We're all progressing backwards
Toward these simple truths;
The ones which we've forgotten
In the wounds of youth.
And to have you here, my dear, my dear
Shall break all that binds us-
And find us in a missile's sin,
One day's redemptive violence.
Lodged in deep,
A finger's touch can surgically mend.
A strengthened soul, a taughtened heart
Can with more vigor bend.
And to renew, the dew, the dew
On shivering leaf depends;
You have my waist,
Bicep embraced,
And in the breeze I'm cleansed.
Friday, February 29
Monday, February 25
Sunday Morn
In a booklet by the founder of the Salvation Army, paraphrasing
Always follow the light, it is your salvation on a path through the dark woods. But it must be your own light-- the one who carries it is close to you, only illuminating what is around your feet. You will know the light when it comes to you. The light is in the Bible, your community, your heart.
This has been my experience lately, coming out, not being afraid of the dark, following the light.
Writing is my service. I learn in anthropology about nations that words become eternal, poems make groups of people who speak the same language into entire nations, and in repeating the words like the seasons, nation-states become as natural in their manufacture as the sun and the rain.
I am afraid sometimes of fitting my writing into some style, some box, a box that is not mine so I do not know its boundaries really. Here I am still, in my light-- sitting, traveling, recording, truths of a sort.
What have you learned, O man-- sitting there on the wall in Hanover-town? Removed from our daily stresses, our confined struggles- What by silence have you discerned from our incessant chatter? What by removing yourself have you gained?
The poet's word is greater than the poet herself, and must be celebrated by its due worth, must be seen as poet creation with flesh, soul, mind implicated in its deliverance, its trajectory to hearts and minds.
The poet writes. The people listen. All are served, all should be heard.
How can we create a habit-in-community so that poet-creation would transcend our daily troubles, carry us the daily bread of a communion beyond ourself, with real flesh implicated. Of course, never too much, never ego-fear inflating, never losing sight, ignoring the unseen, the unheard or the human in this quest.
Always follow the light, it is your salvation on a path through the dark woods. But it must be your own light-- the one who carries it is close to you, only illuminating what is around your feet. You will know the light when it comes to you. The light is in the Bible, your community, your heart.
This has been my experience lately, coming out, not being afraid of the dark, following the light.
Writing is my service. I learn in anthropology about nations that words become eternal, poems make groups of people who speak the same language into entire nations, and in repeating the words like the seasons, nation-states become as natural in their manufacture as the sun and the rain.
I am afraid sometimes of fitting my writing into some style, some box, a box that is not mine so I do not know its boundaries really. Here I am still, in my light-- sitting, traveling, recording, truths of a sort.
What have you learned, O man-- sitting there on the wall in Hanover-town? Removed from our daily stresses, our confined struggles- What by silence have you discerned from our incessant chatter? What by removing yourself have you gained?
The poet's word is greater than the poet herself, and must be celebrated by its due worth, must be seen as poet creation with flesh, soul, mind implicated in its deliverance, its trajectory to hearts and minds.
The poet writes. The people listen. All are served, all should be heard.
How can we create a habit-in-community so that poet-creation would transcend our daily troubles, carry us the daily bread of a communion beyond ourself, with real flesh implicated. Of course, never too much, never ego-fear inflating, never losing sight, ignoring the unseen, the unheard or the human in this quest.
Saturday, February 23
Tuesday, February 19
Мы зачем от чуждой боли
Устроить то учреждение,
И твердели наши воли-
Создавать вдохновение.
А в буре покрывало
Снегом всех наших вот исчез-
И явилось мы так мало,
Всё богатсво наше- без.
Что жь, забыть эти сни свыше?
И в сугробы подгрестись
Произведение да наше-
Старый труд скрывать вниз?
Эх, природа и не кончить,
Но наш выбор стал вечным;
Ей хотя всю силу схватить,
Мы ветра против простоим.
February 1st, 2008
Устроить то учреждение,
И твердели наши воли-
Создавать вдохновение.
А в буре покрывало
Снегом всех наших вот исчез-
И явилось мы так мало,
Всё богатсво наше- без.
Что жь, забыть эти сни свыше?
И в сугробы подгрестись
Произведение да наше-
Старый труд скрывать вниз?
Эх, природа и не кончить,
Но наш выбор стал вечным;
Ей хотя всю силу схватить,
Мы ветра против простоим.
February 1st, 2008
pre-Carnival Winter 2008
O what a comment on humanity's condition- buckets forged elsewhere in some mechanized plasticity, shoveled to fill with snow, are sent up a rickety ramp with electric motor slightly whirring, they fill the form of a masterpiece to melt.
And with such joy this fills us, with such vigor do we work and are warm in the cold air. On a bleak winter day, buckets progress still.
And with such joy this fills us, with such vigor do we work and are warm in the cold air. On a bleak winter day, buckets progress still.
A little unassuming mural of Dartmouth.
The sun is setting on one of the first spring days—it’s playing tricks in the clear air and our little college seems without blemish. The library tower, Old Dartmouth Hall, the red chapel steeple and the central buildings of administration blaze their image on the pure blue sky. Even the pools of mud on the lawn glisten with some foreign grace. Planted underneath lie the seeds of so many thoughts- meditations on semi-truths and anxieties produced by the wonder of things we have never fully known. It is finals time, a breath, the eye of the storm.
The clouds above this place greet us freshly and give the impression that they are tied to the setting, echoing elevated granite reliefs on brick buildings. Lift us all higher, we supplicate in silence, let us all throw back the rays of distant truths; facades glimmer with unassailable, crystalline veracity. Beauty and honor we wish we could claim for ourselves is only in a title associating us with this place, now adorned in dusky radiance.
Peradventure this setting sun will someday come to alight on us and we can reflect its grace on our own company. But even then we’ll just be a figure, a quiet afternoon in the midst of the storm. Recall, in striving, that they erected these edifices only to surface a semblance of society in this wild land. Our imitation is as fresh as the reflections on these puddles, as original as today's sunset.
O Dartmouth, tame the savages we know ourselves to be and give us the hope that this sun will rise again.
Spring, 2006
The clouds above this place greet us freshly and give the impression that they are tied to the setting, echoing elevated granite reliefs on brick buildings. Lift us all higher, we supplicate in silence, let us all throw back the rays of distant truths; facades glimmer with unassailable, crystalline veracity. Beauty and honor we wish we could claim for ourselves is only in a title associating us with this place, now adorned in dusky radiance.
Peradventure this setting sun will someday come to alight on us and we can reflect its grace on our own company. But even then we’ll just be a figure, a quiet afternoon in the midst of the storm. Recall, in striving, that they erected these edifices only to surface a semblance of society in this wild land. Our imitation is as fresh as the reflections on these puddles, as original as today's sunset.
O Dartmouth, tame the savages we know ourselves to be and give us the hope that this sun will rise again.
Spring, 2006
It Drives
American Capitalism
It drives so much, so much
work hard and clutch.
We try so hard, and
-sigh-
Die full of lard.
But there’s a beauty in this crime
Because the bugs that eat our fattened bodies
Deserve to be super-sized,
They are the circle of life.
Right?
We’re just living to the full,
And bringing that life home for our little circle
And then driving our kids everywhere
So they learn how to put their feet
Down on the gas pedal, too.
Why so blue, o my soul?
Don’t these begotten of you make you feel whole?
In this spinning world
Little cherubim with pie holes
They’re on the upward spiral.
Visions of their life show
They grow, and lo and behold,
They have perfected what we could never know.
Our inner parts unite to become this gold,
Which boldly shows what we are capable of
These wonderful vehicles for our talent, from above
Until to the ground they descend
And they better have their act together then,
And their own little gaggle they’ve all tended
And mended the crazy things we did to them
Not knowing what we said.
It’s those grandkids who’ll get it right,
Our kids will have enough money to pay the shrink.
Or maybe they’ll be rich enough to stop and think
Themselves about the tears they cry at night
Because they’re missing their kids little lives
That’s what that liberal arts degree is all about, right?
Better be, because we’re paying up the nose
And who knows
Whether all those wishy-washy ideas will one day show.
We became bankers, because it drove us
-Work hard and clutch
To dream only for ourselves
To escape this personal hell
Of not being able to give like we’ve been given to.
Or feeling like we always sort of miss the truth
Oracle of the future
Soothe us with images of chubby children
Who grow up to be strong men and women
To bear the problems of this world our ideals weren’t enough for.
Help us perpetuate this metaphor
Of the circle of Life
HA! Yeah right, we’re all driven by that little fright
Which meets us at night and shines light on what we didn’t know to do.
On our own we wonder,
What tore this little child inside asunder?
What sickness in parents, what blunder
Tripped our innocence
That we fell into this wheel of time.
Round, round and back again
To the image of a flightless mother hen
Little chicks who want to explore the skies,
But get couped up and all shy
And wonder why Mom gets that distant look in her eye
When she talks about her flying days.
We pray, deliver us
And we will prove
That we’re a bit better than that former brood,
That we’ve learned their lessons, and some of ours, too
And lived to want to stretch our wings,
Still-
Do we have the will?
Yes, break out and catch the wind up and swoop, whistle and chirp
And burp, and slough off hours on daydreams,
With other friends in the sky,
We may seem like we’re a swirling mass of life
To the predator, who would make us resign
To an individual struggle
But we huddle and muddle our way
Thousands of miles despite our fragile styles.
You can’t be blown by the wind
If you don’t give in because you could never win
And force you’re way to the little whistle you’re being called in with
That mate, over yonder, who beds our nest with all the plunder she could find.
And we would die someday
Small but sated with the meaning of a thousand lives, lived together.
It drives, it drives, this nameless beat in our hearts, too
We can’t believe it’s been confused
As youth, and dirtied down in reality.
It is our proof
Of an Almighty that was never aloof
But poof—created us to die
Creatively
To shine, with all of that might
That was mustered to fold us into a fragile shell.
Burst forth and smell the sick-sweet manured air
All the excrement our generation could no longer bear
By life alone we live
And we won’t give in to our kids
When fear in them we see.
It’s time to burn with all our A.D.D.
And do away with our ungifted misery
We are given little chick-acockledeedoo wings.
So sing in the dawn, my little friend
There’s no-one left to judge your ends.
You’re being called to a different covenant
Free of the stony farmer’s pen
Free of generational sin
Run little legs, even if you fall
Because one day you’ll speak truth better than they all
Could ever dream of praying
Join the ravens,
And see with piercing eye,
What you need to survive and thrive
And dive down on what is dead and clean it up
For the next little pilot.
It drives,
It drives me up this wall and I can see
A brand new landscape of eternity,
And it’s for all of our humanity
So fly chickadee, fly!
It drives so much, so much
work hard and clutch.
We try so hard, and
-sigh-
Die full of lard.
But there’s a beauty in this crime
Because the bugs that eat our fattened bodies
Deserve to be super-sized,
They are the circle of life.
Right?
We’re just living to the full,
And bringing that life home for our little circle
And then driving our kids everywhere
So they learn how to put their feet
Down on the gas pedal, too.
Why so blue, o my soul?
Don’t these begotten of you make you feel whole?
In this spinning world
Little cherubim with pie holes
They’re on the upward spiral.
Visions of their life show
They grow, and lo and behold,
They have perfected what we could never know.
Our inner parts unite to become this gold,
Which boldly shows what we are capable of
These wonderful vehicles for our talent, from above
Until to the ground they descend
And they better have their act together then,
And their own little gaggle they’ve all tended
And mended the crazy things we did to them
Not knowing what we said.
It’s those grandkids who’ll get it right,
Our kids will have enough money to pay the shrink.
Or maybe they’ll be rich enough to stop and think
Themselves about the tears they cry at night
Because they’re missing their kids little lives
That’s what that liberal arts degree is all about, right?
Better be, because we’re paying up the nose
And who knows
Whether all those wishy-washy ideas will one day show.
We became bankers, because it drove us
-Work hard and clutch
To dream only for ourselves
To escape this personal hell
Of not being able to give like we’ve been given to.
Or feeling like we always sort of miss the truth
Oracle of the future
Soothe us with images of chubby children
Who grow up to be strong men and women
To bear the problems of this world our ideals weren’t enough for.
Help us perpetuate this metaphor
Of the circle of Life
HA! Yeah right, we’re all driven by that little fright
Which meets us at night and shines light on what we didn’t know to do.
On our own we wonder,
What tore this little child inside asunder?
What sickness in parents, what blunder
Tripped our innocence
That we fell into this wheel of time.
Round, round and back again
To the image of a flightless mother hen
Little chicks who want to explore the skies,
But get couped up and all shy
And wonder why Mom gets that distant look in her eye
When she talks about her flying days.
We pray, deliver us
And we will prove
That we’re a bit better than that former brood,
That we’ve learned their lessons, and some of ours, too
And lived to want to stretch our wings,
Still-
Do we have the will?
Yes, break out and catch the wind up and swoop, whistle and chirp
And burp, and slough off hours on daydreams,
With other friends in the sky,
We may seem like we’re a swirling mass of life
To the predator, who would make us resign
To an individual struggle
But we huddle and muddle our way
Thousands of miles despite our fragile styles.
You can’t be blown by the wind
If you don’t give in because you could never win
And force you’re way to the little whistle you’re being called in with
That mate, over yonder, who beds our nest with all the plunder she could find.
And we would die someday
Small but sated with the meaning of a thousand lives, lived together.
It drives, it drives, this nameless beat in our hearts, too
We can’t believe it’s been confused
As youth, and dirtied down in reality.
It is our proof
Of an Almighty that was never aloof
But poof—created us to die
Creatively
To shine, with all of that might
That was mustered to fold us into a fragile shell.
Burst forth and smell the sick-sweet manured air
All the excrement our generation could no longer bear
By life alone we live
And we won’t give in to our kids
When fear in them we see.
It’s time to burn with all our A.D.D.
And do away with our ungifted misery
We are given little chick-acockledeedoo wings.
So sing in the dawn, my little friend
There’s no-one left to judge your ends.
You’re being called to a different covenant
Free of the stony farmer’s pen
Free of generational sin
Run little legs, even if you fall
Because one day you’ll speak truth better than they all
Could ever dream of praying
Join the ravens,
And see with piercing eye,
What you need to survive and thrive
And dive down on what is dead and clean it up
For the next little pilot.
It drives,
It drives me up this wall and I can see
A brand new landscape of eternity,
And it’s for all of our humanity
So fly chickadee, fly!
B'ez Avtora
There is no author
No citation necessary
for this observation in obliquity
a crystalline cartography of a human thought
I could sign here
Sincerely,
With place and year
but there is no fear
That I will be absorbed in ether sphere
for my thoughts have come Queer
Not of mine or other
but in Trinity
These are Father, Mother
A generalized truth
Ours expressed
Birthed by union
but possessed by none
and to none accountable-
Even the pen-holder is
Unanswerable for the life of
the words for we.
And in Nothing-Creation
And in Death-Resurrection
A quartet of timely timelessness
Creative tone enthrowned.
My flesh is yours
A meal meager munched,
Sweet signified as such.
These friends create my
Satellite world vision
Sputniks, reflect creation
They move and my pen slips
I wrote “Stop the Fall” once
Could Adam-original possess
The agency to deliver this
Fecund degradation
Without a feminist?
Eve was a dike, and
By lifting her veil
We now, forever? will
Know a bit of binary
To aid our quest forthward.
Penetrating the seed, even,
We now light a fire
To guard the way back
And place historical figures-
Kant, Marx, Malcolm X as
Angels-with-spears which burn
If but our neurons-in-skull
Our entire telo-s
B.
And by timely timelessness
On appointment, scratch
thee, ashen soil.
Create thee a community-
By necessity.
Once tasked with naming creation
Now it is our procreation
which lyric labels instates
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