Song of the Phoenix
No
more will I accept your suitcase imagery.
Your parched paint-by-the-number box, your proud ennui
can expect one less guest for dinner. Heartily
my stomach growls at your menu. I take my leave,
now grateful for your chafing binds that set me free.
Kicking and scratching ash from soaring wings, I seek
the holy vast expanses where the choices weave
a tapestry of multicolored inquiry
from one permitted ball of yarn marked
"Oui"
He Was An Air Sign
vanishing cream dream form in a spirit spider web
vague wayfaring wind
wax and wane fade away flesh
evaporating vagabond voice
in a gossamer guise
elsewhere eyes
mercury moods and mirage manners
soap bubble embrace in apparition arms
nebulous now
you see me now
you don't melt away master
helium hellos
ghost cloud goodbyes
quicksilver sentence in a phantom paragraph
puddle rainbow angel in chameleon camouflage
shifting sandcastle companion
smoke ring genie
leaves cotton candy kisses
with the dissolving vacancy sign
What wanting lexicon, what futile tongue,
so ill endowed could hope to graze the heart?
If just Apollo, I were one among
your astral ennead, I'd have the art.
But Ares reigned with Pluto at my birth
and by their scepters' weight my star was pressed.
The grave one watches, my thoughts to inearth
After the master warrior's contest.
If I'd retained the wisdom of the skies,
more distant with each footstep from the womb,
this oral spade would eloquence exhume
that laden ashes so immobilize.
Turning my back on the ladders upstream
I'm a rebel pink
To the ancestral beds of the mainstream
I sever my link
They struggle toward nest eggs in the shallows
To spawn and to die
My neck's freed from the pull of the gallows
Strange rules dignify
I know my way
It's toward the sea
In depths I'll stay
My own draftee
She stepped out of a storybook.
You can tell by the faraway look in her eyes
this is not where she belongs.
There's a rustle of faint memories
as a message is sent from the trees to the skies
and returned in fragrant songs.
But the tune just serves to underscore
that she isn't at home anymore, so she tries
to find vague familiarity.
As the roads uncertain pass my door,
a whisper from some alien shore met her cries
as she stood looking at me.
She was draped in shades of Camelot
but the knights of the day have forgotten the grace
of the lady long ago.
Though she seemed to be a stranger there
the moon looked through the window ,aware that her face
was reflected in its glow.
She turned to smile at a willow tree
who nodded in mutual esteem from a place
that defies geography.
Out of a dream from another time
I watched as his kindred fingers climbed to embrace
His child in our custody.
There's a new tempest coming.
It won't matter what side you're on
when the front is far behind.
There's a red river running.
When it has swallowed the banks and gone
who will want the gold that's mined?
There's a dark tower humming.
When its shadow erases the dawn
what torch will the twilight find?
Retribution is cunning.
It apprehends you in mid yawn
and in plain sight robs you blind.
A still small voice asks "Where's your brother?"
The sons of Cain cry, "I know not."
Asking, "Am I my brother's keeper?"
they disclaim harvests they begot.
An erstwhile forest growls with hunger.
A prison is trimmed in red and black.
A jaundiced eye pours down its venom.
All that we give is given back.
An empty stomach feeds on promise.
An empty coffer fills with stones.
A master bears his wreath of glory-
a crown of thorns his scepter hones.
Slight of hand offer assistance.
White as bones licked by the sun.
Black as moonless nighttime hovers
over the abject trophy won
A still small voice cries in the distance
inside a tomb of flesh and gold.
A pair of sandals rot in the desert.
The shepherd found nobody home.
Spatial Delivery
In my most frightening and magnificent moments,
suspended in the pregnant silence,
tomorrow's hopes and fears kicking,
squirming in the pit of my being,
adjusting my self to a position of comfort
only to be happily and hauntingly nudged
again and again out of complacency,
to move,
to change,
to prepare for birth,
I create life.
A Flat World - Still
A surge of eyes
seeps through the smoldering wastes of war
to overcome a predator
still coveting its prize.
Their graven stares
climb grievously from fevered sand
in a stifling fog of reprimand
to staunch our pompous airs.
A startled lord,
awakened from his sated sleep
imparts his merry men to keep
the cowered crew aboard,
as sails grow slack,
and conscience-led objectors balk
at planks abated brothers walk
in vain counterattack.
The captains pledge
a vast horizon glorious.
The dead ascend victorious
as the ship drifts off the edge.
Seed of Hope
On an airy rite of passage borne
from its mother's whispered farewell kiss,
came quiescent possibility
wrapped in promise-plaited filigree,
sent by chance or destiny to this
holy moment to adorn.
There it hovered intercedingly
between resurrection or abyss,
between beauty's fragrant bliss or thorn,
an ethereal souvenir foresworn,
that a reason-jaded eye would miss,
to restore this refugee.
