The Garden Gate – second edition

Passing through the garden gate, I meander with my beloved, earthly scents permeating my senses and cleansing my mind of thought. Gently I slow my pace, coming fully into the present moment, the sun softening my gaze, my heartbeat in rhythm with the song of my feet playing the earthen path.

Thirsty, I was. I needed water, was my excuse. Five more minutes in the company of my beloved, that’s all I really wanted. And here he is, my lover, my beloved, the softness of his skin brushing my skin as we walk, my senses heightened in arousal at his accidental touch. Entering into the sunlight before me, my beloved passes, and I squint to see sparks of love kissing his aura in a million streams of light, shining forth from his being like honey dripping into the ethers for all of the garden goddesses to witness. A perfect God.

Masterful lover, oh giver of life, how can one contain this beautiful creature? This wild and perfect force of freedom, triumphant as the wind itself? Confidently he strides amongst his beloved Goddesses, slowly taking each of them in, adoration penetrating deeply into their quivering branches, openly making love with each of them, his honey dripping through the ethers and ascending the garden path in front of us.

God, I’m thirsty, I think, mouth to fountain, tongue searching to stifle the unquenchable fire in my heart.

Swirling inward now, my own juiciness enlivening me, waking me up like a sprinkling of water, that brilliant inner sun illuminating my thoughts, offering a glimpse at my own magnificence.

Closing my eyes, I remember being that flower. That absolute single point of focused love, the scent of my desire pulling at his nectar, insisting that he land hard and love well, my juiciness too enlivening to resist, my love too full to restrain. Water swirling around my mouth now, falling fruitlessly from my lips and into the dead pan below.

How ironic, I think, rising up from the fountain and turning into the shadows that lead back down the path, as the flower wilts in the brilliant sun, fire and thirst too much to endure for more than a season or two.

An abandoned lover resides here, in the shadows of my heart. What will a sullen and fruitless season bare? Could this dark space actually contain a magnificent gift? The lonely crevices of my heart cry out to be explored, each line a world of its own, each curve an enchanted valley of ancient secrets, each drop of blood a night sky, angels singing from star to star.

Softening my gaze, my heartbeat in rhythm with the song of my feet playing the earthen path, I meander as my beloved, and pass once again through the garden gate, back to the place from which I came, as the flower passes back to its earthen grave, biding time in the underworld in wait of a new spring.

The Garden Gate – first edition

Passing through the garden gate, I meander with my beloved, earthly scents permeating my senses and cleansing my mind of thought. Gently I slow my pace, coming fully into the present moment, the sun softening my gaze, my heartbeat in rhythm with the song of my feet playing the earthen path.

Thirsty, I was. I needed water, was my excuse. Five more minutes in the company of my beloved, that’s all I really wanted. And here he is, my lover, my beloved, the softness of his skin brushing my skin as we walk, my senses heightened in arousal at his accidental touch. Entering into the sunlight before me, my beloved passes, and I squint to see sparks of love kissing his aura in a million streams of light, shining forth from his being like honey dripping into the ethers for all of the garden goddesses to witness. A perfect God.

Masterful lover, oh giver of life, how can one contain this beautiful creature? This wild and perfect force of freedom, triumphant as the wind itself? Confidently he strides amongst his beloved Goddesses, slowly taking each of them in, adoration penetrating deeply into their quivering branches, openly making love with each of them, his honey dripping through the ethers and ascending the garden path in front of us.

God, I’m thirsty, I think, mouth to fountain, tongue searching to stifle the unquenchable fire in my heart. Closing my eyes, I remember being that flower. That absolute single point of focused love, the scent of my desire pulling at his nectar, insisting that he land hard and love well, my juiciness too enlivening to resist, my love too full to restrain. Water swirling around my mouth now, falling fruitlessly from my lips and into the dead pan below.

An abandoned lover resides here, in the shadows of my heart. What will a sullen and fruitless season bare? Could this dark space actually contain a magnificent gift? The lonely crevices of my heart cry out to be explored, each line a world of its own, each curve an enchanted valley of ancient secrets, each drop of blood a night sky, angels singing from star to star. Swirling inward now, my own juiciness enlivening me, waking me up like a sprinkling of water, that brilliant inner sun illuminating my thoughts, offering a glimpse at my own magnificence.

How ironic, I think, rising up from the fountain and turning into the shadows that lead back down the path, as the flower wilts in the brilliant sun, fire and thirst too much to endure for more than a season or two.

Softening my gaze, my heartbeat in rhythm with the song of my feet playing the earthen path, I meander as my beloved, and pass once again through the garden gate, back to the place from which I came, as the flower passes back to its earthen grave, biding time in the underworld in wait of a new spring.

Valentine’s Day Request (Pantoum)

You wanted a love poem

yet love is better than words.

You will see that word “love”

made cheap from overuse.

Love is better than words.

Doing is better than saying.

Made cheap from overuse,

-just shopping for a bargain.

Doing is better than saying.

It is bewildering where love actually is.

Just shopping for a bargain.

in places where it is not.

It is bewildering where love actually is.

You will see that word “love”

in places where it is not.

You wanted a love poem.

Not Another Love Poem

The greeks in chorus
as only greeks can murmur,
view love as human folly
to be cured with geometry and humor

with forensic specificity
and pathagorian wit
the malady dissected with terms
a surgeons fancy fits

Eros, agape, filios, storage,
epithumia and phile
clean as pie charts,
filed and stored
by generations ignored
in error, pain and shame

we talk of love
and worship love
profit from love
and flee from love

Poets extol its danger
priests vow its virtue
lovers pine and die
in its presence or absence

like a lawn unmowed,
it thrives
ignored like a ringing phone
it grows

unencumbered by god-bothering zealots
love becomes vast and encompassing

surrounding us with quiet glee
it wiggles inside us
with the terrifying patience
of an ancient, thirsty deity

for the unwary
the lame of gait
crooked of tooth
less than clean

And transforms us into saints.

entropy

Only

entropy

has the luxury of choosing the direction of time

All matter follows in orderly surrender

Time’s arrow flies from love’s bow.

chicken feet

I keep my heart in a cage of bone
with space for curiously unjoined notions
about pickles and tomatoes
We are ringed by a moat stalked by death
Shark fin scythes like a dirge with skin thru thin water
In a land where only mad dogs
answer the selfish prayers of pilgrims.
My house walks about on chicken feet
when we become bored by the neighbors.

Carol

Carol talks back.
Sitting at a picnic table
half in shade
she pulls the cardboard
people out of a box
puzzles over each
as tho it were a
codex written by earth herself
Sassy and clever, brilliant
with stacks of crystal lives
that catch the light when
she turns.  And sighs,
“Now darlin’, this death
card is just a new beginning.
Nothin’ to shed tears over.”
She pulls her tattered, ragged
gypsy queen to lie down
across that collection of bones
and captures his attention
right off the page and into the
now for the frightened pilgrim.

Deirdre

Your name should have been Ramona,
riding wild across the corduroy hills
of winter California three hundred years ago.
Local hidalgos swoon and suffer as
you ride past beyond the grasp of mortal
man and mother church.
Only the sea can enchant you, grab
your heart and squeeze an exquisite
sigh from your moist lips.
The day will come when the wet and
wildness with reclaim you.
The day will come when grass will want your eyes
and sun will reclaim your hair
and the sweet sandy beaches
will borrow back your skin.
The soul that you have made for yourself
all by yourself
will leap from confining substance
and make the world cry your name.

Silkies

Those who foolishly go to sea again and again with an unnamed desire experience a soul deep sadness of separation from some essential source, a well that can’t be full or empty.

The few humans who feel a yearning for something lost, something forgotten.  Them that has the tides running through them from the day they’re born til the day they die are the children of silkies.

Those seal-like creatures who are human in form when they carelessly remove their skins and bear their half human children only to return as quickly as the skin can be recovered.

For these children there is no such thing as sleep the way other folk know it and a terrible torment.  They become drunks or poets until they tangle their lives in sails and lines and knots.

Until they plunge back into the water drawn somewhere by a pattern of returning as old as water and part of the water held by our frail tissue is the shape of water.

Old Gods

I hear the fearsome caterwauling of old gods
The fabric of humanity tears at the seams
and with it a whisper of ruin
The girl, a dancer narrow as a shadow
turned to stone
and dropped slowly backwards
eyes white, empty
shivering in a chill of ecstasy
on a night warm and moist
Ragged, tragic deities
linger in mute agony
abandoned by fashion and conquest
Time, the smuggler of fate,
as each new generation brings
their own new gods,
new prayers leaving
the former lords of the universe
to wander begging for scraps
of worship, the scant attention
of simple people, fishermen
and farmers who leave
small offerings out of habit mostly
Mnenos – the god of tape
Ramos – the god of chewing gum
Fratos – the god of pie