Faith Healers

No doubt, excellent penance must be paid.
Life is debt.
Always more to need pulls forward
out of dusty cracked ground to quiet thirst.
We are not last, or first, nor most grieved,
most grievous.
Another litter along this trail of fools.
As if ever more stringent rules,
admonitions of flame and infamy,
could slake or set us free.
Comic cosmic tragedy, carried
through descendants
begrudged, pre-judged, caught up pre-aware
in dismal prophecy catechized by
bumbling attendants.
Future’s fettered face: shake faith in
reckless disregard for creation.
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Waxing

Big, fat, buttery Moon.
Baby’s face in the sky.
Tell me why you cry
fat buttery woe.
Does powerful Mars threaten from
so far below?  Ready to hide behind rooftops,
fade down to the safety of setting
of settling.
Like so many men I’ve known.
Where is fierce pride, independence?
Why is the best we expect
repentance, regret and remorse?
How let go call to challenge foretold
in the cards of romantic youth,
to become just a stagnant pawn?
When we reconcile alone,
can reflected virtue
keep us warm?
Who are you, fool Moon, to cry like
a brat in the night?
No Solar solace — pity-filled
lesser light. 
Moon falls out of my sight.
I’ve no stomach for dawn.
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Living Theatre

Another day in the box waiting for nightfall. 
That is when caged siren sings, mournfully, hauntingly. 
This is where our stage play starts. 
Take the ride your tethered mind could never allow.
We have met the enemy, for they are us, just one shadow away.
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Human newborn imbued with alien soul. 
Where the human soul is taken, if it survives, who knows?
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She screams for her child.  Deeply under sedation,
it is but hallucination.  No one hears her.  None understand
why she insists this child is not hers.
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After months of constant reinforcement, she accepts.
This child is her own.  The child, not so clearly
subject to social norms, cannot accept this mam,
or for that matter, this sham society, as its rightful place.
Pitched sweep of surreal pageantry,
fantastic yet detailed with lucidity,
captured from halls of enchanted lamps
begging to enlighten.
Today is about
yes
pure bright reds
unblended.
Fruit of Eden
to carry in sultry saddlebags
for sustenance in high desert.
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Ride the current.
Breathe the moment.
Embody radiant energies
streaming live.
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Impeccable action is full and complete defense.
To embrace vast edgeless awareness.
To love exuberant outrageous self
is reward and salvation.
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That small flickering insistence
finds smolder of resource within
to make another plan
when broken path
has been obscured
or destroyed.
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Children desiccated,
forgotten flowers on
fields of war.
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Where does loathing fear originate?
Why do we insist on a myth of childhood bliss
when growth grapples intertwined in plight?
Drive to acclimate: 
decide whose got the might that makes them right,
how to win favorable gaze — who to hail;
who to hate.
Grief, anxiety, any emotional signal prized as such.
Instead of fight or flee, impulse to ask emergent feeling:
what have you come to advise?
Often telling stories rise distilled from ambient well of
hostility.
Journeying around the realm of bliss does not deny experience
from other sources.  It helps to clarify lines, strings, coloration
outside of fraudulent choice to kill or be killed.
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Epic Rendition

No harder than
day to day futility,
watching burning death,
build up of
wanton fury.
Ablaze wide and high —
uncertain edges, excessive
damage.
Neverland’s adventurous
play ever more crazed, savage.
Treasure map plots out a way
from here to there.
Daring plan around
the fiercest dragon,
most evil King.
No leverage to stop Pan from sinking
when rowdy crowds laugh derisively,
cheer for fear.  No end
to entitled complaint
that grants no faith
for potent wizardry.
The hard part is knowing alone.
Cursed with responsibility
of imminent calamity,
hearing hosannas,
hallelujahs of inevitability.
Wretched wrench into wherever
explosion expends.
Intent on bold leap, why not act wisely?
Hold as given sight’s highest possibility
to re-write the real.
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Parturition

Under the world tree
among ancient roots in deepest earth
awaiting destiny,
awaiting birth.
Up through layers of confusion,
journey beyond safe edge
of expectations.
Awakening impulses, insecurities,
grit of centuries acquired this long,
tedious way.
Endless feeding,
dead to be upon dead.
Creeping upward
constrained only by blindness,
silt covered space,
inexorable mutation.
Metabolized waste
builds, remains.
Brilliant day, approachable moment,
intended emergency
(light bolts zip-zap
from above).
Arrive into future’s story,
creating not destiny
but integrity’s
destination.
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Self Starter

Private self-reflection.
Mirror face inward.
Outer surface shined opaque.
No need to name or count competition.
Pent up fury intent to procure sparkling prize.
Pinnacle of perfection?
Fleeting fame in blazoned storm immolation?
Entrained to innovative wars for fortune?
Certainly not love, nor deep affection.
That would require submission.
Bold inception desires exception, prized
esteem of recognition.
All roads entwined,
all of ever flows into and from
this start.
Day of decision: morning sunshine
burns off fog.
Glistening sky and the luxury
of self-companionship.
Ready, take aim, begin.
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verbeing

Surfing outpoured strangers’ inspiration,
I heard: we not what we do.
Untrue of course. We are exactly as we behave;
we are our verbs.
I am yawning, waking, reaching, taking,
always performing, even sleeping.
I am assimilating or decaying, refuting, praying,
imploring silently or rudely
speaking, yelling, crying, explaining, excreting.
Motionless in pure spiritual beatitude, I am
transcendently blissing, breathing, flowing,
submitting. We all are, every living instant.
Nouns with their adjectives merely set a stage.
Acting verbs express each changing essence.
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Sprung

An outage pan-expansive is Spring.
Back to primeval woods, planting fields.
Sprite quickening fling. Kicking up heels.
Miles from insider’s agitprop ranting,
wringing soppy run-off
to extend discomfort.
Fresh scents revive reason’s libertine.
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Anxious remnants of winters.
Layered ice savagery,
frozen bleak hellstorms, sharp hail regret.
Chilled miserable, sludge wet, relentless.
Yet, hear adventure recall tribes to revelry.
chase lead of Sun’s bright, warm exchange.
Ignite past’s battles, burn discord as energy.
Surge ahead. Explore new forays toward
merry meeting.
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Extricate

Voices echo from sad shadows.
I never know how to answer.
Vapid leering faces
cheer, jeer, beg for spectacle.
I dare not show fear.
Held firm by my lacerated arms,
chest tightly composed.
Stifled tears drip through,
stain like blood. 
A lonely infant cries in the night,
learning to be human.
Let go.
Drift within caress of beauty.
Delete stress.  Feel flesh breathe,
bone heal.
I allow, attend
to effervescent imagery.
Shimmery waves of
sound, light, smell, texture
surround, define essence.
I allow
in clarity, in surrender.
Bursting through
stalled stale chrysalis,
arrival on spheres
ecstatic.
All answers released through
exuberant beating
of new fledged wings.
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Real World

Tragedy
endless young lives destroyed
by misconstructions of reality
— wars of all sizes.
To rise above,
to appear so large that wanton destroyers
must listen,
must stop and hear and understand.
Empowered creation
is so much more glorious,
salubrious,
smile uplifting.
Spiritual love is not about hearts and flowers,
submission to weakness.
Breath of pure air,
quench of clean water,
luscious, wholesome nourishment.
But mostly
love is about learning from each other
how humanity could grow.
I know that hatred surge of feeling securely
strong and right.
Bitter warmth on cold and lonely
watches,
solace through silent, empty nights.
Hatred comes easily to the spurned,
the deeply wounded
dying to emasculate shame of pain.
But true love is promise,
the hope of healing,
if only we commit harmony, to move,
oh so bravely,
through layered corridors of
defensive weapons.
Arm outstretch of acceptance,
interwoven positive regard.
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