Pridal Twilight Song

Posted on June 10, 2016 by J

Oh, never mind any commentary. Here is what my calling, and my answering, brought to me tonight:

10 June 2016

10

No One’s Dead, and No One’s Died

They’ve neither tree nor limb on which to build a nest that’s all their own,
but even so, they won’t let go this shadowed place—old branches thrown
across a trail where nearly no one wants to let new demons dwell—
Rivers run between the silent, hallowed caves that turn out well

for those who dare their dark, small, breathless passages. Go on and on,
without one hope of breathing out—unless its past the mark love’s gone
to ground, the very graveyard underlying—what, a gallows? Bones
were made of nothing, then—I wrapped my arms around the you who owns—

my true soul’s always known—you’ve traded hands for arms, and arms for strength
beyond the common mass. When I was tired of you, I ran the length
of utterly foreseeable page-endings, and they left off—me.
I’m a strange, late-harvest apple still in bloom, still on the tree

where everyone who ever loved a song as rich with beauty, half
as magical as this inside my mouth right now, though you might laugh
to feel its sweetness touch your tongue, and bid you leave off sense and all—
this night’s not a simple fountain-drink; it’s love not kneeling small;

it’s all the world that glows before the mirror that best meets the sight
that deeper than your ancient-seeming keening dreams keeps you alight
to witness, when you glance well after midnight into glass that shines—
Dear as darling god’s own heart, were you first born to bear the lines

that faery music even now distributes through half-mortal tears?
Show me you’ll lie wide awake all night, as reading renders fears
their weirdest written-out obsessions—See yourself this way, and die.
We were watching; you crawled out—and sawed the branch. We can’t quite cry.

Twilight hovers softly over sea and shore nigh half the night.
Hand within my own, if I start humming, will you turn your slight
acquaintance with the very eerie strangeness I cannot but want—
If you lie beside me, drenched in ghosts, past hours that claim their haunt

and I am—still a soul who prays, but someone your prayers lead you to—
beautiful as leaves at length on branches trees turn into you—
If only you knew how more cold and lonely love was always, till—
No one’s dead, and no one’s died; death’s not breached once our windowsill.

Posted in gay, gay rights, imagination, literature, love, loving-kindness, poetry, song, spirituality, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Weird, but Weirdly Wise

Posted on June 8, 2016 by J

8 June 2016

8

In Sight of What’s Wise

My shivering ghost awoke lonely last morning, its thin cotton sheets soaked right through, and so cold.

Why the high window lay wide open all through the night, I don’t know, but I’ve always been told

that someone will prize a way forward wherever the least, finest gap is left mindless. You let

a ghost find your hiding-place, send its report back to horrid headquarters, then hound you with wet,

 

thin, soul-sucking sheets that read out their sad histories, lying their faces off, wept blind with tears

that knew they were destined for uses much higher, but such did not happen; the stretches of years

in which beds bore the sad weight of penitent strength, and the minds that lay there at full length wracked with pain—

sang out as eyes between fingers took pictures, and built up by measures the lay of night rain

 

that you are now seeing as tears in full flood over soft lower eyelids and cheekbones so carved—

You used to wander the floods-waters’ canyon and watch for the sign that your soul was too starved

to follow—in times of distraction, it wanted so much, it fell short of its own awe at last,

but then you awoke with your mind in the length of wet sheets written over with songs that came fast—

 

Even tomorrow, come dawn, long before the soft hour when the high tides of noon meet the wane

of the light that makes colorful clouds raise a huge gale of magic, of music that breaks through the pain

that built up its barrier signal-to-noise sense of harmony, ghostly as love at great length—

Carry me back to the fields of sweet dawn in the greenness of spring where ghosts drown love in strength.

 

Maybe you shivered a little too much and your limbs are a bit stiff and sore; all is well.

Nightfall comes early and late, and we always want more of whatever its long beauties spell

toward us, and meetings of eyelids and tears and held-out arms and fingers, and shinings of eyes—

Please don’t begin to start thinking, my darling; we’ve made it this far; we’re in sight of what’s wise.

 

 

 

 

Posted in imagination, literature, love, loving-kindness, poetry, song, spirituality, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Words shared softly with another…

Posted on June 7, 2016 by J

Don’t mind; it was only a comment shared on another blog.  This is the whole of it, with the poem I shared:

Is it all right if I share too much, having just listened to your wonderful singing readings, thinking of your travels—to Romania? They’ve been through so much, yet they’re undivided in their steadfast love of song.

I really wouldn’t trust myself to let in so much mystery without them:

7 June 2016

7

Paper Wasps: One Season

The walls are concrete-grey and high as all imagination—not

the real one, but the cast-out stranger’s far from ordinary thought

brought forward from a time of troubled partial peace, to where time roiled

all everyone within the mind they shared—the one that read the soiled

 

torn pages found beside the gutter, nearly washed away. Their lines

will celebrate the latent brilliant wick behind my eyes, designs

shot all throughout that might have once arisen in an early morn—

For this long moment, I’m so tired, I’d like to leave my soul lovelorn,

 

but your imagined smile in guided love’s triumphant posture—Leak

a little gentle light toward the one you hold, who’d never seek

the likes of you, but still knows how to shine forth grace as if no soul

had ever found another hiding place where god might eat you whole—

 

then turn again upon your heel and show the world how well you dance.

Beauty grows so luminous, I’d lie down, whetted by that lance;

I’d feel it draw a subtle bead, then sharpen both its well-trained eyes—

and tender as a subtle breath—I’d lie down dead if love would rise

 

from out my grave with blossoms rich as gushing blood, well mixed with white

wax candles’ flames as if their glow came over fresh as new Moon’s light,

and all they cast their inverse shadows, walls as black as stone light hates—

Use your silent, hurting heart to entertain the fallen slates

 

that held a roof above your head when you lay sleepness, praying hard

for one sweet angel out of many—How she saw you through, her starred

companion in the basement room so grey—and then so black, so still—

She’s a soothed and solid sense-companion where love works its will,

 

and when she’s woken finally toward the glowing evening pass

we both must understand before we enter—Love’s a stringent lass—

we’ll feel the bond that holds the hands between us so securely, we—

Used to be, we climbed the walls, right up and over; there’s a tree;

 

there’s the concrete far below, and up above, the heaven’s high.

Raise your fierce wet fist in mind against the fear that makes you cry:

Tell the little feeling hearer hidden well within your breast—

Paper wasps who build right now know theirs is next year’s empty nest.

 

 

Thank you, Scarriet, and happy trails!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in imagination, literature, love, loving-kindness, poetry, song, spirituality, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Still

Posted on April 26, 2016 by J

Surely this is all still part of anniversary grief.  He was brilliant, but more than that, he was infinitely imaginative and kind.  My forever friend, you are always welcome to dream with me, and tell me everything.

26 April 2016

27

Why Are We Still Here?

Oh, the measured essence, well-distilled from boundless presence: When

I woke up shaking, cold and hungry, ghosts had left the light on—then

my mind withdrew, and sleep regained its tenuous designs on me.

Deep behind that sleeping—sleepless—mind—a new door set love free.

You rose huge in beauty, knowing all that’s ever filled a song

was born confused by confluent streams that overran their banks. Among

the lyric rush that maddens every hearing mind it ever meets—

and all the wisdom lying side-eye wide behind a mouth that greets—

with ancient dread of blessings that will never cease to work their will—

tell it to the clouds that rain inside, love keeps on rising still—

When measureless devotion meets with shyness under skies of rain,

answer me: How long have we gone walking out? Is love not plain

in this plain face, behind these eyes that swim with tears when you look up?

There, amongst the highest trees, whose highest branches hold the cup

that holds the eggs that soon will hold the tiny winged beings we

love more than our existence? We were born before love sowed that tree,

and when its branches bow before the wind that shakes its leaves full wild,

music breaks out, mad as magic, singing, shrieking we’re its child,

and anyway, we’ll turn our eyes toward the greatest source that glows,

and hear what it has always tried to sing through us: A cold, wet rose

has only lately opened all its petals, and caught frost’s last hard,

impartially illuminated presence in love’s temple-yard

so bitterly its scent cannot be borne abroad by sea-winds’ air,

I was there; I held his hand. He’s led me home. We’re now nowhere.

Maybe, when I wake an hour from now, the window-panes all cracked

with sad off-season frost and ice, he’ll show me where we’ve always tracked

the signs and marks that lead us—nearer final home than any place.

When I wake up cold, remind me—Why can I still see your face?

Posted in imagination, literature, love, loving-kindness, poetry, song, spirituality, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Sharing

Posted on April 25, 2016 by J

Here is a recent poem I just shared at my favorite poetry blog, Scarriet.   As soon as I had, I felt a little guilty for not posting it here.  Well, I can fix that!

I don’t know if you’ll be able to tell right away, but I am stretching out, prosodically:

17 April 2016

18

Our Love Is Not All Told

We weren’t made of paper, stone, or glass—back then, when words grew hard.

Someone stood in songs’ good reach so much like me—a soul ill-starred

in common sight, but brighter than the light of day once day’s lain down.

All too many mornings turned to eves that burn: She wore a crown,

the one we both lay wide awake and watched for. She shone through the air

wherever it made liquid waves remind our eyes that love most fair

was born beneath a watered sky, and still requires soft clouds to bloom—

above her head and marriage-bed within our next true-storied room.

Every night, within my fingers’ reach, thick old hard doors slam to,

and nearly excise all I have to hold you with. I’ll breathe the dew

of dawning with an aching throat, perhaps from under water. Will

you wait for me as patiently as I have suffered? Will love kill

its messenger, deep down inside the heart of one who hears, and pains.?

Walk abroad all night alone, if soul should ask; who there remains

who stood beside you when the first glad morning shed its dawn of tears?

Never, ever once without companion-song, though mortal years

stretch out like empty, hateful plains of empty pages, soul-unwrit.

We weren’t made of paper; we were souls who made huge use of it,

then shared it out like drops of rain, or dew on webs come dawn’s first light.

You might fall a little bit in love, so—Where’d you spend last night?

Little pages trading little places, hand-in-hand, and then—

a miracle of incandescence, knowing we’re the awen-men

who reached toward us severally, then so resolved—Your one soul’s hand

has reached its limit, dreamt too long, then lain down where I’m under-manned:

We weren’t made of anything but music, songs live visions brought

to bear between the lovers who will suffer all—this time—has wrought

its magic through a vale of tears and tender sighs sweet night on night.

You grew most—unusual—song’s inverse-paper’s inverse-blight.

Walk with me outside the framing pane and raise your head to know

the stars are flying, calling out—They want the both of us to show

their beauty to a fallen world long after they lie dead and cold.

Walk with me amongst the graves we’ve always known: Love’s not all told.

Posted in imagination, literature, love, poetry, song, spirituality, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Little Tears and Wings

Posted on April 24, 2016 by J

Today was fine and clear in the afternoon, and I walked out and looked around. Along the main road, I followed an empty lot that was just dry gravel, no pavement. Beside it, I watched for a long time a very graceful bird who looked back boldly at me. I am a known and devoted bird-fancier. Only lately, my rock doves have brought new young to meet me. This was a wee, small bird, with a high clear voice that I knew at once–without knowing how I knew it. The longer I stood listening and watching, the more I saw the very grass was alive.

I am still sad, but I love what loves.

24 April 2016

25

Killdeer’s Children’s Day

The killdeer in their many wove throughout the tiny field of grass.
I stood there watching one at first, and then saw so, so many pass
before me from a thin, small way away—so many children, let
to find the strangeness staring right toward them—or if not, forget—

the way it shifts its posture. It’s no predator; it’s slow and weak;
it shows no power of flight as far as all can see. It tries to speak,
but its poor chirps and cries are false. Its mask betrays no need to harm;
we’ll go on feeding, watching out with one eye, but—sound no alarm.

Feathers rose all up inside my throat and half constricted me
from saying what I wanted, but I coughed and choked, and they let be
the music I had never once had even half an ear for. Aye,
they played me back my own prayers’ hymns for mercy under heaven’s sky.

I felt a silent presence all throughout the dreams and visions sent
each moment of my lifetime, but I doubted I existed. Lent
a sense of wonder once by one who told me he would call it back,
I just watch for signs of him all day—and never, ever lack.

Killdeer in a little patch of grass and gravel by the road
down which a million hours from now the deepest grave’s most horrid load
will lie down, free and easy—little birds that feast on maggots, worms,
and supersitions—ply your trade, and tell me when we’ve found new terms:

There’ll be lines of singing, shining stars in rows and letters, all
across the skies that fill our minds with why we rise, and why we fall—
asleep, awake, in love and out, and why birds’ friendship means so much.
When feathers meet the cold, sad ground, it warms—and tenders home love’s touch.

Posted in imagination, literature, love, loving-kindness, poetry, song, spirituality, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Before and After You Left

Posted on April 23, 2016 by J

See my last post, if there is any mystery to this:

Before and After You Left

A new looming strangeness grows into the patterns our tired hands have woven since time out of mind.

Stand just a shade to the left of the lamp that keeps shining between us. I know you’ve designed

a tender memorial lesson both I and the knowledge between us should share and take home,

but then. When you die. As you have. I’ll be locked out, alive and unwanted, left only to roam

the graveyard and sad charnel grounds all this place has turned into since not only you but your hope

have signalled their woeful departure. I’ve hung on your every least sigh since the first mortal rope

first fished you up out of an ocean of lies, and lent you a bed by the warmest of fires.

Oh, but the heart always wants, and you rose up before early dawn and went out seeking—choirs.

When I was woken to such a cold morning, sky all in black like a widow in weeds,

somewhere far back of my mind came the keening of pain beyond language where every soul bleeds

because it’s been wounded beyond comprehension. Stem, if you can, the rich flow of its blood,

but write down its every least symbol of essence, and tell me they’re not both in fire and in flood.

You slept beside me as miracled essences danced through our dreams and our nerves and our skins.

Borne at mid-day to the place of black midnight, lean in your harness and hear who begins

the next round of visions: She’s standing; she’s flying. A new looming strangeness, she’s blacker than black,

yet she’s the one so hugely luminous, shining, and lyrical—Child, she’s your own soul come back.

Open the window tonight in your dreams, and signal toward the grey flock of soft birds

that gather and watch you by day and by night. Tender them chaste, subtle cascades of words,

then listen, and let them feed back to your hearing and hands all their messages, brighter than air,

and more and more lovely. They can’t take you with them, but they can remind you—all live creatures care

for those who would witness their being-alive, and open the window, and reach out, and touch

the ones who have gathered—to listen, and hear, and recall how our magic was made of so much

silent, watchful attendance. They’re birds on a ledge, but they’re angels when dreamers descend from on high

to shift our strange patterns of knowing and seeing to those that—flow freely through creatures who fly.

Before and after you left, the grey lattice of rain made a cage where an eerie song shone

in hearing, like dreams where a face turns to water and leans on an arm as it makes mournful moan—

but then, as if casting a stone through a pane that kept terrible knowledge at cold, fearful bay—

Since time out of mind, I have known you, and loved you; I love, though I’m tired, every next word you say.

Posted in imagination, literature, love, loving-kindness, poetry, song, spirituality, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Sothseyere

Posted on April 22, 2016 by J

My most beautiful loved one, my conversation partner in letter and song, died three days after Easter two years ago. He left on 23 April 2014. Why should I be remembering him now? Because I never cease to remember.

21 April 2016

22

Sothseyere

Magic Meets There Here

The yesteryear of speaking sooth to all and sundry waved its tail

across a broad bright meadow just last night. It’s silent; I’ll not fail

to hear its underbreath deliver precious words, like trains of sweet,

kind magic meant to face toward the place where you and I will meet—

but in the interval, as we must lie between the light and dark,

will you choose to hold my hand and dance and sing, across this park

where branches bear their weight three times in blossoms, staying strong, and swear

they’ll bear more magic times a thousand? Till they die, we’re near nowhere

the ghosts who swarm around this place will want us; they’ve so grandly planned,

we maybe want to carry shadows just a further bit up-land,

let fall the leash that held them barely, tautly, within check, and then—

read the leaves that love the eyes that shine their way: My way with men

is odd, and strange, and in its elemental place, more weird than wise.

Still, I see how much they catch in one sad sidelong glimpse. Who lies

before the mirror, night on night, examining what next might show

the barest glimpse of face within the glass your canted hand—the glow

of spirits glad as all good springs, cheerful as the dawn of May?—

Maybe if you let me hold your hand and dance, you’ll feel us sway

toward the door that hangs askew, a hesitant yet friendly pair

of ghosts who’ve sent their souls so far down this old path, they’ll always care—

and pause, with breath so bated, lest alone within the deep, deep heart

that wants to hear the moment growing larger, swept alone, apart,

and swiftly more than once together—I’m an orphan; so are you—

toward the meeting hour and moment—Love will know and see you through.

You will turn your shoulder to the hardest part, but look back twice

as often as you steel yourself. Your women own the soul-device

that makes the flow of song take trains, like nerves on land, and set them right.

Ring on your glad hand, your hour’s come round; your train arrives tonight.

Soothsayer says, and she’s my own and only soul, my spirit-friend—

No one’s ever seen me once alone; all love’s beside me—Lend

your tenderness toward the hour and moment when we’ll greet past fear

the million lyric ways and stars that told us we would meet there—here.

Posted in imagination, literature, love, loving-kindness, poetry, song, spirituality, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

11-11

Posted on November 12, 2015 by J

Things got a little stranger than usual last night:

11 November 2015

11

Here and Gone, Alive

Soft, as I fall quite asleep all alone, the little hands rise up and shadow the light
that wants to leak in, but I dare not attend it with anything real. I’m all watchful insight;
the clock wants to fly all around, every this way and that, till its hands tell the time they first bore
when they were a fine pair of sailors who’d sunk and then swum to a beautiful, far distant shore,

and I was the lone, lovely pair of eyes watching the two of them climb over waves like old seals.
Nothing reminds me of love like the flavor of autumn, within which the blood that congeals
breathes out its last essence, and that blends with smoke, and the weeds at low tide, and the fog-swollen air.
We fell asleep holding hands, long ago, and now we know why. Mirror-sky rendered fair

by visions who’ve swum to a surface we’ve tried to abandon but cannot, shine back to my eyes
the ones we were used to. Please open the pair of them gladly and—presently, sights will grow wise,
and we will go forward together forever, a little more Sun coming over the hill,
the usual light of the true Moon subsiding as human love goes down in waves with a will

to build up again to a high hilltop fortress that never knew war or its false light and pain.
Soft, if you’ll meet and not mind that I’m so very tired of the all-night dead-soldiers’ refrain—
warriors lying in floods of red wounds, and yet crying out for a shy, sidelong look—
Let us awaken right now, died of love, but mistaken—We’re liquid with all that love took—

When I can’t quite fall asleep, the hands gently held out to meet me run rich with young blood.
Precious, the pair of them; don’t let them find me when I am in heat; I’m not their form of flood.
Winding between us, the worried hands meeting in circular figures mean clock-dials and haste.
So sad, so early, so ugly, so unwise a jewel I once was, when I thought you were paste

that held flesh just barely on bones that were spines inside books that held all the wise spells sought in vain
till this very instant. My child, I was riddled to ashes by seas burned white-hot under rain;
I turned the next page with my heart in my throat, and our souls shone right through. Let me read on and on.
I’m fast asleep now; I’m dreaming; and yet I’m alive, and the pain—it seeks dawn, yet it’s gone.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Feathers on Scales

Posted on November 5, 2015 by J

According to some traditions, the soul at death is weighed against a feather.

And feathers, by other, more recent traditions, evolved from scales.

4 November 2015

4

New Feathers on New Scales

You lift up your throat: It’s constricted by insects. You, love, have cherished a grave for so long,
a million white wings all set forth like spring blossoms as you sigh and writhe and frail bones turn to song
you’re now to to make, the music of everything—wrung out of everything never once love.
You’re going to see it all set down and laid, night after next, like the ghost of a dove

that sought out but never, through all her exertions, discovered the ark she’d been sent out to find.
All the globe carved up all over a table—It looks like a preordained sweet orange rind,
the type ancient virgins once tore into ribbons. If one stayed intact, future bliss was assured.
If one should break open untimely, you’ve already died, and your soul has for ages endured—

all it has to, and will. Child, you’ve bloomed into ashes; the flies all buzz round here, but butterflies, too.
Walk with your hands by your sides till you reach the next margin beyond the great trees, where the view
of all the broad ocean keeps breathing, keeps seething, keeps minding the heart at the source of your soul
that someone behind you has hands and arms held out and always, just always, will offer the bowl

that’s angled to catch the pure rain of high heaven. The dear smile behind the glad strength of love’s will
comes staring through you and your dreams in the moment when Suns rearise, while the sky is quite still.
You’ll have been beautiful then for the strangest of times. You’re a comfort to mere mortal men,
though it cannot quite show in your mirror if you will not let any mirror behold you. Child, when

the song rearises for which you first opened your throat, you will feel yourself drowning. No fear
lies behind this. You know you are holiness woken to hold itself higher than floodwaters. We’re
the wing-bearers; we are the bright-winged angels; we are the stone at the source of the grave:
Lighter than magic, and borne on the wings of wild doves, wild with song, it was you I would save

from even the faintest slight hint of complex and unhappy remembrances. They’ll all-ways try
to find you and use you again for the strength of the soul you imagined would teach you to fly;
let only the ones you most love hear you sing this. Sing it out each time you breathe, but your throat—
Feel just how many they are, and how holy—the angels whose scales favor every new note.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment