In the Sunshine

In the Sunshine

I love life

I love the green in it

I love the peace in it

The quiet

The turmoil 

The dust 

I love renewal 

But it takes a death

A turning

A burial 

A yearning 

A burning

In a fire that never sleeps 

I love geometry 

The lines

The angles

The curves and libations 

Smiles and sadness

Profound rotations

Along a symmetry that never ends

I hear the sirens

They bring me back to an earthen space

I feel the longing pains for grace

That overcomes all my lack of reasons

I feel the air, I sense the seasons 

Are forever returning to the grand delights

No longer night

Meander

Meander

Don’t assume that everyone is as unfulfilled as you are

Don’t think that normal is your own

Don’t believe that every wish upon a star

Or every seed that’s sown

Becomes the thing you saw it to be

Sometimes it’s more

Sometimes it’s naught

Sometimes a drought

Sometimes a draught 

However things turn out to be

It matters how much it’s watered

It matters how much there’s light

It matters when it doesn’t make a difference

It matters when it’s day or when it’s night

Through all the patterns of the daylight

There is always a weaving and a rhythm

That is well beyond what we see, what we know

There is always a vapor in the starlight

There is always a purity to the snow

We often have to rest to feel it

We often have to still ourselves to perceive

We often have to keep climbing up the mountains

Deeply inhaling the air we receive

Either as if it is not quite enough

Or as if we must keep gasping for more

There’s a subtlety in the difference

I don’t quite know exactly what it means

I simply know in the act of the motion

I begin to see the mysteries of the unseen

In the stillness, in the motion

In the rivers, in the oceans

There are so many questions in life

Yet in them all there lies the signs to the Answer

When we choose to join stillness, not strife

So let’s meander

The Parable

The Parable

In just a matter of moments 

The sunlight ascended right up the mountain 

It was nothing at all

It took no time at all

There’s a lesson in there 

For me and for you

In those things that seem impossible to do 

The light has already been there

To create an incredible view

Time to enjoy it....

The Unknown

The Unknown

I stand ready for battle

Staring at the blank screen before me

My mouth agape

Ready to fire forth the arrows galore

Yet all I see is rain and mist and haze

I don’t feel or know the Gatekeepers gaze

So all I know is quiet and dust

Where do I find the Guardian’s trust

So that I may enter the fields of renown?

My head has been shaped for a victor’s crown

My feet have been shaped for the journey

My mind has been formed by the years and years

Of competing in the tourney

Yet no prize will I ever know that way

I will know no prize living in this fear, this mist

This life that knows no pain, no bliss

Just the abandoned memories of Costco and Sam’s Club

I go buying up all their pizzas

Is that the way I’m to be known?

Is that the battle guard I’ve always flown?

No, I don’t think so, not at all.

I suddenly hear a clarion call 

off in the distance

It’s a voice so distinctive in its strength

Yet universally renowned in all its gentleness

Was that Love I heard?

Before I can say one single, solitary word

My heart has leapt out before me

Now I must go chasing it down

Down into the Keeper’s Fields

The place where everything in my being yields 

To the ways and the means of Love who resides there

I hear the lions, I hear the bears

My mind is literally tearing asunder

But my heart charges full speed toward the wonder

The wonder we all call “the unknown.”

Listening to the Wind

Listening to the Wind

Sometimes it’s best just to sit here listening

The sound of the Spirit moving in the silence

Anticipation in the air

The samplings of a gourmet chef

With all the smells and whistles

None of the thorns and thistles

But a balancing nonetheless

I break from far-off weary dreams

To embrace this quiet lull that seems

As nothingness is the norm

Yet the violent wind of storm

Awakes me to the difference

I listen, calmer, deeper still

While the windowpane is shaking

I carry on to the throne of God

Where everything is breaking

Where everyone has entered dance

Where no friend is forsaking

It is the best world of them all

For no fright is resting there

It is the greatest world of all

Only love is resting here

I am awakened to the difference

There is no end it seems

To this place of living, immortal dreams

Where colors are tasted

Great is delight

Where sights are mere wonders

Never is night

Except where sons do not shine

Once again, I am awakened to the difference

Into the Depths

Into the Depths

I have dived into an ocean

Now I realize I’ve gone so deep

I don’t know where I am

The only thing I thought I could do to save myself

Is see where the light is coming from

Then simply return to the surface

But now, where I am, there is light coming from all directions

I now have no idea which way I’m supposed to go

But I presume that wherever I go

there will be nothing but goodness

In whichever way I choose

Monolith

Monolith

Running laps around the carousel 

Blitzing at American Dream speed

No time to think of why

Just churn out numbers until I die

I run straight smack into a monolith

It suddenly appeared right in my way

So massive, so resolute 

So beautiful 

I hit so hard my mind just stopped cold

I feared for my sanity 

I lost all semblance of bold

All thoughts stopped 

The words would not come

Silence allowed me to hear

The rhythms of the entire universe 

The ringing in my ears

Still screeches from the impact 

I hear the slumber of others

Their soft snores ebbing as the oceans 

I hear the cries of witches, warlocks

Selling their impotent potions

To the most delusional highest bidder 

But most of all I realize I have never been still before

I’ve never paused to realize the meaning of the floor

I’ve never seen such clear blue sky

I’ve never sensed the rain

I think the most disconcerting thing

Is I never felt my pain

This is why I’ve been so alone

I toss aside my humming phone

Looking up to the folds of granite 

I pause, I linger, I fold, I panic

At the thought I have to scale this

Yet even though I consistently fail this

I put all I have into the ascent

Which all I have is me

The fireflies begin to flicker, burn 

They begin to light a pathway

So though there fades the light of day

I still climb, I still ascend 

Especially when I am still 

The Hope

The Hope

Poetry shouldn’t be forced

I’m not sure anything good comes from coercion

I’m so impeded, the words won’t come

They are there in my mind, in my soul

Yet there is this dark blockade

Anger, fatigue, self-doubt, irritation, impatience

These are the bricks in the wall

I so often wait around for inspiration

Inspiration is too fleeting, too fickle

I might be sitting on this rock for ages

Moss growing all around me

Growing on my face and eyes

While waiting to be mesmerized

The sun completes all its seasons

So I search for more, I look for reasons

Why all this is the way it is for me

Instead of resting along the trees

I wander off into the bramble

Thus the reason I mumble, ramble

Along the sidewalks of the mysterious plodding way

I still don’t know quite what to say

I still don’t know quite what to pray

Or how

I must go deeper than my brow

Maybe I must go higher

My skin has tired of these annoying briers

That daily scratch my skin

I wonder if my past, the lives of my kin

Have gone these overgrown life ways?

No, I cannot go backwards, that makes no sense at all

I set my eyes for the ambers of fall

Knowing there will be a winter

Christmas is coming

The Way

The Way

I can feel the poems within me

Growing, moving, churning

Not yet ready to see the light

Yet building the light within me greatly

Sometimes I feel volcanic, ready to burst asunder

Sometimes there’s simply quiet, undercurrent

Moving the continents

One millimeter at a time

These senses are so subtle, sublime

Yet also they can be a sudden torrent

I don’t have my container ready to catch it all

The drops disappear into the warm, rich earth

Something will grow from them later

Something that creates a vast, deep crater

Too deep to see the bottom

Too wide to know the expanse

No droning lore or circumstance

Can describe or tame it

I can feel the poems within me

They grow, they move, they delight

They torture, they tense, they torment

All at once

All in a day

This is the way

Of the poet.

10/17/17

Upriver

Upstream

I do not like walking around my neighborhood

It reminds me of how far I have not come

I never imagined my life to be this way

I lived the life of academic success,

Hard work

Be kind to everyone

Where am I?

Not where I was told I would be

Or maybe it is the way I’m looking at things

Maybe I’m not looking at what is really there

Maybe I’m seeing what I want to see

I do not know

That should be the title of all my poems

I do not know

That in itself is a place of panicked unfamiliarity

When I was young I knew all

I learned all

Everything was scientific fact

Not a speck of mystery in any of it

Though there was great wonder and order and beauty

No, not one speck of mystery

Then the oceans rose

The rivers came rushing in

Sweeping all of that away

I look back upon that memorable day

And wonder if I should celebrate

Or curse it

There seems to be nothing that can ever reverse it

The waters are always now shifting within me

Like the winds

So here I am

Another member of lonely land, the wilderness of millions,

Wondering why I’m here

What have I done

To be so fortunate, yet to be the one

That seems to never hit the finish line of destiny

Maybe there isn’t one

Maybe it’s in the running

The walking, the crawling,

Doing whatever it takes to continue moving forward

Never still

Never still

For in the moving waters, still is always moving backwards

Or forward if one simply yields

To the rhythms of the undercurrents

That flow within my very soul

I do wonder what is the definition of whole

I wonder more what it is like to experience it

I wonder if I'll ever know

I think I will, if I will only keep moving

Embrace

Embrace

I am not your savior for the day

Nor am I an expert in anything

All of these experts

I hear the future laughing at them

“Those thoughts are ridiculous!

Everyone knows that isn’t so!”
I just don’t want to be there

I don’t want to be in that group

Known for not just it’s ignorance

But for it’s obstinate arrogance in it all

I also do not wish to be amongst the ones

Who refuse to believe anything at all

Just to not be wrong

I cannot waver between correct and not

Trying to avoid the extremes

I must take my stand

Yet so it seems

The most reliable foundation of them all

Is the foundation I cannot see or feel

Can this be so?
Can this be real?
Do I set my life on something that is so bizarre

Instead of the universal comfort in ritual?

I don’t know

I cannot think clearly with all this noise

People blabbering nothings

Phones playing videos 

The Facebook and Twitter accounts brimming

Over the edges of the known universe

The trolls and horrific tales scream the lies

So loud no one knows the truth anymore

But yet there I go on a rabbit trail

No rabbits have been along here for decades

Only wandering, mumbling schizophrenics

Looking for their next doses of medications

I look up toward the sun’s rotations

And wonder when the next wonder will be

Will I even be around to see it? To know it?

Or will I have fallen asleep in the murmurings of my questions?

It’s been a long time since I’ve use any punctuations

I think that is a great sign

A sign I’m beginning to pause

A sign I’m beginning to pause and ponder the purpose of it all

A sign that I’m ready for the borderlines of an embrace