If I’d lived my life by what others were thinkin’, the heart inside me would’ve died
I was just too stubborn to ever be governed by enforced insanity
Someone had to reach for the risin’ star, I guess it was up to me
"Up to Me" by Bob Dylan)
Thursday, January 26, 2006
Wednesday, January 25, 2006
Monday, January 23, 2006
Sunday, January 15, 2006
Friday, January 13, 2006
Thursday, January 12, 2006
Thursday Afternoon
"Then to the other side,
To break through the veil
Some will pierce, others fly,
Some, invalid, will crawl,
Some, consumed in the fire, will wake
Others, mangled corpses with the crows� pecks,
Will rise and will return to the elemental dissolution and void,
Stripped bare to the invisible."
A warm January day atop Blue Knob, golfing even, in Pennsylvania!!
To break through the veil
Some will pierce, others fly,
Some, invalid, will crawl,
Some, consumed in the fire, will wake
Others, mangled corpses with the crows� pecks,
Will rise and will return to the elemental dissolution and void,
Stripped bare to the invisible."
A warm January day atop Blue Knob, golfing even, in Pennsylvania!!
Wednesday, January 11, 2006
Tuesday, January 10, 2006
Sunday, January 08, 2006
Saturday, January 07, 2006
Thursday, January 05, 2006
Tuesday, January 03, 2006
Megastore Translation
I leapt from the rooftop where
I gazed down upon the scenery and passionately grasped for the beauty
And music in its virginal purity.
I entered onto a long dark alleyway
Where figures leapt at me with eyes like daggers
And I kept on pushing and tearing until long last lit up a speckled, light shining street
Called Rue Ferriol.
I came upon the name blaring:
“Megastore” and I entered in.
Down the mirrored hallways
Through the looking glass at teatime;
Megastores like picture puzzles
Megastores dreams drifting
Images of sounds of memories
Soaking the air around my head
Megastores in old banks
Vault of treasury.
Megastores like little holidays in the center of streets
Walking in
To check out from the serious gaze---
Now I am transparent, floating,
You are gazing through me
As to a speckled trout
In a cold, country stream.
What does anyone know of the mind of a fish?
Little more than hateful guesses…
Afternoon dreams:
Dreams while sleeping and transparent waking dreams.
I take you and transform you
Turn you wherever my watermind spins.
Old heroes on shelves and on the screens:
Once I glimpsed your powerwaking
While listening to jazz headphones
My heart twisted and leaped
And threw me to the ground floor,
And the police escorted me into the light of the day.
Megastores---hidden management---
The miracle of good business.
“It’s all in the name ‘Virgin’.”
Shadows of shadows of shadows there.
Mirrors on multilevels turn back and shift your stare.
Down hallways and corridors of marble ice
Passengers and laborers’
Drift colorful and still.
I was sifting and spinning
tossing images and words and sounds flew me by.
And I grew dizzy and fainted and dreamed:
“In a pure land of pure water
pure people make pure music
on true instruments and live in total joy.
The books there are written in truth
And readers comprehend it all.”
When I awoke I found it rather funny
Looking around at the streets of Marseille
With the crying, and singing and trash
Mondays bells sound noon
recalling God
To the pissed and polluted city streets.
I am stranded now
Having abandoned
All that I have loved or held near;
I have won refuge
For all that is sacred
Wearing no swaddling clothes
I wriggle alone in the dewy grass
And count my firstbreath 1, 2, 3!
Why does the earth heave and pull
To greet us with a new dawn
Filtering the mist in lightstrands;
To paint a fresh horizon?
I have won my only place
Above, below and before me
No obstacles, no flesh to meet my gaze.
Awake, O new world!
I am your gift; lift me up, carry me ‘round,
Dearer is the day.
Words to my lips jumbled rose and fell
Jagged earth to receive
Like melting mushrooms
Nature stood against me as I forged my will
Silent to the earth’s ear
Swallowed in the sear of the sun.
I struck my plan:
To forge an endless highway
And flee into the day
To the farthest surface of thing.
Midday on the stony edge
Precise in my movement
To carve a course to the distant sea
past walls
past dry surfaces.
Such a dream I dreamt
Of gypsyfires, and dancing, music ringing.
There and then found her spell over me
And recalled her name:
Who has come and feasted here
And taken my bed away?
I gazed down upon the scenery and passionately grasped for the beauty
And music in its virginal purity.
I entered onto a long dark alleyway
Where figures leapt at me with eyes like daggers
And I kept on pushing and tearing until long last lit up a speckled, light shining street
Called Rue Ferriol.
I came upon the name blaring:
“Megastore” and I entered in.
Down the mirrored hallways
Through the looking glass at teatime;
Megastores like picture puzzles
Megastores dreams drifting
Images of sounds of memories
Soaking the air around my head
Megastores in old banks
Vault of treasury.
Megastores like little holidays in the center of streets
Walking in
To check out from the serious gaze---
Now I am transparent, floating,
You are gazing through me
As to a speckled trout
In a cold, country stream.
What does anyone know of the mind of a fish?
Little more than hateful guesses…
Afternoon dreams:
Dreams while sleeping and transparent waking dreams.
I take you and transform you
Turn you wherever my watermind spins.
Old heroes on shelves and on the screens:
Once I glimpsed your powerwaking
While listening to jazz headphones
My heart twisted and leaped
And threw me to the ground floor,
And the police escorted me into the light of the day.
Megastores---hidden management---
The miracle of good business.
“It’s all in the name ‘Virgin’.”
Shadows of shadows of shadows there.
Mirrors on multilevels turn back and shift your stare.
Down hallways and corridors of marble ice
Passengers and laborers’
Drift colorful and still.
I was sifting and spinning
tossing images and words and sounds flew me by.
And I grew dizzy and fainted and dreamed:
“In a pure land of pure water
pure people make pure music
on true instruments and live in total joy.
The books there are written in truth
And readers comprehend it all.”
When I awoke I found it rather funny
Looking around at the streets of Marseille
With the crying, and singing and trash
Mondays bells sound noon
recalling God
To the pissed and polluted city streets.
I am stranded now
Having abandoned
All that I have loved or held near;
I have won refuge
For all that is sacred
Wearing no swaddling clothes
I wriggle alone in the dewy grass
And count my firstbreath 1, 2, 3!
Why does the earth heave and pull
To greet us with a new dawn
Filtering the mist in lightstrands;
To paint a fresh horizon?
I have won my only place
Above, below and before me
No obstacles, no flesh to meet my gaze.
Awake, O new world!
I am your gift; lift me up, carry me ‘round,
Dearer is the day.
Words to my lips jumbled rose and fell
Jagged earth to receive
Like melting mushrooms
Nature stood against me as I forged my will
Silent to the earth’s ear
Swallowed in the sear of the sun.
I struck my plan:
To forge an endless highway
And flee into the day
To the farthest surface of thing.
Midday on the stony edge
Precise in my movement
To carve a course to the distant sea
past walls
past dry surfaces.
Such a dream I dreamt
Of gypsyfires, and dancing, music ringing.
There and then found her spell over me
And recalled her name:
Who has come and feasted here
And taken my bed away?
Monday, January 02, 2006
Mount Angel
Poetry must be the voice of Creation
Resounding through the human person;
Caught up in the human senses’ wild abandon
Seeing radiant colors streaming
Hearing waves of laughter rolling
Feeling wet moss on the jagged limb
Scenting the rain blown over evening hills
And tasting tears of sorrow and abandon.
And love must be the voice that renders
The heart’s stillness
Breathing in deep breaths of peace
The chest rises and falls
The heart pounds its way rejoicing;
Still no word reaches up to the ear
Only beauty radiates invisibly
embracing other hearts to its bosom.
I would like to hear the music of love poetry
Bathing my spirit in healing waters’ calm
And then rising up,
Sing a song in the wonder.
This evening, Good Friday,
As the final clouds recede
Swollen and grey
And night hangs over Mount Angel
Edging the daylight away.
Some songs I hear:
The tripping, rippling of goldfishwater;
And taste the coool breeze on my lips.
Birds whistle and chatter
Drawing me into a dream.
The darkfrocked heavy monk silhouettes
The Redwood walk
And quickly fades.
While I drift into sleep
Some ancient voice calls me back:
It is the echo of the Almighty
Whispering right into my ear.
Resounding through the human person;
Caught up in the human senses’ wild abandon
Seeing radiant colors streaming
Hearing waves of laughter rolling
Feeling wet moss on the jagged limb
Scenting the rain blown over evening hills
And tasting tears of sorrow and abandon.
And love must be the voice that renders
The heart’s stillness
Breathing in deep breaths of peace
The chest rises and falls
The heart pounds its way rejoicing;
Still no word reaches up to the ear
Only beauty radiates invisibly
embracing other hearts to its bosom.
I would like to hear the music of love poetry
Bathing my spirit in healing waters’ calm
And then rising up,
Sing a song in the wonder.
This evening, Good Friday,
As the final clouds recede
Swollen and grey
And night hangs over Mount Angel
Edging the daylight away.
Some songs I hear:
The tripping, rippling of goldfishwater;
And taste the coool breeze on my lips.
Birds whistle and chatter
Drawing me into a dream.
The darkfrocked heavy monk silhouettes
The Redwood walk
And quickly fades.
While I drift into sleep
Some ancient voice calls me back:
It is the echo of the Almighty
Whispering right into my ear.
Permanence
Through swirling winds of chill
Winter Sun meets my face
Over the tidewater, golden medallions glisten,
Wavelets sparkle, dance and recede into dark.
St. Michael’s water tower
Like a giant thimble on stilts
Says to those returning:
“I will stand here forever
shouting my name!”
Rocking sailboats dip
the ice-encrusted water’s edge.
Herb points to swans,
White on black, silent
At the receding horizon.
Steeples taller than bare trees
Figure darkly
Against the melting sun’s mauve hand.
As the lightest blue fades into rose, pink and clover,
A shadow arises on the puffy cloud’s violet arm---
This seagull throws her body into the wind
Then scales heavenward,
Then turns, then falls.
Pen against paper,
Like the gull in the sun’s setting pink,
Black against white,
Scaling heavenward
Turning, falling,
Seeking home.
St. Michael’s, Eastern Shore, MD
February 13, 1988
Winter Sun meets my face
Over the tidewater, golden medallions glisten,
Wavelets sparkle, dance and recede into dark.
St. Michael’s water tower
Like a giant thimble on stilts
Says to those returning:
“I will stand here forever
shouting my name!”
Rocking sailboats dip
the ice-encrusted water’s edge.
Herb points to swans,
White on black, silent
At the receding horizon.
Steeples taller than bare trees
Figure darkly
Against the melting sun’s mauve hand.
As the lightest blue fades into rose, pink and clover,
A shadow arises on the puffy cloud’s violet arm---
This seagull throws her body into the wind
Then scales heavenward,
Then turns, then falls.
Pen against paper,
Like the gull in the sun’s setting pink,
Black against white,
Scaling heavenward
Turning, falling,
Seeking home.
St. Michael’s, Eastern Shore, MD
February 13, 1988
Sunday, January 01, 2006
Wednesday, December 28, 2005
Monday, December 26, 2005
Celtic Radio: First Image
I.
Take me to the high hills
Where purple flowers sway
And bees hum.
Magic bird pounds her song in my ear---
When I look, there is no living creature there!
No bird, no dog, no man.
We are bathed in the river of time past
Flowing into time present:
Time present flowing into time past
in one waterflow.
The beginning ever renewing
in universal flashing.
Each man is an ‘adam’
First in his race.
Each finds the world to his liking;
The plenitude of mystery:
Red, green and yellow canyon walls,
Crystal caves and stones that light up in phosphorescence.
Each one surveys nature and says “It is good.”
This is Now---
Forever now.
One sacred eternal moment.
Now.
But then,
You pick up the radio, turn it on:
Like a twisted phrase, an alien object from space, it says,
“You are falling. Falling fast.”
My feet are running away to the edges of this day
No more to hold center,
Falling down the purple hillside,
The magic bird flies
Across the sky
Through the valley like a Winter stream.
I find distance
And have difficulty remembering my birth and my original home.
[Before or after is the same whether I find myself in the center of the day or at its edges running away
or whether I am with myself
or finding it difficult to recall my face.]
There is no difference between these worlds!
The world is always the same/ always changing.
[What is forever changing is forever the same*.]
*Heraclitus
Take me to the high hills
Where purple flowers sway
And bees hum.
Magic bird pounds her song in my ear---
When I look, there is no living creature there!
No bird, no dog, no man.
We are bathed in the river of time past
Flowing into time present:
Time present flowing into time past
in one waterflow.
The beginning ever renewing
in universal flashing.
Each man is an ‘adam’
First in his race.
Each finds the world to his liking;
The plenitude of mystery:
Red, green and yellow canyon walls,
Crystal caves and stones that light up in phosphorescence.
Each one surveys nature and says “It is good.”
This is Now---
Forever now.
One sacred eternal moment.
Now.
But then,
You pick up the radio, turn it on:
Like a twisted phrase, an alien object from space, it says,
“You are falling. Falling fast.”
My feet are running away to the edges of this day
No more to hold center,
Falling down the purple hillside,
The magic bird flies
Across the sky
Through the valley like a Winter stream.
I find distance
And have difficulty remembering my birth and my original home.
[Before or after is the same whether I find myself in the center of the day or at its edges running away
or whether I am with myself
or finding it difficult to recall my face.]
There is no difference between these worlds!
The world is always the same/ always changing.
[What is forever changing is forever the same*.]
*Heraclitus
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