Silence is the great harbinger of possibilities
The open space of thoughts
The elixir of two souls
Universal, it is always there
Even as sounds play upon it
Taunting
I am in that silence around you
Stay and tease me
I need your company
You and the tapping of my fingers on keys
Prodigal Love
Amidst the raucous chorus of soul-work,
A shard of sweet harmony bristles.
As love is carved by reckless masons
Beating down mountains with chisels.
I pictured a million souls all singing at the same time. Their own tunes, melodies, sole voices…like a orchestra warming up…each is wonderful by itself but few work together…unconducted. Yet I wanted to find hope…that one little sound of harmony from the din of “soul work” out there…even our other “soul work” before we found each other. All these souls, mistaken for “mates” claim to be in love and beat down every intuition; claiming to be artists of Love…they are only masons, craftsmen making something. I find there is a great chasm between those alleged soul mates who are simply craftsmen (masons) of the love they have and those who are true artists.
A lumbering sledge hews an icon of love
Which void of spirit, may still fain sublime.
A chain gang sings, to forlorn swings,
Pounding love into fragments of time.
So I keep with the visual of people working so hard to build love through all these conventions and icons (possession, wedding rings, misthought gifts, bla bla). And even you and I have built these icons with certain others….and while it may be love as “hewn”, it can still be void of spirit while seeming something deep and wonderfully mysterious. It doesn’t need to be. We do this…partners tied at the feet by chains, swinging the old love battle axe to the rhythmic sounds of basic moaning and lamenting…hoping to really refine and sharpen the love we “made” with others…but really only pounding love into fragments…over time. Meanwhile…someone out there is made for the other…I do not consider you my cell mate…we’re not part of highway chain gang…and we move to wonderful songs of promise.
So the dust rises up from the quarries
and the road cuts of paths left behind.
Course calluses tell that loves journey
may not always be poignant or kind.
I pictured the white smokey chisel dust I’ve seen in the mining operations in the distance of the desert and coal operations in PA…a long time ago. I picture the mountain road cuts…from the blasting of paths through mountain landscape. I look at my past and then at the calluses on my hands…I’ve become accustomed to the adage, that love takes work, it’s hard, etc…I don’t subscribe that this is true and would not explain love like this to a child…love is not always poignant and kind…I suppose in its blasphemy, we “behave” in love…rather than flourish in it as happiness.
As each laborer leans toward the other
Sieving the talus of trouble,
In their eyes, gleans a flame reflected
By a glimmer of hope in the rubble.
Then I picture us moving toward one another as we look over all this short work made over a long time. The mistakes, miscalculations, the “trouble” we have of not being happy or in love with those we are “supposed” to be in love with because we were handled a chisel and hammer and told to make it work. So we sort through the rubble and in each others eyes, I picture the reflection of fire light from the cavities of wrecked efforts…and it’s that reflection in your eyes that brings me hope that after all the dust has settled, after all this “work” we have love saved for us by the pure nature of who we are, rather than contrived by us like craft…I guess so long as it’s art, I’ll make love.
Two destined souls, now shimmer
Through the ages and journeys apart
“How I’ve longed the return of this prodigal love
To the warmth of the home in your heart.”
Well then, here we are shimmering bright after all this time and after separate journeys. And I picture this reckless, rebel love (working mason with a misguided passion to slam square pegs into round holes), returning home over the hill (dark clouds behind me in the distance). I’m here now safe, ordered, and warm in a real “home” (not a house) that is only true so long as I’m in your heart….and yours in mine.
Like a once broken promise, she came to me
Out of my past, across forever seas
Recasting truth into the furrows of dreams
Sewing intimate seeds that hushed the screams
And unsolved riddles of throttling fear
If one day more, hope would not get here
Over rolling swells, far from land
Spices and driftwood and contraband
Like caramel drippings from a Dali sun
Her eyes cast the color on taught sails of muslin
She sweetly falls soft through scents and caresses
Like a settling snowflake on winters dried branches
She is more than a feeling, brighter than sight
She is the stir in the morning to my withering night
And I recall her breath, a fathomless deep
landing home in the heart, from a precipitous leap.
But the bitter serenity when out of my sight
Is her touch to my soul like raw senses at night
I spiral away, she’ll not get here in time
To keep me from falling deeper in mind.
In this strange numb world, it’s just her and me
Afloat on the tears, of wounded poetry.
I recite all my blessings
As is known to happen occasionally
A moment of tranquil lucidity
I glimpse my life in sets of three.
Guilt for fucking everything up…sometimes I’m so far in it, I can’t quite figure it out. But there are moments when I gain perspective and I cast an inward eye. I’m sitting on a plane when I wrote this…give it’s a propeller aircraft, it was a short lift…probably having something to do with work I was doing with the marines. Whatever it was, flying always used to allow me to drift a bit. It makes me feel better.
The props spin hard, a deep numbing sound
And lug this fuselage across the ground
Now entranced, the runway fades
Chastened by the slicing blades.
We are taking off and I’m drifting…I looked through the blades and watched the runway fall away. I guess this is a form of meditation for me. Purely selfish. I never liked propeller aircraft…gives me a sense of vulnerability. It’s a little un-nerving in high winds, short landings or take offs…I think the guy sitting in front of me was the pilot. Maybe I was in New Mexico.
I murmur the names of those I love
And ask safe passage from all Above
In combinations of tender prayer
In quiet voice, into the air.
I am praying for safety…pure and simple, I’m preparing to say goodbye in case we crash. I do this from time to time.
As I skip in flight through altitudes
Or run a path through latitudes
Or longitudes of forest green
I recall sounds and smells and things I’ve seen.
And so I move on to meditation. The same sense of euphoria I get when I’m running latitudes. In the desert, I ran the mountains a lot…thousands of feet elevation distance ( I guess I call them latitudes – wrong term). As I’ve said many times, smell is a big nostalgic drug for me…I can remember the most peaceful of lifes events when I’m alone, in peril, challenging new places with consciousness.
Body Triangle:
Our encounter is through complex webs
Two paths split through walls of guise
We slipped the grasp of the mundane
In the covert moments of Life’s Sighs.
I try to do things in three’s here. The triangle is architecturally, the most powerful shape. I seem grasp that here. Not sure why I called it the body triangle.
I’m not sure why people come together. But I think, as a friend once said, we draw people around us in order to fulfill the promises of life’s lessons. Nothing is chance…we try to pretend, we go numb, we disguise ourselves and we never meet…or perhaps we eventually do, it just takes longer. Destiny, finds us. The more we resist, the more mundane life is…a sign is an expression of acquiescence…a giving in to matches that God makes for us. We have many mates in life…we have many soul mates. We have one life mate…the most expressive sigh I’ve ever known has been a kiss; and that, without any hesitation, is her and has never been nor will be anyone else’s.
Something I wrote in my past, were glimpses of my future. I wrote a poem about war, when I was 10. My mom found it the other day…never did I think I’d be a soldier. I became one. I disdain war…why did I join a side.
My children, friends, and family
And tragic lust and love’s broken ties
Lo, rock-a-by stars through speeding blades,
you there in the restful ends of my Life’s Eyes.
I lament here. I lost my youth, I hate divorce, I missed my friends, and my immediate family was scattered from corner to corner. I chased lust and love and I failed. I was and am so sorry to have let Him down.. I don’t like hurting people…and I’ve spent most of my life breaking myself down to prove it. I had no idea how far I’d go into ruin. I’ve brought a lot of people down. I just want One shining hope in my life. I’m not sure I can find it…I realize, it’s not mine to find, yours to find…but rather, ours to find. That is a scary proposition…because if we lose each other, we fail to achieve it and we find we were all wrong. This was a night flight I guess, because I’m seeing the stars through the blades of the airplane…I’m sleepy. The restful ends of my life’s eyes…as far as I can see forward…I’ve been deceived by my own love; by my own eyes. There is no You in the end…there is an Us.
I ask for forgiveness From All
Taken for granted, transgressed, spat with lies
In Gods cradle with you my heart
Our children friends and family…Life Size.
I want to be forgiven, but I cannot bring myself to ask for it. I have hurt people…and in doing so, I hurt myself. What will it take for me to be forgiven? Why can I not have my choices…why have I had to feign acceptance?
Prologue
Like a mantra, I recite all your names
In parallel this happens all the time
I roll swelling seas and catch the shores
And see the threads of love that bind
I was thinking of all those I know, knew and care for and pray. I suppose I worry too much about the past and people in it. They are not in the past…they moved on. It’s inaccurate to consider someone as “the same person they were.” I remember ocean swimming and how as I swim over the swells, I lose sight of the shoreline and I’m quite alone and remote – lost at sea for a moment. That feeling when I the shoreline rolls back into view is odd…all I feared, felt guilty about, loved, and toiled over are there and somehow provide terra firma. I guess I am trying to embrace the past and my failures. Not a popular stance with some people…many of us wish the other would not only forget the past, but somehow ignore it and extract it from our ‘essence.’ It can be done, but it is through tenderness, not amputation.
Disguised as ropes and chains.
I slip through fields I’ve passed
My companions gone their separate ways
Like things not made of things that last
I remember feeling trapped and desperate in some relationships. I remember wanting to stay but being cast out. I was thinking about Sandy probably…and my good friends. Things not made of things that last…it’s hard to assess the materials of the present; things come and go. Parts remain, others disappear. I’m musing here.
I wander in soliloquy
Inspired by you and ours
No matter how complex the journey
I find you through Archimedian stars.
Soliloquy is an oration to oneself…not heard by others; that’s how I mean it. Hamlet engaged in frequent soliloquy. Idiot. Inspired by you and ours is who was in the present at the time and “ours” is family and friends and companions past. Life is a journey…at that time, I was bent on those sardonic Aerosmith words. Archimedes was a great navigator and postulated (I think) that there was a central point of revolution (the sun). I remember hearing a professor call something an Archimedean point. I thought predestination was limited…we have a pre-established smattering of stars, we have choice in how we connect them and who we end up with. I guess in predestination, we are always free to make mistakes, but we end up at the same place eventually. The “you” that I searched for was a ruse, a myth. What I seek, is an “us”…. And by fate, she connects the patterns the same way and here “she” and “I” are…beholding an “us.”
We are the Archimedean point…one is really two, is really One.
Across the vast sea of hope and possibility,
The bounty and debris of shipwrecks
Drift in and out of contact
Here and gone, here and gone.
In the views interceded by ocean swells
He walked out into the waves
And the wind swarmed in to keep her company
A figure poised with grace in the sand.
The moon was running up from below the horizon
Rushing to cast light from the east.
And as the sun set in the west,
Their breathing slowed
Unfelt, inaudible over the intertidal.
Not even did the ocean understand.
The spirits on the dunes
Watched over the two silhouettes
Looking out at an empty ocean
We’re different now, but “different” isn’t gone.
Ignoring the breeze of promise
I turn my face into the pillow
And shield your light
In it, tonight, I find only darkness
The phone rings,
And you seem only feet away
Oh if you were,
Only the thin skin of our lips
Would keep us apart
We are flightless in a gilded cage
The latch was forgotten
By the metal forge
A cruel unintentional mistake
Every once in a while
We share the cell
And a kiss teases us
With freedom
Children dance around us
In years not yet counted
They will forget today,
Today, when we parted
And they revved their toy cars
In a patch of sunlight on the carpet
And what was a lifetime to them
Was only moments ago for us
And in a moment, you were long gone
There is a brick office building abutting a lot
Where a barn once stood in the woods
We kissed there,
We defended there,
I will never forget the never-endedness
Of you.
I’ve seen memories come back to haunt me
I’ve aged and cried the same story
Again and again – nothing changes
Except the cast of characters
I am the longest running show
In the Little Theater of life
You will never come through that door
On your own accord
And throw your arms around me
And the seasons will come and go
As our spirits atrophy in the cast iron
Prison of “…love you a lot, but not enough…”
I would take a bullet for you
Even when you anger me.
I hope it only glances me
Because I want to live another day
To feel you, be it heart break or home.
If I could only look inside your heart
If these clouds would only clear
A tear
When loving you made no sense
An obsidian sky
Love comes in from horizon
In finding nothing
I love you, I love you, I love you
Why is it that we create,
There is a rhythm in life and we bend around the syncopation
The sunrises like a new promise,
Full of hope
A melody and we pick the sequence of notes
Love doesn’t fail
It always leads us by the hand
Faster and faster into the night
And we let it slip through our fingers
And watch it run ahead, disappearing in the darkness,
Leaving us itinerant under an obsidian sky
I stood gazing in the darkness
Against a slope before the rivers
And you came to me
In fragments of mist
Dew arriving for an evening sit
And as you landed gently
On my eyes,
The light shimmered
Collecting
on a hill
In the mist
As an orb gently landed.
Looking up through matted locks
I scan the storm clouds from the dock
While you sail the surly sea
Is there time to think of me?
Waiting in the winds and rain
Enduring time and wincing pain
Enter Poet
The paint is worn, the iron rusts
The planks are laden with salt
The barnacles burry the pitted wood
Still my love exalts
And I wonder who your captain is
Who steers the ship for you
Who navigates the stars
And who will see you through
Our love is like the waves
Always heaping upon the sands
Thrashing, churning, and sifting
Time hewn by loves strong hands
And in those brown eyes the sun breaks through
And illuminates your route
Is your ship coming home
Or have you just journeyed out?
And the thing that really makes it ironic, is that it isn’t.
And so the bottle opener from the Bahamas easily opened the bottle of Red Stripe from Jamaica. There begins the longest 50 minutes in history. The bright star or planet, whatever the fuck I’m told it could be, just edged past the corner of the building into my view. Twenty thousand lightening bugs and one BP gas station parking lot away was the only single flashing piece of modern technology in the town of Jefferson. The brights from that car, even that far away, actually allowed me to read on my beer bottle, “For over 75 years Red Stripe has embodied the spirit, rhythm and pulse of Jamaica and its people.” Only now do I read by lamp light, that it was imported by Guinness USA in Stamford, CT. Jamaican beer, imported by an Irish brewing company with an office in Connecticut. But see, there is no irony in that. Not a slippin drop.
I honestly had no frigging idea why I was out on the deck tonight. In fact, I don’t know how I even got into this walk out level basement rental on 25 elevated acres over the Potomac. Oh, well it wasn’t my deck, it was that of one of the other wayward souls on Marl Lu ridge. I was just enjoying the weather from a venue 50 feet higher. Two divorces, four pregnancies, a half a dozen graduations, and 3 Red Stripes down the dusty road of “halfway their,” and I’m figuring, who in the hell owns this computer I’m typing own. Like a wriggley’s spearmint gum wrapper, or one of those aluminum beer tabs later, I’m trying to figure since when is Bill Gates solely the reason for my ability to put ridiculous fucking thoughts down into binary coding. And why are plastic beer bottles available to m? And I’m not talking about the now, hell if YOU are reading this, I’m making money – nothing ridiculous about that. Or I’m dead.
Hm, it’s just odd how it all comes together into a thousand pieces. The guy who invented number 2 pencil lead is mindlessly poking at his mashed potatoes with his chin resigned into the palm of his hand. What did I do wrong? Nobody carries a pencil anymore.
