Sunday, March 30, 2008

Pacific standard



the sun and the wind roll equally along my skin. the shiver of early autumn would settle but for the rays that still descend. I know this is my ocean. Though 5000 miles distant, it laps these shores with the same rough tongue. Stories of the Pacific. my life is just one. but. held in the many. this ocean is our access to the far from here place that lets us see, first and again, what has always been true of our origin.
for a day indescribable what do you say? hours spent without needing to understand, to imagine. everything was present. was whole. was One. as were we.
and somehow this ocean holds a language. tells a story. and reveals...to Ansel, Neruda, Helprin, me. the mariner is carried and promises remain. at any point we stay at the center of the compass. 5000 miles distant, yet the poem is the same.

Monday, March 17, 2008

the yellow tree

I will never be paid for this. Poetry is my refuge. I was made to be a channel. And so I release. Because it is what makes sense. Because it is how I breathe.
Nature never asked us whether we liked the Spring. Without the experience, how could we know? But it was in her to give, and so she breathed. And love was born in a thousand shades of green. Ecstasy. Yet even in my admiration, adulation, is she praised? No. my explosion rolls forward, but it was she who ignited my flame. And my light will inspire another though to me they go unnamed.
Create. Because nothing else so completes you. Because it is the water of these words that moves with faith. As each new fire unfolds and flowers, receive her secret, her soul, her song. And through your words be singing.

sun dancer

I love to think of life
as fertile
each of us an oak
being called forward

or an orchid
the exotic, erotic
lapping at our senses

January is cold and dormant
quiet in its growing
trace like brail
the subtle stimulation

the wind on my cheeks
leaves them red and throbbing
my furnace is lit
and settles to a slow smolder

I can wait
imbibe the Divine
knowing, what I'm Knowing

I trace your shape with my desire
not in fear
in the oak, the orchid
I am coming

her poem

water welling and connecting
tracing the veins within me
Belli born of a volcano
and I, came forth of a river

I drip and shimmer
in summer's light
like liquid silver

but the turning comes slowly
and I wait
for the tilting
that brings my unfolding

symbol into physical
in this moment
the water runs slowly

I'm the slow, hidden river
I am in the waiting
for release and swelling
the exuberant explosion

born of a river
I am the river
I move still, yet slowly
and wait for the tilting
the Comes

the side I don't let you see

November, 2007

I feel dead and empty
I barely have tears for my failures
cross-legged
my knees can't bear kneeling.
clamoring for the sacred

alienated
from myself, my life
my God
I have no faith to ask
asking has hurt me in the past

needing an answer
but without a question

my day is stale
does not sustain
hard, flat light on a night bus ride
this is what I see

Sunday, March 09, 2008

in a coffee shop with an orange

can I make you see the whole world in an orange?
hold it slowly
find ecstasy in its form.

let the juice run through your fingers
the scent a strong perfume
bite and taste it
even the bitter peel on your tongue

be consumed

imagine every moment an orange.
holding your attention
quickening your senses
spicing your fingers
with thick, sweet residue

let it all enchant you.
the moment
the orange
the ecstasy of everything

in it
you're alive
you've found perfection