Finding Words

                         FLYING BLIND 


hard not to know what to say      or what not
everything's a riddle    camouflaged yet clear

this second for instance   an empty coffee cup
that itchy rash flaring again on my right foot

cram life into one box or another   never mind
it all runs together        the inside spills out
the outside spills in   a prayer becomes a pickle

or the forceps of meaning--knee-knocking truth
then boulders shudder and fixed stars move

let's not kid ourselves      we're all flying blind 
it's the only way of getting where we need to go

reality isn't a dingy snapshot of two strangers
though they were charming     no denying this

still    better to grope onward    a spooked child
stuttering awake inside their demolished house

a thousand beginning spurt from that wound...


                                        ***  


     The poet starts out in the middle of the mess--feelings, sensations, imaginings, confusions--groping with words to somehow bring forth a gleam of meaning, using language to "make it new" in a way which others can relate to. Truly, he or she is flying blind, exploring the unknown, fumbling with both inner and outer uncertainties; yet "it's the only way of getting where we need to go." 



                        KEEPING THE VOW


there's much muddle and considerable darkness
just as dawn begins spreading its luminous stain
and that distant train whistle sounds mournfully
while bare trees braille branches against the sky

vowing once to be a singer I chanted my songs
crying ecstasy and anguish    glory and madness
and I won't stop pouring them forth even now
though the cracks keep swallowing what I love

but how can I undertake with my flimsy voice
to stanch the world's tsunami of pain   suffering
cruelty   death?   flinging words into the abyss
I see them scatter like confetti    then disappear

nothing's changed    yet a subversive little hope
shudders through these derelict bones   I think
if I could finally surrender my heart to oblivion
it would bloom as this day does -- spilling light


                                      *** 


      Could I have conceived, when I first made that vow to chant my songs all out, holding nothing back, putting it all on the line, just how implacably the cracks would keep swallowing all I love? Did I have the faintest clue how deep and dark the abyss is, into which I would fling my confetti of words? Hardly. But it doesn't matter. This is what I was born for. And in some way I can't "explain" in any other words, if I can "finally surrender my heart to oblivion" it will be reborn and renewed. At the crux of reality--paradox!


  

Saving Grace

                                STORM'S EYE

 
     We dance round in a ring and suppose,
     The Secret sits in the middle and knows.
                                           -- Robert Frost


my mind's not dancing in a ring but drastically
blundering through sleepless centuries tonight

I plead   whine   pray   try desperate bargaining
anything to sabotage the feedback loop of fear

I think I might cartwheel forever into the abyss
stalking my obsessions   being stalked by them

but then   out of nowhere    the Inconceivable
blooms open!   envelops me   gathers me home

released from the hurricane's wrangle   I pass
through a gauntlet of thunder to its radiant eye

I don't know what I said or did to invoke it--
this wormhole of grace enwrapping my soul

impossibly    I'm breathing "not this/not that"
furled deep in a Nothingness nothing can harm


                                      ***

     Who has not experienced them--those agonizing sleepless nights, these concentrated Dark Nights of the Soul? Gerard Manley Hopkins described one this way: "I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day./ What hours, O what black hours we have spent/ This night! what sights you, heart, saw; what ways you went!/ And more must, in yet longer light's delay." Yet there are times when our desperate prayers are answered, beyond our wildest hopes, and this poem evokes one such instance. At the eye of every storm, if we come there, if we're brought there, there is this pure, luminous calm, this saving grace.

                      THERE WAS A BOY

there was a boy who could hide in the sound

rain makes falling on a dented garbage can lid

or slowly disappear with the dwindling drone

of an airplane's propellers   when leaves spoke

to the wind he was listening   and as the seeds

woke secretly underground he heard that too

there was a boy who could see invisible things

like a root groping downward year after year

or the faces of the dead forming inside stones

he was born half turned to some other world

and could never cease watching for its signals

even after The Thought Police arrested his soul

there was a boy who stayed alive in the man

who learned how to resist The Thought Police

and fight off the cannibal vampires and spurn

any scoffer who said  "Grow up and get real!"

this boy knows what he knows    he'll never

surrender    he'll always be part of the Infinite

                                     ***

     I think the saving grace I experienced in the midst of a seemingly endless night of insomnia was possible because, against all odds, that Infinite Child inside me never surrendered.  R.D. Laing wrote: "We live in a secular world. In order to adapt to this world, the child learns to abdicate its ecstasy." What a terrible thought! And yet how often it's true.

        But my Infinite Child never will abdicate his ecstasy. May this be the same for you!

 




                               

Crickets And Crows

    After a three year hiatus (except for one poem), I'm now resuming this blog. I'll be sharing a selection of poems written over the past few years, mostly in chronological order, as well as an occasional drawing. Most of the poems and drawings will be accompanied by a brief prose commentary. Here we go!

EARLY MORNING WALK

dawn breaking

hardly another soul about

just a cat crouching in the grass

*

not a car coming

not a truck going

no need for the traffic light

*

perched on the rim

of the trash container

still as sculpture--a hawk!

*

these homeless sleeping

small islands huddled

on the slopes of the park

*

even before sunrise

this dancing fountain

celebrates the new day!

*

tiny, reddish, so fast!

whatever it was

bolted into the bushes!

*

sun coming up

in the east, moon

going down in the west

*

dew-covered lawn

the tip of every grass blade

catches fire!

*

green lichen grows

such intricate patterns

on the dead branch

*

bathing in a puddle

feathers fluffed out

that robin looks happy!

*

big fat toadstool

you've found the perfect spot

hidden in the damp shade

*

from the vanishing

pockets of darkness

crickets keep singing

***

     I've long loved Japanese Haiku, and every now and then I write them, usually in a single poem sequence, as here. I adhere to the brief, traditional 3-line format, but I don't worry about a rigid, 17-syllable count for each poem. After all, these are American Haiku. During my walk, I'd been struck by so many vivid moments! After I got home I quickly jotted them down. Later, when I sought to render my experience in verse, Haiku seemed the ideal form, as individual pearls on a strand all combine to create a glowing necklace.

                                  DAWN FLIGHT

these crows roosted restlessly above the city streets last night

now they teeter on the topmost branches of a towering tree

then plunge into the sky again--caw-cawing to wake the dead--

shadows dwindling toward a faint blood smear on the horizon

one part of the man watching at the window flies with them

riding the winds to raid and plunder farm fields far to the east

black and glittering his crow's eye! sharp and jabbing his beak!

dark and wild his fierce heart drumming in its tiny cage of ribs!

                                            ***

     The crow is my totem animal, and as a poet I feel a shaman's identification with it. But I think we all have a much greater affinity with nature than we're usually aware of. We need to get out of our heads more, and into our hearts and guts. That's where the other creatures live, and until we can join them there, we'll always be consuming and destroying their only world, and ours.

CHILDREN OF GAZA

Their Screams

nothing but the torn open mouth of a child screaming
a thousand screams ten thousand infernos of screams
a bottomless abyss swallowing sun moon planets stars
all crunched into a black hole   a minefield of violence
spewing the sulphuric rage we drown in night and day

screams infiltrating us while we gulp morning coffee
screams chewing deep into our bone joints   screams
even louder since we try not to hear them   screams
puncturing our eardrums   screams to scathe heaven
horrifying screams that could make boulders weep

screams smashing against barricaded hearts   screams
crisped to ashes in the blast furnace of hate   screams
bleeding from the gashes made by despicable excuses
screams that can never be cauterized   never reversed
agony of the children of Gaza   screaming on and on


Their Blood

clots of blood multiplying like maggots in war rooms
drops metastasizing--ruby viruses infecting our brains
blood spattered over splintered dishes   shattered toys
blood oozing from severed stumps    rivers of blood
scrub and scrub and scrub   they'll never wash away

blood raining on picnics and cookouts   drenching
football stadiums   blood leaking into the mosques
seeping into synagogues and churches   cascading
down mountainsides   blood swamping the valleys
flooding the jets and limos of the weapons dealers

blood obliterating names  smiles  dreams  futures
blood that's so hot   so cold   bitter and unbearable
innocent blood to appease the murderous despisers
blood of obscene human sacrifice at altars from hell
agony of the children of Gaza    bleeding on and on...


Their Eyes

eyes of wizened sufferers   eyes we can never answer
eyes to shame us   eyes that make us ache not to see
eyes that can't comprehend what's incomprehensible
eyes from light years and ages that won't stop staring
eyes that can't help flinching   crushed raped stunned

who justifies why we kill and kill then kill even more?
who blasphemes and cries "The devil made me do it!"
eyes of our own children   eyes of our own conscience
eyes of betrayed ideals   eyes eviscerated by barbarism
eyes like wounds funneling all the tears of the universe

eyes in the anguished faces of the squandered children
eyes of the scapegoats   eyes of these slaughtered ones
eyes of demolished tomorrows    of aborted becomings
eyes that should scorch out our eyes with such despair
agony of the children of Gaza pouring from their eyes


                                          ***

The Journey Home

     Many weeks ago, I started posting the first of a projected series of thirty prose poems which I actually began writing early in February. With "Home" this series is finally completed. I'm not sure what will come next--probably a creative rest for a while. But please check back periodically. I'll likely be starting a new writing series again soon.

                              HOME

    but which?    there have been many    there'll be more    and what kind?    some had roots    others were just makeshift    I remember the yard where I buried a toy soldier    my bedroom window with a view of the cemetery    the big dining room table Mom chased me around -- she was ready to box my ears!    and what about that dreadfully dying girl?    her ghost's haunted every home since then

    home's been the refuge I couldn't survive without    the prison I had to escape from    the womb world of my greatest need    the ground zero of my harshest pain    to wander homeless is hard    but to feel like an exile in what pretends to be home -- it's worse    this home where I sit now and write is a haven    a blessing    yet it's only a tent I've pitched for a while    only a camp in the wilderness

    a huger home's waiting and I'm getting closer to it    after my ashes are scattered in the ocean I'll have no more good dreams or bad dreams    I'll sleep deep and sound and long    the primal sea will be my next-to-last home    my last will be my first    the one I knew before I came here    the one I carry like a Diamond in my soul    I've been journeying back to that Home for a thousand lifetimes    I'm almost there

                               ***

     Since I'm on the subject of "home," here's another piece addressing that theme, one approaching it from a different angle. This poem is from my 2009 book "Black Butterfly."

             UNBROKEN HORIZON

Rolling up my pant legs above the knee,

I stand by the great Atlantic, gazing out

over breakers to that unbroken horizon.

For the first time in more than 25 years

I'm drinking this glory with every pore--

surf streaming noisily against my calfs,

a brisk, salt-tasting wind, the play of sun

on foam, gulls' audacious cries! Amazing!

How did I think to live without the sea?

And how alive will I feel after I leave?

Yes, it's always there inside me, ebbing

and flowing, its primeval flux as vital

as the blood sluicing through my veins.

But these senses strain to know it too.

This spirit aches to savor its immensity!

Now I see. I was in exile all those years.

My true home is here, facing the ocean,

one with fire and water, earth and sky...

                         ***