Four Stems

Orion hunts under the moon --
everything is alive
i see


--


illusion of the door closing in the dark
a play of shadows on the black mirror
in the dusk room      my lover's camera


--


a hundred crows    cawing maccabre
in the haunted blue dawn --
puddles trap the echo    wings cut the fog,
wires sag    beneath the black bodies


--


bone thin boys in a dim garage --
   "hold on,
       i lost my phone in my hair"

Three Poems Found Between Sleep + Awake

my heart   warm expanding
spinning beat spills
from my left breast   like a Navajo sunrise.

--

you strange nymph --
because you are so,
i don't mind
  that i may hold you   for only a moment.
you appear in the shimmering nowhere of my dream,
and there you will have or resist me.

--

against the white noise of rain    i see
your eyes fixed on mine
like a challenge   or a promise   or a question...
yes, questions many and true --
i find in this deepest cave
          burning opal.

"the dancing shadows"

i welcome the delusions' arrival --
they may not be fought:
the more you resist, the more
they erode the edges
of your mind,
those precious precipices.
so i welcome them.

(Pilate's wife preaching   at me,
 while i carefully unbind
      Leaves of Grass
 and plant the folded pages
                         in her garden.)

my existence
my perception of   self
has been grotesquely magnified:
   i am too much within myself
   i have no thought but
       "thought" itself,
               no feeling but
       "sense" itself.
i AM Thought,
  the feverish kaleidoscopic shifting of
                                       my identity,
                                the mode   of being,
                                          even,
  has burned away all superfluous "personality."
this,
  the torturous opposite of samadhi:
         perfect knowledge    of the Ego Fraud, of maya,
         but the immense
              consuming
           disconnect   with the Real.

meanwhile
  the gentle hum    of angels' voice
  kisses my ringing ears --
    i know they protect me
    as i lay in this bed
    and struggle against the visions
    that threaten to snuff out my breath.

surely i have found that ancient portal,
          visited by prophets alone,
    between our world and
           the Eternal Desert of Good and Evil --
    for in our world,
           there is only        Chance.
    and the prophets,
           returning from that monstrous Desert
                                through the blazing ether,
           are misunderstood
    and the people
           begin to see the dancing shadows
                         of angelic things, demonic
                                                            things
                 coloring the surface of their intentions.

"God's tide of light" / "life is..."

God's tide of light
so sweetly sweeping from the West --
already the canvas prepared,
mountains and valleys and islands
of deepest blue and gray.
the waxing light
washing the ceiling above this busy town --
waves of people with backs to the sky,
this promise,
like that to the sparrows,
of Eternal Love.

--

life is too beautiful!
  too fragile, too trivial,
  too meaningless and meaningful!
may i die only in a moment
  when i am alive with the world,
  whether in ecstasy or sorrow.

Permanence

(kingdom)

(sky)

(fire sky and silhouette)

(self portrait VI)

(trees)

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Impermanence

(clouds)

(fire)

(self portrait V)

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