Poetry — Worth Words

Really- Where the Side Walk Ends

Roots Bulge
Up and Reclaim
Unnatural Sidewalks
That Hinder Soil Respiration,
Always.

Scorched Earth

I see the expanse now,
I see the expense now,
How we expand now,
The sun never sets on Empire,
Pitted, packed dry-cake gully
Sere, stolid waiting the return 
Of precipitation
The dearth of rain
Brings Earth her pain 
until 
The dead creeks rejuvenation,
There’s anticipation of CROAKS, HUMS,
TWEETS, CHIRPS, 
That never come,
Reign in your expectations 
of
Rain, a bringer of Nature’s exaltations,

But all I see is dry death,
little animals hunt for oil,
there’s parched soil,
that cracks and crunches,
from rock to metal back to rust,
silt motes form massive walls of dust,
As brawling winds blow squalls,
I see the future,
My eyes set fire to it all

Equanimity

When equanimity falls to the wayside
And the eyes empirically survey the hillside,
It’s Einstein’s time that I can’t bide,
Mawkish mental masturbation adroitly I chide,
Thy self,
Then my discreet self in its inchoate knowledge of reality,
Like the mass of humanity
Dissembling about Nature,
And Nature in turn disassembles matter, that we build up and think
Matters,

Your death is no grand spectacle even if it seems to be,
wrought cosmologies wield fantastical narratives of eternity,

Even when my hero Nietzsche in his tautology: Amor Fati unfolds itself like origami into eternal recurrence
Don’t get any ideas about permanence.
Take an uncompromising acceptance of reality, isn’t that just akin to Buddhist philosophy?
As discreet markings form abstract symbols of meaning in letters that form alphabets, that form words, that form sentences, that form phrases that compose ideology to compel us and histories, that inform us of existence, don’t get too cozy with them as they have a way of presenting like the Horizon,
The horizon, you know is just an illusion.

I do not subscribe to Pascal’s wager, Dawkins showed me the light,
I do not matter much, but no matter, as surely as I exist nothing is more precious.
All religious cosmologies aside, miraculous evocative entertainments beguiling distractions,
"Cogito ergo sum" Descartes comforting statement.
You bring the inside out,
this doubting mind can be certain of existence, by our certain doubt.

Shelter

Shelter.
You stood there
               Once 
young, fresh, strong, and bold on the precipice
 
Providing shelter and warmth for those you loved, 
o’er looking the valleys and dale 
Providing perspective to see all the troubles below, 
Blow-over— or at least have a rhythm:
They-come they-go, they-come they-go.
 
Strong square angles stolid, and solid protection from the elements,
Time spent hearing rapping branches, brushing and glowering winds in dark nights trying to creep through your crevices and sills,
Long winters where we we’d push out to face the chills, 
Soft-snow cushions muting the sounds of our echoing voices,
Wondering all along if we had made the right choices,
In the winter
 
Gracious odors of cinnamon, lemon and butterscotch pouring from your soul,
Mother was in the heart of you, baking gloriously in the kitchen lull, lulling us home.
 
Your strength girded our soul’s winters, springs, summers, and falls
Your pine planks flexible, giving and taking Nature at your walls,
 
We woke to genial, safe, scintillating mornings on the hill
The sun’s glory through your windows, electrifying all of Nature into activity
 
Radiating, swirling light eddies heat your sides— 
lighting you, warming you and us inside, 
Long whipping green wild grasses flowing like mother’s hair in the wind, a beautiful place you were 
A beautiful place we remember our little house on the hill.

Wish You Were Here

The hay bales golden, crimsons and ocher sere leaves fallen-- the caw of the Jackdaw
There was no Nightmare until after the fall, painted and swooned like a Fuseli
the clouds float in staccato and layered rich tones: vibrato from sparrows joins the chorus
the suffering alluring woman frail calling on Nature, who chides the mawkish

yet still holds in her in Her own way,
as she ambles and thinks of loves’ long ago
sadness your becoming frailty; weakness a handmaiden, its alluring on you

and there is a mourning call from the maw of the jackdaw
and the skies go crimson, deep amber until a now purplish blue
and the clouds become negatives as rotation continue-- I see the first star
appear and think of all the females who thought love’s true

“Boot in the face, the brute. brute heart of a brute like you” said Plath
Tolstoy’s males prevail, the amative women frail, and frailty is true
The tender heart a pulpy thing is simply the mind at war

Oceans of Life

As I walk along the seashore 
This morning pure white 
Catches my eye
I pick up a shell dulled by the millions of pounding waves, the grating gritty sand,
I turn it in my hand,

I peer into its aperture, hollow now where the creature once was,
And I see the most beauteous glimmer of pearlized pink and blues,
 Lightest shades of bruises before they vanish, lovely hues
It’s like a veneer— but the edges are worn that fade into the rubbed-away dullness that carbon remnant of the creature once in the hollow.
It must have been at sea for some time after death, as there is no trace of visible life
It pure carbon calcium remains clean as bleached bones picked clean by dessert dogs.

Autumn is Necessary

Missing the luxurious lush green of verdant spring.
When autumn chafes against the soul
Reluctant of letting go all that summer had to offer
We do not proffer from resentment 
Find, we may contentment with the season immediately upon the boughs,
The leaves all fallen and secretly feeding unseen mysteries in the soil 
Tender shoots then rise from the breast of young men past
The good never lasts…
Renewal’s corollary: destruction is perpetual
And grass is proof there is no death
In the greatest pain of our memories, all comparative,
Seeds the future from counter-fit narratives
And while truth may die in the breasts of men…
Yet the grass is proof there is no death.

EMBRACE the CHAOS

Not conscious of infinities blast Big Bang into reality our matter hurled
The Moira in our ancient past held us captive in this world

The blessings are the curses in every man’s situation
A profound secret and mystery to one another—the human condition
The secret suffering souls demand such solemn serious speculation
Yet the absurdity of LIFE in all its levity and evanescence calls for circumspection…

We create the stories and gods in hopes
And we assign such meaning to everything: stars, numbers, tea-leaves, and dates…
We create stories and gods to fill the voids find star- crossed loves and faith in the fates
In all the randomness—the beautiful randomness
We live, we love, we kiss, and we miss the beauty of chance

Kierkegaard a product of his time
his philosophical bent in line
had yet to be—to see—the reality—
of Camu or Sartre in thoughts evolution
one solution to counter mother Nature’s hostility or indifference,
We wield power over her mock her, scorn her, show her!
I am not the powerless weak little creature born to die at your whim—
No sin to go—my existence I control.

But halt! Oh! our Jungian collective-consciousness in the present soon awakens swooned by modern bards, agnostics and atheists even religious faith shaken
A light! A light! A revelation!

Because that which is unseen we know to exist
The unknown exists and because we don’t know it's purpose.. perhaps there is perhaps there is not one,
The horizon we see with our eyes does not exist in reality Physics concrete Science save us…
Our eyes set to betray us…
All this unknown doesn't mean we can't embrace the chaos

And we assign such meaning to everything: stars, numbers, tea-leaves, and dates…
Yet it all does exist with a beauty more lovely than any of Shakespeare's fates...

Song of the City

Steaming sewer mist scudding low across the asphalt,

The cities groaning bowels gurgling to life,

The sun burns blacktop water, sending it in spiritual wisps back toward the sky,

Early risers shuffle along sidewalks, some synchronize with the automobiles,

Some static hiding in muted porticos of edifices they don’t belong.

The song of the city,

Behemoth articulated busses have cargo with countenances like a Tooker painting,

Going nowhere,

Flags flap in in the soft middling breeze along the pier undulating like freedom sails

Going somewhere,

The sun rays reflect gloriously the lapping waves subdued though by frothing scum

Hopper painting people poker-faced glare out of glossy windows

The tourist pause to gaze—Man is fine, the city is good

And the workers, and the business folks scamper along to livelihoods to,

The song of the city,

In the grandeur of humanity’s creation, the proud concrete and steel erected in dizzying heights

Our ersatz Nature, gives a thrill

Man is good, the city is and its will just humming along

A street vendor whistles the tune, it is not like a sparrow,

He whistles the song of the city.

The Shrines We Are

Thunderous roiling, tumbling, boiling, churning, burning Love misplaced, 
And the rage they saw the side of Janus as he turns his face to the past, 
Oh the unrequited Love shadows grim, dark, foreboding future that will ever last, 
I am thunder you are showers loves lost-- a yearning now takes its place 

The timelines the markers birth to death and grave
Clear as day we saw the stones that marked a path our way
Life will show us what a man can do-- and what he can endure along his lonely stay
Man's raison d être to seek Unity--One Love to divert away the pain 

I come to worship in your name 
I blow East you Blow West
Ah when reason fails
The devil helps to blame
That life's gone that part all the best
And splintered bones and dust our future hails

The Wisdom of Numbers

One
we go
Two three through
this life for all
they seek the Fifth column
they had a Sixth sense to 
recompense the poor the weak impoverished Ones
Petrarch, Dickens, Marx, Harding-Davis, Riis, Mother Teresa,
In form rare to Multitudes, but not these souls,
Thanks to human kindness amidst the insanity-- Ah the Humanity!

Symbols of Infinity

The curl of the letters- formed from nearly what I could make out as the abstractions sometimes strain the heart and mind, woven to and fro with sharp edges fraught throughout the script, or is that scripture? All of these sounds uttered only silently in my mind
 The phonemes (perpetually distinct units of sound) ringing home, called me once or thrice prior but no one was home.
The curving lines of each grapheme caught me up to study up close only the bark of the tree in the forest, 
Where ones eyes can meet each distinctive swirls, curves and angles longingly looking for the power in the words, the tetragrammation was lost some where in those woods,
I know the Kaballists still dwells somewhere out there in the desert, hopeless and alone gripping parchment, tears streaming down his face
I wonder at the wonder of it all. But what is substance… here man we believe cradled cozy in his atoms, and faith of material, FAITH IN MATERIAL at least we can know one mote of Truth…
That is love, it transcends these conundrums, man can own it disown it, and pant for it when he forfeits it
Love of humanity Love of man, Love of brother, Love of one another, is what we can hold on to grip tightly or let the palm loosely caress it the love of Nature, the love of mother, the love of brother, man is Love—Eros Agape its all we have.
Death can grin and grin to my chagrin, he does not race, he makes no haste
He always has Pow’r and time 
Your physical being transmutates, to restore atoms to matter--- 
To Love mankind should be our plight--
Love is truly born again, and again, it is infinite. It is infinity.

Contemplation of an Existentialist

Life secretly offering fleeting moments of happiness… but the underlying sadness creeps through; the grief of human condition always seeps through from the unconscious. I always imagined it as the watery liquid separating from the unctuous and the solid matter of the brain as a pervading force that relentlessly pursued my happiness.
I am reminded often that this life offers no protracted security of contentment only taunting bits of joy.
Is that what we must satisfy ourselves with then? We are to be grateful solely for the passing seconds of joy.
In this life we are offered only an empire of dirt and the subconscious encumbered with the knowledge that we are merely destined become part of that empire.

Expanding Matter

The meandering Universe or tightly packed with no edges at all
The Universe huge and pulsing enough to give seed to the life forms is packed rock into a ball
The Universe did it know all along about Love?
Hey what is life anyway? Some say they know from messages above, within— without
Some say they know by analysis, some philosophers, mystics, priests, all claim they have the key to the riddle-- What do they know? 
I have voyaged with Plato, and Aristotle feeling the firm ground beneath me slipping away, 
I mourned the Passion, I have kneeled for Allah, Vishnu, Shiva, Yahweh, RA, Amun-Ra, Odin, and I have imbibed the mystic, elevating into a fugue
 Hawkins, Sagan, Einstein have wisely spoken, I speak their words, “Where did God hide those confounded data?”
I have visited the land where law of religions becomes the external garb of man, atoms flowing rapidly energetically all from cloth to flesh and back again--
In those black holes I have held hands with Sagan, De Grasse
In search of other worldly terrestrial beings, and have floated into eternity embracing Hawkings into beauteous things— with water at the center of it all…
Plunged into darkness, and never found those dice,
What can I say, I am only man.
We have tried for millenniums to answer the puzzling riddles, what is the ‘mystery of inequity’, perchance it is of no substance at all, or is split asunder in the vital soul of man himself some slippery essence waiting to ooze out into the atmosphere, 
The riddles are great, and the universe holds them somewhere in the abyss, of man blackest recesses perchance— Maybe there is no mystery at all… “Philosophy is a smile on a dog”
Some say they know by analysis, some Philosophers, mystics, Scientists, all claim they have the key to the riddle…What do they know? 
In the desperate search of God we have despised our ways, Men have become haters of Love. I saw the birth of the humanist once upon a page-- Petrarch my father
He held the keys jangling with a smirk and rage…
Man disappoints man…

The Meat Machine

The Meat Machine…
There you are all bundles of blood, nerve, bone,
There you are in the matter same substance you are--you call your home,
Its been once said you are nothing but a tiny speck of dust,
In your head you are something! It’s all really just rock and dust,
The thoughts do they linger…do you go on?
Is there eternal life bringer…after final Swan Song?
This magnificent beautiful thing called life sometimes too hard to take it all in 
If I see all its beauty all at once I feel my heart may burst… Your staring moment under the great star...that's all you are, that’s all you are…that’s all we are..

Bow to the King
We Robot, she was skin
Great King once sought
I know naught
What lies within
A fly buzzed in
Hear him, blue-bottle
Rancid pain, she did throttle
She hath no sin

The great creeping shadows
Fall upon the walls
She goes numb, when pain calls
Lurks she now in placid meadows
Dew on brow, Youth eternal
We chant the dirge—we sing the hymnal

The Animal Man: Predatory People

At the other end of your pleasure

Others, suffer greatly abused, mutilated, tortured,

Living lives so brutal hardly one can call it life

But we choose not to measure

Hover in no noose for the used, its celebrated

Dancing on the cracking backs of the poor,

Pouring Sauternes, material whores

Troves of people living like a Riis photo,

And no one seems to take note or notice

As they dwell in a Brueghel’s land of Cockeign

With roasted sows strutting in the streets –knives stuck in their backs

Ready to eat.

The feast, the feast, They feast:

They eat everything with their mouths, with their eyes with their ears with their thighs,

Ignoring those built of Kori, parading on the charade

of charity,

Charity is big business you know— with elitist and double jointed mouths mouthing promises of Eden. Flashing bulbs, shaking hands, and grinning malicious, delicious grins.

And this continues generation upon each, we preach, we pray, we claim evolution

We boast solutions to a never ending drama of predator and prey.