firebath

firebath

A voice once told me of my beloved.
It told me my final path was through relationship,
that transcendence or peril would be mine through some Other.
This declaration of coming union sent me nearly mad!

Propelled by flame and disbelief,
I barreled back into the fountain of prophecy.
All the while remembering that from my mother’s womb
there dawned a haunting glimpse of future love.

Years later I emerged from the waters of hell
with naked starfish in my hair, startled, but eerily bathed of conditioning.
The slow trod forward of putting fresh limbs back into gait
re-grew a teacher in the place where mind once heaved.

The emergence of victory over death came as life,
the invitation, the acceptance, the reacquaintance, and nothing more.
Simple, clear being, bereft of wayward voices and fidgeting inner fight,
the flight to nirvana wontedly an hourless breath away.

Basking in the plentitude of signs over vast ages,
detachment had brought me so fully to the precipice.
Meditation, my complete existence. Loving, my one action.
And wham! The Other stood there.

No sooner had I said “How could this be? It is impossible!
I am unutterably alone and whole in my aloneness.”
than you appeared.

How could it be that attachment was begging forgiveness for my misgiving?
Just when I had so contentedly painted over the scars of oracles past
with fearless living and relentless discovery?
I became dismayed at the thought of becoming whole again through love!

No sooner had I laid my soul down to the earth to cry,
than I looked up in rapture.

My veins turned to canals from which harbingers of union sprung tall.
Through meditation, I took a blade to them;
and they gushed forth a tsunami of paradisiacal creatures’ mindfood.
Parrots flew by on giant great waves, asteroids landed in my freckles,
lust in my lunchbox, and embodying this world a must.
I saw the future. 

No sooner had I said “You have a magic in you that is only yours”
than I saw the very same magic was in me too.
The apocalypse of visions would not stop.
The avalanche images of completion shattered down on me
growing my heart organ into a universe.
You stood in the center of it; and I opened my arms to it all.

No sooner had I said “I am ready. Take me to my lover”
than I saw my own sex rising to meet you, then running ahead of me to the bay;
and there you were again in the curve of the shore, embracing my breaking body.
I saw galaxies of stars through the icy sea,
mountain peaks of vine-laden planets rise through my tea,
snow leopards bounding through strobing breakfasts.

Fire-capped treetops seared the pawpads of ecstatic lemurs
as they joined fingers with rings of rejoicing.

It turns out I had forgotten who I am.
To love had become the easy truth,
until love became a temporal reality.

How could I have known?
The ultimate kindling had just begun.

No sooner was I,
than you were too.

The firebath still yet to be.

Photograph by Tom Clark

Left to the World

Still the two neither coalesce nor meet.
Their axioms both too close and too surprised
to take the distance as threat
or the netherground as reality.

Yet all I know is unity.
Not a single noble utterance can be displaced
by the dying breath of the indifferent.
It’s not my birth, nor my gain
and the two will not be confused for a tryst.

It’s all in a choice not taken,
an ostensible best, better left unturned.
But how could this be?
To not bake the caress into the calamitous now
leaves you no totem to stand on.

We each had that tensile birth placed before us
with the best of its inextinguishable suns
and hindsight becoming the greatest fortune of all,
even for those left unkind, cowering behind the pale of bliss.
For them, there can be no sharing of rest.

Truth becomes disabled by mercenary duress
and fullness too often oversounded
by the derangement of certitude
and rabid prowess, misgiven to venal gest.

For it’s not here that they squander.
It’s nowhere! Remember that.
For you, its only grasping significance is barren;
one cannot fall and tear the whole world down.

Furrowing backwards had lost its sense
a billion saturnine moons ago.
Initiative had its gall, but not its mission,
following the interlopers home too soon
and lost its victims more willingly to gallows.

Only propulsion of gossamer egos into the light
can mercifully take from you what you had,
released from the stifling cavities of self.

 

the echoes of cosmic union

the echoes of cosmic union

It is true; I have heard the love songs
of formless longing for form,
of essence longing for breath
and life longing for birth.   

My own life has been an echo of cosmic union.
I’ve danced the subtlest melody of courtship with ever deepening self
and a wordless longing for no more than divine unfolding
cradled always by the intimate peal of the sutras. 

I have been Shiva, I have been Shakti. And both I can never not be.
The map written for me is the same etched on the face of every soul.
I have met you here before, on the singular path of infinite celestial polynomes.
with eternal mind galloping through our every manifestation and choice. 

We were once of the same constellation, gazing at each other from across the galaxy
upholding a seemingly singular Universe. Until a new one unfolded.
You became the zenith to my valley, and then I the fog hugging your foothills.
I was the plum you once ate. And the mother of your cubs.  

I have known of the eternal realm of love,
it has even lulled me awake at night whispering secrets into the ears of the unborn,
kept scraps of my soul hanging on through the darkest of days
and mortared my poetic vision to a muse I had not yet met.

Even on my deathbed, I kept long-beaded mantras of faith wrapped about my neck
tightening karmic strands one by one into flesh of cosmic confusion, desire, and despair
blindly endowing my own fitful engagement to the legibility of future seekers
whose minds today eagerly read the last notes from my skin. 

It is true that I may be possessed by the madness
of unremittingly falling in love with the transience of the moment, any moment
of instinctually despooling the farces of trend and order
and knowing ecstasy to be the brightest umbrage echoing inside each breath. 

Yet I certainly did not know the flesh of eternity
until I tasted your face.
Until I unraveled my tightly held expressions of affection
into new forms of poetry.

It is not an easy truth to settle into,
as the bliss of true aloneness has been good to me.
As with all rites of passage, the recognition has destabilized me.
The more vast heart becomes, the faster mind unreels. 

And the sooner sanity becomes the last measure of bondage.
We can move into anything with our eyes closed
but choosing love over loss frees even the sleepiest nightingale
from her silent burden.  

Now that the cage door to my soul has been torn off,
I cannot look away from your face. It could be that I do not dare. But I do.
Every day I dare look at the simmering fragility of the world as is
and find the ocean of my sight pours relentlessly through your love.

Photograph by Tom Clark

 

the source ( “i’d rather..” )

the source ( “i’d rather..” )

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sitting by the Hudson at dusk,
on the cusp of summer thunder.
A deep OM sets in over river sky,
as the Jersey shore exhales and swells
deep into my gaze.

Nature knows I am sundered by her.
She is not being watched
and so opens wide
to expose the beautiful entrails
of her surrendered celestial bodies.

As I slip inside her innermost secret,
the leaden stillness of truth draws me in
to an expanding desire for nothing.
This prurient desire to feel more
of this moment
merges with sky.

My heart cries out:
“This is all freedom is!”
Suddenly my breath is freer.
So, this is what it means to breathe…

And I realize,
that
I’d rather have this.

I’d rather have this
than a river of my own
and be unable to merge with it.

I’d rather have a dilapidated boat,
and mad curiosity to sail,
than anything a stationary home
and stationary mind could offer.

I’d rather be indigent
with the freedom to walk the river
than lack the impulse to wander.

No really,
I’d rather have a jail cell-
with a window,
than physical freedom
and psychological bondage.

I’d rather give up the world
than hold onto a life that wasn’t meant for me.

Rather have the freedom
to dance ecstatically,
than give up my wildness
for a contract of fifty Broadway shows.

I’d rather let you really see me,
than define anything about myself.

I’d rather wander the world alone with nothing
but a smile
than never again have the opportunity
to light joy in a stranger’s heart.

I’d rather have my divine lover
once, just once more,
than forsake my wisdom
with an earthly contract.

I’d rather have a mystical void
than avoid the mystical.

Rather feel everyone is my child
than need to birth sweet children of my own.

I’d rather communicate
than have a cell phone.

I’d rather you feel I am learning from you
than know that I am your teacher.

I’d rather be unknown
than give up my joy in the unknown

I’d rather leave this life now,
with not a fear as to what comes next
than be diverted from the path
of truth and love.

Rather love everyone
than love anyone in particular.

I’d rather the ability to control my breath
than control over anyone.

I’d rather stay here
and participate in collective liberation
than transcend anything.

I’d rather give up my illusions
than be happy.

Rather take leave from this life
than have nothing left to give.

Rather free you sexually
than ever have another orgasm myself.

Rather painfully burn,
than painlessly freeze.

I’d rather experience surrender
in every cell of my being
than have the world surrender to me.

I’d rather never sleep again,
than fall back to sleep.

I’d rather be alone for the rest of my life
than give up the chance to love you.

I’d rather,
than not.

 

                                         photograph by Gia. Riverside Park.

home

home

If you were a stray dog, I’d be your home.
But you have a home.
So I can only feed you from time-to-time
with my affection.
You seem to be hungry.
But you’re well kept, clearly unneutered,
and smell really quite wonderful.

But where is your collar? Where are your tags?
You come to me with leash in mouth,
not tethered to neck.
We play together with the abandon
of two souls dangling from the moon
not caring if we are in web or pond-
and each time, I swear I discover a new star,
a new height to reach to.

And yet you return time and time again
to the same yard you wandered from,
to the same pole untethered.
I don’t know what’s over there
and don’t ask.
I get concerned when you return to me
different from how you left.
Ruffled, bewildered, a little lost.
But soon you settle in,
tail again wagging.

To me, you always find your way.
It seems you know my gate is open,
and this is true.
I may even install a doggy door
no doorbell required, just for you.
But is it my hand you prefer?
Is it my food? My bed?

You trot alongside me, my long lost pal,
as if we’ve been walking together forever.

I already know the games you like
because they are the same games I play.
I cherish the grandiosity of your dreams
because I too dream big.
I know you like to lie by my bedside
and lick my feet-
I like this too.

But I don’t know, dear companion-
I have to tell you, I really don’t want to own you.
Do you want me to hold your leash?
Cuz I’d rather walk side-by-side.
You in front and me behind,
then you behind and me in front.
I already want to go where you want to go.
You needn’t seek my approval.
It’s the unspoken truth in our meetings
week after week, month after month.
But I love how you howl at the moonlight-
finally someone to be unhinged with!

I find your fur to be so beautiful,
the many tones,
a reflection of you.
Which is why I caress you all over.
It’s really not because I want to please you
and ensnare you back for more.
I want to rub my face in your hair
because its bristles make me lovesick.
Your tail wags and I giggle;
and you allow it to brush my feet,
knowing how it makes my heart jump!

I’ve never had a friend like you,
who is simply finding me in time and space
to find a way to play together.
I see now what they mean:
“puppy dog eyes” don’t ask for a thing,
just a little patience, and always adoring.

You know, I’d like for you to come live with me,
be my prime interloper, my de facto companion.
But is it ownership you require?
(Is that what I am lacking?)
Or is it love?
I can offer only one of the two.
And I already love you.

But what if we decide to play together always?
Would I require something from you?

Even though my testament says that we are strictly free,
I don’t know, you’ve kind of got me wondering
what it might be like.

It’s okay, you need not decide now.
Even though you seem to be mine already,
really I am a little scared.
I am a little shy to ask.
I can’t offer you my home because you already have one.
And I want you to know that you are free.
All I’ve got is our cherished moments,
the precious days when I find you seeking my love.

And although these days become closer and closer together,
the in-betweens sometimes garner doubt
from my faithful heart.
When my thinking bud opens,
I can’t help but wonder
what will happen
if I start to need you.

I never wanted a dog before,
but things change.

 

Brooklyn Yard

Brooklyn Yard

Mother soft joy balls at a midday wake:
Pleasing pleasing prisms does not do to you
.        what you do to me.
Neither do sandwiches make messes when
.        your mouth is closed.
You are neither left nor right;
.        how vague can we get?
You are neither food nor are you hunger;
.        is that better?
You are clearer than prisms could
.        or should ever be.
A refractory image of being, not being,
.        of eating, of not eating.
Of getting so close to the spot
.        only butterflies could not be.

Inside the box, not.
Without the box, within.
You are you are you are.
I am in you of you me are in side under of
.        to with me for us we not yes are.
Then the next thing is, is not, is of, your allegiance to being,
.        to wearing, to not trifling, but chortling instead.

Giving me bliss does not deposit your nugget
.        of self, at least not
without automatic departure, at least not
.        withdrawal from this onslaughts of idea.
Of flowing flowering rivers
.        of chunks of heart–
Not of sweet chakra juice, but of
.        poignant gusts of you and of me. Of we!

 

a thousand ideas of bondage

a thousand ideas of bondage

The chains look quite different now–
Having morphed from a thousand ideas of bondage to actual cuffs.
A choice, another day. Yet chains are still chains.

Passion diffused to specificity, reined to immutable reality.
Desire reduced to just one lone force–
Still it’s the same game
As when the vices were many, centrifugal pursuit.

To say I want you
Would be just another doomsday greeting.
Confirms we’re both standing in the same field, that is, of existence.
It’s no coup, neither understanding nor escape from thingness.

So, is this the same performance you signed up for?
I know I did. But I’ve changed my mind.
Sweet punishment shall follow
As we don’t get to change the patterns set in our minds
From eons before. The now is merely a result of all that.
Yet we reside in the fantasy of immediate creation.

In this revolving mindfuck, we are no different
And so the compassion flows deep.
From within this requiem, I have no firm urging,
No wisdom growling approach or resist.

We must play these rounds all together
Whether with hands of denial and inexcusable bliss–
Exquisite choice or destiny divine.
There we each are.

In perfect stillness, it all disappears.
Save the throb of heart, course of blood and cosmos rushing.

Yet the silence of the in between is only that,
An intermediary until the next flesh thought.

Chains remain links to bodies
To lives and earths of unquestionable flux.
Yet the truth of why we are here is neither fading passion nor logic.
No, this level of desire is the soul begging for goodness
Through atomic revelation of seed and sight–
There where there is no distraction, no sex, no justice, no fight.

Only a love which has no name.
It is false piety and the perversion of confusion which gets in the way
Of wiping and polishing the chains clean
To present our vigorously exposed minds on a string
To wonders which will cease.

There, God is found.
Otherwise you still wait in the abyss,
A shivering masochistic lamb, the nether pawn of self.
You can never build your own light, without the nameless one.
Rebellion is a mere folly of identification; nothing truly courageous there.

Step and sniff.
Bow and obey.
Dissolve into mortal light.

crusts of the poet

crusts of the poet

Smoke.
Trails painted red.
Trolls collecting the wrong fees
for dollhouses never built for the wrong sexes.
Liars lie where wisdom ought to breed.
Children bathe in too many shades of juice to digest.

This is a circus, I feel I’m in a circus.
Wherefore art thou?
Alongside me?
Yes. No.
Yes yes YES.
Phantom messes lodge in my seat.

Please please purchase me out of this life,
away from rainbow flakes of gravity.

So much expressiveness in toes
So much pain in the world, in people,
such a huge need for love exists.

Changeling stress won’t utter the words
you want to hear.
For in its furry body,
only farthings can get
the newfound dribblings of self
to scream.

Imagining self stains my goggles
with a pillowcase sodden by night,
a chance completed by sleep
and left seeping out
in a prattle of bygone.

Watered mouth,
a fully satiating self
sits at desk, so still.
With the discipline of Titus,
she surges into herself
by finally giving the world
its reason to beg for more.

Rub your beak in charcoal and see
the darling pea that yearns for a pod
nearing beanful engulfment without respite.

You’re a midget?
Well, you’re tax-deductible.
You heard me!
You’re so short
you don’t even have to pay!

Pleasing the likeliest of crowds
hardly seems a feat of great mercy,
yet it still happens constantly and consistently.
Doesn’t matter who stops it, tries to, or doesn’t listen at all.

This particular scrim still outlines your tides of life,
waving you up and around me.
Moon forces up the liquid love around us,
eternally, yet only now so tangible.

What is, what was.
There are so many ways to go about it.
This trifling, meddling carnage
which could be dizzying.
But lo and beheld, it tries not-
to be fortuitous and so newfangled.
Ironically never terse enough.

Pile on the zygotes!
Just high enough to tempt the tempter,
to bludgeon the mindstuff.

Flippancy will not delight
where toppling over preconceived jokers might.
Chipotle mediation for kind hearted, restless fools
in meetings of clowns and miscreants.

Please do not dismiss my fitness like that.
Secularities strike me peculiar!
“If nostalgia is a country, tango is the capitol.”

Splash out the unadulterated bliss!
Until there is little left to understand.
Only the last left sage branches,
spriggets slid through teeth.
Pulled off tiny leafy by tiny stem,
leaving behind bare-armed twig bodies
littering leafless floors,
The changeless martyrs of forest time.

Encrypt a poem
for the sake of the poem,
and see.

Photograph by Jill Freedman
from “Circus Days” (1971)

loosening the noose of desire

loosening the noose of desire

My trembling words pass so lightly
over your eardrums
to anoint imprisoned passions
and dally only where descent purrs with possibility.

Even with the stammer of uncertainty,
my rapture sings loudly,
dying to graze your feverish,
without misdemeanor of too much or too little
along the way.

With each pass of ribcage
over beltloop
and near swipe of eyelash across belly;

I shudder.

Perfecting flip of wrist and thrust of soul
heaves last year’s worries out of storage
and into applicable juice.

Our ginger approach innocently betrays
the incendiary fascination
we know better to be
-pertinent information-
for an affair.

Descent of the imprisoned
diffuses the beast asunder
to haunt with oscillating pride,
a relic of pawing ginger kisses
deliberate with forethought.

If a sigh can say it all,
imagine the lifetimes a falling body
might gesticulate, one vertebrae at a time,
through thickets of wanting.

A slight realization creeps in,
bereft of consummation
heavy on disappointment.
and loosens the noose of desire
that has been dragging me so sweetly
through the fantasy of you.

Our broken illusory drags my strong feet
through the mud of still unknowing
where you might have led me
had pedigrees and inclinations
passed differently.

There’s no failing here,
we can only have or have not.

Photograph by Deana Mitchell

The Sandstorms of Tomorrow

Viking premises can no longer handle
the newfound promises
which roll along the water’s edges
without any bearing,
without plush safety vests
or helmets.

There are some things
I’d like to say
but still cannot find;
because they are stuck
where they cannot be known,
in the grey corners of even greyer sandstones.

Expecting the sandstorms of tomorrow,
which were promised long ago,
to whip us up,
to flip over the sandy chariots,
the sweetened maelstrom
that stays buried beneath
tired conches and flippant shelves of kelp.

The last whale already passed by.
On his way to the shore.
The mating season has expired,
but a new one is on its way.

 

The Summons

I am a museum.
There flows under me a raving light
down the ravine,
brave bunny.

My palette shifts.
It has rotated
on Nature’s turntable
with Time-
turning and pausing,
perfusing and dotting
other canvases.
However grateful
but irrelevant,
with its bliss.

Finally this most potent elixir
comes alive,
aroused
by the portrait of
you kneeling over my shrine,
you straddling
these long thick legs of mine.

I think not about vulnerability.
for I am alone with one to love,
you and erotic instinct.

This is not surrender,
but a summons
for your pleasuring of me.

With me supine
and you on your knees,
you purr and sigh,
tower and breathe;
as I coo in the cool caresses
of your wet lips on my knees.

Into my thighs ribcage belly hips,
the invasion of your exquisite hands
scalds rays of pomegranate red heat
through my porous sands.

Like white coals awaiting a flame,
my soft flat stomach arches
into your teasing game.

In hot hands I feel your desire
indelibly soft, traveling
up thighs to hip bones,
up waist to rib bones.

Sliding down muscles of shoulders
across mounds of breasts,
pulling tight over hard nipples-
you know what makes me moan
and create a lava-like glow and flow
of bubbling red tides
beneath radiating flesh.

Your limbs comprehend
my body art
like no others dared-
petting my need and filling my desire
with the higher laws of gods and sex.
Reaching deep into art and marriage,
conjuring up lucid effects.

Flavors alchemize
infusing flesh with new life.
The brightest colors
ever tasted-
not just the reds, yellows, and blues
of tertiary spectrum,
but pomegranate, sapphire, opal, and gold,
vanilla, marigold, night, and emerald.
Urging me to paint your every inch
with their bold wetness.

Licking, kneading, scurrying, haunting-
your arms become wet azure soil,
your hands, my onyx black sculptors.

Your chest glows with marigold
as pools of pomegranate sweat
evaporate off slick concaves
and taunted, fertile breasts.

Your taut vibrating skin
soaks my brilliant colors
into its dark soil,
coalesces with the primitive
to recombine with my sweaty
disavowal of control.

When I can no longer continue
consuming you with my eyes
as I love to see.
Too caught up in the breath
and feeling you feeling me.

I will seizure with love,
sharing my everything.
For you to drink up
into your pineal spring.

You stay locked in
to me
until the waves pass.
Your riveted attention
rescuing me from celibacy.

Imagine how you please me
and I worship you,
how we make love.
Yes, in ten different ways.
We’ve only just begun.

 

Fortune

Fortune sits on my feet.
The weight of Her massive buttocks
presses Destiny, my toes, into the earth.
Squeezes their bulbous toe heads,
impressing into the formidable earth clay
their Bursting Point.

Almost squirts out their thick strings of flesh
exploding streams of red chocolate blood,
my chaotic mindscape all over The World.

Hanging from trees my disjointed idea,
lopping over branches the slop of my Love
for other creatures to divulge,
invest their lips upon,
gnaw off my willing chops-
since they’ve no place to sit of their own.
Have you?

misery

misery

Misery
roams deserted alleys.
Is gorgeous
in every city, blanketed.

A seductive gravity
ravishes, standing alone on a street corner.
She does not draw crowds
though every passerby and wall
slide her a sidelong glance.
Tall and willowy statuesque,
a voluptuous silhouette from collar
breastbone to pelvic pleat.
Her clothes are a sin.

Cruel confronting barriers,
she’ll climb your wall
before you heed wanton chances
to re-navigate Adam’s fall.

This girl is a woman who knows
why she pants and stalks the street,
what perineum beholds,
how to slacken her stack
then retreat.

Though when she enters your mind,
you alone in your apartment,
she is naked
for your scalpel eyes only,
bared rags of pristine flesh.

Why so prevalent?
Her bloodstains bereave smooth flesh.

As you shrivel into a plate of wrinkles,
all you can do is bemoan
that she did not come sooner.

unknown painting source

CIRCADIAN CLOCK NO.1 –– unnerving (the master)

CIRCADIAN CLOCK NO.1 –– unnerving (the master)

from The Master Circadian Clock Cycles 1-8

Sex
pathological,
pathologically lacking impetus, beholder,
you, Love.

Eros, settle, disarm.

Patience eludes the grand master
with the lightness of eloquence
and weight
of all the mores’ profundity
interpacked,
brimming with botulism
and you, Love.

Etiology
smears passion
across spokes of wheel,
spreads legs of soul
through soggy white of eyes
bleeding with

dishonest passion
denied,
not you, Love.

Joy is dead,
and with the sacrilege of sex,
the heydays of former lovers
fall away
like flakes of winter skin,
and finally
there’s you, Love.

photograph by Gia. Goa, India.

CIRCADIAN CLOCK NO.2 –– foster girl (the medium)

CIRCADIAN CLOCK NO.2 –– foster girl (the medium)

 


from The Master Circadian Clock Cycle 1-8

Chasing on coattails of sex,
the animalistic bride
               gravitates
into the ring cycles
of her own spiraling sanity.
Time.

Erda warned her,
               “continue to believe,
               breed courage… ”
Smiling, she continued her gibber
into the wayward funnel of inner ear syndromes.

Mysterious gurl leftover from childhood,
gleeful peace spreads legs of mind as
electric blue heels
               assault
cobblestone streets
in neat click-clack patterns,
click-clocking to other less attuned orbs,
along international side streets,
               the earfuls
               of what they want to hear.

Executing perfect stares,
she refuses to fan or giggle,
nor will she release
her spent maidens of yesteryears.
               They’re in restoration.

The Norns already crawl her city-
too Madrid, Lisbon, Vienna, Seville-
in shattered bridal gowns,
floating gossamers
               soaked with red,
laced with brown.

               Barstooling alongside rectors of drink,
               her cross strands erect,
               betwixt
               legs of maidenhood.

Eyes pricked,
she eats at their sex holes,
scooping out fingerfuls,
and sniffing up the rest-
               addict that she is,
through laden conversation
and neat tricks.

But no one knows,
no man or woman could tell.

Their repressed chunks of sexual dough
yet unformed,
congest her filter
               with apathy
and funnel through, unchanged.
Left as dribble for the masses,
vomit on a bar-room floor.

She reverses her stride,
revert, retort, restore,
chiding all the way out the door.
               “Chill your feathers
               in ice water please… ”
Brunnhilde growls.

And her divine palindromes
did not release
               their exhaustive streak.
It was 2002.

(references to Richard Wagner’s epic musical drama
Der Ring des Nibelungen, a.k.a. “Ring Cycle”)

Painting “Saba with Red Wine”
by Fabian Perez