Absolution’s Font
Await the zenith of the sun,
across the clay-courtyard beckoning;
barefoot I walked, heartstring undone;
Oh Lord, there’s love, no reckoning.
A soundless clarion of tears fall
toward absolution’s bright blessing;
within the domed sabil I call;
Oh Lord, there’s love, no reckoning.
The fountain’s dry, but not my eyes,
sounds of grace rebound, soft staying,
Amazing Grace sang such as I;
Oh Lord, there’s love, no reckoning.
We are but one beneath the sun
for all our fears and wandering;
all creation our companion;
Oh Lord, there’s love, no reckoning.
Let spirit rise on minaret
and phantom penitents come hieing;
all is well, we are God’s get.
Oh Lord, there’s love, no reckoning.
Amen Ra
The sunrise was like a fertilized egg
golden of yolk and flecked with blood;
it crowed to the mist-filled morn.
It ran over the hillside frying the vegetation.
The brilliant white albumen flowed
into the vague gray day.
The egg itself blushed at the flattery
extending pseudo pods of white
like rays outward against
the steel gray of the frying pan;
it’s yolk congealed a burgeoning
the celestial eye of Ra.
Boxed In
The crowded airport terminal writhes
an ant hill of humanity.
All the shades of man, present,
accounted for.
The biting winter air brash with cold,
kept at bay by layers of thick glass.
We, specimens unwarmed
by the magnifying rays of celestial eye.
Within the buildings metal, exoskeleton;
we travelers, corporeal, flow fluidly
or hunker down like scar tissue,
swallowed whole
by wanderlust.
Through parting doors with electric eyes;
we pace within conduits; we perch
like the trapped sparrows swooping
floor-ward, we peck at
French fries
and sip at fountains.
Mothers, fathers, children all
pick at their morning meals.
Their human clumsiness making
the sparrows forays seem dainty.
And amidst the white florescent lights;
babies sleep.
Riot in the Third World
The Sunday evening was balmy.
There was gunfire in the streets
but the mosquitos were undaunted
in their persistence at reaching exposed flesh.
The old monastery had no glass or screens
to block the violence of sounds large or small.
The prayer flags of red, yellow, white, and blue,
hung lifeless from the peach stucco eaves
to the locked gate. Sleep seemed impossible.
Dinner was boiled to death
microbes of discontent apparent in the
open drains which wove through the pristine garden.
The monks, long gone now, left remnants
of themselves in the incense coated plaster.
Peace sought here was not found.
In this school for westerners English
was the binding force, the net which captured
the capitalistic dollar, the font unhindered
by even civil war, pilgrims huddled.
Raised on the pap of male supremacy
the diminutive men taught, as village women
washed the floors, the pots, the laundry from first light
to deep dark, war did not stop the drudgery.
Where they slept was unknown to us.
Monday arrived and the riots ended on cue.
Tourists again were permitted
in the crawling, dust clouded streets,
to vie for a path, a way, to the burgeoning shops,
through the alleys full of begging children,
past the hanging haunches of the butcher
and the rare bird vendors,
Westerners walked bare armed, sari-less
exposed, unrepentant, rude, striding
as if they owned the world.