***

***

THE ROAD TO CABRA
Wait.
Wait until the road to Cabra is dry,
but not yet paved.
A penny poem will bring more when prices rise.
Wait.
While rivers run,
while stars take down dictation.
The road is muddy yet,
treacherous to untrained eyes.

***

SPIRAL
Loves and lives and scattered chances,
revolve, and flatten to a plane.
Memory fails.
Old lives are unremembered.
The future moves in half steps across the floor.
Once you lived.
Once you died.
No more.

Scattered molecules of a body gone to ashes
are assembled unemotionally
for something less and something more.

Once it was believed.
Once, in a myriad of chances
On a circle passing this way once again,
In the eddies of a force,
or the offspring of the family,
comes again all the wisdom from before.

***

The apartments stand on the left,
and you to the right.
Your hands and your eyes
will kindle my loneliness to repeal itself,
ask for sharing what’s yours and what’s mine
into endless endeavor,
and pray, lasting sunshine.

***

Dreams go up like vapor.
Vapid.
Have to run.
What times to think of mountains!
Here unfinished trails
Vanish into rising heatwaves.

***

Every year.
What a day!
Yesterday passed slowly.
Summer sunsets came at times
That ended days of lonely.

There was a day,
just today,
like any other day, a day gone by.
Passed through in summer’s heat or winter’s cold
to a sunrise or a sunset
that’s not come yet.

Yesterday’s mirrored walls are gone,
not without the crying.
Today’s the day,
there’s no time now
for thinking about dying.

***

This afternoon I stare at the future,
blind to the past.
I play a few chords, but,
I play for something new,
deaf to wisdom.
Tomorrow’s sunlit morning is shaking the meaning from this afternoon.





Enticements all alluring,
Sunshine, sea and wind,
Are invoked to seek
a solitary gain.
Freedom fights it’s self
Into a corner,
Feeling no shackles
Only in the rain.
Escape, to get away
Means a stagnant,
Stale yearning,
The years just drifting by again.
Yesterday’s beauty fades,
Leaving today encumbered
With tomorrow’s waiting faces
And no gain.





LAUGHS
A laugh I once remembered,
a laugh I thought I knew.
A laugh, a cloud, a blowing leaf,
That chance for something new.

The bombs explode on Drag street.
At night the heads of governments lie down
On pillows within stout walls
To dream of rights and wrongs and God
While everything seems right
For heads of governments on pillows
In the stillness of the night.

A laugh I once remembered,
A laugh I thought I knew.
A laugh, a cloud, that blowing leaf,
A chance for nothing new.

A voice calls out a dirty window
Into the dirty street.
Cries of a dream, a laugh
That grew cancerous and died,
Leaving small people all alone
While tomorrow crouches somewhere in the night.

A laugh I once remembered,
A laugh I thought I knew.
A laugh, a cloud, a blowing leaf.
That chance for something new.





SHADOWS BENEATH MY FEET
After-saying,
speak your mind.
Live a life of life entwined.
After-speak
of sun’s bare beauty,
northern forest’s summer cool.
After-listening,
summer’s voices speak too loud to
keep it cool.





SYLMAR
Mailboxes stand in rows
In cemetery stone,
Each a rising sadness for someone left alone.
Mailmen will drop by unseen some morning
Leaving tattered fragments in a note
From once before.

In the moonlight shadows slanting
Until lost in dark of trees.
A name, a number waiting for another sun.
A note that strikes in cryptic fragments,
Cutting to the bone!
A death! A death!
A mailbox is waiting in a row.





Weary grow the old.
I say it like a fact,
Though in looking from young to old,
I’d say it doesn’t mean a thing.
It’s age, that’s all, (to clarify)
That’s all there is to that.





THANKSGIVING, L.A.
The days are getting shorter,
The sun is going down a deeper shade of red.
Harvest time is here.
The sky has warned us with a drop of rain to
Celebrate what’s reaped before it rots.
The solstice season festival
Is forcing all to work inside
While leaves are talking,
Mockingbirds are laughing in the rain.

For the chance tomorrow brings
The harvest festival was cancelled.
While days went by between the nights
Yesterday was paid for with tomorrow.
Interesting words mean nothing now.
I can’t speak for tomorrow.
Up to now, yeah, for today.
I can’t speak for tomorrow.

The days are slightly shorter,
The sun is going down a deeper shade of red.
Harvest time is here.
The sky has warned us with a drop of rain
To celebrate what’s reaped before it rots.
There’s no time now to say a word,
The interest in the festival
Is forcing all to work inside,
While leaves are talking,
Mockingbirds are laughing in the rain.





TOO BUSY
Bamboo, crickets, mosquito itch,
eastern climate,
far southwest.
Strange leaves growing,
words unknown
in a time that lies just in between.
With a start,
or finish,
yet unknown,
the leaves are growing without a name.
People are speaking a language that seems too much the same.
Leaves unknown
with no future
for me to stop and ask.





EVENING
Happenstance,
I guess it was,
that brought us all this far.
No chance now to retrace our steps.
Outward toward the stars.
What’s done was done,
for some lament;
for others, quiet joy.
No chance to retrace steps that brought us to this hour.
Children set into the molds of parent’s life decisions.
Our chance to mold, to shape,
but not complete revision.
What’s done was done,
for some lament;
for others quiet joy.
Fate sets tombstones solidly,
distances become places.
This place once that chance was had.
This place the child is born in.
That place, then their children, too,
seeing some new morning.





There is a vision in my head of forests.
Trees that grow straightly from the earth.
I humbly bend my backbone in the night-time,
bend my back in day-time for my bread,
and a roof to hide the sky, and what it brings
Like an atheist, alone, while trumpets blow on judgment day.





My love is not enough to give you.
Promises that turn out broken,
turn to lies made long before.
Children crying out their hunger
to ears made deaf by tightened jaws.
The world crumbles into madness,
the hungry sack the stores.
The world made wrong with small ambitions
feeds a few, but nothing more.
A dream long ago rejected
falls in shadows on the floor.
Beauty, once the great ambition
fails to show it’s face,
leaving instead a cruel dictat
that carefully assigns freedom to it’s place.
The years of desperation become normal,
making fools of who we were before.
Making liars of the youths who saw their freedom in Humanity,
yet knew they couldn’t be more.
Lying eyes seeing nothing more than faces,
Handshakes that conceal hatred cast their sickness to the heart.
Graveyards fill with words upon the headstones
that do not soothe the rotting bodies souls.
The writing says that hatred will yet fill many more.
The trees grow straight, together,
yet humanity’s twisted branches
spell doom to so many not yet born.
Aesthetics of the crippled and the broken
are carefully accepted.
Beauty is unseen.
Alarm clocks bring the sunrise,
weariness it’s fall.
Uncontrolled, the doom machine rolls on.





TODAY
Today I got stopped by a freshhaircutted cop,
but I spoke softly,
as did he.
It didn’t matter I was late and was wrong,
I was living my life, as was he.

So he gave me a month,
and he wrote it down,
in triplicate, just to be sure
that I got it all straightened out in a month,
to make sure I was lawful, like he.





MIND OF MINE GOES NOWHERE
A wave
from the sea
to the shore.
Rearing up...
Crashing down.
Around a rock,
all that’s left falters with a whisper,
slides back from the shore.

A mind
from the nation
in this time.
Rising with the masses.
Reaching, feeling.
Crashing on the jailhouse floor.
Lost the train of thought,
walked out through the door

In the forest,
Seeming silent,
things that fall are dead or being born.
A tree stands lofty,
branch and crown approach the sun,
roots gripping rocks beneath the soil.
Below the reaching leaves
the predators will play their game
with high blood pressured squirrels.
Down again,
the roots will rot,
the rocks will turn to powder
that is carried by the rain
that slithers to the river,
sliding to the sea.

A log
is washing up
to the shore.
Rising up..
Crashing down
in the sand,
while raindrops meet the foaming waves
that slide back from the shore.





GROUND SQUIRREL
The clock is running down.
The alarm is just about to go.
It’s time to wipe the sleep from eyes
and say it can’t be so.
Say no!
to where people slumber in buildings growing high.
It’s time to break a cornerstone!
It’s time someone should cry!

Christ is living easy, outside, on the hill.
His power only rises
with the water through the mill.
A drop of blood has fallen upon an outstretched hand.
It’s lifeblood to renew eyes long gone blind.

The clock has gone.
The ticking is no longer heard.
Now a pounding heart and rushing blood
is heard above the flood.
Stirring, awakening,
blood will flow out red
for life’s desire to reach the peak
of the living over the dead.

Gnarled and twisted
blood red hands are asking to live.
For nothing else,
asking just to live.





HOW TO SAY NO TO A TRAVELING SALESMAN
A knock.
Footsteps sounding.
Outside up
and inside down.

A sentence.
Two.
An eyeless gaze.
So many thoughts from so far away.
I haven’t had time to think like that.
I doubt If I ever will.

So,
what the hell.
Oneness inside me,
oneness aloft.
All else is a rainbow cluttering up.





US
Ironclad
in right and wrong stand pillars stoutly rising.
Money spent by people earned
is paying for a reason
why all men taxed
must pay the price for war,
for sin,
for death.

For peace, a tax.
For war, some blood.
A life a mother wished on....

You and I were fractured in these times
that reached a climax.
A mothers wish,
a tax....
What’s mine must be.

The price is paid.
The promise made
that my life, though spent,
was not in vain,
for freedom I was fighting.





GET OFF MV TV !
My mind’s filled up like to burst.
Individual effort seems a dead end.
Still,
the sun sends pale morning light from the mountaintop..
The apple blossoms spring pink and white from the wood.

The sun gets higher and warmer..
People swarm the cities
where the powerful wield passions as muscles.
Individual effort climbs over the oppressed..
Love lies, stoned, in the background..

Nature waits, merciless,
while love is lost in a maze of
what one wants;
what people need;
how this will affect the children.
Blossoms will spring from the wood.





I haven’t seen a tree for weeks,
nor solid ground.
The only thing growing is America.
This USA.
Why do we try to grow so, Dick Nixon?
We’ll surely split the seams.
I’m watching the seams for an escape route.
I’m tired of watching America qrow.
I’d like to see America mature
Spread a few leaves.
Make a Little shade.
American sprouts
from these tangled roots of Europe.
Some sanity.
Some peace.
Some shade from a tree that grows old..





Illusive beauty,
untrappable for me.
I shall pace you as the hunter,
studying, watching, to try to brinq beauty to me.





OUTLOOK
The swell of time neither quickens nor slows for anyone Sunshine that warmed heart songs
now scarcely passes the flesh.
The starry night sky is filled with black holes.
Gravity collapsed stars horde lighhtwaves for themselves.

Can we now turn the tides?
Where are those days that passed with no direction?
Hope was a dream
Beauty waited behind closed doors.
No footholds to be seen by myopic eyes
that watched so long on the first plateau,
waiting for a path to be pointed.
The dark clouds of winter dispel hope..
What now of days gone by in beyween each other?
Time swells..
Not fast,
Not slow,
Irrevocably forward,
over the edge.





PATIENCE
See!
Someone was looking for an answer that wouldn’t show. Now the fog rolls in.
Too much moisture to discern a tear.
Too many jokes to hear a laugh.
Pettiness is washed away,
leaving.....
leaving
wastes a fog and marshlands.
Bogs beneath the feet.
You, who stood so boldly upright,
lean against a tree, and cail for smiles.
A smile to be a beacon in the fog.
The fog is wasted here, just like the sunshine,
for there is nothing left to see, and nothing left to hide.
The patterns left in pettiness are like glass,
become obscene..
The wisdom that withallness brings
is some poor moron’s dream.
The truth stands there stark naked
for any eyes to see,
yet someone mucking in the bog,
while the fog is rolling thickly,
looking for an answer that won’t show.





It sounds the same to me,
echoing through these years,
corning back,
repeated in a different verb.

Tomorrow shouting promises,
Yesterday shining through.
Today a day, like the rest,
in the middle,
hoping for the best.

Me, I’m walking, sitting, sorting...
for a chance for something new.
Something good for me.
Sornething good for you.

It seems the same to me,
echoing through these years.
A view so slightly changing
into a different verb.





Time again holds an answer.
Slowly now so slowly,
sitting on my shoulder like a parrot,
whispers echoes, looks ahead,
dissolving today into ripples of tomorrow.

Time!
So slowly, oh! so slowly!
The sun is up and down.
I don’t remember a name.

yesterday
a few sunsets ago,
was screaming my ears, today! today! let’s sing it!
Today!
We might be dead tomorrow,
today must be the answer.

Ah, goodbye!
Goodbye to a yesterday so hurried
Hello to a ripple
slowly moving out from today
Time again holds an answer.





Relax a minute.
The trees are growing thickly from the ground.
The ethics of the situation are profound.
There is no sense talking ethics if your head is in the ground,
or in the air.
There is no sense talking ethics if it’s ethics that you ponder, but not the one who’s tugging on your sleeve.

Relax an hour.
The leaves are budding quickly from the trees.
From each footstep you have left,
ants are crawiing into, out of.
Spiderwebs are strung across your path.
Ethics lie between the time your foot was raised
and the time it was pressed down.

Relax a day.
The ieaves are falling from the highest tree.
The footsteps left behind have washed away. Ethics lie ahead
In the footsteps you are taking.
Those left behind are not for you to Judge.





Self importance deludes me,
driving off in the night,
leaves me alone by the streetlight.
Newspapers echoing horrible deeds
blow by in the night.

I climbed with my children
In the heights of the mountains,
saw the clouds close, blowing by in the day.





Autumn has a leaf fall,
that spent the summer
breathing in the air.
Now cast aside it rushes lazily to meet
it’s shadow on the ground.





Great, great grandpa sat beside me
as I drove through the gorge In the car. He said nothing
as I impressed him with the quickness of the trip.
in accord, along the river,
I was unimpressed with myself.
Back to the road the green pinto that passed as I pooped out.
Pooped out alone in a house
that should be louder than this.





Sensuous, sinuous, soft.
Arm, breast, eye.
A lover is lost in loving.
Beauty beats it’s breast in rapture.
Life is at it’s best
Attraction loves alluring
to build it’s dual nest.





Your loss leaves a cavity in me.
While cutting firewood I see
the early scars of a great, old tree.
Like that tree as life proceeds,
covered with callus tissue,
I carry these scars in the heartwood of my soul.





JULIE
Julie died on saturday,
or Sunday.. just the same..
It doesn’t seem to matter now what happened in this game
of love, and lost, and loneliness,
the same as dancing round the back porch.
Separate things and separate ways that happened simultaneously.
Hidden then,
as now,
in some unheard symphony.





Divergent is the whole.
The aspects many.
Countable by contradictibility,
one is not the other.
If we put them together two is one,
along with one and the other.

So on too,
in contradiction,
Good and Evil.
Is not each one part of morality?
Is not morality the two
to the one of Good and one of’ Evil?
Inseparable parts of morality.

Like hydrogen and oxygen make water,
Is not three the one of two and one of one together?
There is a way of knowing what is going on,
if you have separated self from daily chatter.
The chattering of self is reflective of the whole.
You can reflect the whole with all your chatter. Does that matter?

There is a way of changing what is going on.
The will of good will always overcome the will of evil,
no matter what the odds.
The good are many, evil few,
though evil more direct.
The way of changing knows the whole is going good.





Troubles, troubles, I’ve got a wealth of troubles,
Yet my neighbor thinks he’s wealthier than I.





Grey toned winter skies
through bare branches.
Melancholy;
Waiting for spring and the first born.
Looking ahead to a spring where new shoots
grow up among the gnarled thorns of rosebushes which years ago have proven their claim to life.





Shades of spring.
Shelter from the morning sun.
Shade to rest in, look and wonder
why this new greenness
brings on old sadness.
Yet such satisfaction.
All of autumn work,
winter struggle,
worth it for these
shades of spring.





Wide open spaces appeal to me
Star-struck visions of greatness and unity. Disunity of people and things
have caught me up,
so I surmise,
distractedly stuck in wide open spaces
where there is snow,
Abbie gone and Noah go.
Work approaches on the clock. The night approaches seemingly empty of revelations of wide open spaces.





Influence, influence,
Where does it stop?
Leave me alone for a while.
Leave me alone to say some practicible thing.
Not just the penny and dime. Influence,
Affluence,
Effluence.





From a time before when everything was me,
comes a time right now
that is all I want it to be, but with no time left for me.
There are children now,
who take up so much time,
and must be listened to.

I haven’t heard your song again.
The song that is left is muttering on the night-time air
when the children have gone to bed.
The song is soft,
a soft collide of leaves.
A song that wasn’t meant for me,
but everyone.

From time before when every song was mine,
comes this time
when listening makes me be
someone to be for someone,
like a fluttering of leaves.





WORKER
Bitterness,
like sweat in my eyes,
has blinded me to beauty,
which makes me still more bitter.

Inequity in labor and sexual roles,
Monotony of social process,
make alternatives necessary.

Bitterness,
with sweat in my eyes I toil too fiercely for another’s gain,
Too busy to seek another path.
inequity in ownership,
with it self-sustaining laws
crippled our childhood
while our parents worked.

like them, I toil too fiercely
for my small share,
ignoring my children
whose world is separated from mine
by more than maturity.
for unnecessary wealth,
unreceived wealth,
I toil too fiercely.
Bitterness sees with my eyes
the children growing older,
inescapable fates.
The beauty of this world
replaced with grey factories.





The sun stands high above the Olympics,
waiting to sink into the sea.
The Sound sends reflected light to the eye.
Visions of this moment stand important in the mind.
Actions.
Calls for actions,
that are reactions between individuals who are each
important at this moment in their minds.

The sun sinks toward the mountaintops.
The vast sea awaits.
My skin is warmed by the sun,
life calls around me, man to woman, child to parent.
Woman to man, parent to child.
The dazzling beauty of life
reflecting the beauty of the world to itself.

Spring rain storms, riding high, skim the mountains,
greying the water, filling the air with torrents of earthbound water, darkening the far reaches of the Sound.
Pain and treachery wander among the many people here,
more common now than among the few who lived here before. Who revered this world.
Who hungered not so greatly to possess her.





ALKI
By and by
the tide rolls with the
earth, sun, moon, in beauteous harmony.

By and by
human bone with empty seashells
roll with pebbles on the beach.

By and by
the sun exposed above the mountains sinks behind them.
Venus’ brilliance lights the waves unseen.

By and by
giant trees fall their weight into the tide. Harmonies unheard, as once before.

By and by
ghosts of the people,
their voices raised in harmony now,
when the moon is full,
the tide is low.

By and by
proud dreams have fallen into majestic harmonies.
Full blown human footprints in the sand, robbed of vanity.

By and by
some eyes will see brilliant Venus’
reflection riding on the low tide,
below the mountains.

By and by.
Past dreams of people,
a different flight of earth, sun, moon in quicker harmony.
A glance of light,
by and by.





ROUSSEAU AND REVOLUTION
Unamused, the poet smells of his surroundings.
The wind blows from the tide flats
bringing the simultaneous odor of many tidal species. Unknown to humans that their selfs are lesser than their congregation,
while their selfs are the greatest of the whole,
the congregation of species greater than humanity.
Sustaining individuals give form to society that is more than Just a balance of good and evil intentions.
Mixtures of species.
Greatest here humans.
Translate the oneness of these species
for the souls of men and women
into equal portions of pleasure and pain
that were mingling in the morning
in the wind and in the rain.
The wind is one, carrying a bounty of separateness.
Crabs and kelp, salts and water,
snails, fish, and shellfish.
Tribes of individuals.
Traces of diverse species blowing with the moisture to the nose.





Men as they are,
says old Rousseau,
are subject to man’s endeavor. No Nietszchian glory. Humility forbids it.

Thundering volcanoes,
hot shining suns
speak humility to man’s endeavor.
Glorious achievement seems more glorious for knowing
it means nothing,
with trembling, quakes to dust and death.

Men as they are,
says old Rousseau,
are subject to man’s endeavor.
In others’ eyes lies vanity,
as we peer at ourselves through them.
Morality needs restraint.
Humility enforces it.
The sea makes sand of rock.

Men as they are,
says old Rousseau,
are as they are, rocks of selflessness
lasting through aeons of pounding surf. The earth makes rocks of sand.
The people know greatness,
humility dictates it.
The sand of the populus is man as he is.

The puny pipes of pollution’s output
are lost in volcanic clouds of ash.
We choke ourselves to hurry Nature’s task.
Humility dictates restraint-
vainglory dictates achievement.
The universe dictates to humanity.
Men dictate to the humble.
The humble dictate to men.
Man as we is.






Not to propagandize,
pulling many punches,
the Lamb of God is human condition,
relating only to humbleness.

A republic serves the lambs,
entire with the willfulness of the flock.
Frugal in steps.
not greedy.
Humble about territoriality and resources.
Lamb leaders leaping this hurdle are rare.
Not enough to put one to sleep.





The poet smells of his surroundings.
the sea breeze from the tide flats
brings the simultaneous odor of many tidal species.
The wind is one.
It speaks of order.
Rampant, melodious order.
Speaking through chaos, complaining every day.
Recent victories,
fatal errors.
Contra times, flowing times.
Smog creeps in to be
blown away by nature’s freshest breezes.
Mixtures of these odors riding winds of ceaseless change,
translated for the souls of men and women into equal portions of pleasure and pain,
mingling this morning in the wind and the rain.





UNAMUSED
The poet smells of his surroundings.
The sea breeze that blows across the tide flats brings the simultaneous odor of many species of tidal life.
So the poet speaks,
speaking in season of the summer spawn,
winter’s blossom, or a two years autumn trail.
The wind is one, speaks of order,
rampant, melodious order,
though chaos complains vigorously each day,
catching the ears
with tales of recent victories and fatal errors.
Listen !
Mixtures of these odors, riding winds of ceaseless change,
are tranlated for each of us into
fluxing portions of pleasure and pain.
Balancing out.
Riding as one in a multitude in the wind and the rain.





ABBIE
Times change.
What’s mine, what’s yours,
what’s ours, what’s Noah’s, what’s Sarah’s
is ours to see.
From the sunshine of seeing you,
to the tensions of a crying babe.

From the core of me,
to you,
we are linked.
No matter what the reflections of the world distract us to.

Alone together, the world cannot save us from ourselves.
Our love cannot help but be our reality.

The sunshine calls for something to do.
It is done,
and only begun,
me and you.





Somber reflections of hierarchies of life
and life’s comprehension
cascade uncaringly along.
Rainbow’s beauty caused by ordering
dissimilarities in what appears as one.
In human understanding
what may seem clear has hidden complexities.
Beauty unseen in relection of this order,
Mirror-like knowledge,
what may seem disorder of separateness
holds beauty seen as one.
Accomplisments of individuals
steal from the accomplishments of humanity together.
Comprehension,
pulling separateness together into
beauty as a whole
can lead to blindness,
misconceptions,
forgetfulness of parts.
Concepts of beauty, evil,
lack comprehension of the truth,
separate conclusions leave out
awareness of the others as well as
awareness of the beauty of the whole.





Be it love, or understanding, or organization,
the little light that is visible to my eyes
has fine colors, many colors,
good colors, bad colors
that blend to whole colors, colored fine.

Be it tales of deathly sorrow, or ill-righted wrongs,
the light of understanding shines only lovingly,
though pains insurmountable block the light,
painting the pain colored days.>
Be it love or misunderstanding,
too much faith in the unsound
sets vibrations in the colors.
Changing hues of some contrast score the history of humanity, varicolored, in tragi-comic sense.

Be it beauty or it’s passing
from the sunshine of the living,
the place where death absorbs the light within the eyes
has serenity and fear, blended into good days, bad days,
that paint the time of life divine.





Smooth tidepool,
crawling with life that
crouches under rocks and
darts through still algae.
Separated now from it’s source,
the sea.
Speaking a different language.
For all it’s diversity,
it lacks the sea’s variety.
Missing the thrust of the waves and currents
upwelling from greatest depths.
An awareness unfathomed by the pool.

Within itself, this pool,
diverse individual,
must be complete until the sea,
pulled by a greater force,
crosses it’s self-made bar,
reclaiming the pool.





Beauty escaped
from the place where
complexity reigned.
Flying south in
singleminded endeavor,
caring not
that the wind blew,
respecting its direction.
Unsaved.
Only grudgingly repentant.
Beautiful,
the single minded purpose.

Beholder’s beauty!
Speak for one! For all!
Light reflects the same
angles for all.
A herd of geese,
symetrically angular,
rouses us with their calls.

Yellowed leaves have not yet fallen.
This year dust still under our feet.
The chill removed by the warmth of our endeavor
dissipates.
Under a clear, black, starry night,
radiates away.

Beating wings,
blowing wind,
singlemindedly remaining
for the purpose
that that dumb head has been struck with.
Winging south,
Away.

Small, within this beauty,
my spirit flies
singlemindedly.





Love’s well is down low
in a dry year.
Our thirsty greed unslaked
with love’s illusions,
sweet promise,
unanswered.
A fool’s chase
down an unplanned path,
leads, who knows,
to what false promise?
Love’s spring disturbed.
The grotto slain,
no shadows for beauty remain.
Dig deeper now in easing pain
to where love’s flow
is sweet and clear.





Shallow puddles of the past seem deeper.
The splashing is the same.
Youth; deep feeling;
uncommitment, a chart through many shoals
where our friends went aground.
Shallower is that uncommitment now.
Deeper this puddle,
heavier with tradgedies.
We splash in these shoals,
horizons nearer,
the course of life just as deep.





I am a many channeled river
spread out on many courses.
Children, jobs, futures,
leaving dry islands,
unwatered.





I weep along the creek,
on the crooked path.
My tears tumble down
across round rocks
beneath green foliage
with the creek.





SCHMALTZ LIQUOR
What you are not to me,
I’m missing.
What we could have been
is a lost harmony or discord
not played encore.
Unbegotten, unremembered,
a discovery for others not born.
In this moment, white sliding clouds
upon skies of deepest blue,
lightened by the sunshine are
wholly empty of beauty to me
without you.





AMORAL
The flowing river is rapidly losing track of what is behind it.
Here, it is cutting at the bank no more,
Yet it still makes noise as it gurgles through the mountains.
A call to what is thirsty by its shore.
What was left was left to go a different way.
Time will pass as quickly
standing on the riverbank,
as when running with the river as it flees.





Oh lapwing!
Your cruel feint has led us down this path
where snakes in rings have led to dreams
that poison all the land.
Huge edifices and trade, more rings are formed
to chase your phantoms round and round
to power self-destruction.
Your home destroyed, your children slain.
No mercy will you show us.
Is there hope that the weak can pull your wing from before the eyes of the strong?





We are awake!
Our voices cry in ninefold contradiction.
No pity brings us here,
only ears that wish to hear
the dirges of this wake. (tears)

Kings have broken fetters.
Priests are still out free.
Our time is not yet coming,
Yet we are tired of only sleep.

We sing these midnight songs for you
to fresh some hearts with hope.
To anger those who are filled with pride,
or lack the strength to see
this ship of fate that still sails on
through seas often stormy.
Time means nothing.
Ages will pass before she sails to port.

We weep here for those who pay the price
to feed pride and greed.
Our tears will fall for ages to renew the seas and land.
To replentish all the beauty that falls to man beyond his place.





Unsung duet.
The song love hasn’t heard.
The dice unthrown, the chance passed.
Handed to the patience of eternity.
Now sad, this chance passed
will sing love’s song to other ears.
The beauty then revealed
will harmonize a duet
upon this single, plaintive tune.





1983 REPLAY
Great-grandpa rode the riverboat,
Played his life with cards.
The river flowed unceasingly
beneath the changing stars.

Today I found a dollar,
you were very kind.
I stopped and was considering
if I could make you mine.

But you seemed so very certain
of who you were to be,
that taken all together
there wasn’t room for me.

Great-grandpa rode the riverboat,
played his life with cards.
The river flowed unceasingly
beneath the changing stars.





Everything that is near me moves
more quickly than what’s far.
The only thing that doesn’t change
is my steering star.
And she.
She seems so far away,
I must die before I reach her.
The only thing I truly know is today I must keep moving.





(In) glorious self conception
a deception
and a lie.
Breathing beauty,
clouding the mirror
hiding truth from unseeking eyes.
Eyes which cannot gaze beyond these windows
cataracted with tears of self pity.
Truth and beauty are not present
in these hypocritic lies.
Only figments
for deception from these unseeing eyes.
Self-bound,
unable to escape.
The doors closed,
in error, seeking solitude.
Impatient ejaculations
sending drops of truth,
none of beauty,
into an ocean of lies.





STILLBORN
A city bus full of people.
A cacaphony of thoughts
that are meaningless without completion.
Thoughts locked within solid bone.
Social thoughts, pensive or unprepared
are acted out with much deletion.
Idealize this unendeavor.
Staring eyes that trace the outlines of the neighbors.
Idealize this into some meaningful purpose.
All this kinetic mind energy
relayed by life’s kaleidoscope,
the bus rolls routinely on.
Fed by the sweat of the farm laborer
this cacaphony of thoughts from our neighbors
flies past their outlines,
lost in a paranoia of freedom,
masturbating, spills potential on the floor.
At each bus stop- out the door.





Looking for the truth in you is not what i do.
The truth will please itself, no mind of me and you.
Something of myself is seeking something from you.
Just the same as rainy nights and tears in phone booth lights.
Just the same as far hotels, reunions flowery pastels.
Looking for the reason, truth is not this sad, sad, song,
Nor love, oh weep!
This saddening search bares reasons of the self.
Loneliness seeks refuge in the broken dreams we shared.
The yearnings of the heart imprisoned in this human form
Are whispers of winds of memories and hopes.





Imprisoned in Love’s chamber,
the jailer resembles myself.
Engaged in self-absorption he lets me wander free.
He knows I will not stray far from the arms of my love.