Message for You

Message for you,
leader of the tribe.
Message for you,
ring of thin warriors.
Put down your spears;
the enemy can't feel them,
and you've lost at last.
Close your eyes.
Slash your backs with surrender.
Throw your young boys
off the bleak mountain
as a sacrifice to defeat.
Carve in your caves
with fingernails, in blood,
flesh worn away to bone,
with fingerbones careve
the story of your battle
you wretchedly lost.
Eat the grey stones.
Drink the grey dust
and stand not before
your conquerors, yelling,
begging to know what became
of your savior,
for I bring you news.
See what I hold?
This grey bird, eyes
blankly glazed,
feet still searching
but without a song.
Brush the dust with your fingers,
blow the dirt off these precious wings.
Yellow.
Gold like the sun.
This is the bird of Eden.
And look to the sky,
shade your face,
muffle your cry,
we are alone,
for, without the music,
God froze to stone.

The New God

Awaken and receive
the new God.
Need not worship, need not pray;
you, too proud to bow your eyes,
do not bow your eyes. Look.
Only lift your hands to the sweet sun,
feel, new, the masterpiece of grass
where the skin is white and
life between your toes.
Do not believe, only do, participate
in the rebuilding of beauty,
you who could not conceive
of, oh, great love for the greatest love.
Sacrifice mediocrity
and build, build on the stumps of beauty,
plunge toward perfection,
dare to bring the power
of creation into your own hands.
Your own hands -- look -- they
are affirmation.
Listen while your new God speaks
now, with delicate woven breath.
Commandment: Be Art,
and you need not listen
for any more; that is all.

To Her Mother (In the next room)

In the next room I hear you crying
and I hate you for making me love you so.
We gather too close like a stand of birches,
we must bend each other when we grow.

To Her Mother (Everybody else is crazy now)

Everybody else is crazy now --
life is simpler when you're mad --
but you and I cling together,
screen out the wind, blow sanity brighter,
keep it between us like silver fire
or a butterfly in a storm.
This is not how I'd like to die
when I die. I'd rather be happy --
I'd rather die mad with a smile on my lips
and flowers on unseeing eyes.
I don't want to be wise.
I don't want to go down fighting. Valor is for God
and you.
You want me to care for sanity.
I think you expect too much of me.

The World We Know

Why is this called the world we know --
what do we know?
Write it down.
We are at the nominal mercy
of everything, and are a part
of the everything that swirls invisible.
When I shout I KNOW, what hears?
Not discovery; nothing is found.
Have you ever tried
to grab at the atoms that must be there,
and then decided they must not be there,
and then not known you did not know?
Perhaps the will next to survival
is knowledge --
and write that down --
but at long last we will not survive,
and knowledge will not be even the sound.

Listen to the Ocean

Listen to the ocean. This is pure music,
not blown or beaten by human hands.
A thousand years bring us no closer
to the true music of singing sand.

The Weight of Dreams

It rains.
The water tastes sweet and
the music's fine.
Just fine.
I held my dreams today to find
they smell like glass
and feel like lava on my eyes,
like monten silver on my eyes,
burned blind.
And we go on.
Erratic stumbling in crazy space,
beaten and kicked
like rotten apples
rolling on a bloody floor.
And what are the dreams
that we snarl and scramble for?
I weighed my dreams today to find
they are sand-grain light
yet the beat my feet flat,
my toes are splayed out,
my spine is crushed.
And it rains.
My tears are sweet
and the music's fine.
Just fine.

On Horseback

To be here
on your brown, breathing body, the mane in my hands
is all I want in the world.
I thought I'd be afraid
to climb, in footseps of leather
and sit so far off the ground,
to feel the breath and heart-beat beneath,
hear the sound
of hooves, hard hitting the giving grass.
I'm not afraid at all.
We are one, welded and molded like clay.
We stand under the limbs of pine trees
like some forest beast, a devil's child.
We could get ourselves lost together,
we could never come back at all,
we could be one and the same forever;
we could die, you and I
as one.
Be a dream, lift your tambourine feet,
run.

Unveiled

I think it must fly out of your eyes
like gilded gnats,
splinters of gold.
I look for gold traces on your ears.
You glow so bright, I can't believe
nobody sees it but me.
I must love you.
I try to shelter you from sight,
cover your face with my hands to hide
your screaming beauty; it won't be still.
I'm afraid you'll draw the universe in
if you call.
I keep thinking that looking at you,
talking with you, should be against the law.
Don't look up when the sky is clear.
God might want you if he saw.

Wings of Song

Now, all alone in Eden,
ashamed to claim his creation,
he climbs the grey, wilted trees and weeps
for everything so soon
gone wrong.
He gathers all not dead around him,
the half-wilted remnants
of unequaled beauty --
a violet still blue
a brook not yet dry
as its stone banks crumble
under the weight of his tears.
And from someplace
out and beyond destruction
a bird flies, dandelion yellow,
black-throated and full of song,
perches above him, clasping the branch
with perfect, silver-clawed toes.
This tiny songbird surely
is too sweet to be from invention's hands,
wasn't created this wild from his clay.
It perches on one finger outstretched
and calls for beauty to live and not flee.
The creator speaks softly, rustles the leaves.
"You were right all along.
I give you the world, yellow songbird,
for I couldn't have written your song."

If I Knew a Place

If I knew a better place I'd go there,
and drink up the rain,
hands cupped like open mouths
to starry skies.
If I knew a place where buttercups
still laughed like children,
and ponies ran,
and sands were scattered with silver shells,
and trees forgave the wind --
my feet would fly like wings on fire,
I would not look back once,
would not kiss the iron goodbye
or leave light tracks on stone.
Eyes, find the way
the unicorns have gone.
Follow the butterflies
that lift to the skies like stained-glass milkweed,
more instinct than weight --
lead me stumbling home.
This earth is not mine -- I feel no love
in the touch of maples that don't know my name,
and smothered, blinded earth that cannot
feel the sun.
If I knew a better place I'd go there,
laughing and make it my own,
hold it to my heart by its roots and flowers,
unicorns' horns and butterflies,
eager, blue and hungry skies
that wait for wings,
earth that grows with weight of feet
in speckled springs.

Learning About Spring

I know very well what you're up to , spring,.
You can't hide flowering pussywillows
behind grey rosebush waterfalls,
and nothing you do to the earth can mask
the spreading greenness, the flood of grass.
You can't convince me that maples
are turning red with cold from the snow.
From years of playing this game, I know.
And I can see the flowering hills
and I can smell the daffodils.

It's a Beautiful Day

It's a beautiful day.
Seagulls, steely blue and white,
take to the air from the beach
like mussels given the softness of feathers,
given the grace of flight.
One cynical crab,
legs in a spiral, extending eyes
to watch the world crumble
with each watery day,
skitters, scuttles silent away
with weapons loaded, cocked
and raised at my optimistic fingers:
Who, giant, are you?
I retract myself.
It's a beautiful day.
I'll chase milkweed along the beach
and dodge the spray.

Stay

Stay.
Let me run my twilight fingers
down your nose, down your neck,
that I may never foget your features,
your body closer to me than the rain.
Under the vine-drenched trees,
inside the leaf blades
bathed in sun,
in the stained glass,
fragile grass,
sweaty wind.
Hear the thunder behind our voices.
Thunder sounds like magnified sand
if you listen close enough.
Close.
Enough rain. Enough wind.

Old Man

Old Man, look in the mirror.
See the life time has shaken
to its knees,
see the deaths you have taken
quietly,
and every line of cobweb
will be with you now forever.
You'd give more than your life to erase
the marks in your body and soul,
no longer perfect
or whole.
Stare out the window
from grey eyes
through grey panes,
smoky skies,
not as blue as yesterday
or a million years ago.
The pavement below
is of crushed bones,
sand and stone,
blue, gasping blood,
eons of mud.
And yet a yellow bird still sings
on window sills, in old men,
sings still of beauty
from morning skies,
oblivious to loneliness
and God's great lies.

Survival

We woke in the night
to the earth shaking,
pottery rolling across the dirt floor.
The volcano, I whispered, throwing off sheets.
We stood outside in the clearing and listened,
our toes feeling gods moving
under the ground.
Across the black sky
like brilliant birds, fire flow;
I heard the crackling treetops catch,
the dog sneezing from smoke,
and in the warm summer air
flies humming like a song of fear.
We turned and ran inside --
whit will this be when lava curls
among table legs, drips from shelves,
burns the blankets brown?
We grabbed great painted pots by the neck;
I dropped one
and it shattered in pieces like a smashing skull.
Outside, feet ran by our door,
children called, babies wailed, the goats rang their bells,
and the dog, eyes tearing,
whined in at us, wagging his tail.
Then we ran
down to the beach.
In the dark the sand rattled
against the sea,
and the cooking pots in our boat
reflected a different fire on their glazed sides;
the dog ran barking along the beach,
wild, the hair on his back raised.
Looking over the trees I saw the mountain
flaming, fire rippling as though spilling
out of the sun, out of a bowl of fire.
Everything shook, my eeth shook,
the trees
shook, and lava rolled
in glowing tongues licking the ground.
We pushed the boats from the sand,
oars scraping, fish swirling
iridescent,
and a wind blowing
grey ashes into our open mouths.
I saw the dog on the shore,
too large for the boat,
fire glinting from the waves to his eyes, and he waded after us, then swam
silently, his nose expanding wide.
The air was falling.
The sky was morning
and fire striped the trees.
And the dog never turned back.
Soon all we could see
was the ripples that he made.