Tuesday, November 25, 2008

The onlookers

gawked at him as he set up 
the tattered display (the one
with the frayed posters)
and began in earnest.
Words flooded from him in
Mississippian volume, lapping up
the sandbags that guarded his
bemused audience.
He then flung buckets 
of explosively colored paint 
in all directions, like a canine
dadaist shaking off 
the wet remains
of the Louvre. 
The Pollockized watchers  blinked 
in unanimous bafflement.
He paced and ranted, reciting
every line he could remember,
punctuating his thespian odds and ends
with St. Vitus dances of abandonment.
He sent up acrid smoke signals;
he bashed log drums with mad delight;
he fired multiple flares 
into the puzzled sky,
ululating all the while,
and for the big finish, he stylishly
severed a non-essential toe.
Drenched and gasping, lying in
spent prostration, he said,
"well?"
A voice replied,
"could we see that again?"

Sunday, November 23, 2008

Three Haikus (Shichi)

Motionless I sit
contemplating unreal dreams;
the wan future shrugs.

Swirling ghosts grimace;
I laugh at their countenance.
Their faces dissolve.

Blessings fall quickly,
the waiting land shares their joy;
verdant smiles respond.



It is now merely

a shadow imprint,
a blind-sided image fixed indelibly
on a ruined wall.
Was it ever more
than two absurd dimensions,
and two absurd people,
proclaiming endless fealty
and devotion
while all the while
Fat Man
was getting ready
to party?



Saturday, November 22, 2008

She waits for the world

to pass away from her patient
endurance, and sets her eyes
to a time beyond time,
and a place beyond self,
where the wearying
ordinary trials
of entangled lives
can no longer hold imperium
over her.
She yearns for the
Presence which speaks to her
in a soundless voice,
engulfing her in the ecstasy
of solitary Oneness,
and freeing her at last
from the tyranny of hours
and the stale trivia
of tomorrow.
She will be dissolved in its
ineffable Truth,
and her coarse body
will have no more import
than a cottony 
seedling 
cast away
on an anonymous
midsummer afternoon.



Thursday, November 20, 2008

Soft specters

visit him at night,
curling up next to him
in unutterably tender,
yielding love,
needing nothing
but his warmly proffered
nearness, 
and never failing to
speak to him
in voiceless words,
expressing all with
an easy sigh of
contentment,
happy to let him have
dominion over
the tiny kingdom
of the welcoming bed.



Tuesday, November 18, 2008

It stood before him

both invisible
and impervious.
He had bloodied himself
countless times
in mad
rushes up its quietly murderous
slopes. 
On every occasion
he had ended up 
dazed and shredded
at its indifferent foot,
a spent, dejected knot
of confused, helpless
bewilderment.
The dried remains of his 
tiny assaults had begun to
reveal tantalizing hints
about its true dimensions,
but he no longer had the
ability to rouse himself
for another Banzai charge;
it was easier just to make camp
and play dark music in the
waning light, opening
weary scars
once again.

Saturday, November 15, 2008

They moved through the frigid

landscape where they had slain
the life-giving ones
for more seasons than their
sacred tales could account.
Father North lashed them
more mercilessly than they had
ever had known;
huge offerings
were left at the side of
the trail in tiny, heart-drenched
bundles.
The lead men could see
the herd receding in the
distance, barely visible in the
dancing white sea that engulfed
them.
The elders quickly gathered,
and pointed eastward,
toward the future.
They would venture out onto the
endless ice, and follow
the prey
to the ends of an earth
they were sure
lay just past the farthest ridge
in the faceless
distance.



Friday, November 14, 2008

It wends its way

through the labyrinthine forest
and sings of its lost origins deep
in the cool remnants
of hot-blooded sensation.
Ruled by the giddy dictatorship
of sheer caprice, it bursts
through helpless walls of
accumulated yesterdays
like a tank round splintering
a log, waiting for its chance
to take its place
among the strange creatures
that have made their hurried debuts
on the wet stage
of the eternally receding 
now.

Friday, November 7, 2008

He could feel himself

unclenching, like a fist relaxing
after someone pulls the plug
on a simmering brawl.
He unfolded from his defensive
crouch,
and as he did the deflated demons
slid off his back in helpless
confusion, protesting feebly
in the morning light.
Breath filled his being once again
and the ossified seals on his
heart were sundered.
He stood, relieved,
silently contemplating a future
that once again seemed to him
filled with possibility, 
rather than the
grim decay of lost hope
and trembling dread.
And as he looked at the
youngest one, her toddler face
filled with pirate-like mischief,
his smile
became an easy laugh.