Morning, Noon and Night

Morning, Noon and Night,
your memory beckons me,
the feel that is the hard hand
that points to the hours of your desire,
for me.

I hope.

Mourning moon that's bright,
an orange that bloated eats the horizon,
no farther from me than your affection,
no colder than your last words,
to me.

I pray.

Now that you have gone away,
I hate, with that intensity,
of hyperion dawn electric,
that shivers away the aching hours,
of leaf swirled wind unto the dawn.

I watch.

And seen the cleansing rite,
of November dawn,
that pierces veil of gray,
and finds me lucid this first time,
with nothing left to say.

I turn,
and your ghost vanishes from my memory.

Poetry Year - End

There in black lace and robes of velvet the morners gather,
a rocky cove on the ocean of grief.
They are in pictures we have made, in color more fantastic,
in shapes more vivid, in edges more clean.
The mourn as we do not mourn,
cry as we do not cry,
feel loss as loss is denied us,
save in extremities of war or panicked ill fortune's grasp.

It has taken on a death of its own, these years,
a gulf that separates us from our pasts and present,
where, across the sea, and across the sands,
forgotten people mourn, in forgotten lands.

[Last one of the poetry project. It is time to put my fingers to other tasks... Though of course, more verse will visit these pages from time to time.]

Poetry Year October 23

So much Time is wasted
So many minutes chase each other down a spiral drain
And we hear them sucked away
Before they are tasted on our lips
Or are there to bring refreshing moment of inspiratio,
Even as idle pleasure that lights like fresh sun
Through old clouds.

Poetry Year October 22

What are you waiting for?
For what, for what?
For what calling scream in the middle of the night,
the crash of glass and metal in the soul,
that upends and flattens all delusions of a working life.

What are you looking for?
For someone you, even though, you do not know who?
For what is this longing,
to stand a top the city's highest tower,
and spread your arms to tip forward,
falling into flying,
as the stuff that fantasy is made of.

To where are you going, to where? And how?
What locations beyond the edges of faded maps,
in between the navigator's gaps,
where glowing white is not an empty space,
but a somewhere, with it's own sense of place.

Catch me, I am falling, free fall, free flight,
the windows racing by,
the wind rushing up to cushion this streak,
from high in the air,
towards a destiny below,
where all and everything
a moment, for a moment, only a moment,
stops.

Coiled in agony,
boiled in ecstasy,
shattered and flattened,
my body pulled to languid end.

I wake, and am warm in your arms,
and you are warm inside me,
and like a body that from tower tossed,
I lie here, looking, upward, at the your beautiful stars.

Poetry Year: October 23

Given Line:
"I cannot yet then have you, 'cept in portrait, shadow, dreams"

and what dreams may come will hold a lantern light
beside the only road we need to walk upon.
The shadows are not shadows, but reflections of the inner silence,
that holds the spaces between the fragments of noctural melody,
and thus,
in waking find that gift of gifts, sleep,
and sweet repose, where lives the lucid memoires
of our better mind.

Poetry Year October 21

the elegance of the arc contains more meaning than any human pen may so ordain,
such blind making of all that might be and is, has not bent to our ear to whisper,
the language or the code of its devising, nor to enlighten us by celestial glimmer.
What majesty it makes to our smaller sense, the show that it shows to deign,
and then deny, the multitude within every whirling ghostly quanta in flight.
But solitude has it's rewards, as we reap the shares of harvest imagination,
and all we need is a simple change to scale imponderable mount.
I've discovered of this, a marvelous proof, which I can recount,
as soon as I stop fighting with this word processor's pagination.

Poetry Year October 20

Gregarious the felines of a feather,
engorged by trick of weather,
that hurled a winter snow,
on huddle larks in trees below.

Upon these mashed and slipper streets,
they smile, then, as they grab their treats.

A winter city at play,
as the kitties pick through gobs of fluffy ice,
to partake of frozen delicacies,
that they prefer to mice.

Poetry Year October 19

I was nothing,
and when I was, you heaped upon me reward.
When I was empty vessel into which your passions poured,
you adorned me with your attentions,
and more than mere affection,
a sing for my sustenance.

But then I showed you wrought palaces,
and futures fit for many kings,
I brought you to hidden realms of far and mighty dreams.

And from that moment, when I became, a real and not just real,
you have not given one word of softness,
nor anything to feel.

When I was nothing,
I was your everything and all,
but when I became a woman,
your attention became dead fall.

Poetry Year October 18

A leave of absence from the bells,
that trickle on the dusty road,
the ruts worn in by wagon wheels,
to market with their load,
the potatoes piled, the onions smiled,
the greens so set aside to protect their flush of green.

I stand before this painting,
pale blue cast like light from window
down upon me, forming trapezoided squares,
that, invisible, divide define the floor.

The painter had been court creature,
and his velvet would with many washings
once again resume the fluff of finery.
And yet, ghost queen of Vienna's brew,
would pack and package her retinue,
so she could look at this,
the peace of very peace,
within pastoral bliss.

Poetry Year October 17

"An orgy of a war"

You all, you call, you cum, with your home built
m u n i t i o n s
You spread, you spew, you spunk, and you leave just
d e v a s t a t i o n s
You spit, you spat, there is no at, where was was a town's
m i n i s t r a t i o n s
the blood is soaked, is sopped, is seared, and burning hair does float
in eager air
g y r a t i o n s.

They cry, they catch, the caress the baby whose skull is now
o b l i t e r a t i o n s
the mother's song is all day long, joining funeral
l i b a t i o n s
The hawk it's flight from edge of night,
now ended in accomplished mission,
and down below, the tale of woe,
to atomic age submission.

The voice from aloft, the screech of jet so soft,
contrail traced in crystal sky,
above the blossom blood
of poppy love,
giving face to the lie.

There is no salvation,
there is no salve,
there is no healing,
only the grave
of nations.

chrys and cry, storm and lie,
seed the ground with Taliban,
which flourish fanning from McChrystal's
d e s o l a t i o n s.

Poetry Year October 16

Flight fallen on the interlude that feast impression on your eyes,
I, taken aloft by this fancy foremost in the implosive regions of my mind,
tarry in the floating realms so far above the land, that, below me lies.
I know, I so very know, you long to place your lips on lushness fruit, biting to the rind,
I want, I need, I so very crave, the adoration of this consumption,
that will suck away the clatter clang of my intruding thoughts,
that shriek and shatter any isle of pulseless quiet meditation,
I feel without the feigning faith of morality, to be swallowed up in droughts.
It is the hunger to be hungered, the thirst to be thirsted, that you make me feel.

Fairy light of faerie tail, that glamor casting shadows to the bright,
blind bedazzled, not just bewitched, a sunrise of the night,
that dark dawn that late hours brings, that opalescent sky of quiet clear,
when all that is close is far, and infinity brought near.
Travesty of tension to suspension, that bridges islands sluiced by acid time,
pristine from painted distance, yet close made of dirt and grime.
The little grit and debris that passion leaves behind,
are the irritant in present face of thinking mind,
that prove the illusion's weight was then more solid far, than anything of real.

Stage struck by standing up above, my glance denudes below,
I look down at tufts of black tangled hair, that is the forest to where you go.

Poetry Year October 15

The hot poker slices in between my legs,
burning, scalding, searing all the delicate tissue of that skin
that skin that is hidden ever from light of day,
or probing touch of any eye,
but open as a road,
as a road as a road,
to the driving molten metal that you wield.

I cry out,
because I cannot move,
the ice cold iron bans constrict my wrists,
my wrists and arms
my arms and shoulders,
my ankles and arms,
my knees and legs.

They bite into each turn of softness that I possess.
As the iron hot consumes me.
My silken contours blackened
by the instrumental burning bright.

An immolation at hard hands,
those hands, those hands that I have kissed
groveling before the legs,
those pillars upon which
the sun god's temple rests,
the eggs of his adornment before my eyes.

Suicide sweet suicide
thou art a dream within us all.
The need to be destroyed in pleasure's place,
overwhelmed by commands of the needs of the race.

[I feel I need to write an annotation here to this one, because it is potentially misunderstood. The imagery of rape and torture here is common, both for the men that consume such images, and for women who experience them. Almost every woman has had images of sex and death, and even painful death. The poem presents an explanation for this masochism, namely, that pregnancy and reproduction were, and in much of the world still are, a grave risk of physical death. Even where they are not physical death, they are a giving up of chances and opportunities, and that focus on the self that a young person enjoys. I am on one side of this wall and it looms high in front of me.

Thus masochism is not because the "I," that inner tender self, desires it of it's inner needs, but it is, instead, an apparition, a way of creating imagery for a drive which is foreign to it, but pressed by the evolutionary demands of self-replication.

So I am not, here or elsewhere, proposing the pleasures of mutilation, but their coercive seduction by within, and their imposition without. Yes the narrator of the poem is consumed with this, but narrators are not the author, and almost never all of the author. Usually I leave to others matters of interpretation, because the multitopical nature of writing is better left to turn in its own geography.

But this, sadly, needs this note to prevent people from erecting a mountain in place of a valley...]

Poetry Year October 14

A ring of many rings, was forged with gold and soul in one,
the artisan glinted in the dark, as dark as the brightest sun.
For blindness to all but inner light, affronts the workers nigh, and night.
In fluid liquid metal poured, all the art of adoration.

The generations learning cast to steel,
caressed to shapes, a foil as thin as air,
gossamer, more gossamer than finest hair.
A web woven of spun fine filament,
that catches candle light as fire.

Then worn once by fading princess,
her years heavily on all but her face,
giving her last chance to prolong her race,
a marriage to a boy a fraction of her age.

But of this truth, she lied.

But fate was to smile on this mismatch,
Some love another kind was between them found,
From first the glamor worked upon his eyes, a startle shook his soul.
From hammer forged, to signature forged,
to forged the matrimony's bonds.

It is a story from that other time.

Poetry Year October 13

A hundred years and some ago,
a reform occurred of which you do not know,
my children yet unborn will not hear the phrase,
of the WuXu reform of 100 days.

A parliament, and bureaucracy,
a constitution to restrain a monarchy,
bridges, buildings, and renewed laws,
a nation cleansed of centuries flaws.

But in a coup it was washed away,
in but three days, the histories say.

And what of this reform, of damned and doomed,
crushed by dragonness in marriage tomb?
In few short years history records,
such revenge as only revolution affords.

Poetry Year October 12

Some say he left in anger,
some say he left in haste,
some say he made it out,
others that he was ground to paste.

In some sources, scribed in variant dialect,
he sailed another sea, between the monsters that guard
the entrance between thee and me.

He, my darling, is, as always you,
that hero of some archaic epic,
carved in my mind, your profile,
sharp and stony, granite crest perfection.

Jaw just so, this I know,
the compass carried of determination.

Lest these frail rhymes betray my thoughts,
you know what other may or mayn't say,
means that all their somes, sum to naught.
Of your many musts, there is but only ought.

Poetry Year October 11

Setting is the sun,
a set of memories in my mind,
set on a table like sumptuous feast,
that sets my mind to spinning through,
all the meanings set in words.

Setting this aside,
the set of it an aspect from a far,
that is the set that frames our time,
that shows that all is set for change,
our contract set as beset by o'er ambition.

A set of forgotten melodies, behind it,
a background to which our set dances in a row,
it has set upon us ghostly fragments,
that sets our love off fire.

This has set a limit on our glances,
they are constrained to set a good example,
and set ourselves to renew all that once was lost,
to set that stone of perfect love a fresh.

No matter what the cost.

Our broken lives are set again,
to heal in time that nature sets,
and in this setting of the world as stage,
sets into it's final shape from phantom mold.

How I have set down these words,
and set upon them my sign and seal,
that comes to you as a kiss,
though you've set your face to stone.

The meaning ripens, set to fruit,
a set of verses to move in shapes and kind,
that our whole set will laugh upon,
ridiculing love set to music blind.

Poetry Year October 10

Fans the floral leaves of bright bamboo
Green is green beyond green of green,
The waves of abundant growth flood
The nostrils, eyes, and every other opening.

Every age is every age, renewed florid fertility.
Like mine own, the red earth
Ripened by the sun, sorghum sweet,
Poured into a syrup that clings a cloying note,
Holding down the throat and shocking any conscience.

In time, in time, in time, in time,
Like the most famous of Guizhou's famous wines.
It is a filling intoxication,
I was filled with it, as I drank of you.

Poetry Year October 9

The peel that rings, the peel that stings us,
the bells that call, in laden fall, the quadrangle as it must,
ages more gracefully than any hour of our lives.

It is like other epoch I think,
exchanging letters in dark of war,
missives that touch what was touched,
where all you have is all you have.

You are so far away, measured in miles and years,
hours and ages.
That we would match on this world at this time,
seems a mystery to me.
Let it pass let it pass,
this bright cold day,
Let me huddle, let me wait,
for your voice and our inner play,
measured in and out in units that no monarch can command.
We gift a ball that floats in that other space,
and bounces there, far out of sight unseen.

An instant in voice connection,
and the years they flutter forced
like leaves fallen on these, the trees that brush my window.
We are children again, laughing at nothing.

And these exchanges are a blow,
and, I think, bring you to think,
of actions incompatible with your present situation,
that would drift you from the the presence in your other room,
who is beyond the arc of our embrace,
but whose shadow lies over all we say and do.

And if, if, that is, ever if,
you find that once the bounce of whisper on your ear,
is to much for your to bear,
then know it was a time, and this our time is true,
even though I will, then, have to bid adieu.

Poetry Year October 8

I pull the sublime web of silk, that spun around my legs,
caressed up my calf and along the outer curve of thigh.
I bathe in it's embrace, and it engulfs me with an electric wave sensation.

I drop the dress over my head, and fall into it's cave,
on the other side, I, transformed into vision,
learned from many maiden's magazines.

The zipper encloses me, and in the glamor
I have those assets in seeming,
which nature has denied.

Underlined my eyes, with soft streak of dark,
and blushed a taste of color that soothes upon my cheeks,
rounded the kiss of lipstick the flowers flush.

I am a garden given touch and taste sensation,
to lure the lust and looks of eyes I have never seen.
Give off light that warms the dreams of lurid wishes.
The truth burns beneath this cocoon of truth deception,
beneath this cold, a warmth and depth of fair reception.

Poetry Year October 6

Within the pinion walls of city lost to common sight,
burning every evening a bindless passion, riddled in ambition's night.
Outside the siege of this stony city, capital of the center of the world,
against which waves of muscle, mail, and madness, come,
against the ages their meaning hurled.

Within these walls are cuddled, huddled, hammered,
against the castle clamor,
as to and fro the warriors go,
to fight the losing battle.
They are burned, and spit, and pierced, and blooded by axe or sword,
they die on command of heaven's slipping mandate,
the fading emperor's word.

But the taste of ravished rape they will be spared,
the beheadings that follow the plunder that has scared the villages beyond,
where cries of woe have shaken the stars half distant above the clouds.

And on the walls a timble tumble figure turns,
cartwheels and summersaults,
laughing at the towers, and the golden vaults.
That closed within soon to be ripped,
the dynasty's most precious treasure.

Gut pulses with the heaves of fear,
as women gather in the darkened rooms,
to give solace to each other's fortunes, reversed:
the fair fertile yesterday fared better,
soon, tonight, they will fare worse.