#AMERICAN TAO XLVII
(Tso- wang)
1.
I have been visiting
with Cause and Effect
in the House Thought Built
it was memorable since
memories arise in plain sight
individually split surface tensions
the rhyme is barely noticeable
below the threshold but not so subtle:
too much thought would spoil the soup
in the same measure entirely on the surface
somewhere the pleasure around someone listens
11.
seeing how, in the dark
the body remembers space
the mind its time
and the soul too late
I know the red but cleave to the blue”
Also how in the abstract goes I have
kept them at a distance whose idea
of right is to do wrong because they
can get away with doing wrong
on others backs and still others do
wrong knowing the right is abstract.
But being appropriate and fair will be
considered wrong or not right by all.
AMERICAN TAO XXXV
1.
Your satisfaction
lasts for a bit
what is it you don’t fear
everything but giving in love
I’d rather the company of children
and animals and holding the door for her
otherwise deciding to be alone
between heaven and earth,
the possible reason for both.
2.
the green lion
the chemist waking
among poppies
crimson as bee- balm.
3.
I mute
I recoil from
the static flash
and consolidated,
of surfaces
I mage
nation
working to get beyond
while the surfaces
sink below
11.2000.
I combine with the changing light
across the board I am falling away
from loses and gains as the back
road swerves into the high- beams
nothing I’ve passed remembers me,
nothing up ahead cares I am coming
from where I sit the sense is one of reflex.
My energy levels hover around their potentials
the needle in the sealed gauge is unmoving
and blunt. You may wonder why
so much of what I say off the top
of my head, heads out then circles back
around when no one else is looking, not even
me, and splits, again, in the opposite direction.
6.19.03
A young stud banks on hungrier fields
and the enfeebled only think of thought
while I fade beyond even recognition
without hope or fear but a taste of snow
floods my nerves from head to foot
the loss I am left with only images,
mysteriously the bad day and I are one,
but cut loose from near every chain
or hot wire noosed to keep me in line,
no more under the thumb of un-natural
orders, I unlocked the door to this room
long ago as I would remember so that,
whether some lover or murderer enter, there’s no difference in the bigger picture.
11.24.04
You had the pot-pie TV dinner drummed into your head
anxieties of mass starvation chipped beef stuck like a pig
shell shocked by the authorities in spades at every turn
still you came out swinging full of faith and god awful
but the envelope they delivered was stuffed with meat
the school that gave you the best deal science for war
on the lam the belly of the beast proved quite comfortable
commercial breaks of happiness came on the side love even
the casualties mounted the artists buried in their holes
when facing the deep fried they choose to smoke bowls
the giant spider busy, making settlement with the Diocese,
questioned the existence of dogs and leased extra police
to roll out the red carpet over the remaining Indian Land
inflated bread for oil preempted a final one night stand.
1.11.05
ANOTHER MAD SONG
The cold can burn you
just the same
as what your relatives consider flame
between the covers I could
read
what in some future
was the fifth degree,
the higher plane,
by speaking out into the night
in which all who slept
had taken flight
or were too dull to take up
arms for love, or even love
the good fight.
6.2.05
frank walsh