small windows widen out
to harbors, vistas, long peninsulas
of
time.

vast vast vast is the world of men
and
wide the sky
before we
die

time

Caritas

"Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within." -James Baldwin

Yet love's force is not all liberation.

It's power is not just the power to remove, but to bind.

It is a forged chain of labor that spans both the quiet & the troubled days, and yet it is more.

Love can be facade, or thrive in a cage of smoke & mirrors.

It is an ocean where no ship makes harbor; it is a desert where all thirst and all falter; it is a starless night that somehow still glitters strange beauty, and it is a heavy burden that distinguishes not hours from years, and must be carried from the graveside.

Our love scrapes and scrapes, yet leaves beneath the dull ache of unfufillment - we have not got past ourselves, deep into the inner circles of the heart.

Human love is a helpless sort of thing, confused with drama and petulent, like a child trying to learn to read.

Love takes off masks and replaces them.

Love is a labyrinth that leads infrequently to the sun.

It is a shadow-grail to be sought after, seldom found and only fully realized at death.

King David, a man with depth of heart, says to the LORD alone, "Your love is better than life."

I too praise divine love, and long to dwell umasked & real within the shelter of that mystery.

Thoughts from Sunday

"We must get quickly every day to the inward things, to the soul." - Jerry Alway

Dabble, dabble in the water
order well your skin & hair
daily deck and double check
your outward self in semblance fair
but within you, o within you
slumbers deep your breathing soul
source of all your truest errors,
joys and thoughts and secret terrors-
will you wake it? Will you wash it?
Will you seek to rouse it now?
Raise a mighty-hearted screaming or your soul will stay deep-dreaming,
content with many layered-living, senseless to the God of giving,
slave to petty, selfish grieving.
Call loud across the coming weeks, at every day's new break
Call loudly to your sleepy soul and keep it wide awake.
Plunge it whole into the water,
dabble dabble in the water,
wake it with the real, clear Water
all to clear & cleanly make.
.

We Are Friends

Perhaps when your time is nearly come,
you will finally rest your white head
and we will have time to talk.
I will lay beside you on an outspread quilt
dappled with the sun.
We will both be old.
I will make sandwhiches
while you eat cheese, and we will talk earnestly of love
and loss and the worship of the abstract, and we will talk just as earnestly about
soccer and memories and the proper way to eat a steak.
There will be laughter and
nothing will interupt us there, on the brink of eternity,
except maybe the skyline-sighting of a hawk
or a soft song of silence.

we are friends, you & I.

sep. ar. ation.

Another lucky-penny sunrise.....

....windy day....

thinking of you.

February 9

Re-tar the torches, arrange the incense -
the party is about to start.
Put on your headress
the one with the gemstones -
i've angled all the mirrors to catch the light,
your head will dazzle with the fire of a thousand stars!
you are sure to stun them,
go on.
you're so good at this.

oh my friend, don't you realize,
my retinas will be burned with glory too -
i will not be able to recognize the guests
but only stand aloof,
smiling through the smokey haze,
longing to dance,
but
too blinded to move.
we may drink from different sides, but we all drink from the same goblet.

stockpot: rhymes for later

fair hair
sweet feet
high sky
town gown.

stung tongue
full grown
grand hand
stone bone

cream dream
bird word
leaf grief
room gloom

blurred word
bring thing
brush rush
night flight

fragment

True to form, mirror true
you dye your eyes to midnight-blue.
You tie your tie, you cut your hair
I'd know your falsehoods anywhere.

Black as night, raven-black
I hide from you and your attack
I shut my ears and shield my heart.
Your love is tearing me apart

"Even ornaments of speech are forms of deceit." - History of the Royal Society

It's 1667. Reason is everywhere, saving
for the future, ordering a small glass of wine.
Cause, arm in arm with Effect, strolls by
in sturdy shoes

Of course, there are those who venture
out under cover of darkness to buy a bag
of metaphors or even some personification
from Italy, primo and uncut.

But for the most part, poets like Roderigo
stroll the boulevards in their normal hats.
When he thinks of his beloved, he opens
his notebook with a flourish.

"Your lips," he writes, "are like
lips."

-ron koertge-

wake up, brother

He prides himself on his mud-eyed dreams;
he thinks himself imminently practical.
He never joins my hair-brained schemes.
I think it's time for something tactical.

Magnetic poetry - what does your fridge say?

who can stand near
not couching or close about
Keep now no matter here
or small tear will open out
Present her the longest way
give her a gentle why

slow moment too full to tell
if some blood is better

hope must die here
inspiring everlasting hell
but

strong he delivered his embrace
around her heart
& there flowered her heart:
the strength of trust.

another monday morning

Go jump off a cliff, she said. At least you're good at gravity.

R E V E L A T I O N 9

Smoke & sulphur pour from
my horse's mouth--
the trumpet has sounded,
and one slash of light
records the descent of
a star.

Across the blood-red ocean
Woe, woe, woe
mixes with the hail.
The idols of gold, silver
bronze and bone
have eyes, but see not
my iridescent breastplate.

Loosed, the locusts masquerade
as scorpions.
Wholesale torment
writhes - these are the days of men
yet I must approach the golden altar
and
obey.

Injury. Demons. Hunger and thirst -
all this tribulation
for the sign and seal of a king?

AND THERE WAS WAR IN HEAVEN.....

[thoughts on lewis] [great divorce]

prove all things

i insist.

prove love strong,
prove thirst was made for water
prove the preposterous
is sometimes
the possible.

prove agony is glory-
twilight bleeds to morning.
reconcile purgatory with eternal bliss.

i insist.

prove a good man good,
prove the Ancients wise,
prove the Shadow of Death eventually dies.

you have lived a sheltered life,
you have not seen how far Hell extends its misery.
you have been an earthly knight,
you have been ignorant.

ghosthood awaits,
and still i demand

prove all things.

from the highest place to the lowest, I brought healing and joy.
i have proved in blood:
their weapon will be broken

[another saturday of mock trial]

Beast drill at dawn. Set out your boots
and kit, you'll have to gear up in the dark.
Pack light, sleep hard. Rendevous at Dearborn Park.
What, soldier? Don't be asinine. Practice doesn't make perfect
perfect practice makes perfect.

Saturday - semi-sabbath

Morning sunlight through the trees paints my sight with grace
it falls upon the waking hills
it gilds the winsome winding rills
the fears of night it softly kills
and
I drive on.

Your faith outpours from your life in such an evident way - we didn't even need to preach to the Macedonian countryside, the gospel in your life was so obvious to your neighbors!" -paraphrase of 1 Thes 7:8

CONTRAST

re: eternity

Sweep the hills for survivors,
turn aside and search every miserable inn you can
find in this
God-forsaken place;
I want every breathing thing
assembled
outside my tent in the morning,
understand?

"Sir, yes. But Sir...well, they're mere boys, the lot of them. They'll bring back the beggars and the whores and the plague-carrying vermin of the streets - Sir, this will not bring us anything but......trouble."

What are you suggesting? That we should poison the wells? Subaltern, as you probably have noticed, this place is six inches shy Hell itself already. Man was born to draw his breath in pain, but damn it, I'm going to give him a chance to breath it in, if I can.

Sweep the hills for survivors.