back
home
13 August, 1972
Where are those words,
The living words
That promote life and growing?
They are not here,
For here love is a wasteland,
Emotion dry as the sand
Silent as the rocks.
I therefore turn my back on it
And, outfitting an expedition,
I am leaving to explore
The far reaches of my world,
Still unexplored,
To find what I may
And to begin at last
The mining of the endless
Treasures of Myland.
Some will be yours.
Much could be yours.
Some cannot be yours.
3 October, 1972
Paper, shreds. Patterns. Falling shreds.
Shreds falling.
Aching voice. Failing. Seen image.
Twice seen. Twice felt.
Deaf eye whirling, trailing symbols on a sea of energy
Wave up. Wave down.
My mouth a thin line. I dream.
I dream awake.
Live and dream in the wake of thoughts.
Of disaster. Of terrors.
Floored by ceilings.
Dream retoucher.
Life distiller.
April menace treats
To frustration....
Aberration.
Star or cone in panic.
Dry wrath.
My wreath of cinders.
8 October, 1972
I held out my old heart to thee
A time I felt the heat to flee
Or dark sludge roiling
The edges of space, and answer
None but lookaway;
Then I peered down the
Long tunnel of love
For a light, for a sign
And found a turning upon itself,
A circle of deliberate mystery
Dressed in sparkling gems
To lead my heart on to its theft,
And drew back with what was left.
October 24, 1972
Mother of salt ___ and misery,
Upturned tears and sight;
Death mother ___ cryptic engineer,
Swallow your sallowness
In words and indeeds
Purifying the pain and struggle
With heart and meaning.
Death mother ___ come down
Off the cross and doublecross
Over the block-walled
Fortress of lies and death
Into the light
You seem blind to see.
Mother of pain and chains ___
Scoop out your reluctance
--- A pregnant bellyful ---,
Hang it saclike over the sun,
And pave the skies
With past and future
Blood and fury.
Mother of writhe and twist ---
Lie it all down
On the crystal slab....
Here now we bloom beyond the fact
And truth settles round our wings,
A lute plays our thoughts,
And home is sweet and exhilarating.
24 March, 1973
April sings of tomorrow
And gold edged leaves beckon,
It seems,
To a promise of joy
Here and now and me.
The delicate breeze touches my leg,
A wisp of motion
Stirring the glory of being alive.
The world blanketed in a home of sunlight.
1 April, 1973
Late-arriving, home at ease,
Social whirl in the past,
Native sense dictates a clean slate.
Tracing the path of genesis
Proves a galactic trek
10
For 7 league boots
In the barest nano-second.
Name in the beginning
Lest we forget is Consideration:
Taped to the post that is polar.
15 April, 1973
Spare me your embarrassed spare ribs
And grinning dry skull,
Your dripping haunches on the spit.
I should like to dine in peace,
Content with the content of my pipe dreams.
Oh, do not prod me with your prickling conscience,
A harpy that irks you as much
As your pickled liver.
Have you not had enough of justice?
Of spilling woe and bitter struggle?
Of plastic hopes?
Of lies and mirages?
Let my digestion proceed
Without your whining
That "they" have done you in,
That you could succeed "if only...."
Take a look. It ain't.
I will enjoy this roast
And this wine
Whether you let me or not.
6 May, 1973
I muse often of home and hill,
Hearth and crest,
Swell of sea, of heart, of quartet.
Knowing the increase of exchange
And the swing of time
As a Bachian harpsichord
Competing with discourses on the state of music;
As a Rembrantian vista
Competing with posturing dictators of taste;
As a Shakespearean staging
Competing with drooling electronics of waste;
As a Michaelangeloian stanza in marble
Competing with the pretended knowledge of chatter.
I muse often how they pass here and fro
And across the great circle of mass,
Always still and returning,
Always a little beyond
Our chosen view,
Placed there by our unseen hand.
A glance, a thing.
A home, a wing.
A breeze, a star.
A word afar.
Follow the clues by looking.
See what is there.
The clues are not it.
The clues do not lead to it.
The looking is not it.
The looker is it.
It is you.
You is it.
25 March, 1973
Space over my head,
I languish timidly in Coventry,
Total rest nudging but apart.
Do I drift slowly on thoughts
To a planet of a star
In another ruined dimension?
I place the lens of paternalism
On the tossed bedclothes,
Walk to the windows
And onto the balcony of Time.
Her undulating etching
Shows me radiant flowers
That expand the sea
to the horizon of their scent.
Surrounding surf unhinges
The locked door to stillness
As I flow monofilamentlike
Through the pinhole of decision,
Sowing the universe with
Fresh realization.
13 May, 1973
I sit waiting for a design of words,
arpeggio of ideas,
to approach;
I toy with effort
and with apathy;
Then I become able to form
or let dissolve
Whatever formal ecstasies
sprout unwarned in the seedbed
of mind,
the universe of home,
the ache of paper to pen.
Plain as a mustard jar,
Elements dance and reform
Losing and regaining places
Theirs and not theirs,
All part of the larger composition
Unseen, perhaps, to them.
Life gives....
Viewpoint gives....
The twig the grandeur
Of the galaxy,
And the star the flatness
Of the mustard jar,
While time in space in time twirls on.
7 August, 1973
Over the cities on the plain and hills
Float the billows of truth
--- my friends.
Each day sees this presentation,
And if we wallow in stupidity,
If we wade up to here
In the sludge of our future past,
Then we look seemingly the other way,
To the hills of falsity,
To the mountains of lies
And quaking deceits.
Each day sees this presentation,
And if we let our gaze graze
On the mellow meadows there
Reaching certainly, knowingly,
As we be, soaring in our now,
Then we approach the sea of knowledge,
The sky of Light and Life
ÄÄThe glowing largeness
That is ours.
20 October, 1978
The sun of life is shining its bright cool light
On uplifted faces eagerly gazing from today into tomorrow,
As in a mirror reflecting their dreams come true,
And unfogged by shadows of yesterday.
Clear bright forms and spaces await there;
Await the billowing sails of the navigators of infinity,
Who, no longer asphyxiated by the past,
Inhale deeply of the gale of knowledge,
And breathe out whole forests of inspired creation
As stepping-stones for those who will follow.
12 August, 1980
"ZERO"
I stare in stunned horror,
Lashed to the mast of Unbelief
As it sails past the realm of Polyphemus.
It was <I> who created
That dark, menacing Ogre, my nemesis,
That now stands between me and life??
But am I not life itself?
How could any mere creation of mine
Stand between myself and my self?
How indeed? - Yet there it stands,
Bullying, threatening, robbing my future, my joy.
It sucks my life like a tornado vampire,
Piercing my neck and head.
Swarming the frenzied harpies of my senses,
Blanketing my awareness with darkness and sleep.
It patiently tears me apart with panic and uncertainty.
When I attempt to face it, sternly determined,
It turns its force, blind force, upon me.
Like an elephant plodding up a mountain,
It gradually presses its crushing weight onto me
Until I surrender to its unarguable persuasion.
And <I> created this parasite
That murders my future and thus me,
Using my own power of life,
My own substance, to destroy us?
WHY? Is life so dull
That I crave dying to relieve the boredom?
WHY? Am I so evil
That I need my happiness policed?
WHY? Am I so stupid
That I need a zombie brain trust?
Let me hazard a "no" to that.
But if I face it
Will it kill me and die
Before I kill it and live?
Will I rob back the holy powers
It bestows in disguise
Until I have all I need, and all it needed
To make a fool and a mouse of myself?
There is yet a chance for me
If I have a pure heart and will the one thing.
22 Sept. 68
One father loving daughter loving mother
Would bring no less than the home of stars to lunch.
The simple one-a-day considerations magnified/solidified
Make the first tiny gesture of all-reach familiar and painful.
The hoped-for care is a blooming sun of life for life.
The missing ingredient searches for the missing ingredient
And the labors of Hercules are unequal
To the struggle of circular non-confront.
When the universe is a mouthful of food only,
Or an ached-for unspoken word,
We taste bitter salt-sand in stopped time,
And hear the thudding roar of the monster past
Colliding with the freefall future now.
Adam's children for seventy-five million years
Have tried to redecorate the nursery in a burning house;
The baby stopped crying long ago.
Only life creates death and reduces itself
To the pinpoint of dizzying suffering and dismay.
Only life has all time to wait or grope
For an other-caused flash of "Truth".
Only life makes or not the mouths to be fed or not fed,
And feeds or fails to feed. And life is not Other.
Not Other. Only life can be total effect of Other....
And creator of Other. Only life can be less
than bird droppings and more than infinite.
Quod erat demonstrandum.
Qui va l ? *
*[Note Dec. 1998: Incorrect Spanish; I don't know what
I was trying to say.]
Nov. 17, 1968
Brother called brother and heard
No voice but the wind, and thinking he had no reply,
Anxiously cried, "Brother where are you?"
And the wind answered, "I am here."
"Ah!" despaired the first, "My brother, if it is you,
That is not the form I desire to see you in.
Can you not be as the brother I am accustomed to?"
"Yes I can." said the wind, and breathed warm and cool on his face,
Peered clearly at him, ruffled his hair,
Threw him a mist of tears, whirled for a moment
As a small cyclone, sang in the shrubs,
And without warning, disappeared.
All was still, and the first brother
Screamed in grief and terror,
"Where have you gone?!"
"Nowhere new..."
October 13, 1968
A word of poetry does not leave one in the dark
But lights the sky of knowing beyond time + space.
I have received the colors and words and know the full depth
of a child's drawing
And a mother's puzzlement. Speak for yourself!
Where are the spare dollars of sand-filled Zechariah?
What the school teaches is beyond what they teach
And not what they want to teach if schools could want.
The featherless sun, bursting over and around you,
Could not touch you without your earliest agreement.
And so it is, the endlessly tremendous touching of feelings
Flows and flows to child ancestor of man,
Without proof, but knowing and young understanding.
To <you> being pulled as a pilgrim gambler
These symbols are addressed, not the swirling,
Fire and ice cage we oddly call life,
And they snap! right through to <you>. There!
Thank you.
We will all win, and each is not lost
From the other.
October 19, 1968
Hark! The sky is falling, in bunches round our feet!
Small pink and green frogs gobble it up,
And turn to princes and princesses,
Reigning over their vast kingdoms and little problems
With a strong and loving hand.
We are skipping through its drifts on the ground,
As if kicking the gold leaves of autumn,
Not missing the breeze-stirred flower petal,
Or the grinding masses of this universe.
A spider's web rings in the pool of our eye,
Symbol in crystal clear drops of a nearer vision.
Shake hands with the grass,
Gather yellow pearls from the tongue-ends of rabbits
And sow them in the meadow of recognition.
October 27, 1968
I saw two raccoons trotting up a long wood stairway
With both my eyes.
I saw a wet half-moon halfway up the sky
In a mixed-up morning-evening around the window shade.
I saw with one eye around the next corner
The open door to half-held, now lost grandeur.
I saw the finish of a lengthy period of desolation
For a people only now beginning to be stirred.
I see the sun, after much tugging, is beginning to light the sky
After the long Arctic night of Man.
I have seen, in the last two weeks,
People whom I never expected to see again,
And glimpses of others.
Nov. 17, 1968
Reading of golden glittering glaciers in far worlds
Leads some to believe that their dripping nose
Conceals some vast beauty of majesty
And that healing the nose precedes
The witnessing of the mysterious glories
Heard and read of. The Answer to that
Must drift off into mumbled obscurities
Resembling the cart before the horse.
True but not so simple because the attention
On the nose drip is not on the beauty
And that sometimes appears to be that.
Finally the question arises: Is it worth it?
Presidents fail to answer it, unaware of having noses,
And pursued by old, old crimes, solved by new ones.
The chase and question has watered the desert
With the tears of a million Popes,
Never the wiser for all the salt.
Yet for answer try this: If "no", there is nothing;
If "yes", there is something. Hint: much.
January 12, 1969
Curlew reacheth, curiously compensating for the granular
By snipping abundantly at the ground,
Old seaweed lazily touching his toe.
To the swinging limb of a lasting oak
He cocks an eye to note possible menace.
I know not the thoughts he may not think,
Or whether he perceives him the passing pageant,
Or is only part of it, unknowing, uncaring.
There is minor profit in the penetration <at> this point
Of that particular preterprolixic twaddle.
Unasked,
T. S œ *
*[?]
17 Sept. 1970
Still the ear and still the struggle,
Turn it in, turn it in.
Who then, can win
Belly-up drifting with plush night with which to snuggle?
This madhouse which passes for a planet,
(So far as the inmates are concerned)
In the brackish backwaters of the stars
Holds no hope to escape the scars
(So far as the keepers were concerned)
And swoop away, a sea-bright gannet.
"The Kingdom of God" is within us still
And we must exorcise it,
Vanish it whirl by whit
While we have this instant to strike our will.
What we cannot confront
Is that "things" can really be that bad,
That this is Hell and we are mad;
History an apathetic grunt.
So here we lie and befoul our nest,
Our Eden continue to Iscariotize
And gaping, fail (perhaps) to realize
The open door and the eminent guest.
How many know that our undoing is our own doing?
We underestimate the incredible depth of our "Fall".
We know not who we are, and so we stall,
Indeed know not even that we <are>, for all our stewing.
1 Feb. 90
See in my hand this ball of fire
Seething, churning Universe
Untimed watch-fob
Useful perhaps, once
To the timeless timer
And in convenient agreement of consecutivity.
The Gordian Knot tighter tied after Alexander cut it.
We at a glance tie and untie it gentle as mist
And tough as double-tigers
Ripping feathered flesh into windless snowfall.
(And back).
21 Sept. 69
Prince of light, carrion-creepers crowd thy shadow
With no-self. Death screamer cares not a flip
For home and turns every eye away. "Let them circle
And run in wilder turns, heavier and more shattered daily."
Kingless throne of blackness, bleak terminal-echo
Stealing by distraction what cannot be lost.
Rise up now, feathered cloak around thee and
Join a tidal wave of thine own growth.