Monthly Archives: July 2005

Death of a Circus Lion

His speech was almost poetry;
I say almost, because to claim
such subtle acts of sophistry
as conscious art is to enflame
the ire of critics, who exist
with their sole purpose to decry
encroachment on their world as lies,
and play the constant pessimist.

The world’s not ready, they proclaim,
for such a mix of show and tell;
for movements that defy a name.
The vanity of hope won’t sell
a single copy on the coasts.
Besides, a voice we cannot tell
“be silent” is quite mad; to boast
its worthiness despite our well
intentioned praise, or degradation,
seems to smack of heresy.
I ask you, in this situation,
would you dare let such things be?

In these and other ways, more sly,
the world prefers its genius mute;
no small surprise that you and I
give up such goals as our pursuit,
and gambol, as if without care,
through life without a moment’s thought
to who built our cage bars just there,
or for what purpose we were caught.

25 JUL 2005

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Human Nature

Why must “human nature” be
considered some mad blasphemy,
an otherwise repulsive state
save for its chance to teach us fate

and providence are not without
a sense of humor, lest we doubt;
and if not heresy gone wild,
the beast corrupting meek and mild

behavior we think suits us best,
that soothes the fire within our chests
and bids us be compliant, mute,
despite our nature’s wish: pursuit

of happiness, right here and now,
unsatisfied with learning how
this world is just a proving ground
devoid of anything profound

or sacred. Human nature begs
us not to settle for these dregs,
but to enjoy the life we’re in.
There was no fall. There is no sin.

23 JUL 2005

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Follow

Listen in the dark, and follow
where my voice leads on, away,
through the woods beyond the hollow
where the cheerful sparrows play
on into the mist that thickens
where the Spanish moss hangs low
on the spreading live oak branches
as we pass, silent, below.

Here the sun makes no impression,
for the canopy is thick;
mossy roots criss-cross the pathway,
mute our footsteps; here, the trick
is to remember without seeing,
gauge by sense of smell and touch,
so that if you feel like fleeing,
you cannot reveal too much.

Listen, can you hear the whisper
of the almost stagnant breeze,
like the faintly fading flicker
of a hair bent on your knee?
Your own breathing now is heavy,
louder than the crunch of leaves,
than the slow lap of the levee
echoing the distant seas.

Listen in the dark, and follow
where my voice is almost gone;
feel your face find the cool hollow
in the air it lingers on.
Listen for the fading footsteps
that leave no trace on the ground,
only soft and silent shadows,
memories lost to sylvan sound.

23 JUL 2005

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Weak Blood

The blood that courses through my veins
has been diluted. I can sense
its former potency at times:
remembering my father’s strength,
my great-grand sire’s blind wandering
(which was itself a pale claret
compared to further back in time
when his ancestors sought freedom
in the New World, alone and broke),
the continents and oceans crossed
in times of war, in famine’s peace,
must have required more courage,
gumption, even, than I now possess.

Your plasma, too, is watered down:
in veins passed down from one who preached
the merits of peyote worship
to the Great White Father in the East,
and made the exodus, on foot,
from Canada’s Acadia
down to the Deep South’s draining heat.

How weak the strain our genes might mix:
like royal hemophiliacs,
or hypochondriac offspring
that dare not risk a paper cut,
or need a day of rest to cure
a sniffle, or a broken nail.

21 JUL 2005

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As if the hazel mud

As if the hazel mud
its edges flecked with dull green
and salt-stain,
cracked and peeling along
the summer dry edges
of the viaduct
that ran its length,
a brittle concrete spine,
down through the
creosote valley
from cinder block to overpass
were somehow host
to hordes of unseen ghosts
where once the heartless roots
of dandelion split
the grey white skin into
psoriasis scabs and lesions.

That’s how the city’s heavy
mid-July became a poem;
rending itself, in slow catharsis,
from some meaningless
overpass photo op
into a metaphor
of urban blight.

As if that were enough:
to use each word from that
threadbare thesaurus,
marking up the boring proof
that being marble, made a statue,
with no sign of art
beyond the lexicon
of vague pretension.

That’s how you become a writer:
just convince yourself
your vision isn’t just another
meaningless sight.

In your world, I can never be a poet.

20 JUL 2005

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Stars at Night: a sestina

To look out at the stars at night
against a distant tapestry
of endless black, that seems to spread
beyond our fickle sense of time
and stretch the limits of our sense
to breaking, is to feed a dream.

No simple, selfish kind of dream –
the kind that wakes you in the night,
half-conscious, where you only sense
your astral footprints on the tapestry
like sand grains, swept by tides of time
into the ocean’s ancient spread;

nor nightmares through which are spread
vile creatures half-real and half-dream,
who live to devour all, in time;
dividing sunlit day from fearful night
with claws that rend that fragile tapestry
between unconscious fear and sense.

No, this dream gives to us the sense
that all of what we know, if spread
out on the floor, or hung as tapestry,
would seem as fleeting as a dream,
a single faint star on a full moon night,
a mere second in the endless hours of time.

The palimpsest we know as time,
the fickle moments with which we try to make sense
of what seem random shifts from day to night,
great gifts and curses wrapped and spread
like shiny baubles on a blackened velvet dream;
on our illusions hang life’s frail tapestry.

Yet mixed among the threads that weave our tapestry
are warp and woof from far beyond our time;
alone, under the stars, sometimes we dream
of ancestors and progeny, who sense
our presence, head back, legs and arms spread,
offering ourselves, and them, back to the night.

At the tapestry’s frayed edge, we sense
an end to time; and hopeful spread
this dream, in silent prayer, each starry night.

20 JUL 2005

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Moving to America

When right-wing zealots take control and change the living here,
in bonfires roasting unfit souls with smoke that never clears,
to forgo the auto-da-fe I’m sure will be required,
where can a person choose to move and still remain inspired?

Some place where there’s still rule of law, dividing church and state,
without a bloody history or spineless legislate;
where there is culture, and some sense of personal dignity;
where healthcare is informed, supplied, holistic and sanitary.

Some place that doesn’t want to be a member of G8,
that doesn’t stand a chance to share a superpower’s fate;
where military spending isn’t more than art, or schools,
and where technology is not the end, but means and tool.

Where nature is important, and where reading is still done,
and entertainment does not mean six kinds of VH1;
where extremists of any kind are not staging a coup,
and perhaps things could be improved, but in the main, they’ll do.

An anti-theocratic place, where tolerance is taught,
and peaceful ways to solve dilemmas at all costs are sought;
where freedom of religion means freedom from such things, too,
and how another leads their life has no bearing on you.

Of course, the weather must be good, and winter’s not too cold;
because I like the beach and summer now that I’m grown old.
Fruit that’s fresh, and leafy greens from gardens close to home,
good food, good wine, good bread either in public or alone.

And property — the right to own it, at a modest price;
these things are the essentials. But some others would be nice:
like making sure America remains the kind of land
where flags are fire-proofed, not by law, but by for what they stand.

19 JUL 2005

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