Ratio

Its unreasonable, I suspect, to wish to know that which I wish to know. Clouds drift according to their purposes, hidden in the evening sky, and the calls of mysterious birds hint at coming sadnessess. The air is full of water, laden with tears perhaps. Each new stream seems pregnant with distress, its flow surely fleeing some disaster. A friend once gave me some firm words of wisdom, borrowed words worth a thought or two. "Everything that rises must converge." he said. And so I borrowed those words again: everything that rises must converge. And I burrowed into them and sought this rising everything. 

But here I am again, climbing this same hill, breathing this same air, laden with heavy wretchedness, for everything I see seems not of rising. The rain falls sour on this land; my people seem writhing to upright each right, destroy each art we've wrought. From this high hill the world descends to nothing. All I see is fleeing, falling, finite, not converging at some limitless incline, but stopped by an abyss I daren't know. 

And so I ask, perhaps unreasonably, to peek into that void. When every star has fallen, when each small cloud's dispersed, when all the thunder's voices fade to empty, then I'll stand. Standing I'll step down this hillock's rise and to the darkened canyon raise my voice and say, "Everything that rises must converge." And then I'll jump. I hope I'll fall as I descend and hope that time spent falling I'll spend knowing and receiving. I hope that falling will revive me and upturn me and discern me and that maybe all my life I've been living and deriving and been wholly upside-down. And falling, rising, whirling, wheeling, I'll come up into my knowledge of the world. And good and evil, wind and rain, indeed all things will know me.

And yet I linger there, silent, at that edge. 

Ridicule

Farce is just another name for
"You don't matter and I hate you."
I'm not even joking.

Bottle Openers

a slick drip and a sudden lick

or maybe it was the temperature

that could have been it

either way now i have it

and now i enjoy it

a slap and a wiggle and that's that

but it really seems to be a bit of a 

beginning

where it seemed like there should

have been an end

oh but the aroma is the beginning

and the taste is the end

although when the taste begins

the end is nowhere in sight

maybe its the temperature

that signals the real end

that could be it

the end comes when everything

is warm and not cold

either way now i enjoy it

Canned Goods Keep

I'm telling you Bartholomew.
These will last through The Apocalypse.
When my neighbors ask, "how did you live?"
I'll say, "I put my trust in preserved goods.
I set my hopes on lasting strengths
And they did not let me down."

I know this is true. I've done it before.
Remember the war, Bartholomew?
Remember when we fought our brothers?
And I thought "certainly brotherhood lasts.
Surely this will all blow over like the last war.
Brotherhood keeps.

Like a stone flung into a lonely pasture,
Like the final swallow of yesterday's coffee,
Like my mother's warm smile and gentle touch
Years after her passing, Like Love, and like hatred,
Surely brotherhood keeps."

We both know, Bartholomew.
We both know how quickly brotherhood
Shatters in the face of something wicked.
When our neighbors asked, "how did he go?"
I said, "Don't put your trust in blood.
There was a wickedness that took him.
Only it took me first and that is how he went."

Come with me Bartholomew.
Let us leave the neighbors to their chatter,
Let us find our brother where he sleeps,
We know the only things that matter,
We have the lasting strength that keeps,
And it will never let us down.

One Hundred

"Ready?" asks the winter and we all shout "No!"

"Ready?" teachers walk back and forth. "Pick up your pencils."

"Hold your breath" says the dawn "Ready to drown in sunlight?"

"All the others are ready" my parents are in a rush. "Have you gotten your bags?"

"Here it comes." trains are fast and full of hope "Are you ready?"

"I think I'm ready." now the voice is shaken and alone. "Its my first time."

"You're ready?" a child is a big commitment. "We weren't ready for you."

And you think that you're not ready and never have been ready but no one was really asking.

"Ready or not" life has no pity for children. "Here I come"

In Defense of Short Poems

Sometimes I see into the soul of things, 

A momentary glimpse, short and succinct.

And then, the seeing done, I look about

And see that I am merely looking. 

I remember, though, my seeings 

And I hold them fast for dreaming. 

They would be my poems; 

They would be my dreams. 

Short and succinct. 

Reasons

Some people have reasons.
 They listen intently.
A sapphire song come sailing,
Fastened to a distant home,
And they can hear it and obey.
I peer through life.
I long to hear that voice.
And yet for all my desire
I have never heard it.

A Taint

All the doggerel that God made

Flows into a pile like vomit. 

And I, stuck in the mess, sing.

How can I spew but filth?

How can I speak but dirt?

All the doggerel that God made

Flows from my mouth. My shit

Soiling his gentle hands. 

Enter the Temple

I am undone.

How can you look upon me?

My hands have killed the innocent.

Their blood covers my conscience.

My conscience which rebelled

Against the Real, the True.

I am undone.

When you reach towards me,

When you hold my face,

So softly, gently, tender,

Do you love or me or despise

The errant death that I've become?

I am undone.

My lips, unclean, my filthy

Tongue and heart. Have always

Wandered and destroyed your art,

Your beauty. My lamentations,

Do they offend your ears?

I am undone.

Now place the coal upon my lips.

I am undone, for they are foul.

Cleanse them, burn them, recreate them,

I have seen your face.

Your PURITY astounds me.

I am undone.

Lo, this hath touched thy lips;

And thine iniquity is taken away,

And thy sin purged.

Fang and Fire

Sometimes when I feel bold,
Bored of games and tricks,
I take you off—
Tear you off, really.
I shed you (like a venomed serpent
Trades his rotten skin for beauty).
But only once.

I hate you.
Your ugly tendrils cover me
With promises of freedom.
They mold me.
Draconian myth!
Your sullen whispers
reek of suffocating safety
(There is evil lurking here).

But fearing and doubting Heaven
(And his sword— his claws),
I hide in your embrace.
I absconded deep within
My trap for you.
Surely its better here
Than gasping in your pool,
Uncovered, flayed.

No subtle ploy
can lure me from this play.
Though boldness comes
and though I wake
I must (must) sleep
That you might dream.
So I breathe deep
And drown again.

Mendacity

Sometimes real things vanish.
Their shadows linger on as an echo of a scream.
A scream, a tear, a torn thing.
Once true; now lies.

Sometimes True things aren't.
They're masqueraded and pretended. Masked by friends,
Also pretenders, and all their children run and hide and
Vomit and die.

Sometimes I'm the falsehood.
And a slough of self deceiving flattery flows through my fingertips.
But not my True and Real and Self alone
lies floundering in my dereliction.
I release my mendacious
offspring and they
fly; I will not
be the only
one to
cry.

Jack

Cycles, dust motes, dragonflies,
Lyrics to a reel gone by,
Are to me nostalgic song.
In the window will I see
Restored, revised, new memory?
Eventually all hopes are clouds.

Fall sunlight suspends
A speck of regret.
In clouds, through windows,
There! - it flies off.
Here sometimes and then not.

Live
Eat
Why?
I
Sleep.

Pyre

Burn me to the ground.
Watch my ashes waft away.
As memory drifts and falls
Into obscurity so shall my name
Decay and surely wane.
So burn me bright.
That in the blazing light
Of my demise some other might
See my ashes, my lost aspiration's height
And think them, somehow, worthy of new flight.
Perhaps then someday hence
My dreams, soaring so proudly now
Over a dawn that seems as
Bright and hopeful as Deus Vult
Will someone else's night
Fill with a thundering delight
And with another's arms
Raise all to higher, greater sights.
For this I burn.
Coals and sparks and flames
I cannot help.