Nine Poems of Renewal

Hope

 

Beyond the flavor of the day

The pretensions of illusions thrust

Cut off obscene angelic forms

Meandered thoughts and sacred space

 

To call this livelihood a sham

To stare and pray to some incandescent flicker

Our worlds inhabited by a sequence of sordid swipes

These bitter leaves these thorns and forms

 

Porous singed skin a quiet gasp

We burn it down and let flowers grow

On the shattered plains of asphalt slabs

 

For roses grow they sprout and bloom

Mature and flower wither and die

And decompose and plant anew

Between the cracks of hope and lies

 

So much rage and pain and ghosts in time

But here we breathe and gasp and sigh

And cleave to wounds and forms and things

And live our lives as if we’ll die

 

For life and risk a sacred act

To pierce the veil the drones illusions grasp

And truth its pain skeletal flowers

Will fertilize a minds’ eye lapsed

 

A field a cricket a cold ensemble

A thicket field a butterfly bed

An unrest that tremors loses its hand

Beyond some stammering eerie stagnant dread

 

So if destruction on tired thrusts would land

The blow proportionate to the frustrated rage

The life within without to be reborn

And sing a song and turn the page

 

 

A Green New Deal

 

In some dark dreary illusion

Some cataclysmic rite

A tower of babel extending

Up beyond the clouds and sight

 

A murmur a shape here

A recorded burst

A word left unspoken

A violet burned mush

 

In that eloquent fixture

Some cold emblems dirt

An empathetic mixture

An insipid hurt

 

Some thought form elusive

Forever beyond sight

And as we were speaking

Its order burned bright

 

Some lamp here a fixture

Snuffed out at noon

And the daylight it shines through

The darkness and gloom

 

American seizes

In eclectic shakes

Elliptical seizures

That time zones create

 

For what I’d suppress here

What words were stillborn

Some dead flesh and sinews

And an umbilical cord

 

For those thought fields that numb minds

Forever pulsate

But hope is as eternal

As our renewal creates

 

Don’t judge me too harshly

I’ll reach to understand

And clasp your clammy fingers

And sweaty moist hand

 

This grime and this dirt its

What bring us to earth

To ground us in humbled

Debt to our birth

 

For born of this world here

Sustained and then die

To claim it so arrogant

So sad what a lie

 

For as the western frontier here

Is bitter with pain

The carcass of buffalo nature

and human remains

 

A song of spread suburbs

Oh black asphalt plains

America will grow free

When it’s the home of the brave

 

A rose born of concrete

Helicopters and shrieks

Blood strewn sirens echo

Like gunshots in these streets

 

But that rose it grew vibrant

Despite tatters and thorns

An end in itself

Life meant to be adored

 

No calf bronze or golden

No stock market soars

No salute to napalm

Or atomic scourge

 

No this world isn’t ours here

To beat and abuse

Its God the one only

Through which were subsumed

 

If eagles and hawks once

More freely could fly

Then American clearly

Will be here in our eyes

 

Yes brothers and sisters

Together well stand

A new deal is coming

Across this great land

 

 

 

Remorse and Redemption

 

For what the world my heart did yearn

To sit in silent peace

The cars did roar the bullets fly

To tombstones all did cease

 

For where or all some quiet tune

A murmur to beseech

And cry out loud for my lost youth

Innocence out of reach

 

And if love we could start anew

To start over again

Id kiss the indent above your top lip

Hold hands and call you friend

 

We’d sit in parks hold hands and talk

Your throbbing heart in mine

And some rhythmic trace of my soul with yours

Complete when intertwined

 

Its been so long here wandering off

In woods and city streets

In trash strewn alleys where junkies fiend

Eyes glaring in sundered shrieks

 

But why I cry and reminisce

A sloven disheveled mess

I dream someday I could start once more

And give it all my best

 

So no matter where out there I’d roam

No matter what I’ll find

The thought of you follows me still

Some echo of the divine

 

 

 

A Ramadan Evening in Hawthorne, California

 

For in some trance

Beyond the race

A still paralyzing fear

 

To rush and roll

Out of control

To still an inept veneer

 

To shatter that power

Hour to hour

That emulsifies and sits

 

But to a place

Cordoned disgraced

Humiliating shifts

 

To sift about

Down towards the mouth

Of some terrible prickly beast

 

An angels wings

Swoop down are singed

Rise flapping in rhythmic beats

 

A cloud on high

Beneath the sky

That pain to suffer call

 

A victims rage

A behavior made

An oppressor to oppress us all

 

I hope one day

To describe the way

Of what it for me was like

 

Iftar we break

And bread we make

In Space X’s shadowy sight

 

In Hawthorns burgeoning aerospace hangers

To occupy mars and moon

But what about the earth can we

Save ourselves from certain doom

 

I love you.  Amen.

 

 

 

Longing

 

Between the curbs the lines

cascading down tired occult silent shadows

slinking across the night.

 

Murdered mayhem morbid confusion

distracted animated time:

 

And if these hopes could assail fear

And press your healing across my back

 

Inhale your nurturing love and tears

And together balanced against all attack

 

I’d kiss you deep exhale and breathe

Your pulsing soul that spirits reach

 

Oscillate within each life form seized

With love and joy beyond all speech

 

For words these longing whimsical prayers

Cast out into the ether’s grasp

 

In murmured echoes the abyss it stares

With terrors memories an indifferent past

 

Bust some flare some spark, no could it be!

That an ear could bend, you towards me.

 

 

 

 

 

Return to Nature

 

So time itself through screeching halts

And belching metal clangs

Through wooded glens so still serene

The police gun sirens refrain

 

The hydraulic press the mufflers roar

The bombs bursting deified might

The wild amused times tricks and treats

A momentary blight

 

A human refrain for what remains

Some silent defining hiss

Fear and power shame and pride

The emotions tugging at this

 

For a quiet mind in peace we’d find

Strength to shake all heavens gates

And hells fiery depths from which we’ve leapt

A searing shuddering escape

 

A silent vowel a word a phrase

A number climbing steep

Some dimension of time some peace I’ll find

To pause it all and think

 

Empty my mind of these auditory assaults

The advertisements scream

And to look once more at natures chorus

Meadows lilies of flowering dreams

 

But in that grateful loving time

Disturbed by some thundering drone

It snorts and grunts I shrug enough!

Of your shining and screeching tones

 

I’d much rather be in wind swept air

With butterflies and bees

With a kindred soul up on mountain heights

To commune amidst the trees

 

A slave to time three minute rhymes

And nine to five – enough!

One day they say we’ll awake I pray

My people have had enough

 

And you and I quivering and shy

Alone without these screens

Hover close to kiss your sweet unadulterated lips

And revere the quiet spaces in between

 

 

 

Relations Unmediated

 

There will be a day that we will meet

And brush our feet in soft sweet grass

And brush aside those walls of thorns

That hide our past defend the self

 

I had a dream that outside these walls

Our hidden hovels our cellphone screens

We’d dance in forests green and damp

And to the leaves and bark would sing

 

To unleash the spirit from its chains

And the mountains and sea would unveil a path

A place where one could breathe the rushing air

That no time clock brand or code constrains

 

Free of measured time and egos spent

In some clear fresh place to love and reflect

 

 

 

Know Where

 

And if these thoughts that form from joy and grief

Could form a word infused with gratitude

Delivered as a humble gift a treat

Like ice cream tasted on hot parched tongues does soothe

 

You shook the false beliefs that held me numb

I spun and whelped jumping in joyous glee

My brain it froze my thoughts they raced I’m stunned

I stumbled running like an inmate escaping freed

 

For you it seems have a blessing and a curse

To though your piercing eyes of hazel flame

Unshackle souls from self-inflicted hurt

With curt retorts to lance all lies and shame

 

And of your curse to feel what others feel

I pray for you that you love and joy’s revealed

 

 

 

Human

 

And in some place a rainy day

For what these words I write might say

I hope that you are dry and safe

While from some corners edge I race

 

To find a tinge of empathy

To kiss your lips and let you be

To hold you tight as drizzle falls

To rock back and forth to share my all

 

To feel your heartbeat in my breast

To laugh and love with all the rest

To share and think that we might sink

Into one pulse a beat in time

A common soul humans kind

 

But while these words these husks this phrase

Could not do justice to psyches frayed

Nor broken hearts nor shuddered tears

Remorse nor longing across the years

 

While nothing I do or say or think

Could equal the sight of your eyes fixed

I pray that in my abject despair

Ill be worth some laugh or half-hearted care

 

These shattered hopes and half flung dreams

Thrown at the gates of fates cruel schemes

All meanings worth and purposed goals

Stale and brittle when hearts froze cold

 

So I wish and pray that for us one day

Wed put aside our guises and defenses

And be able to trust each other with compassion and understanding

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