of what once was, and never can be again.

Photo Courtesy: http://www.deviantart.com/art/A-Rose-407797819

Weightless we stirred ashes with our hands

Weightless are our holy words
with breaths from owlish darkness
our swooning shoulders cannot move
without thought, without poetry

We bury our fingers in the inner voice
to bring up the alchemy of water
where our empty body is pure energy
We scatter ourselves, moving light

with the serenity of our minds
we run through gates of sunshine
to find the words that move us
from brightness to blindness

Weightless, we are a unity of undoing
creating on seven strings the pillars of salt
that will crease the page as a pure sky
with wings of fire and gentle radiance
our words were meant to pour the oil of care.

Photo Courtesy: http://www.deviantart.com/art/Winter-in-the-Overberg-407174930

Fugitive from Utopia

The hand beats the air
It’s a poet who floats up for a moment
she could take up residence
in a nest of stars, or gallop from light rays

With words longer than dreams of flight
Her hour is the silhouette of infinity
With visions that last a lifetime
Wild in her brain, needing to be written

That’s a poet, not an angel
Pale and fiery, passing by a rose
Saints wept in her handkerchief
She seeks happiness in little words

Making no promises, but rapture
And authority of visionary commentary
mystic union, she could take up residence
In the folk wedding, of spirit and mind –

The hand beats the air
She was born to be a poet you see
Dead Nefertiti’s voice flown from her mouth
which lifts you, wing-beats of days and nights

She is a fugitive from Utopia
She walks from the unforgettable sea-shores
To catch her muse, that voice
That breaks between one wave and the next

Sifting through the costume of silence
Behind the veils of time
For the pause of moments
And the whisper of the monologues of the earth.

She is blurred with loquacious tongue
Of the eulogies of countless white-haired men
Ancients that spoke with the tenderness
Of a handful of birds who visit the bird-bath of song.

Photo Courtesy: http://www.deviantart.com/art/El-colibri-406816561

In the regime of hunger

No more of this poetry.
Bring on the hard, harsh real life instead;
Let the jingle of verse disappear
Bury the lyrics of my youth

Like precious Ivory of another time
When the creatures of the Earth were free
No more of this poetry.
No more need for the serenity of a poem

For the empty invisible sense of victory
Poetry, I give you a break today
In the regime of hunger, the Earth
Found more useful things, like family;

The full moon burns like a loaf of
Bread in my mouth, my wife
Waiting for me to overcome idleness.

Photo Courtesy: http://www.deviantart.com/art/Sophia-and-the-Pilgrim-406349902

To All Good Nights

Good night, because we must
Say how to elude strife is to sleep
Father! They won’t tell me
What the light knows

That I shall never know –
Good night, I fumble at my spirit
As players at the chords & keys
Before they drop full of music

Before the end of poetry
Good night, prepare your possessions
You will not need them beyond here
Father! They won’t tell me

Why your breath is so timid today
What the light knows
That we shall never know –
Good night, we are dealing

With Imperial thunderbolts
With a fate that scalps my naked soul
The stars above my head
And my feet pointed to the sea

Good night, because we must
Not know what to do next
Father! In our hour of doom
All evenings steal our purple flight

Reasons profound and Daffodils
Good night – merit and fear qualifies
Humanity, to my beloved need
That never met a more sufficient proof
Than saying good night,
With but itself to rest upon.

Photo Courtesy: http://www.deviantart.com/art/Secluded-404857664

Saucy Seraphs of Death

Death sets a thing to its significance
That was insufficient in life
The eye that hurried through

Goals, perished for its workmanship
We all work in crayon, and wool –
Industrious by passing necessity

As other creatures who have eyes
I see no other way, this world
Profits from the business of death

The distance of youth floods
Departs like the Grace departs
For each beloved hour, each beloved year

Death sets a thing to its significance
There are no tears that measure for the dead
Incognito, dust, how intricate the weeping dust!

Photo Courtesy: http://www.deviantart.com/art/autumn-rain-404842271

Visions of Old Earth

The oceans warm
Between my finite eyes
The motions of the dipping galaxy

Visit my planet like birds
To see the forests gone
Morning’s amber roads

Where the news is never good
My planet makes money
On the insurance of the dead

The image of aged cities
Does not satisfy the heart
The future hath no hospitable intuition
For this company of greed.

Photo Courtesy: http://www.deviantart.com/art/Sacred-Land-404849999

Primal Body

Who is the pictured form, the body that lasts
That repeats its masks, its lusts
Biology, like scattered threads of clay
That breeds and seeks to win

Across the veils of ecstasy
Who is behind the sense, across immortality
The youth derived from evolution’s soul –
That fetches the wine from the beyond

Who is the pictured form,
The female that lures, the male that pushes on –
That tie the skin of opposites
With head and loin, heart and care
The songs of the organics, the original ancestors.

Photo Courtesy: http://www.deviantart.com/art/Summer-Love-404705610

We, Who are in the Blood

Oh, dear wife, you are too much
Mine and flesh of me –
There is no dawn

To keep your water
From my blood, I am unceasing intimacy
Oh, unvisioned loving face

There is no dusk that does not signal
Your baffling comfort of caress
Oh, you are the loss of all

Accomplished things, I do not care
For the world, after you
You are the skin of the

Long-lunging seas
On my bones, in my organs
Moon dark, with laughing mouth

With sweet uplifted lips
That taste like Mandarin honey
The maple syrup teasing eyes

Savage in the glory of redeeming
So many empty lonely years.

Photo Courtesy: http://www.deviantart.com/art/glade-laura-404696026

We are one Flesh

We say we are one flesh:
Two bodies in one heart
Sharing the cries of star to star
Species united, countries melted

On a girl’s throat from the
Tunic of Earth, with a rose of breasts
And longing that is a mouth
That never has enough food

To couple and not stay single
We say we are one flesh:
With two minds of one faith
Sharing the circle and space

That divides our respective births
Future united, and boundaries melted
On a boy’s muscle from the
Gardens of Earth, with a surplus of desire

And consuming fire
That can never be possessed
Love is the way that lovers never know
The shortest way to find love

That never turns aside and never goes
But which reminds us that
We are one flesh.

Photo Courtesy: http://www.deviantart.com/art/Only-a-Way-into-the-Sun-404677679

More-Than-The-Angels

What does the voice of love sound like?
A voice for everyone, sight-seeing
With Oneness to the left
Unity to the right

What does the voice of love sing about?
To those friends waiting in heaven?
What is its goal and who are its subjects?
What pure substance does the melody play

These instruments, our subtle chords of heart
What does the voice of love sound like?
To ancient ears, to ears of the young –
Yielding up soul to a world of maladies

Leaving out spirit in a corruption of greed
By morning bright, love’s alphabets keep
Speaking, no matter the country, or the time.

Photo Courtesy: http://www.deviantart.com/art/magic-light-III-404666052

Look on that spiritual cheek

I no longer have any idols
Beauty has scattered
Desires have fled

My ascetic’s door has been taken
My prayers no longer have a sutra
My heart no longer has an object

I have forgotten the memory
Of god and the world
I no longer write a poetry of sweetness

Or care to sing of my afflictions
No heart is left in me except
The friend to all the worlds
That seeks to treat each equally.

Photo Courtesy: http://www.deviantart.com/art/Lonely-swimmer-404679490

from The Happy Marriage

Days I remember of
Now in my heart
Days in the nude
Of the fondness of new love

Throbbing with the peace
Of ecstasy of windy grass
September days that shook
With the health of

Death that never was
Or Life that can only be
Days I remember of
An Eternity of the heart –

Waiting impatiently for victory
Of a life that stands still
Or moves sure at last of all things
As the things seen by moon or sun.

Photo Courtesy: http://www.deviantart.com/art/Marriage-Wedding-145300777

For our Tale is not Linguistically Interpretable

How to keep silence, when every moment
Is as holy as a word dreamt upon the page?
At the zenith of poetry where

Metaphysics becomes a living necessity –
There, I shall dwell for a few weeks
Between the scavenging of hope

And the arms of my loving wife
Anguish was a revolution
How to keep the silence loose

When every moment bursts forth
In the beauty of the King of Kings
The place where aspiration travels

Off-shore, to alphabetic neutrality
A transparency of how ancient language
Leaves its mark on the spirit’s page

Sanskrit melding into mandarin
With an undertone of rolling Gaelic.

Photo Courtesy: http://www.deviantart.com/art/Paradise-404652006