Alight

Alight

I’m ready to float right out of this universe

Alight onto another 

Far more distant than this one

Yet closer than the breath of my lungs

I breathe the same air as the warlords, the bright ones

That spread love and peace and happiness and battle

The ones that make their swords all rattle

As they drop them to the ground to plant some life into it

Beings placed Deep into the brown, soft earth

Reddened by another’s blood

Watered by a steeping flood

Of submitted will and alabaster

The full moon just fills the fanning window above my head

Reflected light overpowering the lingering autumn darkness

Leaves unchanged as of yet

Yet we know that all is coming

To the sounds of soulful lutes and lyres

The coolness brings the smell of fires

And a thousand drops of rain

I lift my head again and again

To see if there is yet any difference

No matter how many times I lift my head to see 

It is my heart that feels the breezes

I am reconciled, I am reconciled

Like a favorite blanket to a crying child

There is a restoration forming in this quiet soul

That is surrounded by harsh and disruptive raucous

Yet nothing but stillness deep within

A stillness so deep, unfathomable, restless

It’s movement changes worlds

It’s vibration lifts the earth

Setting it, vast, into a different place

Where freedom never dies

An inkling, a nature, a persistent cry

Does drive us into that galaxy wide 

That is so narrow many miss the smile

Could it be that we are all so worthwhile

That on us love alights?

I foresee again, I foresee again

The friendless and forgotten do know a friend

Who smiles again as does a brother

Whose embrace is that of gentle mother

Simply warmth and grace and good and love

A place where I can truly know enough

Where a reality meets my expectation

Is there ever an end to this disrupting frustration?

Or is this simply the fuel that feeds me on?

In all of this weakness, through all of this brawn

I simply seek on for the firelight

Realizing my alabaster wishes have pierced the night

So the sky is overwhelming in its shadows

Clouds so immense they dance

with the movement of the moistures

They grow in ever increasing cloisters

Bringing a realization into the mix

Could it be that we are so worthwhile

That on us love alights?

K, Duane Carter 9/18/13

In the Beginning

In the Beginning

I do not know where I have always been

I cannot hear what I have always seen

I seek a treasure that is within my heart

This search it binds as it tears apart

with the fierceness of a lion’s grip

I walk in paths known in ancient beings

I sense the unknown in all its past fore-seeings

My heart has known nothing but a great unrest

And all the while it has touched the breast

of a million shining suns

I am thwarted.  Quite unable

to know the one that was found in a stable

By rugged and wandering men

This one that sees me and calls me friend,

bringing the unknown before my very eyes.

I am hungry.  Hungry for the knowing of mystery

Hungry for touching the one who’s the real me

This person I have yet to have known

A thousand seeds of love have been sown

this oak tree is finding its roots

I feel a river deep inside

This river deep, this river wide

Encompasses all that has ever been or will be

Encompasses all that I have never known to be me

Yet it loves me all the same

I seek a name.  I seek a rendition

Of the one that brings all goodness to fruition

I seek a shining brilliance of who I am

a willing heart, a helping hand

These things make the world go around

I hear the sound.  The owl does “who”

The dove does coo, and the skies of blue

All speak of things unspeakable, true

They speak of me and they speak of you

but... we have to listen to hear them

   

I do not know where I’ve always been

I cannot hear what I’ve always seen

I seek a treasure that is within my heart

This search it binds as it tears apart

with the fierceness of a lion’s grip

I cannot slip

But when I do, and when I do

All I can see is the sound of you

so therefore I cannot slip, 

and new, such wonders are wondrous like the ship

that carries all of my treasures

I cannot measure the depths on which I stand

I cannot fathom that in this life, this sand

I have formed many a nightmare, many a dream

I have found what life and love and living mean

in the throes of an untimely death

This life, this breath, keeps moving my entire chest

Filling my cup with this wine, the best

Has always been saved for last, but yet

This one I drink is just the beginning

of a melodious and merry sing-song

I have known this all along

This is just simply the very beginning

K, Duane Carter 

Love in the Stillness

Love in the Stillness

I am longing for the stillness

Stillness,

Like the darkened sky against a September moon

Yet here I am at the tides of noon

With all of hell and water beating down my door

This heart within me does so long for more

yet my head is banging against the bricks

Raised up long ago with clubs and sticks

and a thousand useless apparitions

and thousands more useless superstitions

Have overtaken my nights

So now it seems my only plight

Is how many videos it takes to entertain

How many cells can I kill before my entire brain

Finally comes to the point where I can actually be human again

Finally comes to the place where my heart can pulse

Not to mention where there my soul, repulsed,

comes into the pleasures of the meeting

Time is continual, time is fleeting

But to the birds I make my motions

Greetings high with mixed emotions

I stand on a rusting moonshine still

I hear the sound of a whippoorwill

Yet in the midst I know no distinctions

The old, the ladies, the dark, the tinctures

Have all faded into dust

I must, I say, I must, I must

Travel into the realms of timelessness

To hear my heartbeat revel in the winds

“Dear God, would you please stop this meandering.”

I hear the raucous noises daily, the philandering

It is the only music the dirt can hear

Yet I dance to sounds in the atmosphere

Which is why my soul is in stillness

In places dark and unseen

No shiny, metallic, shimmering sheen

But just an overwhelming magnanimity 

Sewn with deliberate humanity

Brings on a dance that shakes the universe

This I will never, ever reverse

Forever forward will I go

Will your heart and soul and being know

Me in this land of fierce contention?

I believe that I must have forgotten to mention

You were with me all of this time

You were the cadence, the voice, the rhyme

That slathered all of my being

In dusts and dances and darknesses bleeding

yet healing all the same

Was found in one vastly simplistic name

Called love

I have found the stillness

I so long for it....

K, Duane Carter 10/30/13

Voice

Voice (Day of Atonement)

I dream of days, I dream of ways

Where I do not have to enter into this incessant wandering

This amassing of graves between worlds of reality and fact

And the realms of reality and truth

These things I have wrestled with since my youth

Seeing the dragons get all the stronger

I still face them though I wander

between the place of courage and of fear

I sit amidst the lovely violets here

Just watching from a distance

I seek a grand but notorious gaze

a Voice that lives amongst blue-green eyes ablaze

These stories wrap around my mind

I cannot grasp such things sublime

Yet grasp them is exactly what I do, I must

Reach deep within to find the vessels of trust

That lead me to my pleasures

These things are so much more than treasures

They are rather more than things

Rather more on angels’ wings

They fly beneath my feet to greet me

All the while I look above while seeking

Those things that cannot be known or seen

I hear the whispers of gentle giants

I feel the tethering of a meek compliance

Knowing I cannot meet these ways

These ways that just lead all astray

Yet promise a sure deliverance

I also cannot yield to happenstance

Nor can anyone else for that difficult matter

For space is nothing but mindless chatter

if it truly had no beginning

I see the red roofs on those distant shores

The winding, writhing tales and lore

which break into my musings

All hair, all skin, all dark accusing

Just bristle in the sunlight

To speak of love so forthright

Is the answer to all these breathings

I cannot come into the forms and worries

Yet I cannot leave them ever since

I yield to the mysteries of unfathomable furies

With not a skip of heartbeats hence

I yield to the mysteries of unfathomable furies

With not a skip of heartbeats hence

So where does this all lead?  So where does this all go?

I think it goes where no one knows

But it does go into the knowing

The place where our listless souls are growing

In the green room of our past neglect

The pictures of our contorted wrecks

are turned into sound and life and beauty 

This happens right before our eyes

We listen and are mesmerized

by things we cannot hear nor see

In the listening I am free

It is in the listening I am free

I hear the Voice

K, Duane Carter 9/14/13

The Gift Orchid

The Gift Orchid

I see the remains of the potted orchid,

A symbol of friendship and time

Sitting brown and dead on the pavement

Shriveled completely from neglect

From busy-ness and lack of respect

The little things got in the way of the life things

And now all that remains is a dry and crumbling waste

That not even water will revive

It simply shows how we must invest the time, the effort

To keep what is living alive

While letting the sordid details to themselves

Don’t set what’s important up on the shelves

Until they’re a withering, nebulous ghost

Of the past.  What I want to last, I must water

What I want to live, I give life

Otherwise none of all this really matters

K, Duane Carter  8/11/13

Wreck it

Wreck it

In a place of freedom

I have the liberty to dream, to think,

To act

Which is why so many of our wondrous ones are enslaved;

imprisoned, silenced, tortured, wounded, scarred...someone, something

Doesn’t want them dreaming, creating, living...

So who is there to help them if not the ones who are already free?

What will the world look like when there is no slavery?  

It will look like the place I want my children and grandchildren to live

What creative genius is locked behind walls of evil filth?

What bringer of hope and life is shackled under oppressive chains?

Whose daughter has been stolen?  Whose son?

What child’s life has been stomped on and beaten all for the name of a moment’s pleasure?

In a place of freedom

I have the liberty to dream, to think, to write

To act

It is time

K, Duane Carter 7/13/13

Sense Eternal

Sense eternal

there seems to be a place where I live

yet I cannot seem to dwell there

I cannot seem to breathe the air there

all the while smoldering in this sordid heat

and dryness, dark and dust

I live in a land of angels and oceans

Streaming rivers, birds in flight

Mists dancing with the mountains

Where words are never enough

You have to breathe in the beauty

For it just becomes a part of you

I feel it in the depths of me

I know I am there

I can feel the colors, the sounds 

The movements of the symphonies eternal

yet I can still smell the dust, the heat

Instead of running through golden fields of wheat

I simply sit here and yearn for more

I refuse to live in an unending chore

But rather dwell in the beauty

Knowing that it must flow forth from me

Water for the trees

Healing for the nations

Joy and hope and deep libations

Of all that is good and real

there seems to be a place where I live

I simply have to dwell there

or maybe rather let it dwell in me

K, Duane Carter 6/29/13

Sun

Sun

I ride by the mystical mountains

upon a purely white, God-breathed note

I slip into His eternal chambers

with a single bright sound that He wrote

I allow my spirit to return quickly to Him

without shame I no longer hide

as I move into the fire of His sun

He moves me into this mythical ride

The myth is more than just happenstance

The truth is simply too much to flee

The throes of His love are simply too much to grasp

Until I realize their grasp is on me

I ride by the Mystic of mountains

resting on this purely God-breathed note

I lie here in His eternal chambers

being the song that He wrote

K, Duane Carter

Surprises (Theme of 2013)

Surprises

Sometimes God shows up in surprising ways

He comes upon us and messes up our left-brain strays

Waking us up from our slumbers

Our endless, stony days without numbers

Just waiting outside the realms of the religious

Calling us to spread out our wings and fly with Him.

He rests sometimes right above our heads

As we longingly look elsewhere for our bread

Standing outside in the rain and storm

Forgetting, ignoring our original form

Where the light caught our wings and lifted us higher

We have taken stones and form in place of fiery desire

It is less painful, but is not living

God patiently waits, He patiently waits

The light and the music continue to wake

The waves move within our souls, and our minds

To our hearts the melodies one day will find

Then breath will come, warmth will come

The stony caricatures will be undone

We will all find our wings and soak in the sun

Our songs will never be quite the same

Blast from the Past!!!

Longing
Time is fleeting by, never stopping
To hear the water from the rose petal dropping
Into the softened earth that gives us breath
The same earth which holds us after death
So much to do, so much to give
So much to see, we can’t help but live
For the time is fleeting, never stopping
To hear the withered rose petal dropping
To the chilling earth that beckons death
The same earth that holds our every breath
Of somber wind and playful breeze
Of peaceful lakes and roaring seas
That know not that time which slips away
That know not that death that shall come one day
To meager mortals, as they sit dying
Who can do nothing but complain how their time is flying
With the hummingbird: it is here, it is gone.
Days are so desolate when spent all alone
With only the clock as a friend
The day will soon end
As the life of a small rose petal, dropping to the softened earth.
What gentle mirth will be when there is no time.
kdc 6-87

I have been getting the last 25 years of poetry I have written put all together.  I've come across several I wrote as a teenager, and thought, "What the heck!!  Let's post this old stuff!!"  I was a little more dark and introspective back then....

Presents

Presents

I sit in the presence of golden and shadows

While my soul it does the same

Yet there is something wondrous about the light

In all of it’s amber revelations

That speaks of infinity, and, yes, beyond

A presence that is always there and always love

Even as the earth turns her face away

She is still met with warm and gentle kisses

Even though the light does fade

It truly never does

It is always burning, always bright, always beautiful

Nothing in this world can stop it

Nor can anything in any other world for that matter

I sit in the presence of the golden and the shadows

Knowing that even in the midst of coming darkness

The light is always shining on my face

K, Duane Carter 1/10/13