

K. J. Hargan Collected Poems

Volume 1

SMASHWORDS EDITION

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PUBLISHED BY:

K. J. Hargan on Smashwords

Copyright 2010 by K. J. Hargan

All right reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

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A Winter's Journey Through England and Wales copyright Kurt J. Hargan 2005

The Trail Through the Hospital copyright Kurt J. Hargan 2005

Summer Roads and Winter Horses copyright Kurt J. Hargan 2005

Songs of the Angels copyright Kurt J. Hargan 2005

K. J. Hargan Collected Poems Volume 1 copyright Kurt J. Hargan 2010

Cover photograph by K. J. Hargan copy right 2010

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A Winter's Journey Through England And Wales

A Winter's Journey Through England and Wales: The Cursed

Wandering, alone and hungry in the great blue hall

The faces of the anticipation and pensive, fear in us all

Amongst the marble, chrome and glass, passage is designed

Summer fruit is gone, the living days are left behind

Blood and ancestors call my name, ghosts will win at last

Excitement and numbing hands recall injustice and profits past

Trace the towns and lines in your mind, see the specters ahead

Chosen names, I've yet to meet, the once and future dead

Slow through lines with wondering eyes, here fates are stamped

Twice I've seen the stone faced men, old bricks, dirty and cramped

It's a curse to be away from love, even here in the great blue hall

I know my bones will return to home, I hear, I feel the rolling, muddy field's call

At the start, the roads and streets are a clouded phantom

Do you see with your heart? Are the possibilities handsome?

Praying, hoping, we move ahead, each pilgrim a doubting debtor

The rain a worry and happy sign on my itching, dripping, woolen sweater

The terminal makes the best and young face the old and grim

I'm filled with the gravity of a journey undertaken on merely a whim

Shouldering on we're reminded of how sweet life is dear

And I look forward and back to when my mind was crystal clear

Up we go into the vessel, it's time to boldly brave the brine

I must forget to listen easily to the melody and then to count the time

Caught between duty and senses dulling necessity, we sit in rows

Here our faith is tested, here our wings fledged, so it goes

And the split is mended, we're one now, up, up and away

How we'll fare, how we'll eat, how we'll grasp, only God can say.

A Chill Goes Through The Trees

A chill goes through the trees

Overflows the banks

And wet this winter

Old bricks dirty, cramped

So easy to think and forget

Injustice and profits past

Move forward Britain so,

We can forget our fathers

And grandfathers and brothers

And our necks stepped upon.

Cold, chill and grey like stone

Cozy sheep grazing a field

The bare, razor hedges

Make me boil with rage

Complacent Britain!

Fatalistic Britain!

Comfortable Britain!

Sneer abroad with envy

Oh, but here it's best and honest

Honest! Honest English vicious

Honest English fear

Honest English capitalism

Here In The Rain

Ancient, delicious, scape of beauty.

My body aches to touch it all.

Here in the woods or near the weir

I hear, I feel the Jack in the Green's call.

Rolling, muddy fields and borders,

Cobble, stone, shops, and streets.

Clutters of houses, roofs, and awnings,

Lean together where webs of roads meets.

Lost and looking where I am or not,

A people who know, keep land close at heart.

Maybe they wander, trip, or meander,

But always revere and return to the start.

A respect within reach, even on Holidays

Look out your door step, Briton!

Do you see what your mothers and fathers have fought for?

Has the answer been hit on?

Do you see with your heart

What your fathers knew and gave?

With every ounce of straining will,

To sacrifice with all, even to grave?

To each son, a land and a green

That can penetrate like none other,

To each daughter with strength, determined,

A home, blessed by their mother?

Even brick and pipe have love

And arrangement with consideration, thought to the other,

Even in the worst, most dismal of times,

Stumbling, there is the hand of your sister, your brother

no matter the feelings of frustration and crowding,

Here is the place! Here, you know!

Whatever the horizon, points of the compass,

Wherever you wander, wherever you go.

There might be palm trees far off,

There might be lands where sun fiercely blazes,

Beyond the globe there are sweet lands

Where colors and smells and tastes senses crazes

But here you can feel the vibrations of trees,

And stones, and towns, and rivers, and lakes.

And they say to you quietly, like a voice in your ear

"Come home to me, come home whatever it takes."

"No matter the passage. No matter the trouble,"

"Your tears will be washed, you have the might."

"Feel the land, under you, loving you,"

"Here in the rain you are right."

Make Me Laugh

Rolls of hay make me laugh

An eely English photograph

An outlet fuse at 240 volts

Lads from Derby, Chelts, and Bolts.

A play as complex as a cube.

Drunken pub crawl on the tube.

Heads that chatter in a can

A proper British Gentleman

Dangerous boys who shy away

The kingdom of the sweet and fey

The land and city of my blood

With accents blue and clear as mud.

American music done much better.

Itchy, dripping, woolen jumper.

It's quite easy with burning eyes

To moon and sneer and criticize.

Rotten, damp, mildew, smelly.

Unending tangles on the telly

Bickering, snickering until I'm sick

Beautiful British rhetoric.

I Knew a Lane in Shropshire

I knew a lane in Shropshire

The road was dirt, the hedges green

The trees would arch and billow

The clouds would stop and dream.

My breath was slow and heavy

I knew a British summer there

The Severn was dark and sluggish

But my mind was crystal clear.

Everyone thought the world would end

Panic was a joke in the air

But I could just walk and fill my lungs

I could feel my heart beating near.

We walked the wrong way up the Wrekin

The farm land folded out in awe

The sense of distance made me dizzy

A jade blank spread before, below.

Something about it made my throat tight

My heart and my lungs seemed in pain

I felt I could simply reach my hand out

And gather up all in my gaze.

I've been to the rugged, misty Wales

I've been to the Town That Never Tires

But the one I stop and relive again

Is the strolling lane in green Shropshire

Tea In Telford

It's time for tea in Telford

In housing tracts that spin and twirl

Thousands and thousands of housewives

Hand in hand on their doorsteps greet the world.

The older houses in Hadley stumble

desperately trying to keep the time.

Best to try to keep your feet nimble

and orientation of the spine.

Out come the dashing husbands of Oakengates

Arms akimbo watch them, heels kicking high

Why waste your life with useless toil

when you can rumba the day away.

Forget the office, forget the train, forget your brain

Slip into another man's wife's arms with ease

Listen easily to the melody and count the time

Ready, steady, lock your eyes and slap your thighs.

Look at the history fade, the masonry and stone

The boredom of the glass and aluminium

can simply be let go and brushed away

with swingers and cheaters and drinks and fun.

Then the telly will show us an excellent show

a wild life documentary playing on BBC 2

And the meaning of our dreadful existence

will transform to a religious memento.

To hell with the boring offices in the Bullring

You're lucky if you get to holiday in Wales

Booze wears off and dope's frustrating

Betty's the only one who can cure your ills.

You consider the hair growing on your ears

on your nose, on your shoulders and ass

the lumpy, sagging, bulbous flesh

Betty won't do, you need Fiona and Candice.

And Sally laughs and sneers since Ian's gone

he's been trying hard to get the sack

He hasn't bothered to come home in years,

That is until he needs to change his socks.

Yes, Telford's a lovely, sprawling village

I'm sure the sight would take your breath.

Most in the Midlands are in agreement

Here the living are dancing with death.

Lost

I became lost in a maelstrom of darkness

Adrift and enmeshed in a snag pool of blackness

I gave up all hope of a future or for progress

No chance for help or finding some egress

Caught between duty and sense dulling necessity

Each moment I sink further into a dirt choked city

The sun gone, eclipsed, snuffed, blackness forever

Spring and the green, growth and the promise come never

Each path is blocked, no way is opened, or through

Arms and my ankles are clamped, I am imprisoned, it's true

Hatred and stink gag me, my enemies constantly surround me

Forms and the doorways fade, fog everywhere, I can't see

But one of these days, you miserable son of a bitch, I'll break free

A Winter's Journey Through England and Wales:

Wid Y Bod Am Bradd Heddu

Loaded and strapped like test pilots, we trudge to the station

Leaving the Lion's den , we scan the tables for the Dragon's nation

Once for pleasure, twice for business, I worry about three

I begin to see the patterns forming, straining between you and me

We've all our lives to answer for, account for every yawn or moan

We've no mistletoe to gather, no rosehips to pinch, time is our own

I begin to read something on your face, a schedule's there

You see or miss something in mine, a mystery not to share.

Into the hills wild and dark so near the towns

old and traced a thousand times, places where

rituals reverberate a whole world away, and we

are smiling children, happy to be in a fairy tale there.

It seems so easy to walk right into Wales,

the doors and windows are open, the web clearly invisible.

Our own emotions, histories changing as we pass

verdant pastures of the Kirkyard, a question of being divisible.

The trains are on time, and the seats available,

once again the green ire waits patiently to purify,

men in white huddling secretive around the small house.

The mist has yet to rise, but it waits, a cat in the hedge,

now I easily hold your hand, no possibilities questioned,

the jaws with jagged teeth, forked tongue curls quietly around the mouse.

For now the sun is shining, through sputtering train windows

today it's warm and calm and the sea, to my right,

deep in the watery green, the fish, half asleep, look up and smile.

I begin to balk at the natural conspiracy, an itch at the nape,

now the scent is clean, why then wait the smell of rot in the air,

I frighten and amuse my senses with speculation and guile.

Let's just get to the station. I have a hold of you tight.

We'll contend with the shadows when it's finally night.

Tremadoc

Along a mottled hill, banks of white overhead,

evening sun coming in sideways and weak,

gold and burnish haloing on all,

looking right out at the fist sized rocks on the beach,

gliding low and easy like we, she winged in from the sea.

Circles of ancient druids, sitting eating sandwiches

singing soft and muttering to each other,

no mistletoe to gather, no rose hips to pinch,

the grass damp and soft beneath their wiggling bare feet,

looked out upon the Irish Sea and saw you come home to me.

Edges of snows melting, trickling, lapping, burbling,

down a sharp cut valley, dark slate bobbing for air,

lambs and rams asleep on vertical green, nodding, blinking

saw you coming to me, as you kissed the waves on the sea.

Yellow last bronze of the day, a glow in the west,

the pines tall, thin at attention like soldiers,

casually arraigned in broken ranks, astonished,

caressed by the wind of the sea, marked how you came to me.

There in stone houses, stacked grey and blue roofed,

cooking roast lamb and roast potatoes with kisses of mint,

and yellow lamps and fires radiate comfort and home,

the ginger haired family saw how you embraced me, on the edge of the sea.

There in the old, old, land tangled, cautious, dangerous with green,

in an earth you could take in you arms and hold closely,

like a lover you've known all your life with curious eyes of green

Sweet love, look away, look way from the sea,

look only, look only, look only at me.

Below Gwynedd

On wooden benches, at forty five degrees,

Dinner and a prayer between your feet,

The clank and the tap of the inclined rail,

Down you go boy, down along the line.

Remember the stories in Kirk, going down to Hell,

The smell of water and rust so strong,

You're deeper than your ancestors in the Kirkyard

Down you go boy, down into the Gwynedd mine.

It's time to work, out you go, out in the dark,

light your lamp and mind your feet,

In the caverns, in slate, angles everywhere,

Here you'll clear, and lift, and sweat until you're very old.

Head lamp's flame brings out creams, blues and marbled greys

In the room's ceiling sweep sixty feet or more,

This dark cathedral's opening hymn is

"Down here we'll take you with the cold."

You start at twelve, then forty more

And work is work, or else they're empty years

You'll feel the pain and your muscles strain

To those above you might as well be dead.

There are stars in the night, and the sun at day,

And your sweet one's cheek and her laugh,

But they are away, a whole world away,

With a million tons over head.

So ignore the aching pain in your arms,

Each ton wears down your back,

For shingles, and pavings, you mine the slate

It's your heart and your hands to harvest the crop.

So it's faith that this world won't come down on your head

Or blasting or weight, or steel takes a toll,

And you make your wages and return to the top.

Beyond Criccieth

Diverted by the Master of the Manor to his automobile,

Racing at clenching speeds on ten foot country roads,

I noticed dragons forming in rising mists on fallow field.

Past barren trees, fingers imploring, falling, Welsh, lavender night,

All the world breathing out a crisp cold winter's solstice,

I felt the fog of the sleeping world all around me congealed.

Up a gravel drive to an ancient, sacred, Celtic swelling,

To a hill crowned with a squat, sinister edifice,

I sensed the emanations that made the old druids hands rub.

Near other dark automobiles huddling secretive around the small house,

The sky, now black and unforgiving as the dragon's maw,

In the door, I was surprised to find a yellow, glowing, pub.

Wealthy Northern Englishmen, fat and proud, and drinking wine,

Sturdy Welshmen leaning together, softly sipping ales,

A tangle of lasses, boisterous, divining who has the shout.

The Innskeeper, lordly, genial, granting mirth and cheer,

The serving wench moving, grace enough to make angels weep,

And I and the Master settled in and ordered ourselves a stout.

Then it becomes hard to tell how light filled up the room.

How happy men and women dispersed the winter's gloom.

As worries lifted, cares were banished and merriment ensued,

Inhibitions lost, fears were tossed and happiness pursued.

A smile, a twinkle, a laughing yelp, the give and take of the game,

The curve of a neck, the drop of a shoulder makes you glad you came.

There amongst the dark brilliant wood, trophies, and trinkets and plaques

The heat and the curve, and the feel of our skin fills up all of the cracks.

The burning golden hair falling all around our form,

The Master, lost, alone, perplexed by the trails of our warm.

In magic Cymru, in the mist, on wet, black sand beaches,

In the forest, amongst the pines, swaying straight and tall,

On the green, rolling hills, a part of me was lost.

Stumbling on the waking morning, scratching, blinking, yawning,

Mind afire, a sum and weigh of my soul here above the stone,

A measurement of all I've gained and just what it's cost.

A Night in Wales

On a tarmacked road, winding on between walls,

with scarcely the width for a man to lie down,

comfortably on the cold, without being run across,

With the sky swelling purple, night coming on,

and nary a tree, but plenty of scrub, I decided it best,

to lay down my head, on some fine Welsh moss.

By the slate stone walls, flat and blacker than night,

chipped from the caverns, of misery and toil,

stacked and arranged like the records of wars,

marking the limits of possession and rights,

setting the treaties of peace and appeasement,

I surrendered to sleep, and dreamt of Angelsey's shores.

Into the mist, fading at sea, deep in the deep watery green

then onto the surf on Llanfairs beach, up from the channels

to the line of green, there where men have made the myth,

Along through the shires, and black sloping falls,

the flurries of Snowdon and blue jagged peaks,

the soul's in the soil of Colwyn, Swansea, and Aberystwyth.

From ancient lands, thrown up from the ocean, trapped in rock,

extinct animals standing in circles, singing to moons,

stab through the lawn and grass of my dream world.

Awaken by rain, tapping my face, startled by time

and the illusion of passage, unsure of the real,

I was surprised to find my fists angrily curled.

Along down the road in a ribbon of darkness,

avoiding the walls or the thorns of the hedge

stumbling on by a cottage with windows glowing warm.

Slogging on in the pelting, no town in the distance

marching to music no man is playing,

the moon through the clouds madly shining,

I smile at the imminent storm.

Tyn Y Parc / The Holy Well

We finally found the entrance you would've missed,

hidden amongst the verdant hedges on a wicked turn,

the preternaturally guarded, paradisiacal gate.

Here in the cowshed, changed into a mansion,

set into a hillside, above the Welsh pasture quilt,

we will bathe in communion, and wash away hate.

Uneven walls painted white, blue slate roof leans at clouds,

crippled tree sprawled out front, lichens scabbing crusted bark,

up the hill, an act of God, where a stand of Welsh pines fell.

Here then, for a millennia, from the white domes of Greece,

from the brilliant marble of Rome, from the yellow stone of Jerusalem,

is where the pilgrims stationed their way to the Holy Well.

After rain all through the evening, stepping along the narrow trail,

mounds of Autumn's leaves decaying, smell of rot in the air,

brambles and scrub dripping and clutching at naught.

Walking slowly behind you, figures together in rhythm,

stepping, quietly, reverently through the cathedral of pines,

I remember this morning, both our eyes twinkling with doubt.

The pilgrims so willing, so fervent, so sure in what to do,

the artesian water so sweet, so clean, so refreshing and cold,

to them the Father, the Son, the spirits and demons so near.

Leaving spouses and children alone without food or means,

only the internal, only the eternal, only worlds without end,

in their minds the imagined world was so wet, so clear.

You and I staring into the hewn rock well, counting minutes,

moving farther apart, clinical coldness growing between us,

unspoken, body filling, shame washing grief.

Eyes averting, teeth clenching, arms empty, numbing,

the accusation and the evidence, echoing in our minds,

Cresting, tossing, flailing, thrashing, drowning in our own disbelief.

The only thing I really know,

Rain will come, ground will wet,

You and I will pass, will go.

The Train Out Of Bangor

We rattle the train out of Bangor

The morning sun blinks Colwyn Bay

We are away to change at Birmingham

The miles we desperately gain.

You're quiet and watching the castles

Embedded in ancient Welsh hills.

There's something you have to, must tell me

Something I fear we both feel.

The aisles are clanking with tea carts

The silence is slicing my heart

The windows are clapping and tapping

To say it would cause too much hurt.

This land has its meadow hue reaching

The lanes and the flats are all bought

The dank, musty hedges are grabbing

This land has a hold of you tight.

Oh, leave! Please dear God, don't you leave me

My life would be empty and shell

Just say it, that's all now, just say it

Somewhere I'll deal with it all.

Our train clatters on in the morning

Through Abergele and Rhyl

Moving on, moving on through the Midlands

We wait for the tea cups to spill.

A Winter's Journey Through England And Wales: Bit Of Indigestion

Weary in the day, the traveling pulls and drags

While the cold sun shines, my trekking soul sags

Happy to be burning from the tiredness in every bone

Pain and leanness resulting from experience grown.

The day is made to put the miles behind as quicker

Than the nights struggles, carousing, smokes and liquor

In the center is a miserable, painful place on the earth

From which I stand and see the breadth of England's girth

With the magic and the old behind, the night becomes tactical

The horror of the mystic, gives way to the horror of the practical

Here the lines have been trod, a billion feet will trace

I am one, too, as a smile comes up on one side of my face

Here the history's unavoidable, clashes set in stone

Sons of blood and misery, no redemption could atone.

Here in England's middle, the sorrow comes at night

Each man is then counted and must rejoice in dying light

Each man is leveled by his own heart, the thing that slices

And we must warm with songs and thoughts, faces to the ices

Of colds of alienation, black walls that stretch and run

Though we huddle together, they sneer and have pity on none

But, but our love can light the abyss, impossible it seems

Down at the warm, shoulder to shoulder, our brilliance streams

So in the killing industrial clockwork, amidst its frozen goals

In our hearts will be thawing Spring, and Summer in our souls.

Bewildering Birmingham

It's time for a happy dancing tune

About bewildering Birmingham

The sad unending brick and corners

cheer like no other singing can

Small Heath's dressed with oil stain shine

Orange and red, brick and stone

Jigged together is what I saw

where nary a branch or blade can come

What can compare to the horror I see

or cool to the bringing anger I feel

A labyrinth made to bring men down

a place to profit on lives that fail.

A ride on the train will tell you the truth.

A miserable, painful place on the earth

An unnatural wonder made to stare.

This, my Briton, is industry's birth

Long shallow buildings built like worms

nestled here in England's gut

Feeding and breeding for centuries now

As the body withers for what they get

It's time for a happy weeping tune

about bewildering Birmingham.

The Old Man Of York

Frosty York stops and says hello

To cool the heat burning in my head

It's elegant stones make me smile and laugh

When I'm consumed by all I hate.

Cobbled ease brings all of it down

Maybe I'll stop and get something to eat

A fast food place ensconced in a flat

That has to be a hundred years yet.

Look at the window's wood workmanship

A bloke who whistled away in his guild

Made that for you to look out at the day

And ogle the lanes, if that's what you will.

The pain in my heart begins to slow

A smile comes up on one side of my face

As the men and women of beautiful York

Invite you out for a stroll on the Ouse.

The river is flat, content, and wide

Olive and tan, a slinking cat

That purrs and licks and lounges and lolls

Swells and scratches and splash in your lap.

You could see how young people are angry and tense

Confined and constricted, here in old York

So give them their space, and have a good yell

They'll get to a day when their hearts will all ache.

Magnificent York, never forget

The cat's fill of blood

That's run in your streets

And covered your fields.

While children in class

Quietly romance

And dream of a standard

Trailing a knight

Teach them the look of

Dread in each eye

And urine of fear cried

In every man's fight

How can you know

The rush and the bellow

Of blood and murder

At the King's behest

The smell of bowels

And the wash of tears

The rending and crying

And screaming and terror

To save yourself you must

Cut the flesh of another

The Old Man of York ambles down by the river

Admires the trees, the town, and the stars

Feels the warmth drift through his sharp memory

Beauty and peace heal the sting of the scars.

Oh! Bleak

An entanglement of dry, bare, reaching twigs together,

The sunshine coming down weak, sideways, if ever.

A caramel mass of frozen mud, huddled with a shore of ice,

A swarm of sullen, slate blue clouds looks down with lidded eyes.

The emaciated ghost of a horse closely crops the brittle grass,

Petrified world fills my heart with a strange kind of bliss.

Tickled by the snapping at my fingers and aching toes,

The shadows of cats, desperate, dangerous, sulking for homes.

And you are gone, lost in the freeze, and it's right they say,

So I should be happy in this stark, dead world, I sigh.

Solid berms of lumpy snow frosted with a glaze of dirt,

The danger of touch and pain, a hungry world of deadly art.

You have to be away from here, away from Shrewsbury's spires,

I must rejoice in the dying light, Spring will fly, it's hers.

A cute something shifts in my chest, congealing a complaint,

How can one be only a half? And so, and so, the math in Winter went.

The shuddering shivers along the walk, along the river's work,

There must be an opening in the crystalline cold, a door into the dark.

I'm glad for you and glad for the logic of cold competition,

The trees bristle frost, alive with a will, white up to their shins.

I'll walk up the High Street, then slip up on Fish Street,

Where the houses lean, breathe into each other, but never meet.

The sky holds back the snow now, sneers out of spite,

I guess I'm the fish, swimming in white, dry in the net.

Two dogs on the loose, happily trotting, bowlegged, out,

I wish that they'd bite me, just a little, vicious at that.

Now the streets are empty, the Solstice vacating in full,

The world breathes its last, it's dead. I'm alive, the fool.

The Severn

Deep in the river Severn, dark, and smooth and beautiful

Stand on the Welsh bridge, see it shimmering and plentiful

A sliver of the moon lights the night, a silver splinter

Stand on the English bridge, see it cold and glimmer

Compelled, I slosh down the bank and sit in the water

The cold soaking through my trousers, I almost caught her

Slinking cool from her Welsh father, alabaster sheen like no other

Nurturing and sane she slips into the arms of her English mother

Cut from the crystalline snows, born of love from the sun

Her thighs irresistible, incandescent, dark and sweet she runs

My hands ache for her waist the gentle curve of her hips

Numbness begins to set in, I feel pain thinking of her lips

Curving and snaking, hypnotizing, she curls and softly sways

Her rhythms make my heart faster, transfixing me where I lay

Several days past the solstice having lain in the river twice

I decide it best to vacate, wondering why there's no ice

On the bank, wet and shivering, her fingers tickle and poke

And here am I, a sorry, mooning, abandoned, soggy bloke

On she rolls, on through other towns, on through other lovers

I'm left, but my soul rises, above my spirit stretches, hovers

She twists gently through the spider web of hedge, and dale

Black and sweetly wicked, like the coiling Cymru's tail

Stumbling home on the street stones, I sense her smell

Pungent, alive, and I know the day, without her, will be hell

Back to the wall, and ceiling, the shop, and the office, the man made cave

And I think of her purity, her nature, and the blessings she gave

Standing at my window, wet clothes stripped away, only in my all

I hear her laughing, chattering, I pull and ache to her call

In the dark, in the dream, roiling the severing alone

Cuts I from you, and you from them, and spirit from the bone

At the river the thing that slices, cuts us apart for ever

In the infinite, is the thing that brings us all together

Nodding, at last, I savor the moment sweet, of her lips on mine

Then she's gone, I sleep as the Severn dissipates in the brine

Hidden In Indigo

We walked the edge of day into evening

Dove gray and black shadows let go

Into lines and gutters of blue stone

The two of us strolling and watching night go.

Crossing along the lanes in dark tunnels

Watching the color drain from the day

Dark motorists swaying on snaking lanes

Wink right on past you this sublime day.

Shop windows and office windows glow and warm

Blue walls and black walls stretch and run

Glow of street lights pale blue and sparkle

Bubbles of cobblestones under foot as they run.

Your arm and my arm in a hidden embrace

Your foot and my foot in quiet perfect step

Hidden in indigo, my contented dark smile

Hopes that your heart will take the next step.

A sapphire wake magically trails us

The angles and lines of the town wink and shine

Trails of the night spread out before us

Possibilities filled with a blue satin shine.

There never could be a night world without you

The gutters and corners would brighten and leave

Without the purple and blue of the shadows

The lovers of Swindon would ask for your leave.

Night, in the towns, in all of the dark shires

Smiles in the lanes and embraces in parks

All of our secret arm in arm strolling

Powers the shadows, the night, and the dark.

Reg At Maidenhead

Reg has a walk in Maidenhead, a ramble to the river

Sculls and row boats bump at the weir, lovers to deliver

Ancient trees and Tudor houses, where once royalty wandered

Movie stars homes right on the banks makes the Thames grow fonder

Frost on the paving, moss on the roof, rabbits amok in the gardens

Brisk, bone chilling fog, frost on the brick, sap in the forest has hardened.

Reg, feeling spry, goes out for a pint, down at the warm , glowing Ark

Whistles at birds, says "cherrio" to a bloke, all without missing his mark.

With scarcely the room for a friendly "Hi, Bill!" the locals all wiggle in

A joke, and a tickle, and slap on the arse sets all of the maids to giggling

But, despite the esteem which all of the girls hold of him quite mighty

Don't bother to try to divert his keen eye, young Reg sees only Heidi

And even now as we speak his venerable bones creak, happy here on his pew

He'll toast to your health, wish you all wealth, and more tarts than you know what to do.

Then last shout comes round, time to close up the town, off you go home to your bed,

With no time to talk, Reg is off for a walk, the wee hours clear up his head.

On the banks, the grebes, and the ducks, and the swans, tuck their beaks in their wings,

Reg smiles at the moon, the clouds, and the stars, and other nocturnal celestial things.

Magically now, every single thing in Britain is heavily asleep

Lit by incandescent sparks, Reg strides but does not weep

He smiles at the gargoyles on the roofs, dragons slyly smirk

Let me tell you something, boy, taking it easy is really hard work.

Crossing the Thames to the railroad bridge where perfectly balanced bricks march,

Without saying a word, for little ones sleep, he stalks past The Sounding Arch.

Here at the dawn, the real chill sets in, watch for the slippery patches

The hard working folk off to early work dates, lift up their garden gate latches.

Completing a round of Maidenhead town, frost biting his ears and his nose

Heart now swelling, approaching his dwelling, Reg steps up to Ray Lea Close

It's good night you lads, Nans and granddads, and all who creep in the day

Our Reg is done, he's has all his fun, and me I have no more to say.

The Dog in Slough

There once was a dog in Slough who spoke quite well

Owned his own home and wore a fashionable hat

Went south for the sun in Cornwall for holidays

Ate nothing but Norwegian food, but wasn't fat.

He would never, ever take the train to Paddington

Though many were impressed whenever he would talk

He'd take tea crumpets with pickled herring for Guy Fox

And regular as clock work take himself for a walk.

He'd always say "Shall not" instead of slangy "Shan't",

And never shake, but preferred to dry all with a towel

His manners were impeccable, his etiquette supreme

Though crabby Mister Spacklefrog had said he'd heard him howl.

He'd only eat the finest fish the Severn can provide

And wanting else he's always say an enunciated "Please"

His health was good, his coat was clean, bathing once a week

Though Dr. Alfred Spottybum once treated him for fleas.

His reputation was as good as Berkshire would allow

Only one event sullied, brought out once he'd popped his clogs

Once in Maidenhead's high street in view for all to see

He'd mounted, with vigor, a purebred bitch, only saying "Dogs will be dogs".

A Winter's Journey Through England And Wales: London Improper

The Solstice is past and on we shuffle, heads down, nearer

Christmas days and gifts and feasts costing us much dearer.

In sheer canyons eroded from blocks of Victorian stone

The masses wander, weary, silent, cramming, crowded, alone

Trees and shrubs carefully caged, bus and traffic drone.

And all of the gains and strides resounding here with anger

Let loose in the streets from sanctioned government hanger

Would go well with an ale, fried onions, and a banger

As ruddy skies vibrate the oppressing alarm and clangor.

And yet for all the unfairness and pain and swelling danger

And lip service and hypocrisy and empty promises from the manger

The tile halled strains sing us no other is a stranger

No one here at heart is an outsider, out cast or ranger

Hold hands and see your brother, sister, feel the changer.

Are you alone here in the crush? You couldn't be wronger

As the gently rains spit, feel burning thirst no longer

The prod we feel is the heart's reminder and pronger

Scrambling, fluttering we gather round the Hyde Park monger

Begging for pies of beef, and lamb, and parsnips and conger

Struck with the thought that that which makes us odder, makes us stronger.

Smile at the shining Thames uterine canal and linger

Life and hope snaking past, family and love bringer

Smashing against each other, fighting, put in the wringer

What we need from each other, merely at the tip of a finger

If only there was a way to tell the need like a sparrow singer

The ache of want of the other, a bumbling bee's stinger

Something to wake and shake, and tie and knot a perfect stringer.

Enter the gates of the city, even the old feel so much younger

All are allowed to play. All have the need. All feel the hunger.

Three Cheers For Capitalism

Pull up a chair, hang up your coat, and close the door

Here's enlightenment lessons for the lads who want more

From the docks of Ramsgate to the breweries on the River Liffey

The pungent smell of commerce is something rather whiffy.

And all of the gains and golden returns filed

Are negated in the fabric by one ignorant child.

The danger is anger where oppressions are left to fester

In Brixton, and Small Health and the poor of Manchester

And all of your comfort, security and silk suits that fit

When the towns and men fail won't save you one little bit

Here's a kind word for all the lads who love pounds and pence

Keep the fire from your windows with compassion and sense.

Now here's a kind word for the respected at the end of the day

The silver haired and wise, with a sum socked a way

From Inverness to Solihall to Bedford's forgotten

The acrid taste of capitalism is putrid and rotten.

To be sure, one's possessions are warmest when earned

But a child with no winter coat can warm when your houses burn

We rub in their faces the shiny, new things we've got

So they kill to acquire and diminish their lot.

And you sigh in your safety, the poor have their bread

But the religion of the consumer leaves everyone dead.

So what's in for your soul when your love's pence and pounds?

A devils hand shake in hell when he makes all his rounds.

And here's the inside for the average working man

Trying to get ahead, put two quid together best as he can

In Derby and Coventry and London profits are strutting

But mind the soft caress of work and business is cutting.

And confidential deals and arrangements made in the dark hushed

Will destroy and ruin when brought to light by the crushed.

We train to fight, and compete, go for the kill, and defeat

But you create a dangerous man, with no reason to retreat.

It's the law of the jungle, it's what everyone does

And, we'll wipe a crocodile tear where your living once was.

So, produce and do well and provide so we'll see

But remember compassion. Free enterprise is not free.

The return from the investment in the community

Is invention, love, peace, safety, happiness, unity.

A man with nothing to give,

Has no reason to live.

Flat Light

Unmoored on the streets, compelled to walk the West End

Forced to contend with open space and horrible freedom

Trying to turn my eyes to the skies, appreciate the free

Wondering about chains of the church and people who need them.

Grey tower, square, medieval turreted and sharply spired,

An iron gate with spikes, a stone wall topped with broken glass

Perfect stones in High Street, shallow gutters tired,

Cracks in plaster, grey-green mildew, straying grass.

The scrimmed dry weather, close, early morning bright

The dull reflection of enormous shop window panes

The legs and the feet crossing in morning's flat light

Sand and grime huddle in the cracks, fearing wash from the rains.

Scuffing shoes kick up bits of packets, straws, plastic lids

Wooden jambs and skirts, crumbling, one hundred years of paint

The pattering snap of stampeding herds of shoes of kids

No voices, no news, no greetings, no teasing, no complaint.

Squabs, scrambling, fluttering, jousting on the paving

The sickening smell of cooked and cooked and re-cooked oil

Old blokes, shuffling, wandering like me, but comrades, behaving

A thistle near the verge, fights for sun, grass must not recoil.

There on the street, alone with my feet,

Solitude so painful, so tart and so sweet,

And no one is coming for me.

One half, full of air, adrift, not a pair,

The ache and relief of not having to share,

And no one is coming for me.

All the fears I have squired, and hopes that have mired,

Don't care if my feet are too tired,

And no one is coming for me.

The price of things done, and kingdoms not won

Shrink in the flat light of the sun.

And no one is coming for me.

The Town That Never Tires: High Tea

Here's a dance for Dames and Sires

Here's the town that never tires

Victorian coal fires gloom the skies

Disraeli longs for her eel pies

The Clapton bolts all of Wembly

Toys at Hamley's make George trembly

Cockneys listen for the clocks

Bon fires lit just for Guy Fox

Wallace's head upon a pike

A teetering penny farthing bike

Dangerous footmen dressed quite silly

Pick a peck of Picadilly

St. Martin's out to take the aire

While lions snarl Trafalgar Square

Down by the river's the place for rugs

Lamps and kazzies, pints and drugs

Black birds pecking the yard at the Tower

As snakes slither through the Eigth's wedding bower

Blooming, close or ruddy skies

Kitchens cold with shepherd's pies

Dragon Westminster atop the bones

Jagger rolls the rocking Stones

Pinter's oracles gave them fits

Adolph paid dearly for the Blitz

Alfred's Lodger seeks rooms to let

The R.A.F. lights the first ram jet

Henry's John cut from the stems

Tipplers toddle to ta Thames

Dickens columns ease the strife

Of work house, poor house, orphan's life

St. Paul's perfect whispering round

A tireless town I've loved and found

Hyde park's dark and green and deep

Softly Ben sings me off to sleep

The Town That Never Tires: Laundrette

We cla-clacked the train into Paddington

The station was churchly and open cold.

We skee-skittled over the walking stones

The sun through the rain shimmered gold.

We traced the Circle round South Kensington

To the holy busker's tile halled strains.

We twiddle-diddled through gears and machinery

But were yearnquesting for derelict trains.

Merrily in Covent Gardens, we smiling meandered

The new day expiring with brass odds and ends,

Bone buttons, clay pipes, dog canes, and teaspoons,

Scooking and sifting old things for old friends.

Dancing and laughing rain began to tratter on to us.

Giggling round and round Mermaids chased the Mare

Off we went, back and up, Charing Cross, and New Row

Splashing and slipping and higgling in Leicester Square.

The day was out of breath, golden minded, soggy,

Silly tired, numb faced, dragging legs and hunger even more.

Remembering ticket taking days counted in the West End

We glittered past the theatre to stop at the tea time store.

Tickling the rain from our coats and hair,

While patrons solemnly queued well before the close,

We looked to the table right in front and neighborly sat,

The smell and glimpse of mushy peas, pot roast and potatoes

The kitchen help and servers qualked throughout the room

Cut string beans with pepper, chicken to tempt the fates

Children lost were found again, embraced and greld their hands

Love and warmth and shining faces smiled into shining plates

Refreshed, for fun, we ran like hell to catch a lumbering red

Peered through fogged windows as decker doubled sway.

Deep sleepy, well worn, smile-bumpity on the train home.

How could one man have known such joy all on this crystalline day?

The Town that Never Tires: Gazza

We went into town on Christmas Eve to look all the lights

To look for sales at Hamley's, and watch the shop wives fights.

As darkness fell a gentle rain began to softly spit

London's roads and streets became a lovely shade of shit.

The night came in and settled in, an obese fetid guest

Bumping, jostling, pushing promised the bestest Christmas yet.

Over by Nelson's shaft we heard, New Age bullshit howling

But chose instead St. Martin's traditional carol yowling

Unforgiving Christians queued for a first class seat

Trying to stave off biting cold we stamped and stomped our feet

Shuffling, waiting, respite from a grey world gone grim

Eyes wandering over architraves, columns, pediments, then him.

Hard to place a more miserable member of the human race

Dirty as an outcast dog with dried blood upon his face

Swaddled in disintegrating rags and a sheet of plastic blue

Huddled on a closed shop step down a door or two

Tattered ratty bright red hair lying on the marble shelf

In his beard quietly muttering, pleading, shivering, crying to himself

What's your name, Jimmy, Gazza, Ian, Dog or Roy?

Does your father or your mother wonder where's their lost and broken boy?

To feel the hunger, or addiction or anger in the rain

I seemed to reach into your coat and dress up in your pain

A cold, rotten world with razor eyes set in a granite face

Shouting, shunning, hitting, kicking with no chance of an embrace

Urine stained shadows and rats empires the only path allowed to lurk

A half mad thing with a heart, a soul, a mind that doesn't work

A burning, throbbing ache alone thrust into a world of shit

The last good thing for him was the last time at his mothers tit.

A living ghost adrift on stone unburdened by anything

And I, I was waiting to sit in church to hear the angels sing

Here was I waiting to praise the birth of the risen Son,

Commanded to help, to heal, to feed miseries such as this one.

The hypocrites stab cut through my heart, eyes burning red

Here was I comfortable, warm, well dressed, and over fed

I breathed in apology to Heaven, ashamed, underneath the stars

Reminded of desires which the heart and soul can mar

I dug into my pocket, trembling, gave him all I had

Prayed a blessing on his head, for peace from all that's mad

In St. Martin's in the Field we were shown a wooden pew

Two and a half singing's worth was all that I could do

In this world it seems that most will do just what they please

And neglect to provide for "even the least of these".

The River And The Weir

Ripples of gold, blue and grey undulating together above

The brown meandering, luscious, languid liquid permeates the womb

Reclining, stretching, arching her back against her emerald quilt

Cat's eyes, blue and green, winking, sating skin so cold.

A shaping, aching, at the bend, tender neck and shoulders

Quivering hands long for the mold of her hip, the bank

She is the Thames, she is the uterine canal, smooth

She is the strength, and the heart and moves to her own time and tune

The river is beauty, desire and life rolling out to the open

Her scorn is fire, her pride is diamond, her love is a gentle plum

She is in dreams, her smell in the streets, her kisses a fever

Beauty in endless, continuing, unending, wife, daughter, mother

Erect, striated, right angles, lochs, mechanisms all time,

Impeding, interjecting, a straight line meant to be seen

At attention, his rows straight, right face to the foam

Eyes hard, arms straight, beauty in strength, pale as the moon

He stands against force, resisting, defying, gathering in,

Feet deep, in the mud, he challenges, more resilient than he seems

Harnessed energy, slight of hand, a puzzle solved and applied

He focuses and concentrates, his will becomes the conduit

The weir is a series of impenetrable window frames,

Filled with gears, trained in pain, sees the world as freight

Tension winding, the water rises, the pent up, straining, eager

Body against body, the river presses, the weir leaking

The river presses again and again against the weir, tension

She senses the connection to him and the energy they can release

The lochs are open, the roar of the flume, the waters passion

A scream of foam, then tumbling froth, shaking session

The river flows, its body complete, skin shimmering

The weir rattles as the river passes through, saturated

Here in the passage, the purpose is cleared, the question penetrated

Iron Age Briton

A golden, burnished shaft pierces blue clouds, a spear of light

Strikes the valley floor a green fire burning bright

Ancient, broken rocks, breathe free of the ice bound weight

A wild and verdant Eden, the Human Briton invited late

Her Neolithic cousins purged, for circles of magic, dark

Her chariots and ponies prance, supreme in all the park

Amongst the yews, and oaks, the Britons move as one

Their bodies painted with ores of orange star, moon and sun

And there the Roman troops, so vicious and fierce by fame

Quiver, and weep, and shake and quietly whisper Boudicca's name

In their golden summer, the world at humble command

In the forest, moving one by one, their body a silvery band

Beneath the earth, in sacred caves, the precious oxide's sought

Then primordial fire, white and pure, brings the metal hot

In aged time, the Briton strides, monarchs in the grass

And here am I at bus stop, waiting, in winter freezing my arse

Waiting, in the cold, for red painted iron to take me away

Frost covers walls, iron sign poles, part of the working days

I hunch feeling the stare of the steel clad CCTV eye

Iron grates and shutters cover shops from the greedy raider's pry

I feel alone in Britain, the separation cold and hard

The naked isolation a gleaming, sharpened, metal shard

The world is dead, asleep, roofs are mountains of ice

The iron bus finally comes, filled with quivering, human mice

Thinking of my cousin's secret spells, wish that I knew one

Something to wake and shake, and return the Briton sun

I feel the steel that keeps me out, tells me what I must

I fear the iron that makes the cage, but know that it can rust

I feel the iron in my soul, my spine, and swirling in my blood

I know the anger, the thaw, and justice awaiting the flood

At the end of the day, alone in the dark, I'll stand at the iron frame

And look at the street, filled with rage, and whisper Boudicca's name

A Winter's Journey Through England And Wales: The Blessed

Here at last in the gentle delta washing away to the sea

I pause and let my journey's current flow and wash over me

Here, where I'm meant to be, centered, points aligned

The fresh and it's transitions, welcomed by the brined

I feel the hands of all I've met, warm phantoms, on my shoulders

Soft and friendly, easy sand, reduced from lonely boulders

Now the split is opened, now my heart will be here and there

Now light fills my mind, for the Blessed are loved everywhere

But, here it's best to know the peace in each human heart

And feel and hear the voice in the whole as each one fills his part

Like a voice in my ear, I hear the song, a whole nation singing

A passion, overwhelming, swelling, my mind and eyes stinging

Unending tangles of love, lines of light, connecting each one

A shining grid of music and light, a symphony barley begun

And I'm the one, listening, seeing, feeling this hand

As the love like a sound, moving, falling, drenches this land

Now we relive again, and again all the things that are right

As each painful bar and selfish bank is washed away to the white

There's a sight would take your breath, as I rise from the water

On the banks, on the shore, every mother, father, son and daughter

Free from want, free from pain, free from sorrow and ill

Filled with love, filled with light, living and feeling their will.

Then I hold tight as a drying moment clears ahead the skies

And the dream, the utopia, is too far a fantasy I surmise

I feel like I've known all my life, as I've lain at night's bed

That all could be cured and solved, but only in my sleepy head

And as I return to the top of the real, I feel, I sense, I touch

The pain that's swirling in every human, sorrow, much, too much

Nothing ever happens that's needed to truly help the lost

To reach and touch and risk the ache, all fear the killing frost

And I sorrow for my soul here above the stone, unresolved

And I know that light and love by greed can be dissolved

On the shore, choking, weeping, marching to music no man is playing

I strain for the grace from the prayer that no man is praying

Up from the water, I wince, from the only thing I really know

As we turn away, pull from each other, look away from tomorrow

We wait for the darkness surrounding, dwindle away to the bone

Each heart encased in its falsehood, each mind burning alone

But, in the killing quiet, I sense more than a frightening dream

Here in the dark, soughing, restless, all humanities teem

It's time to see, here in the dark, the music and pain and light

All configurations in sleeping humans, the worst, the best and the right

Beauty and peace and all possibilities resting here in the night

Bruises right at our fingers, but the healing and love beyond sight

The world breathes its last, humans, like seeds, tucked off in beds

If only they'd realize glorious flowers wait to bloom from their heads

I savor the moment, the potential beneath ice and snow

This humanity's winter must return and melt again in the glow

All of our worries and fears and dark, silent isolation

Are part of the sleep and the rest of revolution's desolation

It's good night that we fumble in, the cold and the worry

The impossible nightmares that stab with snows fury

For all have simply set their heads and quietly closed their eyes

But the voice in the whole will surge as the rays finally rise

All awake! Heaven's right here on Earth, it's our for the taking

Sins can be forgiven, beauty is in the foundations we are shaking

To live free of restraints of material envy and greed

We must know a thing's just a thing, it's love and grace that we need

Green and deep this journey's taught me that grace on the earth

Is forgiveness and courageous openness which we all have at birth

Such joy is given in simply, breathing, and feeling, and being alive

Each day we must be reborn, this crystalline love must revive

To provide love for each other must become our only aim

The world will unfold as we reject pain and injustice's game

No one must be allowed to be lonely, burdened, no matter how strong

The sorrows, troubles, and grief in the distance is something to which we belong

The purpose is cleared, once we've found each and every soul a place

And looked, and listened, and loved each and every human face

I'll stand by this water, and see everything through this winter

The glory of humanity , the potential heaven, all this but a splinter

At the end now, I understand we grasp by the love and life we share

The dream and perfection of reaching out is how we dispel nightmare

And unbalanced, in this world, but caught by the other is how we fare

We can erase all the pain, humiliation, and sorrow a human can deliver

When we understand forgiveness is for the refinement of the forgiver

Then this journey which has opened my eyes, my mind, my heart to see

How beautiful, peaceful, loving, glorious, and wondrous we mortals be.

*..*..*..*..*

The Trail Through the Hospital

The Edifice

Here, you are brought, pilgrim, supplicant, sojourner, seeker

Your clothes are correct, your posture erect, you could be a little meeker

There are those who are brought in bloodied, groaning, screaming

But with light, magnet, sound, we're going to get down, to your essential meaning

This place is big, as well it should be, much too large to caress

For miles all around, listen, the sound, everyone feels the impress

Rising from donors and beggars, Rising from almighty money's leaven

Here in this life, without sorrow or strife, they've recreated a heavenly heaven

Look at the windows, colorful, glowing, the ethereal power of God.

Quiet and dark, like the woods in a park, whisper and humbly nod.

There are rows and rows of seats, places for lovers and the infirm

Crouched in their places. Tight serious faces. All dreading the worm

There are symbols and figures, pointing or poised, some you already know

Some are revered, or hated, or feared, they're rarely a part of the show

Do you recognize anyone? The place seems to be full of only strangers

Not knowing a name, but one and the same, we all enjoy mortality's dangers

With no chance of a choice, these humors all submit to the same subscription

So have a good look, you're down in the book, this your new family description

Do you remember the pillars, the street, anything at all of the outside?

At the end of faith's rope, fear, pain and hope, have brought you on to the doubt side

Proud subordinates yawn, with an indifferent cloud they dust us.

You curse your fate. Will angels wait? How can they ignore justice?

This cathedral of a hospital makes you feel so substantially small.

No matter the cost, at least you aren't lost, there might be a cure after all.

Towers, like a prison, spires like a temple, the edifice fills you with shame

Clenching your teeth, you lay down your wreath, and wait for the call of your name.

Monkey Wrench

In my youth, when I was six, hit on the head, I nearly died

Keith was frightened, I was stunned, my sister simply cried

Reaching my hand, to try to understand, the dark seeping into my eyes

The rush and the truth snapped in my mind by my bloody surprise

Pulled in the house, panic all around, my body had opened the flood

Unsure what to do, moments they fear, I filled up both sinks with my blood

Speeding in the car, head in her lap, I felt numbness and life unclench

Sound far away, calmness and slack, all because of that damn monkey wrench

A searing sharp pain, the line on my head, cold and open to air

Drowsy and lost, a leaf on the breeze, floating without any care

I could see a world without color, staring up at the roof of the car

As a chill settled in, strange for the summer, I felt akin to the far

The red faced cop, screaming and mad, Joyce screaming right back

Horror in his eyes as at last he looked down at my young face pale and slack

All was unreal and so slow, echoes gone, only a smothering hum

With the car gently rocking, I strained at the sleep that would come.

Rattling and bumping in a pillow soft world, a place I could easily drown

Looking up to doctors and nurses, their serious faces look down

Then into a room right next door, as I to consciousness cling

With my body on the table, and everything blue, I felt a very strange thing

I felt myself rise, right out of the real, with hills spread right out below

With no building or street, river or tree, all was dark as the sunshine let go

But high on a hill, with Ionic columns, a temple bathed in warm light

My body lay prone, in this Greek edifice, surrounded by men all in white

After some time, the dream eased and passed, the temple and featureless park

And I became thin, and sank in the sky, and finally succumbed to the dark

I slept for two days, without worry or dream, recovering happy and wild

With half a smile and a knowing look, the resilient will of a child

Sick

Illness comes to both young and old

Dumb and smart and hot and cold

When someone's sick, no one's to blame,

It's only a part of living life's game.

If you are worried, that's all right,

We'll do all we can, to win the fight.

Your body is strong, more than you know

Healing takes time, that's how it goes.

Our bodies are made to stretch and bend,

And when we break, to fix and mend.

All of your body works as a team

Parts much stronger than they may seem.

Together they work just for your good

Your body's doing just what it should.

So if you feel you're at the end of the rope

Hold on tight don't give up hope

Help out your team to fix it up right

Tell your body to fight! Fight! FIGHT!

The Jungle

There are beasts with fangs and claws

obeying only microscopic laws

Judgment

Fully awake, vivid, conscious, here, alive in this world

Picking out forms, colors, smells, textures, knuckles curled

There at your side, the angels, and slopes of the sheet

Shivering, so cold, so furious, and sweating, burning from heat

The horrible choice, the random, not so random luck, so rotten

Try to find courage, some sense of your fate long forgotten.

Of all the possibilities that are or could ever be

The judgment colors the vision of all who might see

Who can dare to know the heart, the soul of another

No one can honestly say they know for certain the mind of the other

Not one creature on this earth has any kind of right

To evaluate, weigh, or judge any one's choice or plight.

Even the wisest, most informed, decision regarding the whole

Will inevitably erode, corrode, and diminish the soul

I've known important men who sat on the bench and weighed the sinned

Grow thin and immaterial, until they were finally claimed by the wind

There is strength in caring, and it's a simple thing to prove it

The weight of the world, when we work together, can move it.

It's not easy, we bruise so quickly, we have so many complex defenses

We have needs and wants and instinctually try to please our senses

It's so easy to be angry, to grieve, to cherish the memory of pain

But striking back, retaliation, ends in a zero sum gain

So let's enjoy what's good, what is, the mind right in front of us

My arms will always be open, so should we, everyone, all of us.

Hate, rejection of a human because of a personal deed

Reopens wounds, rejects the healing, leaving all to bleed.

Life is too brief to judge and follow an excluding chart

Love is not weakness, the strongest open wide the heart

*..*..*..*..*

Summer Roads and Winter Horses

Alaskan Eternal Quiet

How can I paint for you the moon in Alaska?

How can I explain a small, blinding fierceness?

No matter the night, the Alaskan moon is cold

No matter the month, Alaska is overwhelming

Up there, dreams are clear and simple plain

Up there, the night is dangerous, blinding

Shadows in Alaska are impenetrable black

Shadows hide a primal fear past modern icons

Only fools risk the vicious, hungry, Alaskan night

Only fools, like me, go out to stare at the moon

The stars up there are sharp, plentiful knives

The stars back home span heaven to stab the eye

The mountains jagged, black teeth grinning

The mountains, the jaws of an eternal quiet

A night, so cold, so fierce to paint your aliveness

A night so beautiful, so blinding, to swallow you whole.

What I Want To Know About Your Alaskan Vacation

You stayed three luxurious weeks on a Princess cruise liner

I lived for five years of my childhood, magical, surreal

I lived there for five years of my teenage life, difficult, isolated

You dined on king crab, king salmon, ate like a king

I ate what couldn't be refrigerated in the mosquito summer

One July day, our Dad brought home five gallons of ice cream

The next day we had three gallons of Neapolitan soup

Our puppy St. Bernard's head turned pink, stuck in the bucket

The neighbor's full grown St. Bernard constantly licking his head

You watched glaciers, blue, translucent, calve in Prince William Sound

I watched a whole world turn insulated white for six months

I watched the tracks in the road, only life line tracks

As snow piled up by the minute, white blooms everywhere

Houses yellow with light, dark and cold at four in the afternoon

You marveled at beautiful animals strategically, tourist placed

I watched a moose and her calf come every day for six months

To save their wild, risky lives by gnawing at our horses hay supply

I saw a moron in a VW chasing a brown bear down a dirt road

I saw a bleeding ptarmigan, spruce hen, speckled brown and black

Dying, dead, pliant, warm in my teenage hunter's hands

I saw men who had to, had to, had to, get away from society

I saw a wild boy with magic in his bewildered eyes in the mirror

What do I want to know about your glorious, Alaskan vacation?

Not a single, safe, pampered, protected, god damn thing.

The Light

There is no other mysterious, awe filling

Spectacle to compare with Alaskan light

In the summer, the days supernaturally long

Lingering, a sensual pleasure well into the night

In the winter, the light is meager, miserly

Diffuse with cloudy cover, barely called a day

In the spring, green wildly fighting for new life

Warming through mottled emerald, fingers of ray

In the autumn, orange, dusky on the mountains

Crisp, late in the morning as we watch the year go

And then at night, if you're attuned to the sky

Against the stars, the fiery auroras shimmer glow

Mystery in the nights and days we dare call our own

Life and warm, plant and beast, struggle and the fight

In a strange mythic way, the northern things have grown

Nurtured, kept, loved and scorned, all in Alaskan light.

Dearly Friends Departed

Of my life remembered

Pieces I can recall

Of writing with my friends

Upon the bathroom wall

And all the dreams we had

And all the plans we made

Now seem very foolish

When they begin to fade

You never thought you'd leave

Until you start to go

Dearly friends departed

Your anguish seems to show

Oh, we can always talk

Across man's knowledged mind

But we will never have

The closeness that will bind

I used to look at you

And then I'd wonder "when"

"good-bye" is merely a word

Our paths will cross again.

Pure White Snow

I rode to my love on pure white snow

Pure white snow, pure white snow

My love for her did grow and grow

Love did grow, pure white snow

Our light of love, the way did show

Love did show, pure white snow

Light did grow, the way did snow

Pure white snow, pure white snow

Nervous my horse, the way to go

Love did grow, pure white snow

Empty the woods, nary a crow

The way to show, pure white snow

"My Love!" I cried, moon aglow

Nervous my horse, pure white snow

The mountains high, the valley low

Filled with snow, pure white snow

The path with snow did overflow

Nary a crow, pure white snow

My horse and I, sleepy and slow

Pure white snow, pure white snow

Not until Spring, my love will show

Covered in snow, pure white snow.

A Summer Afternoon

Stalks of grass, uncut, long, natural, swaying

Knuckles and blades of fuzzy green, swaying

Dandelions, sunbursts of yellow, flat flower, simple

Square yellow petals, huddled together, spirals, simple

The earth, black, delicious mushroom smell, rich

Legacy of nutrient death, roots webbing tundra, rich

Branch of birch, rotting, papery, life giving life

Dance and intercourse of basic elements giving life

Clusters of delicate bluebells, quietly, breeze, ringing

The blue paler than the early morning sky, ringing

Raven walking, stately, head turning, pondering, curious

Dignified bird, schoolmaster, unhurried ebony, curious

Rocks smoothed from one hundred thousand years, patience

Feel the earth under you, lay back, turning with patience

Sun welcome, slowly pacing the heavens, giving warmth

No questions here in the sun, feel the pulse of warmth

One day lived, one summer afternoon enjoyed and eaten

A life simply, swaying in the rich warmth of an afternoon

Summer ringing with a curious patience, happy for what's eaten

Sing For Me

You who have never walked in green, sing for me

You who have never known a drowning vernal moment

Sing to me of walls and cement, ceilings and floors

You who have never floated in a sea of grass

Your dress billowing in the late summer breeze

You who are proud of village and brick and city

With hems softly brushing against glass and steel

Your hair pulled back in your people's tradition

Sing to me your songs of hurried, stacking safety

Your heels clicking to rhythms of engineered grids

Shoulders turning to avoid a stranger's brushing touch

Take my chin and sing to me songs of your dry, hard land

And I, who have drunk deeply of nature's ocean

I, who have been a long haired boy swaying in a tree

With dark eyes watching a brightly dressed mother

Gently groom her fragile son with silent grace

I will twine my voice with yours on winding rivers

Of colored paving and rivers of rippling, heaving white

I will sing for you of groves of green and mottled light

Trees as solid, silent friends, arms reaching, waving

Arms begging to feel our hands gripping as we dangle

Take my hand, from the top of my green brother, we two

Will sing of your glittering city calling from the horizon

Sparkling through my black leaves in the gathering dark.

Sonnet 15

There is love impressed upon the new,

A love overwhelming and shining bright.

There is not a thing the lover can do.

The wave of shock becomes love at first sight.

The shock a sight, a vista of new land,

Worlds of beauty unlike any others.

Alaska is such a one, wild, unplanned,

And she has seduced so many lovers.

Winter worlds encrusted with jeweled snows.

Sweeping ranges off in the purple sky.

Azure abuzz with life, the river flows.

Ragged red suns, afire, that will not die.

This land's rivers and mountains are steepest

And my overwhelming love is deepest

Sonnet 16

As if from nowhere, life stands right in front

Too big, shaggy, in the water, frozen.

No sound, unless provoked, barely a grunt

Magic moment makes you feel you're chosen.

Drooping, elephantine, bulbous, blunt snout

Dripping, scraggly, uncut, too long, thin beard.

Dark eyes, open, eye lashed, checking you out

Shoulders so large, hunched high, make it look weird.

Deer like, floppy, twitching, sensitive ears

Wiry, short hair over grey fluffy fur.

Antlers, huge hands, reaching, spreading for years

Long legs, taper down to small feet, sharp spur.

In the water, hidden among the spruce,

A glimpse of my beloved Alaskan moose.

Sonnet 17

Stately and mysterious the raven

Enters as if from nowhere, there he is

No crowing circles high waiting craven

This dark bird is lead to wolf, fox and grizz.

With jet black tail and hatchet for a beak

Raven announces his presence with an, "Aaaugghk"

And if approached his reprimand will speak

"How dare you?" with an imperious "Daaugghk"

In England, ravens wait in the tower

Acting for the royalty and their death

In Alaska they embody power

Bringing to the world love, and life and breath.

Raven's roles are mythologic, global

However he's cast, playing it noble.

Sonnet 18

He followed the strange one for two cold days

The ache to hunt and run so close beside

His pack long lost to frozen waterways

His four paws pace the strange, two legged stride.

He remembers the smell of mother's fur

Hunger a pain that makes him out loud growl

His knows his line and birth make him no cur

And why there must be more than one to howl.

He feels the tracks that intersect all life

The paths that pull the one to the other

He suddenly knows wolf's love is shared strife

And he aches to call the stranger brother.

He continues to follow without pause

Melding with him in pack or in jaws.

Sonnet 19

Flipping, tumbling, arrow dipping magpie

Flashing black and white with chevrons of blue

Bad cousin of raven and crow, he'll cry

With a wry smile from a low branch, "Hey,you!"

Too quick, a daring acrobatic dive

Keep eyes on your rings and buttons on clothes

Thrill to validate his being alive

Steals the dog food from under the dog's nose

Surprised the lower forty-eighters say

"Oh, Alaska has those relentless birds?"

Defending from marauding night and day

Alaskan's tiredly pick out their words

Stealthy thievery from top to bottom

Wearily, simply say, "we got 'em, we got 'em."

Sonnet 20

This is a song for wide, open spaces,

A land without a plan, a theme, or goal,

A place devoid of pushing snarling faces,

undeveloped heaven with just one soul.

A world shaped by water and what can grow,

Wind, and what eventually wears you down,

Tundra where the selfish would never go,

because there is no pay or golden crown.

Silver is from the water's sparkling light,

And diamonds are the mountains precious ice.

The gold is sky as it turns into night.

The freedom in this earth has no price.

There is a place for all to be alone.

A land which only God can call his own.

The Ballad of Rick's Father and Brother Kim

The Alaskan Spring does many a thing, pits the wise against the fool

no other time proved this more, then when Kim came home from school.

My brother Kim, was not dim, on brains he had a lock,

emotionless and way too smart, like Star Trek's Mr. Spock.

His wealth of smarts brought scholarships and accolades galore,

which puzzled me, when employed he, at the local convenience store.

Here was a man who hieroglyphics could read, and ponder numbers strange,

content to spend his summer break handing out your change.

No pleasantries, from thoughtful he, standing still and clean,

here's your two cents, ladies and gents, dispensed just like a machine.

But those, like me, who know him when he, wasn't burritos a'floggin'.

Philosophies, mathematic seas were sloshing in his noggin'.

Then came one golden evening, to the convenience store,

in his truck, my buddy Rick and his stern progenitor.

Sent by his glowering Dad, Rick went upon his mission.

His errand to fetch, and buy from Kim, the latest news edition.

His prize in hand, returning to truck, his Dad said, "Hey! Hey, hey!

This rotten scoundrel's sold you printed news from yesterday!

I'll set this clerk aright, and give him Alaskan what for!"

With news in hand, he stormed right back into the convenience store.

With veins abulge, and eyes afire, righteous in his caper,

he slammed it down, and with a frown, said, "This's yesterdee's paper!"

Ready for a fight, Rick's Dad would feed this guy his hat.

But Kim looked down and calmly said, "I am aware of that."

Unable to, give argue, or even discuss it further,

suddenly gone were angry thoughts and even threats of murther.

Struck by the cold, unassailable logic, come much much too soon,

Rick's Dad became a silent, and stunned, floating human balloon.

Wafting back to his truck you could have herded him with birds.

This stern and blustery man was at an utter loss for words.

To this very day, you'll hear him say, if the story you ever get,

"There did work, a rotten clerk, the dumbest man I ever met."

The Ballad of the Frost's Evil Dog

This is a story, most of which is absolutely true,

About a dog owned by the Frost's, with eye of brown and blue.

It was in High School, in the freezing, cold, bitter Alaskan fall,

For some bizarre personal reason I decided to try football.

Those lucky of you who know me by a personal repute

Know that I could hardly be called a massive, hulking brute.

And yet my average stature taken into no regard

I was assigned the dubious task of playing the left guard.

Incredulous upon the field, though this design permits

The game could carry on without the ball ever touching my mitts.

So my assignment, all the day, was to hit without a rest,

the dope across from me, with my forearm, right in his chest.

Although my arm was quite sore and the work seemed quite a grind,

I had to stand and take from that dope punishment in kind.

At the end of the day on the bus, with the bumps and groans

We'd ride home, just like the tide, with weariness in our bones.

When the driver would stop and make his drop, that's when I would shake.

Tired and sore, and what's more, I had an awful decision to make.

Would I roam, the long way home, off on a weary slog?

Or would I slip, on the shorter trip, past the slavering dog?

If the short way I sent, by the Frost house I went, making my ragged way down,

And barking like heck, cause he wanted my neck, glaring with blue eye and brown,

Was the dog I knew well, like a demon from hell, tearing the dirt and the mud,

promising pain at the end of his chain, thirsting and wanting my blood.

So day after day, practice and play, the football and hitting went on.

Hit with the snap, hit some poor sap, as my forearm grew so much more strong.

And every night, without any light, on my way to my home I 'd continue,

afraid of the cost, by the house owned by Frost and his dog with the brown eye and blue.

Then one dark eve, passing the dog so aggrieved, as homeward I did gain,

The Frost's young lad, intending no bad, let the mongrel off the chain.

I could tell by his eyes, and his look of surprise, a moment of shame I did note,

While his dog in a frenzy, bounded at me, rushing and leapt for my throat.

In a moment of will, as all time stood still, the dog filled with animal harm

Seemed to hang right there, floating in air, as I instinctually brought up my arm.

I gave him a whack! Knocked him hard back, right like a guard on the line,

The dog hit the track, flat on his back, the wrath that he felt was all mine!

Then that wild mutt, turned round his butt, and slunk, whimpering back to his lad.

This flesh of my own, toughened and grown, was not by a dog to be had.

So from that day, when I'd go my way, by the dog with the blue eye and brown,

He'd curl up his tail, and quiet his wail, and turn both his cold eyes straight down.

Eagle River 1976: The Land in Spring

Bones and brain still vibrate from the Alcan

My father's land is uncut, untouched, pure

Frightening in its green and black wildness

The child, fading, sees a natural wonderland

The teenager, rising, groans with contempt

The huge birch you can't get your arms around

Papery, shedding, black limbs bristle yellow green

Alders are fortresses, walls of silver branches

The cottonwoods are towering and smooth

The brilliant, glaring, green grass is waist high

Pines are grey green and huddle darkly together

Creating sacred groves of evocative resin smell

Squirrels burrow between their gnarled roots

Safe near the ancient heart of the father of trees

A carpet of needles, scales from stripped pine cones

Magpies dip in sharp arcs from lower branches

The earth in Alaska is old with the echo of life

Thick, black, matted, pungent smell, called tundra

Incessant attack of flies, mosquitoes, yellow jackets

A magic world without fences, yards, or curbs

On the edge of a protected, federal, natural park

Eagle River is a wide, saddle shaped, glacial valley

The town is a blink on the Old Glenn Highway

Set against the middle of spreading, vast pastures

Where teenage boys and girls would come and gather

At the only hamburger stand open all year round

Because the delicious, wooden Dairy Queen stand

Was only open in the months of August and September

And that summer, the only, new black teenager in a fight

Frightened, surrounded, angry, a misplaced lion

Later that year, to become the local football hero

And his younger brother, one of my most honest friends

And two white boys who played a mean trick

Only for the three of use to become the three musketeers

Wasting time so desperately together in Alaska

Only one year later, the three off to other paths

And how my older brothers gone, left behind

To begin their adult lives back in warm California

And now the squirt of the family a lead child

My arms suddenly swelling, chest wide, bursting

Finding I can rip stumps clean from the earth

My untiring saw sweeping alders from the land

Four acres of grass mowed in a single afternoon

My father smiling, not letting too much pride through

Our corner of the earth, turning into a lush park

Then an old birch stump filled with yellow jackets

Vicious insects that both bite and burning sting

With a can of ether, the vicious are sung to sleep

Their wooden castle sieged, chopped from the black

The start of the curious, merciless, cruel, burning free

And no tears shed for everyone had been stung once

And known the fire, fury of the relentless yellow beast

So our fire was settler justice and a ringing freedom

School was close, the first teenage summer closing

Fourteen only once and becoming a modern pioneer

A change, cultivation in the green, black land and boy

So far away in distance, but not so far away in time

As measured by the heart with a certain edge of love

So the strangely long, warm days began to cool

And for a week resemble the rest of the world

A new home is shaped and molded from nature

And she seems to smile as we comb her emerald hair

She is no less beautiful, no less wildly majestic

Her children have dressed her and set her curls

Here there will be a home, a place to finally live

No less then the burrows tunneled in the wood

Then let that summer never fade, now so gone

Let that lingering dusk which took hours to clear

But filled with the laughter we knew and created

Not as hard as people a hundred years ago had lived

Not so easy as people with money could've lived

Just right for a boy of fourteen facing adulthood.

Eagle River 1976: Winter Horses

My father bought a giant, bay quarter horse

Her name was "Judy", and he thought it stupid

Horses should have mythic, beautiful names

I was frightened, so large, so muscular

Dark, curious eyes, penetrating, alien

The old rancher who sold her was mad

His stallion, "Dungaree" had broken out

In the cool, Alaskan fall, wildly carousing

Judy was loaded onto the trailer home

The family was ecstatic, crazy, joyful

A battleship monster had casually strolled

Onto the verdant lawn of our Eagle River park

Lessons and rules, wary, and old stories

Guess who had to feed and water her every day

The horse fat and happy, acres of delicious grass

The novelty gone, school to survive and adjust

The horse became a drudge and a morning chore

And the first snow flew in early October

I was first down the steep, sloping hill out front

The snow too fresh, not packed at the bottom

A hard thump and embarrassed bitten tongue

And that damn horse just got fatter and fatter

Until it became clear we had got two in the deal

Dungaree's night out was Judy's gestating foal

Then a renewed excitement, strange anticipation

Even though Judy would die several years later

In a sad confluence of Rube Goldberg events

And willful and strong, she was never dangerous

Then one November, bleary, pre-school morning

A big set of black eyes blinked at startled me

Judy, I swear to you, a little contented smile

Had delivered her foal, without trouble, herself

Chaucer he became, happy, bumping, tall as a man

Furry, bristling, shy, needing his mother, leaning

Nibbling one strand of hay like he could really eat it

Every day a growing wonder, gaining weight and height

And glued so close to his mother's rippling side

Black pools in his wondering, learning eyes, so new

Even though his balls never dropped, poor chap

I was the one to climb up, take the chance, break him

His little, bony back, so small, barely satisfying

Like his mother's broad, muscled, rocking back

When I took Judy to get the mail, half mile up

In the last, long, straight, even, dirt stretch to the box

I'd push her to a full gallop, ride a flying carpet

A whipping, soaring, rocking chair. Yee Haw!

Chaucer pacing with all his little, fuzzy heart

Sold later at half his worth, unable to ever stud

The next year, in the spring, he bought another

A filly from Judy, slightly damaged, "Buttons"

Smaller than her mother, but identical black and bay

Stepped between the sharp discs of a cultivator

A small bubble of a scar and so she became "Buttons"

My father had had enough of the stupid names

The filly was rechristened with "Dulcenaya"

Taken from Cervantes mad knight Don Quixote

Gentle and kind, unlike her mother, an absolute joy

The next summer, three blooming quarter horses

Not the way a fifteen year old boy wants his life

Humping bales of hay and straw, gallons of water

And sacks of feed, and shoveling mounds of horseshit

But later in life I call myself a stable master

And you better believe that was really a job once

And I wasn't sorry to leave the responsibility behind

The next winter, Judy broke out of her corral

Every morning for at least three frustrating months

Five in the morning, I'd hear her clump clumping

And spend an hour before school in spirited chase

Every morning angry, cursing my father's vanity

Years later, grateful to that mad sire of mine

Who gave his Sancho Panza, me, the grace and fortitude

By saddling me with the responsibility of horses

Eagle River 1977: Summer Roads

Coming up on sixteen in the frozen November

Summer was the time to safely learn to drive

Behind the wheel, serious, freedom up ahead

Dirt roads pitted with damage from winter's frost

Paved roads snaking, long, sensuous to a teenager

Some roads like Skyline, winding up the steep wall

Of the Eagle River valley, impossible when iced

My father's 1962 Cadillac, a finned, iron clad tank

Automatic transmission, power steering, yeah baby

But also his new 1976 Mercury, sexy green, Capri

That one with stick shift, sporty, intimidating

The next year in isolated desperation, parent vacation

Cadillac hopelessly entrenched in a snow filled ditch

I taught myself how to drive the Capri and its stick

It just made sense, listen to the revs, then clutch

Fifteen miles to Anchorage, only a learner's permit

Feeling like King Shit, what was I so scared of?

Until I popped the clutch and embarrassed, stalled it

Right on the first red light on the new Glenn Highway

Muldoon Road, three lanes in either direction

The new Glenn, so slick, so modern, so unAlaskan

You could really fly when the roads weren't ice slick

Later, in 1978 I'd get my father's powerful Cadillac

Up to 120 miles per hour in a race from Palmer

We both switched off our headlights, stupid teenagers

So desperate for destruction, feeling invincible, immortal

The old Glenn Highway, winding, accommodating all

Snaking from this village to that in a winding ribbon

Most of the time a single lane, only double when needed

The shoulder, a steep drainage ditch, so better be careful

Then from the old Glenn Highway at the top of Chugiak

To the north, on a clear day without battalions of clouds

You can see five hundred miles away, Mount McKinley

Now returned to the original native name, Denali

And from the old Glenn Highway was the Eagle River Loop

An arcing quarter of a circle, sweeping connecting

To the middle of the arterial Eagle River Road

The summer of 1974 four teenage boys in a truck

Killed themselves, driving too fast to stop where

The loop dead ended on the reaching Eagle River Road

On the bus, coming home from school, stops called out

"Yellow Rock!" because there was a huge rock painted yellow

"White Rock!" same reason, residential roads with no names

Later when they named the side streets, something was lost

With no consultation, our home, known as "Five ½ Miles Back"

Became the ridiculous and embarrassing, ugh, "Wilma Court"

Eagle River Road itself, I swear to you, I've driven

A hundred times in my unconcerned, waking sleep

Every turn and waver, climb and swoop a drill

Played out at least twice a day, usually more

So I can tell you with imprinted memory

When you turn off the new Glenn Highway

Just past the convenience store I worked once

You arc to your left, past a rarely used laundry

Where I worked one gritty, sweaty summer

On your left, a wooden bridge spans a creek

Then a gradual climbing left as you orient

To the fairly straight angle of the Eagle River Valley

Residential side streets only on the left, like Yellow Rock

Then one traffic light, the Eagle River Loop Road

And the Baptist church on the corner alone

One winter, with horror, stained blood hand prints

Where someone had died the night before, stabbed

Then a straight climb, steep, where my father once

Had killed a moose with his Honda, couldn't be helped

Up over the hill, a snaking dip past Skyline Drive

An arcing right past rows of houses, glimpse of river

Then just at the immense earth station, white dishes

A rising sharp, long left, see modern log cabins

Then one, two, three roads, are you awake, ready?

Be sharp, there on your right, dipping, steep, invisible

It's five and a half miles back, I've walked it home

Eagle River 1978: The River

Once every other year, like a brutal ritual

A life was claimed, swept away by the river

Days of searching, looking for the body

Eagle River, a beautiful liquid contradiction

From up high, the river winds, a lazy snake

Fat and weaving in the wide glacial valley

But up close, Eagle River is ragged, chopping

Deceiving banks of shallow, smooth stones

The water fresh from the glacier, angry and cold

Logs and torn stumps thrashing in the water

The water free from millennia of imprisoned ice

Wild and ferocious, white and opaque, milky

With no transparency, the river coils, waits

With no telling of depth or speed, surprising

With no warning, carried away, too late

From the surrounding mountains, streams run

Cool and clear, calm, the river's opposite

Here the fish spawn in silty stream beds

Here the huge salmon finish their journeys

End of their struggles, plant their life, then die

Fully grown, the salmon are orange and red hulks

Dog Salmon, King Salmon, Silver Salmon, Cohoes

One summer, the Hardy boys, four acres away

Invited me to trip to the North Fork to snag

Snagging involves only a large treble hook

Three, vicious, empty prongs, no bait needed

Illegal, worried, cast your hook beyond the fish

Then whip the hook into a giant orange swimmer

The fight and splash a rush, life in the balance

Food and life, swirling in the clear placid fork

At the edge where the fork ran into the milk

Silver swords of fish called Dolly Varden swam

Tender, white flesh, mild, unlike the pungent orange

With the spawning comes evidence of bear phantoms

So elusive and ghost, the bears leave their trace

On the banks remains of salmon torn to shreds

With the winter, the oppressive blanket of snow

The satin ribbon of white is the frozen Eagle River

Safely frozen thick, the summer water treachery

Becomes a solid, smooth highway of winding ice

Funny that a wild river animal so summer feared

Would become a still, unmoving, stretching stone

One winter Bob Hardy, who had an illegal trap line

Said I should come with him, something winking

I didn't really want to, but something in his eye made me

There on the river I saw it, unbelieving, stunned

Fifty yards of pink ice, bits of bone and fur

Two nights before, the pack of wolves in the valley

Had corned a moose on the graveyard of the river

The wolves had decimated the moose, vaporized it

Astounded by the fury of life and turning nature

The river had played its part as the fatal open space

Where the wolves could attack, corner and feed

Nothing left but puffs of fur and needles of bone

And an amazing, sad, fifty yards of blood

Before you turn your head or fold into your disgust

Remember nature has been winding and weaving forever

Because you think you're safe, doesn't mean it goes away

The river is there. It's been there for millennia

The river will be there long after we do our level best

To tame and develop and ruin its beautiful wildness

The river is life and the river is death

The river is food and the river is hunger

High up north, Eagle River was once my home

The river is there, it will always be there

In my dreams, at night, with animal struggles

And lashing water or dangerous frozen openness

I do not judge, or cherish, or fear the river

How could I? The river is. I am. Nothing more

And yet I cannot deny, ever deny, its awful beauty

When anyone climbs the valley walls to the mountains

Everyone sits, and for hours, in peace, happily stares

My life has been claimed by the river and I am the river

Eagle River 1980: Fall Mountains

The summer is a lover you've seen too many times

You've enjoyed yourself enough, but want more

And something cringes inside, winter thoughts

But there is the month or so before the snow

And the trees knew before you and they're ready

Green, soft translucent leaves fade to yellow

Especially Skyline Drive where a stand of aspen

All at once, turns a shocking, yellow gold

The birch age to yellow leaves, some red

And there is a plant called, in Alaska, fireweed

Tall and purple through the summer, now red

And fireweed indeed, the valley is ablaze

All along the steep slopes every tree by color

Belies its genus, pines resolutely olive

Up to the tree line, no higher can trees grow

Here are the jagged edges of the Eagle River valley

Not so high you couldn't climb in an afternoon

But ripped of brown rock or gentle angles

All, ten thousand years ago, cradled the ice

Five and a half miles back, two, round sister peaks

Always a beacon to get home, head for the twins

And up past them, on our side, is Heller's bowl

In the fall, bursting with fields of blueberries

Families fill containers and hardly make a dent

Bears occasionally grazing, blasé, hypnotized

Amongst the blueberry, a bitter, black crowberry

On the other side of the valley, a massive bowl

In my imagination, a skier's untouched paradise

A drive up the valley and you'll see Raven Glacier

A massive growth of blue, hanging, way up high

A trek back, the road won't take you all the way

And you'll see the ancient remnant, Eagle Glacier

A puzzle at first, sight doesn't correctly register

A huge, frozen, blue and white, cresting tsunami

Straddling the valley, it seems somehow impossible

And a white runway, sloping up, curving back, titanic

Out on the Glenn Highway, from the Eklutna flats

Soaring 3000 feet, marvel at the Talkeetna Range

Spine of rock sweeping from sea level, purple, white

So large you think you'd drive around it in an hour

Hah. Keep driving, it'll take nearly a day, if that

To wind through the Matanuska Valley to Palmer

On a clear day, five hundred miles north, Denali!

In the valley, in Autumn, specks of leaping white

Dahl sheep bring their lambs up onto the sisters

Springing and walking along a sheer cliff face

With a look of calm puzzlement, "Can't you?"

Climbing to the top of one of the mountain twins

I went right to the rocky, forbidding mountaintop

And after crawling hand and knee, rose, to stand

Tallest point, for spreading miles and miles away

I was the ceiling, I was the eagle, I was the cloud

Stopping the heart, some animal accomplishment

Isn't that what mountains are? So in the way?

The obstacle to surmount, the goal the other side?

Mountains play no games, they come and slowly go

With a time immeasurable by busy you and me

A day is nothing to a mountain, tiny little itch

You're a blink to the mountain. Where'd you go?

A mountain, no pity, will firmly nail you in place

Give the perspective your humming brain craves

If you listen, you can hear time sliding off its back

If you stand still, for one human hummingbird instant

You will be a part of crystal, stretching eternity

We claim our little spots and say, "better stay off"

But who is foolish enough to say he owns a mountain?

An unavoidable part of everyone's life, the wise realize

A buzzing, brief, human life, the mountain owns you

Your life is a sum of the mountains which own you

Mountains of memories, family, desire and knowledge

Stone parents, smiling, look down at their arrogant children

Until the child grows and sees the love he was given

Eagle River 1982: Sunny in the Spring

Sunny he was named because of the effect

He had on our father, gone three months ahead

So lonely, needing his family, so uncertain

But the puppy, Sunny, made him sing and smile

"Thank you for the joy you've given me."

So when we children finally got to meet him

Our Alaskan, half St. Bernard, half Great Pyrenees

We were dancing and jumping around like demons

And Sunny, so young, so tired, so dopey, so puppy

Droopy, swung his head, smiling that dog smile

On a grassy shoulder in Anchorage, where we stayed

Then, out to Eagle River, lean-tos, sheds and trailers

Our home barely claimed, roughing it for real

That first night, Krystal and Koral worried

"You have to let Sunny stay with you!"

They cried, I alone with my own , small trailer

Dad wasn't having him in the huge mobile home

So sleepy time, I hustled the massive puppy in

Months old, already pushing forty, fluffy pounds

So happy, that puppy happy, told him to lay down

He tried to sleep, grunting and puffing his happiness

So distracted, no sleeping, I finally had to put him out

The running joke with the beautiful, milk white dog was

"When's he gonna grow into those slapping, great paws?"

Size larger than a big man's hand, so clumsy, so puppy

And love, how can you measure a dog's unending love?

A little food, some attention, a quiet corner and he

Will give his all life, disregard his own safety

Throw himself into the teeth of hell for you

If you have never loved a dog, you're incomplete

And so, this grew in our Alaskan family

And Sunny, so male, so aggressive, grew alpha

But smart and obedient, knowing instinctively

Our neighbors dogs were another sad story

Playing and then fighting, as dogs grow they grow

But know the safety of this large dog beside me

As I ranged out over the green valley, exploring

There were bears and wolves and wild humans

Who all politely faded into the sheltering trees

When the boy walked with his three foot, six inch dog

And when cars drove down into our cul-de-sac

His awesome snout right up on the driver's window

Once the Electricity Reader was formally introduced

Wagging tail and happy to see him, pat on the head

Markings like the St. Bernard, light brown, not black

Not so jowly, a little drooly, but so loving, sensitive

And if you sat, roll his battleship body half on you

Playful, running, mock biting, head dodging

Paws splayed, fake, fake, then run and feel life

Trouble when he killed a few neighbor dogs

But everyone thought they were new pioneers

So no one kept their dogs on leashes, or fixed

Well what the hell did you expect when

They finally called the "mad dog" call on him

A pregnant lady was followed up to her mailbox

Not attacked, not chased, he followed her

You stupid bitch, he was probably saving your life

Knowing him, knowing his keen connection to the wild

He knew what was in the shadow behind the pine

And so in doggie jail, that was it, no reprieve

Only the needle and the furnace, seven years later

All the children grown and gone, Our Dad now alone

A ghost dog is appropriate somehow for a ghost home

Returning from Europe, so sad to find him gone

The woods incomplete without his shaggy white

Eagle River so much less magic without the dog

A soulful dog's soul, a sad, beautiful dog's face

When I see something akin to his noble breed

There is such a secret heartache, if he could've come

But I know I could never have taken Sunny from Alaska

Sunny with his sad, golden eyes was Alaska

Pieces of heart hold the love and remember, so puppy

*..*..*..*..*

Songs of the Angels

Songs of the Angels: The City of the...

It floated in a putrid milk of foamy aquarium water

There was nothing left at all I could have taught her

The useless meander of empty pint glasses at the pub

Fishbowl notoriety frothing in the bottom of my career tub

It hardly moved, long, oblong, slimy and sloughing

Skin, so entrenched in the preoccupation of nothing

The excrement of my inaction when all I wanted was drink

When do all hopes become the things that stink?

Its dorsal fin was curled and dead and rotting

There are no sins ever forgiven or ever forgotten

Its contour shining above the water, useless white

Come and gather my failures under the yellow street light

A ridge of all my deceived aspirations cruelly born

Revealing every secret which my hypocrisy adorns

It was delicious, hallucinatory, despairing sushi

We know each raw and cold revelation to me

The time to wake, pulling it from the water in sudden rage

Can you hear it drown in air? Free from its cage

My gasping, bulge eyed, newly found desire

To my brain, sparking, a red, hot live wire

I had to evolve by force and not by tripping whim

No more wallowing, or placid staring from the brim

No longer possible to float with the swilling dregs

I had to stand. I was forced to grow legs.

Hello America

I was talking to an attractive, intelligent girl

So blind she couldn't tell the trees from the grass

So full of training and knowledge

With her head jammed firmly up her ass.

So entrenched, so divided in what she knows

In the correct, soul saving camp

Exactly like her counterparts on the other side

Spewing sound bites in an indignant, ignorant vamp

Understanding in America apparently is too difficult

Interferes too much with commerce, too tiring

Having an individual, well informed, original thought

Confuses conservative and liberal mental wiring

Hello America. Not so long ago, with faults

And sins, once you actually stood for something

But now the dream is money and nothing more

Freedom to be selfish and greedy is the one thing

I mentioned to this girl the thing we

Desperately need is some kind of morality

She, aghast, assumed I meant some fundamental

Christian, hypocritical, overwhelming fatality

I tried to explain I meant a shared system

Of values, community, something more than the buck

But she didn't hear, how could she really, considering

Where her head was so firmly, resolutely stuck.

Hello America. Once our land represented the best

A place for thought, compromise, progress, the free

I know I'll catch shit for this truth, I don't care

Immigrants come to America now only to make money

And why the hell not? Why shouldn't they want what we've got

And so from the tyranny of poverty they come

But in a world mostly free, it seems hypocritical to me

That it's impossible to have prosperity where they're from

And I exclude no color of race, or particular face

Vive la difference! I want to make perfectly clear

But as the world wildly expands, with shortage of land

It's physically impossible for everyone on earth to live here.

Hello America. No one cares about being an American

It's unfashionable, somehow racist, an exclusionary dream

But both sides, left and right, haven't got it quite right

Which is why I refuse to sign up with a team.

All respect is long gone, for the original composers of our song

No child is taught the full history to sing

But ignoring sins of the past, then blessings at last

Erases both the melody and the harmony of all things

Hello America. What are we? Falling, spinning apart

With no compassion or interest in human unity

I despair for the future if we're no more than cash and television,

We must, we must, we must have community

Hello America. A beautiful promise, liberty, and equality

Freedom and love here in the beaming, morning sun

Hello America. I pray god for a way, though this dark day

If we don't hang together, we can always hang one by one.

Negative Orbit

Is there such a thing as a negative orbit?

Can something you put so much into be of no use

A real broken heart is when you realize you've

Wasted the time you should have been sharing elsewhere

A negative orbit is when you circle around

The wrong thing, for too long, hoping

When does hope become foolishness, How can you know

How can anyone know if the person you love most

In the entire world is the absolute worst person

For you and pulls you in for bad gravity

Can gravity be the thing that pulls you along

And yet sets you in the worst wasteful paths

Is there such a thing as a negative orbit?

How can a heavenly body, with a radiant smile

Be the person you wait and wait for and then

Be disappointed again and again.

How can a child so easily repeat their parent's mistakes

All the same faults you had as a frustrated child

How can a compassionate soul hate so much

How can a friendship become a competition

How can something meant to be eternal die

How can a parent look at a child and see a stranger

How can we walk and socialize and stay so far apart

Is there such a thing as a negative orbit?

Why would a man who's learned so much be stupid

Why would a society follow all the rules it despises

Why would a woman say "I love you"

And then provoke, provoke, provoke

Why would a gentle man be so horribly violent?

There is something so very strange in our heads

Something that reaches up to heaven, but

The monkey inside has a hold of us tight

And screams in our ear, eyes to blood

And children of God hate, hate, and hate

And forgiveness is an empty whistle

Or rote, or a hypocrite's prayer

May God find the paths we need to trace

May we listen, listen, listen, listen

May we know and feel and help.

I will not stay in a negative orbit.

Immutable Truths

The world is flat

In fifth dimensional science.

The sun revolves around us.

There are no fictions in lyings.

The President is neither good nor bad,

But something else altogether.

You are not alive. The dead aren't gone.

The most important topic is the weather.

Feed me everything you possibly can.

Set a feast of opinions and facts on the table.

But, don't expect me to eat a damn thing,

I'll ingest what I want, if I'm able.

The goods we know today, in future will be evil,

Then returned to good before too long.

You are not you, but someone else,

And every single thing you know is wrong

The Enemy

Do you feel like the enemy?

Surrounded by pointing fingers

Come and gather together with me

Join my club of hated enemies

We can sit and hate each other

We can squirm under scrutiny

Do you fill with envy and pain?

I'm here and have nothing to gain

Are you sneering, are you hungry?

Sit down right with the cannibals

We have dinner with you in mind

You look like the enemy, like our kind

Do you feel the rhythm in your hips?

Do you feel the poison right on your lips?

Let's be clear, no one is getting wet

Starving and staring is the only safe bet

Yeah, I feel like the filthy enemy

I see the stupid, pointing fingers

Get together with my enemies and me

I don't squirm under anybody's scrutiny

No, you can ignore, desire, or humiliate me

You're a fucking ghost, something I can't see

I don't hear you, plead, tempt or cry

Because no enemy can hate me more than I

Tom Moggy

Call me Tom Moggy and I'll do my best to explain

I'll reveal every secret prowling round my poor brain

Moggy's' a Brit name for a feral alley cat

'Tom' is the male of the species, simple as that

I've a beautiful woman who looks after me

She understands the permanence of the temporary

I apologize if I've ever unintentionally misled

But I always skulk home to the place where I'm fed

If I don't speak and it seems that I'm staring, too

I'm merely wondering what its like to be you

Don't be frightened by complex things that I've said

Pity me for the somersaults in the maze of my head

Some wonder about my woman, think that I'm daft

I'd've been put to sleep long ago, if not for her laugh

Before her, I patrolled Santa Monica's pubs and its bars

Laughing with girls at October Fest in our cars

Back in college, poor Tom Moggy confused many

By smiling, but leaving, and not choosing any

The old cat was a flirt, but had the future in mind

And realized the immature wasn't much for his kind

There was a girl and it seemed that Tom thrilled her

Until a bastard who thought he owned her, killed her

Then there was one whose love turned into a tomb

She cleaned out his clothes, his heart, and her womb

There's the poor Moggy sneaking, giving it a whirl

His heart is so broken, but keeps looking for that girl

There's something this Tom keeps stalking in track

There's something he's seeking, hopes will come back

As a boy, Tom Moggy spends his time to himself

Reading and reading, an extensive mind filled shelf

He couldn't speak to a girl something more than shy

There's something he's afraid of, this imaginary guy

What he's afraid of goes way, way back when

A hurt and a freedom he'll replay again and again

At five years old, just a child, no more than a laddie

Told, "You can't say anymore mommy, mommy, have to say daddy, daddy"

As the youngest kind of boy, a realization of pain

Abandoned by mother, difficult freedom to gain

So all his life, Tom Moggy looks for the lady

But doesn't need her, won't be hurt again, ever, or maybe

So desperate the need, so leery of the female

Afraid of the storm, but wanting the caress of the gale

So don't be hurt if you think Tom's the worst of all that

He's a prowling, yowling, nervous, confident cat

I want you there, I don't really, but I do want a part

Just don't be surprised if I escape through the hole in my heart

Brilliant Girl

I am grateful to my brilliant girl

She comes home and I felt the bad vibe

I feel the frustration and anger she nurses

We know each other so well, a tuned chord

I'm angry at an asshole motorist, urge to kill

And I'm lightly touching her leg, "What's up?"

She says. "You calm me down," my honest reply

So when she comes home, I want her to touch me

I want her to let go of the frustration and anger

From petty squabbles, maneuvering at the office

But I can't help my brilliant girl, so we watch a movie

We watch a movie about the people of Rwanda

We watch a movie about blood and anger and violence

We watch a movie about real genocide, real horror

We watch a movie about love and sorrow and hope

We watch a movie about a time and place removed

And my brilliant girl turns to me and says almost stunned

"I feel better now, my problems are so little."

Brilliant girl, just as the movie nailed her in place

She nails me to the eye of the human hurricane

A moment of peace and love, sorry for the Rwandans

And the Iraqis, and parentless children in places removed

And I am grateful knowing we can lose it all

Any day, we could break the bonds of community

And we could have human horror right at our doorstep

We intelligent humans still so close to the dark trees

But for now, safety and life, something to sadly savor

And I am grateful for love and this moment with my brilliant girl

Leimert Park

Moving as though something down there was afire, the parade

Is begun by the slow strutting of skeletal whores

Shuffle sideways eyefish smokers, dark suits beautifully lose

How does the parade float by for one so lost?

Ah, Liemert Park, a carnival sound, a merry go round

A tree falling down.

Built on the bones and fear, can you hear

Of angry, white people, oh come on down

Ah, Liemert Park, a mountain road, carnival route

Winding around to the end, for God's sake Liemert Park

Easy to touch the ground, there's the taste

Of good red wine in my mouth, islands of grass,

Cars drive too fast, curbs high with bitterness

But what's that melodic beat? Damn my feet!

What's that ancient, rhythmic time?

Call backs, syncopation, hand claps

Fusion, Latin, cool, hot, bebop, swing, Dixie

Sucking in the madness and hate, breathing out the last

Of peace and delight shining blue teens bring up the last

The silent mask, feather and bead, feast in the body

Laid out between the softly whispering giant pines

I know some doctors will wait for the song of hope

Ah, Liemert Park, a carnival sound, easy to touch the ground

Try to keep what you found, a tree falling down

A merry go round.

But judgment is stupid, you cheat yourself

But watch your pockets, don't go easy

But let a good man give his chance to help

Oh, Leimert Park, keep our heart beating

Songs of the Angels: From Pico Boulevard to Ocean Park

"I hold the poem," she slipped on her words

balanced on a knife's edge, watching the birds

Like a bodhisattva one foot raised high

She could tell I was a bourbon and soda pop guy

The rats in the bar parading their tails

A guy eyeing me, holding a cross and some nails

The beast by the jukebox didn't like the tunes

He prefers old songs with someone who croons

A sad, dingy collection of friends shooting pool

My filthy, worn clothes made me feel quite cool

Not bothering or looking over in my general direction

She wanted to know what the hell happened to my erection

The evening turning ugly, is it really time for insults?

At least when I get enlightenment from bourbon, I get results

And how do you argue with a shimmering avatar?

And why in this confused cosmos? in this buggy bar?

"In the first place," she ran her fingers along my arm

"There's nothing you could do, if I wanted to do you harm."

"I do not want to hear you say how you are wrong."

"I simply want to hear you simply speak your song."

A fight broke out, some asshole started a fire

I was frozen still by a consciousness much higher

A riot by the pool tables, but she was gone in the night

In the midst of the maelstrom, I was filled with her light

The Black Beast

The beast in the shadows is stalking

He follows my tracks, licks my feet

The beast in the shadows leaps up onto

My back, laughing, on my shoulders

His talons caress my head, evil, black beast

My heart sinks, stupid I know, my weakness

And just like that, stupid I want to go

I want to go home and put a bullet in my head

It's irrational! My life is wonderful

Safe and healthy, and it breaks my heart

I am rested and feel so confusingly tired

Fuck the black beast! Fuck his stupid evil!

I am a fighter. I will fight in the furnace

I will not give in. Let me burn, burn, burn

Like thin people, grieving, arched over empty tables

The beast in the shadows happily acts waiter

Cement floors chipped, strategic ribbons of paint

I will be heart broken, but leave the beats of suicide

Cling to faith, faith the clutching, blind vine

Seen through an unwashed window, dear, beloved vine

Let me hold tight as the beast pulls at my arms

I don't know how this ends, how the hell could I?

How will this end, with the dark beast on me?

Have faith in something, any thing, what?

Have faith in the short, fat, greasy guy behind the counter

God help me. God guide my feet. Help me hold on.

And that is it. I will not dwindle away

Dwindle to the cheap plastic lids and paper napkins

Rustle in the trash. No!

I will fight the black beast to the very last

Looking him in the eye

because I will not give him the satisfaction

Los Angeles as a (W)hole

Los Angeles to me, is a sad, dingy collection

Of coffee houses gone mad, and bleary bars

Staggering in pathetic, hopeful circles

Looking for the setting moon, seeing only stars

Los Angeles to me, is glaring, hangover white

Cement surfaces, cement bridges, cement lives

The victimized huddle together, more dangerous

Than drunken husbands, or flying, stoned wives

Los Angeles is beautiful in a fading evening slow

Dissolving into brown oranges, and purples into black

Move and groove, sound and fury, Phoenix, San Fran,

O.C., go home, get away, but you're always coming back

Los Angeles as a (w)hole is eroding into

The rich earth, creative, recycling, artist's death

Hate it, love it, it's a carnival of cultures

A boiling community trying desperately to catch its breath

I am home, though born six thousand miles away

I am not Chandler, I am not Bukowski, or Kazan

I am not Mullholland, or Cohen, or anything special

I am simply here, a living, breathing man.

Fragrance

The beautiful, elegant, elderly ladies

Coo and swoon over the winding verse

Not bothering or remotely aware

Of the raging sexual lust stalking

In the male poet's throbbing lines

For a smooth, young man

I see the beauty and shape of the verse

But am not so enrapt by the inherent intent

I like women and that is all there is to that.

I see, I understand, and do not judge.

But I do not want to confront the elegant ladies.

Let them extract some deep and meaningful

Beautiful, abstract, emotional, ethereal concept.

Nearby, a striped a cat quietly contemplates

A colorful zinnia it could not eat or pollinate

Only a faintly aware of its fragrance.

Santa Monica Middle School Picnic

The rambling start of the new school year

In Southern California, Santa Monica, here

The evening turning cool in glowing September

Wandering among the families, a new community

Young girls, whose look surprised, startled me

Was that an inkling of twelve year old lust?!

Ye Gods! Children growing! How horrific!

And their mothers stumbling, groping with

Looks of fear mingled with insatiable want

Husbands drifting, vacant, human balloons

Single mothers panther stalk the unmowed lawn

A turkey sandwich for my son, he hungry

I am not hungry, my son eats in silence

The poor child is learning to be an outsider

Alone and reticent like his weary, old man

And I realize, for the moment, a horrible "why"

Why I'm solitary, why I'm no longer social

Once I was gregarious and happily reaching

But as a young man saddled with a door to door

Responsibility forcing myself on the annoyed

Now I enjoy standing back, being apart

And my poor, poor son with his turkey sandwich

Has learned to observe, too old for his age

So I can't stand back as he munches, forming

I can't stand apart to teach him to be a part

A gang of graying fathers play rock and roll

His mother arrives, invisible bonds are broken

He is free to run and play, I am content to watch

The Explanation

I was wondering about what once was

And how it dissolves into time, goes.

I went to a past life, celebrated psychic

Telling movie stars of queen's lives on TV shows

I was afraid I was nothing but stacking

Tumbling, boring mortar in the wall of strife

Worried I would be one of the unremembered

I asked the psychic to reveal the parade of my past life

She frowned, then spoke frankly, quickly, honestly

"At the court of George the Third you shoveled horse flop,

you once thought about trying a fresh peach

but didn't, and regretted it until the drop."

"In the palace of Omar the Sultan, you brought water,

You wore average clothes, lived an average day.

You once had an amazing revelation, but

Forgot it, and then had nothing more to say."

"At the building of the pyramids, thousands past,

against the magnificent stones erected to those

regal Cheops and other pharaohs of time immemorial,

you leaned against the limestone and picked your nose."

"In the Greek Isles where great thoughts were born,

you looked at clouds and ate a green olive for brunch.

And in man's dawning on Africa's savannah,

You were a hungry, pouncing leopard's lunch."

"One of the lines of those who sneer past the parapet,

as time moves unceasing, and mountains creak,

you've also been a sad, touching, unending line

of babies who never got the chance to learn to speak."

Angry I rose, paid the psychic, turning said,

"I suppose I've lived as insects," hitching up my pants

and at the door, nearly gone, ready to fade

I heard her say, "Yes, mostly as ants."

The Apologies of Thomas Moggworth

I do not want to go along

I do not want to hear the song

Late at night outside the tavern

Where I will dress like all the boys

And hunt the night with mooning toys

Hear the words I plead from the hall

As drunken children laugh and fall

I give my heart on altars of Diana

With breakfast cereal, strawberry and banana

And the broken heart upon the limb

Will never satisfy our whim

My time upon this happy street

Has been the measure of my feet

Amongst the hunter's happy eyes

I wander with the smiling smile

Wondering will you while a while?

And it comes as no surprise

Embarrassed by my old giraffe

I suddenly know why mermaids laugh

I feel old, and I feel spent

Wondering where window winds went

Though praised to ask another day

I know, I know what fades away

And the broken heart upon the limb

Will never satisfy our whim

Though chided for a childish tsk

I still believe in reaching risk

And dances wild in mooning light

My mind upon Diana's alter

Old and silly, watch me falter

Without wings of dragon or finch

Who crosses the chasm of just one inch?

Rubbing our backs against the night

Let Prufrock, then, voice my fears

Embarrassed by my wanting tears

There's bread and jam in the pantry

He can't now, can he? Can't he?

Though alive by breathing laws

I understand the scuttling claws

We are here and then we go

Regardless of opinions of Michelangelo

We reach and touch for all we can

A simple warmth in thumb and hand

A smile, a face, you here now

We may not ever again have now

For I have known if we let

Ourselves live with but one regret

Diana's alter will surely show

New appreciations of Michelangelo

Standing proud on marble platter

So this is enough of dinner then

No coffee, or pie, or you again

This, then, will be the end of the matter

Our honor is true as we've showed

Adhering to insulating code

We have nothing, let it pass in sleep

Wrapped in happy, plastic deep

Then I'm ashamed of my loving eyes

To dear T.S. I apologize

And know that bite would be worthwhile

But still kneel at the altar of Diana

Eating sandwiches of peanut butter and banana

In flesh, in love there is root beer drinking

And love unending without any thinking

In darkened vehicles realize why

Eliot's voice makes me cry

Even as I contemplate a smile

It's because I'm old, over for me

The happy, springing virginity

And then I know why the ladies go

And are afraid, so afraid of Michelangelo

With hair and flesh all dressed in marble

As sparrows spare melodious warble

Then let me amble, stumble walk

Enjoy some pool and randy talk

Until my bed becomes the rock

Though prostrate before Diana

With salad of grape, and of banana

I feel the love, it's good, it's grand

Embracing loving thumb and hand

I love you all, let all men know

More than David or Michelangelo

As I long for cold, dark seas

I do not think I shall ever swim again

Let our smiles exchange, embrace and then

Be enough if we should never meet again

Your words and thoughts a subtle kissed

My flesh and stumble no longer missed

As drunken children laugh from the hall

Never knowing how much I've loved you all

We hear the hovering angel's call

Our eyes have searched the heavens

Until in eternity's lap, we awaken

Let us hold hands, until we're taken

Songs of the Angels: Orange County

Welcome to Hell.

It is no special place,

no definite location.

Hell is memory

of guilt, failure, weakness

nestled in the cavities

of your lonely, lonely mind,

being in tune with the

pain that is uniquely yours.

It is the color of unending, incessant reminders,

standing mercifully invisible;

a monstrous weight felt

only by you.

However, memory is no

respecter of persons,

but can be an infection.

Stop. Go no further,

mostly because I don't want

you to carry this, too.

I'm not responsible

if your curiosity

rewards you with a

small, infinitesimal portion

of the memory which is

this particular Hell.

But,

before you follow

your insatiable, inevitable

human question;

Listen. Listen, listen

You shits, listen;

No man

No man

owns any woman.

Marina: Trains in the Distance

Marina's graveside, Rose Hills Cemetery, Pico Rivera, 6/11/88

It all seems so wrong.

I've prided myself on being spiritual,

Being in tune with the sounds,

and smells of the universe.

This is wrong.

God, infinite creator, loving father

glanced away for one imperceptibly

brief instant.

In that age, the corruptor took his opportunity,

And stole you from us all.

I tell others what happened.

I write.

It all helps me believe.

Because, until I saw your corpse,

laid out in white silk,

I could not accept your death.

They made you up very heavily.

Apparently, the bruises and swelling

were very difficult to conceal.

I wanted so badly to kiss you one last time.

It didn't seem fair.

As I sit here lone in the cemetery,

I wish there was someone here.

I wish everyone was here,

to see me grieve,

to know the horrific injustice.

But, I sit alone on the grass at your grave.

It does not seem right.

Can spirits hear us?

Do we simply evaporate?

Could you hear me say,

"I love you, Marina."

if I spoke it out loud?

I laid three, long stem,

pink roses on your grave.

I hear the lover's moans,

the mourners cries

of trains in the distance.

Marina: Slopes of Resignation

The flowers from your funeral

withered, dried,

ring your newly sodden home.

My three roses are painfully fresh,

painfully resplendent

with rich, deep green, and velvet pink.

The pink of the roses

seems the only thing right.

It is the color of our passion,

the color of your innocence and sweet quality.

I hear the cresting waves,

the whispers of confusion

of the freeway in the distance,

the ebb and flow of this reality.

Their phrases and cries

are slurred, hurried, urgent.

The Los Angeles sun, unlike any other

starkly exposes all.

Towering over our smoggy cities,

snaking freeways,

scarred land.

Nothing is hidden,

no hurt,

no burning agony,

No lost love.

It all lies dehydrating in the Los Angeles sun.

Shining, jet black ravens laugh

in circling flocks,

perhaps smelling delicious death,

perhaps mocking our arrogance.

They seem possessed.

The grass on your grave, Marina,

is oddly brown, burned,

an uneven rectangle of dirt and sod

breaking the smooth, restful descent

of these quiet slopes of resignation.

Marina: Enough

Mature trees of respite stand

mercifully round all the graves,

all the graves except here.

The trees, puny, bare,

hardly taller than I,

seem fragile,

easily snapped, weathered,

hardly an acceptable host of attendants.

This all seems so wrong.

What had this world done to you, Marina,

asked you to become subservient,

to mockingly disdain you

for lack of self respect,

and then expect you

to become someone's property?

When I first met you,

you were suicidal.

Your boyfriend made you

feel inadequate,

cheap, insignificant.

I told you, on our first date,

that you were a valuable

and worthwhile person.

You didn't seem to believe me.

Everything about you, the way

you behaved, and expected

me to react, seemed forced,

developed from some incorrect

more deformed time, as if

someone's dark, twisted will

had tried to imprint himself on you.

You contemplated ending your life,

rather than surrendering.

We slowly, painfully freed you.

Now you no longer have to suffer

any of the machinations

of men.

But, that freedom was bought

at the highest price.

It seems wrong.

I thought I had helped.

I didn't help enough.

Marina: Bright Day

The skyline is glaring,

milky white

with tons of

airborne pollutants.

Good.

Let's all

choke on our own

filth.

Monstrous corporate shadows hide

behind truncated, crazy suburban hills.

Better.

Let's cover

ourselves in our

trash.

Trees and brush of the hillside

are blasted, burned from

the inferno of the

Los Angeles sun.

Best.

The fire in my mind

writhes with

no relief.

"It's all wrong."

I hear

over

and over again.

Three, beautiful

pink roses

lay

on your grave.

Symbols of the only thing

that keeps me from

succumbing to

the cold, cold darkness

on this hot,

bright day.

Jim and Marina

The Shore, a foggy, warm day, Manhattan Beach, 6/22/88

I do not want to think about you, Marina.

Life has taught me to have a selective memory.

I remember trivia, facts, concepts.

They can't hurt you.

However, memory of personal involvement

has got to be suppressed, forgotten to survive.

I drove out to Phoenix, to see my old friend,

James Dean.

He was alcoholic, defeated, surprisingly alive.

I told him about you.

He didn't want to become involved.

Who would?

Jim's smart.

He owns very little, expects very little.

Diogenes lives.

When I got there, we went out to Papagos park

and caught up on the last three years.

Then, we went to Jim's favorite bar,

the Phoenix Zoo.

Bewildered animals sweat in the relentless Arizona sun.

Afterwards, in the parking lot,

Jim had his tenth beer

And passed out in the car.

After that, I was more careful,

buying him food instead of beer.

You've got to look out for the people you love,

if you expect to stay in this world.

There was really nothing for us to do in Phoenix.

We went out to South Mountain one night,

and looked down on the city of Phoenix.

We talked about where all our other friends,

Mutual acquaintances, old lovers were.

Jim told me a lot about his life,

More than he should have, just like Marina.

Marina and Jim

One night, as Marina and I

were breaking up, I reiterated to her

how we couldn't be together, mostly because

I didn't want the hassle of Jarred constantly

following us around, coupled with

the difficulty of balancing a social life

against study at school, and holding

a full time job all at the same time.

Marina was really hurt.

She always was.

When I got home that night,

a single red rose

lay on my bed.

A card next to it read,

"I love you. Believe in me. Marina."

If Marina shared too much of her life with me,

it was in the process of improving her self image,

fighting against the socially conflicting demands

of being accountable while being Jarred's possession.

Marina was ascending,

Jim descending,

shunning the responsibilities of our culture

choosing instead to not participate.

Both put their trust in me,

Both telling me

more

than they should have.

Marina: Out of My Life

What could I do?! I'm not God!

I'm just as human with just as many pressures

and conflicts around me.

I've got my own juggling act going.

How could I add someone else to my routine?

I'm not responsible for anyone else's life.

Stop haunting me, Marina!

I could have seen the signs of Jared's

frustration and desperation.

I could have loved you more than I did.

But I didn't. I have my own goals and dreams.

I want so much out of life.

How can I risk a single precious,

moment for anyone else, when I know

all I'll receive is pain and grief?

So, I become hard, cold, resilient,

like the miser storing up every penny

in the bank until his death.

I preserve and reserve my feelings.

I reach out to no one, and I am protected.

Then, I won't have to watch my best friend,

Jim, destroy himself with alcohol.

I won't see the injustice, rage,

and burning emptiness of your death.

Now I am alone and safe.

Your cool, silken arms won't

embrace me in my memories.

Lips, flower petals of softness

won't kiss or whisper in my ear.

Your hair, long and luxurious,

won't tickle the back of my neck

as you tempt around my shoulders

to speak to me.

Your sad, child's mouth won't smile

or laugh in my mind anymore.

All these things I've forgotten,

ripped out, exiled, deleted

and put out of my life.

I don't want to remember any of this anymore.

Please, for my sake,

Stop haunting me.

Songs of the Angels: Culver City

I must be drunk, cause I'm feeling fine

But, tell me, who the hell goes to a bar to drink wine?

I've never resisted my besotted muse, never fought her

But, hey bar keep, this tastes like it was once water

And, there's something gnawing, I've forgotten, but

It's turning, and burning in the bottom of my gut

Something struck me stronger than the drink

Elusive, slipping, it's no fun to be smashed and think

In this moment, if my brain would make up my mind

I could worry less and start drinking myself blind

Drawn to the flame, burning somewhere in my soul

A nagging thought flutters, wary of its goal

As if some new kind of designed, written addiction

My thoughts ferment in the wine with superb dereliction

Every shrub and branch of desire and itching worry

Can be withered with intoxication's inferno fury

To those we love, and those we remember, I will toast

The thing in my mind parasitically feeding on its host

A truly enlightened vintage this particular cup

keeps my buzzing, eating thoughts from ever catching up.

I do not drink to forget, that would be too sad

I do not drink to remember, my logic's not that bad

I drink to get drunk, to feel less of this world we're in

To feel less of anger, loss and desire, sliding over my skin

And isn't that the drunk's wish, pathetic though it is

To drown the past, stop the future, let the present swill in piss?

So whatever thought or doubt that made my poor head ache

In the morning, with my hangover, can bless me when I wake

An Awareness of Discontent: Part 1

She wondered in polite horror, voice kind

"Why do so many 'artistic types' end themselves?"

Something struck me like a bolt from heaven

Having recently struggled with the cursed Black Beast

And excised him and his inexplicable thoughts

Of suicide and physically tangible depression

By furiously confronting him with my verse

Healthy and out of debt, loved and happy, safe

And out of nowhere, this overwhelming pain

She wondered if it was because most 'artistic types'

Were sensitive, gentle souls, assaulted by our world

I smiled to consider Papa Hemingway, unshaved

Sweating, cursing, fornicating, fist fighting

A gentle, rarified orchid, shrinking and wilting

In the methane atmosphere of this brutal earth

No. No, I knew something in the flashing bolt

Something about an awareness of discontent

An opening in the mind, a terrible window

And what is seen is unending and all encompassing

Love and compassion, and horror and animal violence

No, not anything so simple as the march of history

But acknowledgement of an eternal, universal hopelessness

Because the creative flash which colors the void

Comes from the void which is never filled

And never goes away, but is the inevitable parent

What was there before the almighty, omnipotent God

Said "Let there be light"? There must have been dark

The first original state was chaos and black and nothing

That is our ultimate parent, before the Almighty was

Was an empty, blind, black, impenetrable nothing

But there is hope and bright, swirling in a balance

Dark circling light, neither better or worse

One defines the other, there is no compassionate good

Without the blackest evil to stand against

And this is why God stands aside in his heaven

To let us mold and prove ourselves in the furnace

And the poet understands this, laughing understands

The deepest, most enlightened, constructed argument

Has no more or less importance than the baby's babble

There is life and struggle and will always fall short

But still we try somehow to illuminate the other

Share our lives, bridge the gap between us all

Sometimes the beam falls on the boat at sea

But we are never our imagined, divine potential

So the Great Divinity, however you personify

Gave us more than a spark captured in our skulls

For some, a conflagration, unending, even in sleep

But God forgot, maybe intentionally, the instruction manual

So here we are, lumps of monkey flesh, straining

With the fire of God between our shining eyes

You, Great God, gave us minds to rival yours

But flesh fit only as food for silent worms

So your "artistic types" turn these ideas over again

Trying somehow to express what there are no words for

And you feel it. I've seen it burning in you.

Even when you try to make light of it

Somewhere in the pit of your stomach you know

There is that cursed, divine awareness of discontent

A futile, brilliant lighthouse shining its beam

Trying to illuminate the vast, hungry, night sky.

An Awareness of Discontent: Part 2

There is hope, no worry

In this moment, right now

There is all you need, right now

Everything that is good

And worth living for

Is in this life, right now

Rub your forefinger against your thumb

My next breath, your next breath

Feel the sweetness in the beating heart

There is love in simply this moment

No need to worry about the future

No need to worry about the past

No need at all for regret

As you read, as I write

In this moment, there is hope

And everything that ever was

And everything that ever will be

Is in this very moment

A sweet breath with the beating heart

Beating

Beating

Beating

Beating.

Forget the tumbling thoughts

Let them go. Let them go. Let them go.

It will be good. It will be right.

There is hope in this moment

There is life in this moment

Forget, let go of discontent

It doesn't exist in this moment

Everything in this life

This is.

No worry.

All you need.

Now.

An Awareness of Discontent: Part 3

Consider the hope of the moth at night

Drawn to the flame in erratic circles

Is the moth's awareness some great insight?

Does the moth see a window into its beloved day?

So hateful of the dark and eager to get through

Like the need in the flesh that can't be denied

Ringing as echoes in an unavoidable intersection

The moth as an addict returns again and again

Discontent to be without that which hurts it

Unable to bury itself in the loss of illumination

Perhaps the thing we try to get to is our emollition

With strict rules and steps we can master our urges

But we moths know we are without what we want

In the day does the moth see the sun as father flame?

Is the quiet of airless space riddled with moths

Who couldn't wait for night and sought the highest bright

And there is that echo that never leaves, even now

Even as you read, even as I write in erratic circles

That echo is there, stuff your ears with Odyssean wax

Buy a pair of stylish, black, Oedipelian sun glasses

Borrow Harlan Ellison's favorite kind of mouth

Cover yourself in a blanket of moth's black night

That echo will resound, your need, your need, your need

The echo, a beating of your heart, beating, beating

This then is life, a series of sensuous addictions

This is the Promethean fire in your skull

This is Great God's almighty gift to you

A never ending series of challenges of the flesh

An unending catalog of ordeals of the senses

What you return to, what you make your routine

Is your soul killing, life ending, moth eaten flame

Then is despair so foolish? Happiness contentment?

Then even Buddhist detachment becomes a flame

A crutch to allow the poor, intelligent monkey to function

Pick your spirituality, isn't it another anesthesia

Isn't it our way to cope with the incessant echo?

But there is a way to walk the slackened tightrope

There is a way to circle the flame, or fly at night

There are those who look the devil directly in the eye

They hear the words of God, whispered close in the ear

They are rough and unconcerned with social niceties

These are the men and women to seek, because they know

They know our foolishness and our erratic circles and hope

They love and know real compassion, and they laugh

An Awareness of Discontent: Part 4

Born into money, the true original sin

Never knowing uncertainty or worry

Of the kind that leads to ribs and hunger

There is a class delineated by money and hurry

To have more than is needed, for the sake of it

Corrupts, destroys, erodes the human heart

Beyond the ability to construct or command

Is a desire to live in luxury above, apart

How dare any human place themselves away

As if some new, evolved, better kind of species

This kind of human animal is different, true

Because their heads are filled with stinking feces

Humans are meant to live closely together

To aggravate, stimulate, enrich each other

No human because of wealth or high birth

Entered this world any way than through mother

From the moment of birth, when we shrugged off the earth

We felt the sharp need, and the beginnings of greed,

Milk and the Queen's jelly, remembered sharpest by empty belly,

Then with the search for milk and honey,

The child realizes the desire for money

Money buys, money cries, money feeds, money bleeds,

Money helps, money yelps, money thrills, money kills,

Money hurts, money splurts, money money, money money

And we are marvelous creatures, so clever

When we are drained, strained, pushed to the edge

The lowest will level the highest, surely leaving

Cathedrals to ashes and monarchs in the hedge

Money and power, desired by the discontent poor

Will destroy from within, an inevitable plan

The only happy are those who nurture others

Only the generous animal can be called human.

An Awareness of Discontent: Part 5

Popo and Oog, struggling, monkey scratching

Squat in the dirt by the fly loud, crocodile river

Hunger an ever present guest in the stomach

Weary ape eyes scanning every shrub and branch

After an interminably long, simian silence

Popo says, "Say Oog, did you hear about

Sha Sha's son, Adam and this God thing?"

In Oog's mind a fond remembrance of fish

He had safely plucked from danger hidden water

The balance of risk, danger versus hunger

And then like the snapping of a safe branch

"What?" Oog turned. Squinting at Popo

"What did you say about somebody, something?

And this thing, what the heck did you say?"

Popo scratching in the dirt, slightly offended

Oog now annoyed and exasperated at the step

Of social structure which required him to

Stoop behind in apology and diligently groom

"Well," Popo started eagerly, "It's this Adam."

"The son of Sha Sha," Oog volunteered, picking

"Right, apparently he's been shaved and taken away

to a glorious garden with lots of delicious fruit

and the tigers and jackals don't attack him

and he just walks around all day, it's called Eden"

"Hold on," Oog interjected, "they shaved him?"

"All his fur, every bit, looks really, really weird"

"Who shaved him?" Oog actually caught a flea

"Why, God, of course," Popo too irrationally smug

"Who's God?" Oog sat back in perplexed dejection

Popo turned to Oog with shining eyes, eager smile

"God," Popo began, "is the all knowing, all present,

all powerful, entity which created everything."

"Entity," Oog sneered. "That's kind of like

a person who isn't a person, but more a force."

Oog was positively disgusted. "And you know this how?"

"Adam told me." Popo quietly scratched in the dirt

"He peeked out from this garden and told you?"

"No, he's not in the garden anymore, kicked out."

"Kicked out." Yeah, him and his magically formed wife."

"Magically formed!?" "She came from his rib"

"Oh this is too much," Oog screamed, flailing

"Where is this God fellow, we better straighten this out."

"But that's just it, Oog. He's everywhere and nowhere."

He's in all things, like love, or life, or the sunshine."

Oog sat down in astounded silence, mind racing

The god-like fire of thoughts burning in his monkey brain

A discontent desire welling like a charging river crocodile

And in one breath, eyes wide, Oog became the first zealot

And, unfortunately for, poor, bedeviled Oog, also the first heretic

An Awareness of Discontent: Part 6

The other wheezing, dingy night

I understood the invention of ghosts

How our beautiful thoughts hold so tight

To those we love and know and keep

Longing in our hearts, do you remember

When you were a wide eyed, young child

Do you remember the parade of people

Grandfathers, uncles, aunts, Grandmothers

And cousins and cousins, crawling out

From every cupboard and from every corner

And there were those who left their mark

I had a Great Grandfather back in Iowa

He had a Model T and took us into town

And there was a hole and I could see the road

Rushing by like the whirl of life to a child

And a Grandmother who went to Europe

With my brother and me and broke down

And cried as she explained how much she

Loved her boys to a woman who spoke no English

And a mother who left us early, but tried

To see her children when her husbands let her

And I was the only one to go one summer

The others not too charitable, who could blame them

And I remember she treated me like an adult

Heartbreaking when I think about it so much later

And my father and all his loving sacrifices

And his sweet singing voice, made woman swoon

And he'd put on the Robert Service vinyl record

And he would recite along with Stewart Anderson

And we children would sit in a little, elfin row

An enchanted audience learning about Alaska

When we lived so humbly back in San Jose

These people and their traits are as present, real

As anyone I've ever met in the parade

Of people coming and going in the stream of my life

And there are moments when I want

To ask my Great Grandfather where he

Got that Model T with the hole in the floor

To ask my Grandmother why she couldn't

Say it right out loud to my brother and me

To ask my mother, how, why, why she left

To ask my father to stay and sit a while

And fill up the room with his love

And maybe read a Robert Service poem.

You have all these people, sweet in your head

And sometimes they come through the dingy night

Wanting love, wanting to come back, wanting you to remember

And sometimes you do, and sometimes you don't

This is the wonderful curse of the human animal

To recall so perfectly those who have left forever

But they gone, gone into the hungry night

And they only come back when you decide to invent a ghost

An Awareness of Discontent: Part 7

Consider the plight of the poor, winding snake.

He has transcended this world, shed arms and feet

A mouth, intestines, an ass, the rest just show

A truly enlightened beast, economical, stream lined.

And yet, three major religions utterly vilify

The snake as a symbol of abject, tempting evil

Or unrestrained male power, the undulating penis?

And yet it was the snake in the perfect Garden of Eden

Who is our real parent, the one who posed the question

Offering the fruit of the tree of knowledge, ripe

Because you've got to stop and ask yourself this

Why didn't God want us to know the difference?

Sure you say, wouldn't it be great to be innocent

How many horrors could we have averted?

Please. The monkey great, great, great grandparents

Of Adam were slaughtering each other until

The moment Our Heavenly Father took out his razor.

No. This was an awareness of the delicious difference

And it was blessed Eve who took the bite, had to know

This is why, in general, women are more intelligent

But, more likely to, curious as the cat, be caught.

But, I am grateful that I have an inkling of that fruit

I am grateful for the worst, most terrible things I know.

Because the darkness allows me to see the light.

It is what you do with this knowledge fruit

That defines your immortal, eternal soul.

It's not what you drink, you piss that out,

It's what you spit, that tells us who you are.

And there are those who curse the snake's gift

Or wish their minds were once again blind

Or worst of all, tie their very immortal existence

To the well of the mind from which they draw

So when the flesh inevitably crumbles, ages, fails

They feel their turn in Eden has come to an end.

But I, I cherish every sweet beat of the heart

I do not ascribe to Dylan's rage for the dimming light,

Although I understand the defiant sentiment,

I do not surrender, but savor every enlightening bite.

Though the fruit may be bitter in the belly,

The knowledge of the difference between good and evil

To me, is as sweet in the mouth as when

The Great God first had his first bite

Of his forbidden fruit in the far flung

Reaches of the garden which catapulted him

To his exalted place, which some day

I aspire to scale and storm the gates of heaven

And laugh and stand and see the dark

And in my own voice say, "Let there be Light."

Songs of the Angels

Lost on darkened, creeping, blind alley streets

Listening to the stillness and the half moon beats

Unafraid, abandoned, aimless, late night walking

Wary, just out of sight, the Black Beast is stalking

Carefully treading over my own evaporating grace

Thought I'd be out all night until I found this place

I had to stop on this overwhelming, starless night

And understand these warm windows filled with light

Like the morning sun just inside the glowing door

A bar filled with angels and a happy drunken roar

Here they know and feel, ecstatic, angelic carousing

And I shy up to the bar, my curiosity arousing

Every single angel is filled with intoxicating love

A night out, a break from all their duties up above

I hear you, dear angels, something in my heart ringing

As if any moment could be more beautiful, they all start singing!

I want you there, I wish you knew what was in my heart

As songs of pain and love made the Black Beast depart

Safety and life, sings an angel, leaning heavily on me

Since the angels are buying, the drinks flow easy and free

Without judgment, an angel starts a raunchy song

No recluse, the laughs he draws are deep and long

Present here in the night, another angel softly trills

About flowers filled with touch and reach and thrills

Given the satisfaction, an angel, a broken heart can mend

Singing about lovely girls and their sizzling hot friend

I am astounded, puzzled with the celestial refrain

Smiling, wondering what happened to my grieving pain

At the window, the devil cannot come in the house

An angel gives him the finger, a fierce and joyous souse

Standing together, a halo of angels leans to hear

An angel rip the chaotic, proud, façade of echoes of screaming fear

Nearly gone, an angel refills my glass with a kiss

So smart, she knew just what I would miss

Sure to collect misery and memories of failure in the world

An angel eased the pain, singing about a letter to a girl

Sure I would awaken, this an illusion, this a trial

An angel, fingers in my hair, life's wine gracing her smile

No man then could know my fight against the breach

As an angel sang of the bare, winter branch's reach

No man in heaven, no man on the turning earth

Can truly know the weight of each human birth

Out loud the angels sing, together, a soothing song

Of color and plumage, unique and happily wrong

The smooth, even tone of a trio of angelic voices

Rowdy, passionate, challenging all our worldly choices.

I thought I had pierced the veil of this present time

But the angels knew my heart and teased me with their rhyme

The only thing that kept me from the purple dark

Crowding, gathering, as the yellow eyed dogs bark

More than any real or present, increase of pain

The angels fell silent, outside the sound of rain

They should have let the stillness, and quiet be

But they turned their wondering, beautiful eyes to me

Out of my life, in my head, my own song begun

But silent in my mouth, unsure of how it should be sung

What could bless me, to free my swelling song?

Amongst these free and wild, with whom I didn't belong

The vast hungry night, outside, gathered in the flood

Rattling doors and windows, thirsting for my blood

"No worry." Spoke a voice just off to my right

I turned to see her face radiant with moonlit light

Love and real compassion were then tangible and real

The song inside bursting out, a spark that I could feel

The angels softly hummed, happy, nurturing me

As words like suns illuminated infinity

A fire of thoughts burned my song, angels now so loud

Their voices swelling up with mine, happy, strong and proud

So perfectly their joyous sound healed my wounded flesh

I felt my soul renew, my heart and mind refresh

In my own voice, I turned to the angels to say

"You who have healed, have knelt for me to pray

You, more than anything have I held most dear

You, who fought and conquered and chased away fear

You, who I would cross all of all creation to hear

You, have calmed, soothed, saved my very soul

You have helped this broken man become a healed whole

Oh, angels, our songs are divine power shining bright

So hear and join with us, as we become infinite light."

*..*..*..*..*

K.J. Hargan is also the author of the Wealdland novels: The Last Elf of Lanis, The Archer From Kipleth, The Lord of Lightning, and Legends of Haergill and Conniker's Tale.

