OUR PLACE IN SPACE


Our egg and our girdle – from our toelines to stars’ beyonds,

edgeless sky occupies. Continents and constellations

indicate sky’s compass points in all directions.

Here, and there, it corrals our air. Sky’s only brake is our imagination:

We house our deities in this infinite bubble, map every manifestation

of this cosmic envelope. We extract our character and extort destinies

through constant observation, keen ingenuity, endless speculation

as we contemplate wonderingly at sky’s progress and creation.


AMERICSSON


Whores parade their hymens

and diplomats their swords.

Priests display their diamonds.


With confusion since birth

futures ignore their pasts.


Cowards hang their medals

and gluttons wear their fasts.


The sugar tastes bitter

from the sweat of the slaves.


All the stones and banners

can't cover all the graves.


The lame think they're dancers.

The blind behave like seers.

The deaf play musician.


Hiding behind paved mirrors,

the meek show ambition.


Our clear insight is blurred.



O NIGHT, THE DOMAIN OF OUR DREAMS


The full world by day

is a speckled shade,

but colors at night

all coordinate.


Our humanity

claims its sanity’s

enshrined in marble

but held together

by spirit and breath,

yet we live in dust

and we choose to starve

amidst much rich stock.


Only dark’s tattoo

clears checkered shadows.


THE SINS OF POETS AND PASTORS


When preachers and poets exercise

our metaphorical rhetoric

we much prefer the dramatic

--the pitchfork of lightning--

above the anticlimactic

--a blanket of sunshine.

The wrinkled and crippled shall arise

sooner than the smooth and the spry.

The salve is shadowed by the sting,

and Found, by Wandering.

The tornado and the torrent

and the volcano’s ring

are prized beyond plastic ornaments.

We tend to the tortured and the tried.


TELL ME. ARE YOU SURE?


I wonder if once half our limbs were wings, like a fowl,

or if they all had thumbs once. Or is that only now?

The asker wants to know.

Do we see us in mirrors, or need a fluoroscope?

Are lovers on the level or are they on a slope?

This doubter wants to know.

Was Tigris always Tigris or once was it Paradise?

Was Jesus a carpenter or always just a christ?

This skeptic wants to know.

Are the answers on the internet? Or in ourselves?

Or should I communicate with oracles and elves?

This searcher wants to know.

We learn through maturity? But ages are cages….

Or from these ancient books of fingered, faded pages?

Don’t we all want to know?



QUANDARY



Flatter me – Do I receive or repeat?

With contempt or reciprocity?


THE PROCESS


My appetite

is my engine.


I transubstantiate

the wine of night

to morning wind,

body to pulsed headache state.

And I might write

undisciplined

doggerel to celebrate.


I eat that shite.

I take it in

and digest it. I translate

rails into kites

and doubt to djinn;

vomit; and hope it pulsates.