Masks of Liquid Fire

Lost Inès, fire-bells, storm pixie
How quickly the lightning succumbs to the flesh
And hope is squeezed so silently in our chest
That light, doesn’t flood our vision, but warps us
With a kind of fear and anxiety

Won Inès, there’s no winning in the tragedies
There’s only ambiguity and doubt and fear
The kind of thunder that makes you climb under the bed
Or paint in the closet, or immerse yourself in the unreal

Creator Inès, there’s no season when beauty dies
Because it dies each day and in every person
As we decide to label them something, to limit their light
We kill our dreams to manufacture new ones

Cowardly Inès, there no one left to run home to
Not the night of courage, or the love of art
Not even they can save us, we are just that
Solitary bandits, cats and ambitiously warped

Memory Inès, there aren’t rooms I can go to
Only drawings, a canvas of your success
Where I’m reminded of the days of summer
Where the Eclipse held the potential of everything.

Jowangsin Come Near Me

I didn’t know Koreans had living Goddesses

It seemed strange to me, how hypnotic Korean sounded

Melded in a harmonics of prophecies, nothing felt

 

As divine as your laughter, Hae.mi, I succumbed to it

Making my heart panic in sweetness and with indecision

I no longer knew how to speak, but could only

 

Thumb your ears with heartbeats, blink with my eye-lashes

Upon your eye-lashes, like the velvet of holding hands

I dared not kiss you, as if wonder could kill my sense

 

Maidenhood, besides, you had no room for moistness

You had no desire for my warm hands to enfold you

You hunted, scavenged, made yourself one of the tribe

 

And seized me in a thousand places, all at once

Hae.mi, whispered nothings, and I believed her

Knowing she was the sap of Autumn’s bizarre chill

 

That feeling you get when you are paralyzed by beauty

Held down in a moment so intense, you cannot breathe

Your name is now oil poured out, my warming chest

 

Your gentleness was my last thrill, finally acceptance

Whose love would weep better than wine, I know

Hae.mi, you who sustain my taste for dripping delight.

Fragment of a Corporeal Once Thing

my brain is wild

my breath comes quickly

I am dissolved in

such consuming ecstasies

none forgoes themselves

and none can forget

their spirit’s signature

the light within

which illuminates the possibilities

my heart is savage

my feelings attain repose

I am dissolved in

such consuming peace

meditation without limit

the universe within

all that I am is

a leaping fragment of existence

a blur in the resolving dark

my brain is golden

my touch is the forgotten legend

I disappear in the myth of being.

The soul has a time-ridiculing roar

The soul is as an unseen Swan
Drifting down the black river
With only stars to stream the light across

And only light to make the river
Seem more bright, a perfect commotion
Of silk, snow, lilies, the flexibility of matter
Creation, the soul feels no bondage
With an armful of white blossoms

I’m sure the soul smiles even when
We appear to be at our worst
Down and out and suffering

As if there were no tomorrow
The soul sways and is partially hidden
It known no dark music, only stretching
Down the river like a waterfall
Discovering something for the

Inner evolution of form and whistling
The background music of everything
Quantum variables speaking new languages

The soul listens for the bulb of love
As rain pelting the tops of trees
And clouds over the river in a season
That is between seasons, for which
There are far too few names

The soul is an onlooker of the most mischievous
Parodies, smiling at the drama of last week
Piloting dreams for learning situations

Laughing at the calendar whose touch
Is bleak weather, irony of shaded routines
Patron, portion, logistic of the mother-instinct
In us all, the soul doesn’t find necessity hard at all
There is no bottom to the soul, it catches us on the other end.

Photo Courtesy: http://www.deviantart.com/art/Swan-199231681

I name them here

love has seven names
do you know what they are?
brightness, flame, melting

transformation, sunshine, shine
Light, that final healing
that is the end and is the beginning
these are the warmth of heart-strings

where the soul may rest in
clearest water, purity of unity
truth that is not true or false

but simply is as an extension
of love that has seven names
love appears day after day
not requiring scripture or even faith

love is wise enough in nature
to survive indefinitely, with or without you
her signs fall down from the fusion

of peculiar and eccentric evolution
crossing divinities of perspective
of virtue and the flesh’s form
love has seven names

her gifts are never-ending
like sublime coal that burns a lifetime
for an intimacy that God can give

for our intimate souls that long
more strongly with a mystical heat
that is a spiritual substance
whose radiance is a kind of love

we are both seized by the same heat
and coming like a breeze, or laughter
we both pause, and do the same thing

as all love is identical
think about it, it’s all the same
What comes behind the sweetness
of a name? love has seven names

nothing but wounds and kisses
year after year, again and again.

The Duty of the Poet

I will take thee, as a Poet
To candidature for ethereal thrill
Subtle as the inner champers
Portions of visions, phrasing that

Dwell as full as an image – the red Rose
I will transport thee, as a Poet
To Cathedrals of fraught mortality
Joys of darling spontaneity

To risk all for the Scarlet Shelf
And usher in liberty for arcs of white
I will love thee, as a Poet
Until the house is full, that of the dream –

As conquering as love’s palaces
As secure, as divine intercourse
I will lead thee, as a Poet
As a carpenter on hands & knees

With opened palms, known to nobody –
As a stranger speaking of the elder tongues
I will speak of summer fields
And unheralded flowers dropped from memory

As a juggler turned wordsmith
As a prayer turned literary
I will take thee in, as a Poet
As the original artist of creative Vermilion

The pressed dust of symbolic projection
Of minds painted with brief beauty
That warrants pricelessness, with every line
These bards never awake from midnight’s trance.

My Opaline Vision

There are views and sighs
Where the vistas is still your face
There are coastlines where the waves
Are the most celebrated musicians
There is music in all these things
Liquid prayers cast off by nature’s harmonics

I can feel them in your cheeks
And in the higher clouds
Would you notice in an open heart?
The frequency of our becoming
Ancient layers where love already took place
And was sealed in children and dust

The shared labour of our tribes?
There are places that are fountains for the sun
Where the vistas is still your face
Burned in my memory like indulgent springs
The angles of your pouting discrepancies
You were the darkness that burned in me
To cool my wild-fire of doubt.