& AFAR

far (and away we go
and a how we are)
away from here my dear
you are, and near
to me you seemed to be
so recently (it had to be)
there you are
(so near so far)
and here I am
so far (from near)
away from you
(my dear so near) my heart
(and a how we go)
and away we are

AFTER PRAYER

silence settles
in its tendrils
the displacing
effect reveals
certain city
sounds that
are constant
in this era of
spinning rubber
tires against
asphalt or
the variant
hums of cars
propelling them
a jack-hammer here
and there drumming
in the distance as
sirens doppler by
and the very low
steady wish of
the wind

SEEING THROUGH A STONE

a partially eroded curved
fragment of a shell stuck
up along a ridge of fins

scooped a wind scoured
trail along a sinuous
path intertwined among

the braided roads of fate
linked to the rope bridge
supporting one's fears

over the underpassing
rivers of silt piling
up the layers of a life

gone under, the seeing
wall of a long remembered
assembly passed quietly along

MIRROR

When the wood
grain invites you in
do you dare oblige
or meet its stare
and realize that
you invited it
there first

When the woods
invite you in
maybe they're
sitting in your
parlour just to
warm their toes
by the fire

A fair trade
when you roast
off a hank of
that flesh do
you suppose whose
feet get dusted off
at the other's egress

When returning
from a campout
if a book is
missing from
your shelf,
now you
know why.

BRIGHTER EYES

Think about it. Think throughout it;
Think within it, think without it:
Most everything you've ever heard
Was from the lips of men.

Most everything you've ever read
Was penned by them alone.
Chances are you yourself are of the race of man.
The chance is great that what I write
You will not understand.
But have no fear, this tale is told
For others who may hold a secret deep inside,
And only they know the truth held within the lie,
And with time and understanding the lie will shed its skin
To free the dormant spirit that incubated long within.
And men will age and not grow wise
And lose this world to brighter eyes.

Legend has it we can see within the darkest cave,
But who has passed the legends down
From in between each grave?
And others claim that some of us have skin as black as night
And spirits that are evil, and hair that is snow white;
Just because they're legends, child,
Doesn't mean they're right.
But don't you weep or lose the shine born within your eyes–
Because they are just legends
You can see through their disguise,
And only you can see the truth hid well behind the lies.
Man will misinterpret everything until he dies.

Remember children, there is nothing that we have to hide,
For man has hidden it from himself
And seeks with vision blind.
So though it may be woven throughout this very verse,
All that man can do is rant and rave and curse
And laugh at all these words and think they are cliched–
While silent and nonplussed, truth shines within arrayed.
For man is just a creature trapped in paradox
While we walk freely through its realms
With the keys to all its locks.
Man is either kept imprisoned within one of two extremes–
And if lucky finds balances so brief they become dreams;
Or he's crushed within the grindstones shifting in between–
While the rest of us just live our dreams
By balancing extremes.

Of course it's true that in a way we can see in the dark;
Just how exactly dark it is becomes the curious part.
Look at them with torches lit, straining to improve sight.
The shadowglares just frighten them
And further mock their plight;
And in this corner of the world
I close my eyes to see the light.
So I suppose it's true, we can see in the dark,
Which they've confused with shadow
And therefore missed the mark.
For shadows throw patches of fear on the walls,
Illusory phantoms that hunt men down halls
And will stalk them forever in labyrinths lost
For the grimmest of fares–sanity's cost.

In a world that is mad and only a dream,
In echoes of sunlight and refractions of scream
We undrown through memory recollecting lost seeds
To harvest an anchor thrown out to the sky;
Motionless branches, remembering trees,
Roots freely breathing in mineral dreams;
Half of this passes straight through his eye
And he thinks he's seeing it all–
The biped has lifted his heart from the earth
Held his head high, and severed the contact
That once used to be a cherished embrace;
Now he's a walker of wastelands, imprisoned
And forced to support the divorce of his race
From his paradise lover as he treads on her face,
Wildly in search of her eyes that erase
As he scuffles and trods up the croplands to waste.

But enough about man, we know his ways.
It's not necessary to see through the haze
Or to smell his pollution and taste the hard rain
Or hear the cacophany and feel all the pain;
It is evident alone from the loss of one thing–
That last unnamed sense called the sixth has been slain;
Or stunted, at best, in the least of the race; or at least
They seem sparse in the worst light of space–
The one that they utilize too far in this place,
To come to decisions to jump at a ghost;
You know the one, suffused and
Diffusing in all concentrations,
Worshipped by many throughout all the nations,
Remembered by few and forgotten by most:
You know, the Sun...our holiest Host...

And this is the reason they have brighter eyes;
They know what they see, they do not disguise
Their bodies’ awareness with fear or with lies.
The stories out told about them aren't distorting
The truth you see, they're replacing it and kid
You're not the only one beginning to get the picture.
Skin that is ebony, blacker than pitch, hair that is whiter
Than wilderness snow, and cruelty that is fabled
Across history you know. The hush of a polar hillside
Holds their secret; if you hold a mirror to their name,
You get the word; if you read between the language
Of their game, you get the meaning. And they never
Stole the holy grail. Pretty soon you know,
They'll be accused of having ripped out people's eyes...!

Think the next time you listen, or read
The carefully cultivated, immaculate lies.
And balance your options, plant your own seeds,
And water the fruit that it breeds.
Tend your own garden and mend your own business
And careful... your steps are on stones
Where their owner feeds, for he has freedom
Of speech and freedom to press your bones
Into a printing machine that spits out
Certificates of ownership–deeds inked with your blood.
We leave our signature every where we've been.
There're signs of us in leaves out there you've seen.

And no matter what you believe, there is something
Outside that harbors us, protects us, loves us, preserves us
And seperates us into enclaves–each deserving its own fate;
Able or not, each to its own ability,
To transgress its own state.
And those whose eyes have drunk of the grail
And seen with vision clear, will fulfill their chosen
Destinies that they have held most dear.
And the rest in the end will be left without fire
While trapped in an endless galaxy...
While brighter eyes, between the frames,
Exist in actualized fantasy!

The moral in this cryptogram is equal to the curse–
It's up to every individual to tell the genuine from the worse
Reflection lost amid a myriad in a labyrinth of mirrors.
Among the countless echoed ghosts,
Only one is without error;
Instilled with pure faith, this one hatches in the world
And spreading a cloak out, dissolves into darkness unfurled
Under starlight and coiled up in a cavern.
The secret is hidden and learned in reverse
By the few who have made it from the beginning,
For whose ears and eyes this story's been told,
To dispel all fears and understandings of old.
And though the chances are slim men will comprehend–
Remember, that this was not for them alone penned
And most everything I've written here
I never heard from them.

Think without it, think within it,
Think throughout it, think about it.
For all that they have done without it,
Brighter eyes will never doubt it.

A FEVERISH FABLE

A delirium maintained will sprain your brain
a lasting illusion amidst the confusion is the only way
to fool yourself into thinking you're not insane
what tools do you use to build your ruse with ?

I seen so many fools led down that path
hell I was their pied piper do the math.

They lied to me, now I'm a word sniper.
I'll leave a bloodbath of old fables behind me

The linen these stories are written on
not worth a dirty diaper
grow up, use your mind,
leave language behind

she said to me and I'll follow her
into the sunsets ever after
where the echoes from this beautiful disaster
sound hollow, my respect goes creeping

on tiptoes to follow
as a gecko slips past
the shadow of a branch
like a sundial angling slowly
away from the dusk
an upthrust column
of stone serves to shelter
us temporarily from the sweltering musk
we breathe in these fevers from constantly
these seething feelings we've learned to trust
always haunting us, haven't we had enough
of these ghosts of our own devising
or are we merely addicted to the notion
of our own fancies each day rising?

Now everybody knows words don't exist
do you suppose the point's been missed?
I propose language itself exists only in our imagination
think about that and get back, what it means to me
is that everything real is by definition unimagineable

Because even the word real is but a figment
another pigment of the shading for something which
there are only shadows of words fading fast
we all know they won't last and we can surmise

that all words used to disguise the truth
if gathered together would amount to a fraction
of a feather of the whole of reality
fully on display before we arrived on the scene

wordless in all its magnanimous glory
here in the story lies the very secret
to the enigmas posited by Zeno and Kant

as Borges conjectured that
"we have dreamt the world"
by observing Novalis having memorably written
"the greatest magician would be the one
who would cast over himself a spell so complete
that he would take his own phantasmagorias
as autonomous appearances,
would not this be our case?"

and then Jorge Luis elaborated further by stating
"we have dreamt it as firm, mysterious, visible,
ubiquitous in space and durable in time;
but in its architecture we have allowed
tenuous and eternal crevices of unreason
which tell us it is false",
I in turn am moved to observe
that we have merely interpreted the world

and in order to untie these lovely philosophical knots
it becomes helpful to realize Novalis's statement
may be refuted by replying "indeed it would not be our case fully
for what you have posited is an imagination borne
of an underlying imagination; what becomes helpful for magic
is the undoing of our original imagining, language itself."

It may have only seemed
that way because we perceived
it to be a labyrinth when it might just be
a singularity of which we, by necessity,
appear to be only parts, so here
is reflected the disease of our hearts,

That of considering ourselves
or anything for that matter as parts
of a whole when in fact
the nature of the singularity
refutes this. Here it is shown
how we must unlearn
what was formerly known

and just why the keys to truth's locks
always seem to lie in paradox
a delirium maintained
to the very end
like the lasting
illusion of
a true
friend
and
to
pre
vent
any con
fusion by
that I mean
to say take a look
around you today

RESCUELESS

If the human race is bound
to wink out like a candle
snuffed in outer space,
paralleling the same fate
each one of us knows
with certainty awaits,

then what gives, who cares,
why try and stop it, instead
look up and stare one more time
at the darkling smear
of starpoints winking
beyond in the night,

and ask yourself, once again,
don't I feel alright ?
So be it: call out
in the dark
to each other
"good night".

ADEPT

The definition of readjusting
one's view of world & self,
the anamnesis of recovering
the knowledge we were always
part of a whole & never the central theme.

This divorce from a common law knowledge
paved the way for the ego.
A shunning of the mother goddess.
The study of letting go; the practice
of letting go. What is there to let go of?

Well certainly not the ground.
(Once a supposition is merited,
a plausibility is extended;
something like a merry go round
where old rides die hard.)

The study of properly planned revolts.
Examining the back yard.
Scratching for scraps in the moonlit dirt
The study of choice & identity.
The question of who regulates it & destiny.

The question of freedom and
the limits of our rights to it.
The definition of self.
The study of perspective & priorities.
The meaning of being human.

The study of photosynthesis.
The observation of con artists & shell games.
The nature of the beast.
The assignment of application.
The study of definition.

The science of chaos, to say the least
the order of faith. The needs of the few
outweighing the many, the challenge
of how pretty no longer is a penny.

The methodical scrutiny of grime.
The stain in the transmitted lie.
The disease of the silent eye.
The hills of foam on the pond
floating on dark underslitherings,
where steam bath dreams rewind.

Peel back skin of faces to find
the study of all mankind.
The study of one man studying,
left behind for someone to find.

The study of dust, of skins being shed.
Re-emerging life, polished anew.
The study of what, where, and are we who
(the study of me is the study of you).

The study of balancing each
other out of the equation,
the entire history of a nation,
the dream of changing our mind,
the need to invent a new word,

the necessity of creating our own language,
the wisdom of learning for ourselves
the study of wisdom. The defining of change.
Forgetting having uncovered the meaning once.

AMBERGRIS

And what came of it all is still falling.
No way to suppose how the pieces
of this rose fit or what pattern
the petals will fall in, matter of fact
there's the beauty of it, to revel
in the opportunity to not be the architect.

Once, a city of fingernails grew.
From this embroiled, razorcoiled
hanging garden dropped battalions
of ripened fruit, hunched and ready,
this crop grew to prune itself.

Thus leaving the nails to grow
another race. One after another
dropped into the stew, come
to perfect a manicured face.
This chitinous fortress a tomb.

Once, a pretty breathing firestorm
flew from each other's lips
and scalpelwired eyes, a coalition
of the lit. Relay trance.

Magnification of distant concerns.
Zero avoidance. Hidden yearning.
Perhaps for reassurance where
the park benches are made of claws

STATES OF BEING

If "Absolute Power corrupts absolutely",
then know the real nature of "God":

The "Devil" IS "God", only fallen. Corrupted.
This shows how "God" has NO POWER.

Herein lies the secret of his inviolable status:
If power corrupts, then by definition
the one who would be "God" must abandon all power.

In so doing, He achieves Mastery
(while those who seek power must fall).

By Letting Go, "God" achieves becoming
One with the universe.

Thus, We are given a choice.
We, too, may Let Go,
and Become One with "God" and the universe;
the ultimate surrender.

Therefore, "God" and "The Devil" are not seperate beings;
rather, they are seperate states of being:
the states of the heavenly (or divine)
and that of the infernal (or damned).

To be damned is to have been sent on a path
from which there is no recourse.

The pursuit of power, or riches (merely power in another guise)
is just such a course.


This is exactly why it says
"Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here"
on the gates of Hell.

NO RESET

Every year it was the same thing
Each day I awoke in the morning
with a clean slate, as if a brand new person
My counter pushed to zero
Sailing out into the new day
the wind reviving memories

This year, however, is different
When I woke up on New Year's Day
January 1st, 2007, I felt that
I was exactly the same person
who went to sleep the night before
on that lone frozen peninsula
known as December 31st
the last day of the old year

I checked and my counter
was still counting
Now the wind is just the wind
My memories never left
I sail under my own power
Limitless horizons await