Forging a Sacred Text

I would be a forger
of the highest
order & instruct
the flowers at the border
that these words come
straight from tongue
of God into my own.

My own tongue.
God & me, kissing
like that, His saliva
alive, oh, an ambrosia
of inspiration,
of spiritus, of word
breathed in my lung.

But these are only words.
Only mine.  No more
divine than blood.
Idea forged in reckoning
of holy wind, a Book
of Respiration breathed
into my breast.

Even pretense can
invigorate.  I am
as a preacher praising
to the flowers at the gate
a god who comes
& goes.  Like a lover
who we sometimes love
& sometimes hate,
a necessary fantasy
inspiring the sacred
lays that shape
the outline
of his sacred grace.

white party balloon bouncing on the sidewalk toward me downtown pdx 7-20-14

i have learned i want
to be happy here
at the middle of life's road.
the late middle.  who am i
kidding? upsettingly close
to the end.  i have learned
i want to be happy, that is
something.  something more
than before, when misery
seemed a sport, the body
so plastic & filled with juice
de vivre that happiness seemed
unseemly.  it's like this balloon
bouncing down the sidewalk on a breeze,
a cannonball careening through my ranks?
or just a balloon, its only meaning sorrow
for the kid who lost it, & pleasure
because it's pretty, even though
it's partly deflated, plain white,
a bit dirty.  it seems happy,
bouncing on the wind
before it pops.

lines written in anger at the imminent destruction of my planet

only beauty
& the tenderest
emotions give
me hope
that this
experiment
in sentience
might continue

there is no beauty
in your greed
no tenderness
in your grab
at the cloth
of green that cloaks
my land

you are a criminal
in my society
you
of the fire-spouting
arms

i will turn
away
from you
we all
will turn away
in our praise
of the poet
& the mother
& the lover
of the woods
for what
they are
& not
for what
they offer up
by way of profit
or commodity

we will be free
of the cruelty
of the choices
that you make
for us
& the only wrath
we'll feel
within our bones
will point
at you.

a poem is antimatter / manifesto

a poem is antimatter to an advertisement
a poem is antimatter to a sales pitch

the right poem can make capitalism explode

...................

this sequence of words:
a recombinant meme

...................

the word is used to sell bombs
& desire

the bodies that have burned to paste
no longer sing

a poem should be a sacred text
of tears

that speaks their story

.................

in the beginning we created the word

the word is of no import
if it does not lead to knowledge

knowledge is worthless
if it does not lead to wisdom

wisdom has no meaning
if it does not lead to love

untitled

as my vision fails the world
pixelates like japanese
pornography

eggs for eyes, cracked,
the life within cooked
to plastic yellow paste

moving through a gallery of rothko
color-fields, pieces of the world
lost to platonism

sensation remains -- the taste
of meat & milk, the warmth
of your garden on my skin

& still the sound of your voice

still

untitled

it was
air

clean
somewhere

carrying
words

to
your ear

summer song

another summer.  allergies worse
each year.  dear
persephone, you have returned.
triumph of the will
to life & all that.
i used to root for you
& your mum, the domineering
demeter.
those days are gone:
the stench of the violet
lays me low,
& i think wistfully
of hades
& the cold.

the wanderer

it is not fated that the wanderer will return.
the sinews of the coracle give way.
sometimes the wanderer disappears,
his heart-song smoothed by time

to the seagull's metronomic cry.

rape & plastic

once in a forest
where the fungus spirit spoke

we flexed our language
& lifted up new gods

we fashioned beadwork
that brought out mischief
in each other's eyes

our currency fit in our hand
a sharpened stick
a piece of bone

......................

we still live
in an actual world

but abstract languages permit
its blithe immolation

patterns of brain writhe
at separation from our other selves

our fingers now are numb
we feel nothing but
rape &
plastic

antiquated lays

the flowers of that time have bloomed & gone.
the sounds of color fade to this deaf eye.

i, an old troubadour, chant courtly lays
in recognition of an unrequited life.