On Turning Thirty Seven

UPDATE 3-11-2009: I am unprivatizing this in memory of Heather Davis Palamountain.
There was a time when I would look at a blank sheet of paper and be dazzled by all of the sweeping pen strokes that I could make on it to communicate in poetry or prose how beautiful the world was to me and [...]

Neverlove

If my eyes are full of stars
Forgive me, love.
This swell of sinew in my heart
Squeezes magic through my veins
With each breath I take
Thinking of you, warm and laughing.
My once resolve to neverlove
Is so many ashes in the seabreeze,
For eager puppy I
Can only long for another look
Another touch that burns alive.

Realized

Three nights I have lain awake
Storming through half-sleep dreams
And possibilities, thoughts,
Mental magical carpets,
Half real, half realized;
Doors half opened and swinging
Smooth computers peripherally
Analyzing and verifying
Believing yet incredulous
Of the panoramic impossibility.
The stark lightning of imagination
Energized and rampantly naked;
Leaping obstacles with merry, nimble feet
Barely touching – gracing – the earth.
A sweeping wave of everything
Reconditioning, revitalized
Colorization by raw power
Of [...]

Forgive Yourself for Evolving

Perhaps my only true loves
Are those that are inanimate,
Or are animated soley by my
Magical imagination.
They love me like a god –
I give them life, they give me
Love without strings attached.
They could attach their strings
If they ate from that forbidden fruit
That Adam and Eve partook of.
But that is the difference
Between mankind and animals,
Plants, minerals, Elves, Dwarves, [...]

Introducing the Muse

I wonder, as the Poet,
if you care what I say here;
these words may only be
patterns or statistics to you.
The appreciation is when organs move
– some passing of spirit
through your flesh,
a Magick spell which,
uttered, or even read,
evokes a thump on the heart-drum or
a tangle of the air in your lungs.
When the eyes are slightly moistened
beyond necessity [...]

THIS BRIGHT LIGHT

Ah, this bright light –
I was a closet Vampyre,
dancing on cardboard tombstones
with flexible skeletons
who beat chopsticks on
overturned Folger’s coffee cans
– it shrivels the flesh
and weakens the bones.
I’ve heard of the process of aging before,
from people older than I
(that was all [...]

Treaty

I’ve hated myself for so long
for other people
other opinions, other lives:
here goes my hair –
look in the mirror,
watch your steely blue eyes wink:
lighthouses to steer ships by.
Bring them home.
Home is the sailor,
home from the sea,
and the hunter,
home from the hill.
home to your heart.
Quit renting the space from yourself:
laugh and languish
with the rest of the apes [...]

Candle Flickers

a candle can
move its shadows
like the magic
of an angel
if you believe
that it might be so.
one word
one attempted
explanation
and it’s war
so I give up,
keep my mouth shut
and rot
from the inside
out.
page after page
of meaningless meaning
to myself
tonight
to forget tomorrow
to rewrite
tomorrow night.
Love is no longer
a good enough reason
made to bow to religion,
made to bow to science,
cheapened
and losing the battle
to the [...]

A Plea for Relaxation

People treat themselves like natural resources
(yes we are as part of the ecosystem –
we can be useful)
but expenditure like the burning of a ton of coal
to light one lightbulb?
I ask if this is necessary;
there is a chorus of affirmatives
from the millions who know no better,
who know nothing else,
who bought and will buy again,
who sell this [...]

The Cataclysm of the Mirror

I’m looking at myself
in the mirror and wondering
who the fuck I am -
wire-rim glasses, two day old growth of beard;
cigarette dangling from my lower lip.
FUCKING POETRY – I’ve been gone so long,
writing to myself, watching
my pen bleed from word to word
across the page,
tasting every letter,
thinking every penstroke: the speed of poetry.
And fuck it if it’s [...]