Or Clouds

It is impossible to know whether the horizon holds

reflections of light on the water,
or thin, soft clouds.

I close my eyes and refuse to know.
Even my existence in this world of stillness
is a matter of faith.

For this moment, I am.

I choose to love these fleeting wonders as they pass,
relinquishing the best of myself
in hope that I may someday be repaid.

Even for a short while.

Rain in the Engine of the Earth

The window falls open beneath slow hands
because the air in the room, so hot, has killed it.

In streams the gaze of streetlights,
in on the cooling wind
the sound of a silent world.

Even standing in a field a hundred thousand miles across,
the earth is a motor
and an engine
and the fresh-air scent of smog and silence like a disappointed sigh
blots out my eyes before starlight can reach me.

Even my whole skin in a moonlit stream
feels like rough grains of salt inside a fragile dream
from which I'll wake to find I've broken it
while sleeping dressed in cotton.

Wind in my lips, I lay unshielded in the street and listened:
heard the howls of a train.

The stars unlocked their lidless eyes
and whispered:

Rain.

Ghost Drunk Moan

Where my naked body, bathed in coolness and fever aroma,

parts from a torso and splits into legs, at the base of me,

I am affixed in sweat to the edge of a mattress;

a leg on one side stretched to brush the headboard,

a calf on the other melting from behind the knee to drip and wet the floor.

Damn it all, who melted iron in my blood and wrapped my pulsing veins around my brain?

And what the hell did they do with my feet?

If ever I escape this steamroom of a skull I'll be a ghost

and haunt the workers in a brewery

till kingdom come.

The Canvass of Salvador Dali

What painter ever painted stars,
dipped deep oil-pots, brushed infant spheres,
cold explosive dwarfs into being?

Only their mismeant notion onto subtly insufficient canvas.

God-fire

Hanging from invisible cosmic wires and comet tails,
echoes in a seamless void,
giving eternally, consuming nothing,
hinting ancient birth, defying death
or enveloping cold?

Falling, crashing dismal heights to glorious rent ground,
careening like a tumbling Lucifer to rip through waiting Earth
and reach its cousin core, create damnation and fire by its own heat.

Stand a guard over Eden, search all ways
and wave an infinite blazing brand of star-stuff, Salvador;
consume eternal things into a single point by your collapse,
tear the curtains of God's space and find in dissolution
meaning, or a portal to some brighter place,
and I will follow every pathwayed creed
to realize where you are.

What painter ever painted stars?

Reason

Sewn into the richest folds of heaven's curtain,

made to neither fall nor rise along the thread unseen
from which the planets, cosmos, great ambitions hang suspended,

a single spot of Savior-blood rests tireless in place where first it splashed

and burns into the close and dawn of ages as men know them,

to cast out fear from searching hearts
and force the darkness from the world.

My frame, unhinged, unworthy, blessed beyond the measure of conception,

opens casements of a pale, cerulean metal
not unlike the flesh which graces better men,

unveils as revelation the incomparable truth as mystery within:

my soul,

unpolished plate,

glorified statuette,

reflects the light of Christ,

is thereby cleansed.

Oh joy of every pure, unblemished act of grace!

My lips, my hands, my heart, my all for thee, my God.

Amen.

For to Hear the Subtle Movements of the Hinges

The trees go on for miles, like pillars in a long-forgotten hall

where dwindling monarchs, softly stepping,

gather cobweb vestments about their spiderling bones and

stare with shuffling, empty eyes past mould and crumbling edifice

of former, failing, flickering glories.

The man who walks the endless stair

counts vertebrae with long and feeling fingers,

as bravely glistening facets of jewels that he would rend unto their essence.

The man forever wandering there finds no nepenthe

in his ever-spiraling motions.

In shiverings and in gales of breeze there comes a method of intent

that carries in its wake green leaves, like breathing stones,

to place a tremor in the hinges of the eyes,

born of the warmth of unspoken words,

and trace initials on the wind.

The trees go on for miles, and the monarch folds his bones

to rest within the doorframes of the many rooms,

and sits in silence and forgotten tears upon the cheeks of a mask,

for to hear the subtle movements of the hinges as they sway.

Irish Eyes from Italy (A Dream of Sleeping)

10/14/09

I'm inside a raindrop, and the sky is blue,

and leaves are falling green onto a coal-red ground,

and I'm happy to be where nothing could ever be better.

I'm a raindrop sleeping in the middle of the way in the centre of the day,

and my arms aren't lonely and my tongue's not tasteless and my mouth's not empty

and there's a blanket on my feet.

It should be cold, but it's burning and it's perfect

and I didn't know your skin was capable of so much steam.

This is a wonderful dream!

I'll lie here with you, raindrop,

we'll evaporate each other

with our eyes closed

and hearts and minds

and stunned to unbelieving mouths

wide open.

We'll never have to wake up;

no one's ever tried to sleep like this before.

There's a beautiful world in here, there's a sea of Ireland's favorite green,

it's looking at me and I hurt my face by smiling too hard and too often.

The Irish eyes from Italy are speaking, but they're too far away from me, asleep.

Settle in, raindrop, get warm and turn to steam.

Sheets and lips and eyes and sighs and endless fields of White and Green.

I laughed and held her close anew.

She said she'll never tell a soul of what she's seen.