THIS STREET
This warm wide street
murders the infant ice.
It carries benefit and debt
from Perdition to Paradise.
It’s walked by gamblers and planners,
sharers of a barrel
or a quarrel.
Perceived to be staid
by beseechers and besiegers
looking for worship or a war,
by flatterers, benefactors,
prophets, and the perfidious–
it’s radical and erratic,
as wild as a wave.
PHASES
1
The horned owl would hunt at night.
I watched it from an egg,
blinked
and couldn’t find its flight.
Worried that it went extinct,
unable to sleep, I mourned
until I found, faint, its horns.
2
Fishes glimmer in the nets
spread across the deep.
Trapped, they surrender to death
in their cold, dark, and cramped keep.
But, oh! What schools they inspired;
when stars spawned, no one higher.
3
The orange on the sky tree
is burnished like polished brass
trumpeting Eternity’s
emergence from a dark past.
How sweetly that orange glows
all today and tomorrow.
ROSES OR LOTUS, LINE AND POLE
My self lives with several selves
that confront, ignore, cooperate.
Sometimes the Army of Roses quelled
rivals with promises of passion.
The Lotus Ashram would dominate
through its acceptance of inaction.
Or I’d be the weathered bosun’s mate
on discovery from Line to Pole.
I oscillated from soul to soul.
I joined that Army but deserted
when I learned passion had gone awol.
Alas, when romance eluded me
I tried the Ashram to forget it.
I got to Bali and Moosonee
but then got strapped to mast, unshirted.
Now content, selves meld with line and pole.
BESTIALITY
White teeth
I mourn–
they’re shorn
like sheep–
and bones
grown limp
like shrimp
and prawns.
My thumb,
adrift,
a skiff
of chum;
my tongue,
threatened
vegan
dugong.
The knees
wobble
and stall
like bees,
and toes
crackle,
rattle
like crows.
The heart
quivers,
shivers–
tense hart.
A MAN’S MOTIVATION, EXCUSE, AND RULE
An idea, an acre,
an ounce, an inch of skin–
a man’s motivation
for mayhem may be quite thin.
By fiat, by fire, by fist,
by bullet, or by blade–
a man’s excuse and rule
can be tradition or trade,
opportunity or lust,
inspiration, or luck.
A try will lose, will triumph
through cowardice, through pluck.