wine

red wine
crimson water
intoxicating blood
luscious lips of grapes
fluid of vines
sunlight's transmutation
kiss of tannic bliss
perfection of autumn
curved hips of a chalice
licking scents like sex
copulating fervent sips
trips to the moon
velvet coated tongues
under Dionysian influence
canticle of the fruit
budding passion
prayers of companionship
wash my woes away
keep my company
through the endless night

night

night
inversion of sun
mystery reigns
solitary
stars en masse
each one distant
solitary
mysterious

night
panorama of depth
darkness extends
eternal
reflection of eyes
wells to fall within
eternal
deep

night
immense shadow of earth
mirrors gaze
divinatory
prophecy of the past
returning to the present
light
shadowed

night
immersion in stillness
symphony of silence
contemplative
spirits walking about
secrets speaking truth
contemplative
silent

writing

blank rapture of divine rapport:
the word descends, pretends
to be inspiration, capture of sacred
breath, spirit inhaled,
pages impaled upon pens impregnating
trees with poetry, passing time with templates,
resemblance of life lifted to worship
through script.
blood fills drops like sips of wine,
like ink across these pages,
filling a crypt of trees,
words scripted
encrypted in semantic sentiment.

an old one

today i cannot write
as if words have gone south
wintering in unnamed poems
gathering feathers to adorn future pages
emotions flapping wings
following the sun
seeking the space
between
solitude
and
surrender

forever soil

not that i ever could understand it
but i found the place where the world ends,
where it begins again, where it becomes itself
in repetition, like some chromosome,
some clone of the unknown;
i held the crossroads in cupped hands
wet and aromatic with a strange mix
of decay and renewal,
just a handful of soil, ancestral dust
and flowing with fresh blood.
with just one handful of dirt
the world ended
and began anew.

the stains never leave, one can never wash
the evidence of time from the hands,
it only grows within you, should you
hold it.

time grows inward like roots
blood flows outward like perpetual birth,
and the soil builds, earth makes bones
from stones of solid blood, magnetic
and purposeful like being sunken.
the world ends and begins where i found it,
within my grasp, damp and rich,
basic and singular, a complex of the cosmos,
the cellular memory of millenia
unified in something as simple as soil,
soft and mother-like.

not that i really understand
but i found a fingerprint of forever,
the blood of something mysterious,
the memory of some distant fire.

music

there is nothing quite like this earth,
this music and symphony, polyphonic
cacophony of vegetal alphabets,
the harmonic phonics of trees that clap
and rain that shushes.
the wind is a conductor of circular rhythms,
one can hear the chorus of air
strumming notes with grassy strings,
water sings wave-like and awash with leaves
falling like scales from branched keys.
even the brave flowers of winter
punctuate this melody, the counterpoint
to a dance that is a step in incremental crescendo,
storms climactic and ecstatic, the acoustic tone
of an atmospheric audience, the audible
breath of this singing earth.

metaphors of metaforms

i must employ metaphor
to metaform my mind,
to go beyond the form of my life
i employ metaphor
of metaforms
forming my life,
this blood that moved, moves,
is moving my being,
this essence of me,
my birth-death reenactment,
this blood--holy--
wholly flowing my rivers of desire
firing my passion
and whipping my fury,
spilling blood in slow dense drops
fertilizing my soil
growing my seeds of renewal,
blood in exchange for blood:
i am scarred and torn
and blood is my medicine,
it is my sacrament of seasons.
i bleed inside
an ocean of salt and plasma,
i am a metaphor
for the sea.
i must hammer this blade
and sharpen its edge
to cut through my density
and offer my prayers
to my ancestors, to my destiny.
i am a sacrificial offering
to the sea
to the sun,
i am the blood of the present
cast by past sculptors:
ancestral hands that shaped this clay.
i must meta-form beyond my form,
cleanse this river
of stagnant salt,
i must employ metaphor
to go beyond myself
to plunge into the depths
of the sea,
bloody with rolling passionate waves-
intensity,
density that floats my bones.
i am sinking into form
beyond mineral
beyond bone
beyond flesh
i am floating in a sea of seasons
shifting into reasons rhyming
blood-moon timing.
i see the sea
reflected in the moon
and my blood is a tide
influenced by the confluence
of salt and water
bleeding life
breathing life
feeding life
as blood hangs in perpetual
thick drops
stopping only when it is time
to return this blood
to the origin story of the sea