Love Poem
The love that loves and knows no more
is love that knows no sorrow,
the love that asks but for today
will love again tomorrow,
the love that knows no boundaries,
nor walls, nor bars, nor grave,
will every caged soul release,
from depths of hell will save
and gather up like daffodils
the lonely and the lost at sea,
and set amongst the asphodels
the prisoner and the refugee
I remember my parents playing this album in the car when I was two. It’s a trip to hear it again now. Oh, and it’s magical.
Cigarette
His tongue is a connoisseur,
ruthlessly rejecting the shuffled symbols
of an ordered pallette,
poised and purposeful,
awaiting the hesychastic
nothingness of experience,
He smokes his cigarette,
furiously compressing
the bitter details of a moment,
rebel against the constraints of time,
Each harsh and hurried drag,
is pinned on his breast,
like a minted souvenir;
“I was here,
and Dharma commended me,”
as though he’s been ticking
off the landmarks
of his groovy incarnation,
pacing out the limits of possibility,
wondering when they’ll let him
go to sleep.
Haiku #229
When the Moon King rides
and we, his knights, behind him,
the towers will tumble.
I barely have time to write this down, let alone edit it for clarity or easy reading. It’s a dream. You know what you’re getting into if you start reading a description of someone’s dream. No refunds.
I am contacted by someone producing the Oscars the day before the telecast asking if I’d like to…
This man is a genius and requires no commentary.
The Kite
Too high for poetry,
I lay, suspended,
the susurrations of the wind
humming in my bones,
like a prelude to psychosis,
The hills loomed all about me,
stately, religious giants,
and the telephone lines crackled,
and the undergrowth stirred,
with a silent babble of hope,
The Kite came over the field
where the cows grazed,
and hung on the peak of an eddy,
struck by the warmth on the road,
It passed me on my left,
alarming the horses
(hoofing the dusty grass
and praying for rain)
then swung about,
saw me,
swooped,
and passed,
it’s feathers nearly
tickling my face,
Over and over,
about and about,
tensing and twisting,
eyeing me unnervingly,
I was high,
wracked and immobile,
it felt like an omen
of doom or bliss.
Arthur, Fourth Notes
One day, we’ll awake without burden
the voices of our native birds calling our native names
rousing us with peals of ecstasy
from the morbid torpor of our sleep
Then, with minds as clear as mountain winds
and hearts as fresh as woodland springs
clothed in all the flourishing glory of the world
we’ll greet the awful sun blazing over the ridge
Can you feel it? The beating glory of your heart
the chapel of the spirit long locked
the place that seemed so distant
you never thought to call it home
Can you see it now? I see it
the tapestry of truth that shimmers
in the clean, perfect air,
rich with all the strivings of life
The Price of Joy
The price of joy is pure despair,
this i have learnt by learning’s course,
That perfume on the evening air
anoints the mantle of a corpse,
The price is steep and hard to gauge
with joy at hand, it has the power
to stretch a moment to an age,
but so has sorrow, hour by hour,
A suffering mars the infant breath
at once departed from the womb,
Who would know life must first know death
and of his temples build a tomb,
And every kingdom comes to nought
and crumbles, thus the lamplight shows
a scar upon the one who thought
that bliss was his, for soon it goes,
And yet the sad, unsightly mark
has toiled throughout the fainting night
to further illustrate the dark
with ever finer streaks of light,
How strange the fruits of woe and strife!
This old accustomed injury
has made an opera out of life
and made a poem out of me,
How deep the bliss, how soft the sigh
of he who, from experience, knows
the tree of joy is watered by
the tears of youth, and thus it grows,
And thus it grows from year to year,
in spite of snows and gnawing frost,
and flourishes with blooms of cheer
with every noble effort lost.
