questions of self

is it too early
to ask for my own pardon,
to inquire about the manner
in which i may meet myself
anew, perhaps with new shoes,
or less words, a brighter flame,
or even a definition
of my indefinite?

there are sad excuses for
wayward words, for
mistimed withdrawals and
for deliberate misunderstanding.
it is true i never loved the barber
yet sought the shears with which
to cut away the ivy
of my cluttered head.

not much has happened that went
unnoticed by those who matter
or do not matter. everywhere i am
i encounter myself in others
or in their words and actions.
therefore, when they seek to erase my name
or sing my praises i must forgive them
for not knowing me, for not knowing
i have been foolish the entire time.

what have i done? what did these hands
do, if not spell out the exact nature
of my folly? what purpose did they fulfill
by penning these forlorn pages
where the evidence of a forgotten sea
waits to be buried?

for my part i am resigned
to never taking myself as seriously
as i present in these pages.

i too am a fool and a clown,
clumsy with words.

just a gray day in spring

give me this sea, this placid longing
through a sad and sinking window,
allow me the currency of the present curtain
of gray fabrics drawn against the sun.

the window of spring has shut,
and i am pushed into a misty
form that is formless. tiny needles
of rain shatter the surface of the sea.
she is a refracted mirror too tired
to stir her appendages, unable
to walk or swim.

so it is i, eyes and ears and heart
afire, looking, listening, feeling my way
through a topsy-turvy season,
witnessing footprints, watching them
recede. i cannot find
the precision of my path
amid such shifting shores.

i have seen it all before.
this is my home, my cradle
and my grave.
i greet this gray curtain
with a steady hand, parting
the liquid illusion, seeking
evidence of blue, gold, green,
or just a falling feather.

a prayer

give me this day my daily bread:
sunlight crisp and unclouded,
the laughter of my mirrored offspring,
frog song and owl speech at night,
the sleeping logs aglow with warmth,
pen and page, cedar and sage,
another day to age, to grow and die into,
the jazz of this musical planet,
a whirling tail of canine fluff,
oh wine and wonder!

is it for this that i live and suffer to live
until the suffering is but the rose of spring's thorn?

cast me into the sea and sing like the moon,
grant for me this companionship with all things,
one to break bread with, or two or three,
until the blessings cannot be counted,
until i may find peace, a piece of cake
so i may eat it too.

the ex factor

excerpt from the extirpated:
expectations can be excessive,
like baggage unaccepted and excised.
i expect that i must inspect
those expectations in order to extricate
myself from having to exhume my heart
after exonerated reality exits its hidden dimension,
exerting pressure on existence excommunicated.
i expect to expel expectations from my existence,
though i expect exceptions to the rule,
ex post facto.

retreat

and after all of that, after all that
worrisome wonder, all that trepidation
and torment over what to do with my feeling heart,
after all that confusion i set myself
apart from the world, from the sullen days
and hesitant nights, i flee from the memories of the women
who once fluttered before my eyes,
feathered and fanciful. i run and dive
into the wine, into dreams, self and home;
i retreat toward the sound of the drums
and with the moving fire, seeking root and stone,
hounding the trail of blood in the sun,
swimming, swimming to shore.

i need to understand only my own dark wing,
the soil of my native bone, the stain of soil
on my hands; i need only to find myself
standing with my face to sea, still,
in stillness.

new old moon

this moon is new, once again.
she's so old.
she's been up there
the entire time, aging,
growing ancient,
being reborn to our monthly lives.

is she dead?
does she look down on us
with cold dead eyes,
feeling the frost of space,
of time, dictating
her diction of the tides
from beyond her grave?

is she alive but silent,
motionless, mute witness
to the terror of love and war,
weeping silver tears,
constantly rebirthing herself
through the world's women?

all i know is she falls into the sea
on cloudless nights, disappearing
whenever i need to reinvent myself.
she beckons me whenever i am
at my limits, overflowing with light,
with darkly muted light,
lifted to dreams and forever
searching for her hidden heart,
needing to understand myself.

some sadness passes

well, it is what it is, what it was.
i have traveled many roads,
through endless countries with or without borders,
through treeless forests and tired mountains,
airports full of passengers without direction.
i have moved ceaselessly,
always trying on new hats, washing and rewashing
the linens of my life, searching, perhaps
finding some semblance of home, of peace.

from sadness to sadness i have gone, finding
bones of death and the flowers of dark despair,
learning of children's ribcages and empty bellies,
gathering tears, harvesting salt and tears and
wave after wave of tears: the falling rain of the dead,
the dying and the living dead: those victims
of freedom that my country seeks to kill
and kill again, to eat but not consume.

i have seen this, i have seen the forlorn lover
whose fist strikes a blind wall and whose bones
break like an endless ocean with its furious duty
of shattered shores. i have seen  the damage done
by simple misunderstanding, by not understanding
what love is.

the sadness of this world flies like an invasive wind,
fully encompassing us, feeding us strange fruit,
feeding upon us, inventing new words for itself,
for fear, for despair, for silence, and for spring.

i reject it all, i sing the names of the dead,
those i know and those i never knew,
could never know. i remember for what reason
love brings its vengeful sword down
upon the oppressed, inventing new words for hope.

muse in the wine

muse sings in the wine:
musings in the wine:
singing vines and divine
pressing of grapes brings
mating of mutual lips,
inescapable like unity.

wine is the poet's companion,
the muse at the table, breaking bread
and silence, sips of bliss to sink into,
to spill ink onto pen tips, toes in sands
of time spelled out to rhyme, singing,
singing, rhythmic catharsis part of this
dance cadence dressed in bird feathers:
word tethers: noun and verb now tied
in time, wed to space, placed upon a pedestal.

call it pedestrian poetry.

wine,
you do this to me.
amuse me, oh muse,
use me, produce for me
purple, burgundy, velvet,
introduce me
to your curve in the glass.
stain me with your ink,
let me drink and i will sink
into that place
where i do not think,
where it is only you
who speaks,
sings what i merely dream.

remembering/forgetting

days of hunger, days of appetite's absence,
days of labor and long naps
that arrive nowhere:
where do you depart to when
the singing of frogs arise,
cutting the night's density
like a thousand little saws
preparing the lumber of tomorrow?

i am a carpenter shopping for fish,
a fisherman netting hours,
laboring like a farmer planting time,
harvesting the rays of sun and threshing
the wheat of golden seasons.

i am accustomed to these rituals of passage.

i awake and set forth each day,
winding the clock and tracking the sky,
measuring each cloud and finding
only birds with feathers of rain.

what has happened?
did we live only to go on dying?
did we yearn to forget so much
we left our luggage on the platform
and boarded the wrong train,
leaving behind an empty station?

maybe we no longer understand ourselves,
with our barbaric words and science of extinction.

and so the heart wills itself
onward, pulsing its heat and current,
always wanting us to listen and hear, to understand,
to cease the damage of wearisome words,
to forget the newspapers, the sidewalks,
the steel towers and the unreachable palace,
to forget the dwindling past that kills us
like a suffocating shadow, to seek our voice
in rambling rivers, renewing our song
as spring is overrun by frogs.

we need to sit at the edge of the sea
and beg for our own forgiveness,
to cast the stones of forgetfulness
into the empty sea.