DEMON

Tags

identity, mythology, Ocean, poem, poetry, power, sea, transformation, Water

DEMON

spent some time
amongst the water demons
learning the tricks
of their trade

the sea serpents
thronged around me
my acquaintance
pleased to
be made

and from the surface
of the ocean
I looked back
to the shore

wondering of all the fantastic
tales of the great mariners
I had heard
whose
perspective seemed
so limited, sad

before I submerged
to be seen
no more

WATER MOCCASIN

Tags

Consciousness, poem, poetry, river, Snake, Water

WATER MOCCASIN

my movement
Moon fluid
tango
perfect

nothing more
syrup sweet
than my poison

but
my eye
these eyes
what could be
sharper, harder,
more embittered?

as
I read you
follow you
am
surreptitious
follow you
everywhere

upstream, downstream,
from
tiny source
to
mighty confluence

our consciousness of
these moments
so smudgy,
somewhat
shop-soiled

but your understanding of
my lethal grace
being so measured, replete,
(in a word) academic

that alone
should see you thrive
that alone
keep you alive

UNDER NEPTUNE

Tags

Ocean, Pisces, poem, poetry, Water power astrological

UNDER NEPTUNE

was dancing with Rihanna and Kurt Cobain
was a purely Pisces mutable water sign party

sorry if you being
Aries or Leo just
didn’t get invited

therefore missed the best part
where we sucked in huge air
and swam
to the bottom of the ocean

sharks and porpoises guiding
phosphorescence lighting our way down

thing you
air, earth, fire people
can have no comprehension of really
elements of the signs
for which
thing so visceral, intense and soul
re-defining
can have
no real meaning, be totally
lacking in appeal or true appreciation

THE ELEMENTS

Tags

air, earth, elements, Fire, poem, poetry, Water

COLLECTION: THE ELEMENTS

IN YOUR ELEMENT

these scars
on my arm
are where
my skin burned
when you
touched me
lifted me
up out of
the ocean
and we
walked
for that moment
hand-in-hand

this is the water
I can still taste
you
bade me drink
until
flowing through my body
water and I
were
as one
sometimes I sense it
is there
a drop that
will never leave
has remained

it’s molecular structure bonded
in a place of perfect light

and this
the air

vehicle for the word
across which
your voice carries

through which, all
being well
I am meant to ascend

but for now
where I juggle things

this poem
this breath

every
aspect of myself
all that
must be weighed, judged
called to
balance
come to rest

and lastly, by no means finally
this earth that enfolds
ground from which the
child in me outgrew
where my
feet feel time’s sand, fertile loam,
kick up
some dust
(and who
knows what
gold
hidden
in such dust?)

this the
floor to

who knows
what ceiling

this the dark door
where you yourself were
made human, died
and were entombed

LAMP

the naked lightbulb
your Sun

the cracks in the ceiling
your constellations

and you wonder
if there was
some singularity
in your
life experience

or what you see
above you
has always existed
since the
beginning
of time

except, for you,
there was no
beginning of time

****

S is for serpent
in the Bible, but
S is for
Sartre in
your philosophical
dictionary

and I suppose Socrates,
Spinoza and Schopenhauer too

the books
somewhere in the house
or perhaps not

perhaps there is no house
just a
naked lightbulb
floating in space
as self-explanatory
in its own theology
as anything written
by beloved
Catholic scribe
or Saint

****

sunrise
over a flat-space
of semi-desert

I suppose the technical name
for this is depression

somehow the Earth sank
until it realized it was behaving
like water

another element entirely
one that is
determined, predestined
to settle at its level

no
element more
in thrall
to the force of
gravity

in this space of Sun and dust and rock
and dry bone
no element more
conspicuous by its absence

the spirit of its essence
less around

****

lightbulb
can be switched

or deployed to allow
a play of shadows

in the darkness alone
are we free to dream

let me do
with bit of brain
I’ve got left
a quick correlation
between philosopher of
freedom and
philosopher of darkness

see who
walks out into the spotlight
stands at the fore

****

under the spotlight
one is pressurized into
soliloquy
S in
the dictionary of
literary terms raising
its elapid head

feels funny talking to God
funnier talking to
oneself before
invisible audience

signing off in speech
rhetorical, speech poetic

as the fates
move in from the wings
setting in motion
that tragic action

the bleak existential triumph of
scant human principle over
implacable, singular, all-
focused cosmic force

burning with an all-
consuming Olympianness
with force
far in excess of
a billion stars let
alone
forty, sixty, a hundred
watt lamps

ANGELS

I was expecting
angels of
another element

huge angel of Earth, Water
or Air

nice angels
too nice angels

the angels
that came

were sent and
came

started out life as
pieces of Martian rock

passed through the Sun
burned their way
through the
atmosphere

landed on my hand
would have burnt a hole through it
if they did not
at that moment
announce themselves

my two
little angels of fire

thrusting their tiny arms
through my chest, finding my heart

which burns now
like all the burning stuff of the Universe

Universe suddenly
of passion
and desire

CUSP

fire
water

I am
creature
at the cusp
of those
two elements

cardinal, mutable,
I change, I embody
I fluctuate and
yet I
am the pole
I am the extreme

fire
water

how do I live
this paradox
resolve
this conundrum

the roll of the waves
in the ocean my rhythm

fire of the Sun
running in
my blood

OLD SCHOOL

“‘Tis not too late
to seek a newer world”
Heraclitus

and now we
know
what the
truth
looks like

we started to
lose sight of it
lost
sight
of it completely

no, truth is
old school, truth
is elemental

is earth, shaking seismically
beneath up, erupting with
terrible toxic power

is air
whipped up into storms
of irresistible power, were
once
beyond imagination

are the waters rising, swamping
flooding, drowning
tsunami waves to
eclipse the
highest tower

but it is you
fire

who speak the truth most
plainly, most openly

you whose physics of raw
angry energy
cannot be denied

PROVIDENCE

there are things a poem
doesn’t need
can do
without

and things a poem
needs to be free of

and
somewhat in
this spirit I decided
to leave my
poem
incomplete
let it be free

commit the page to the
element of air, see what
the wind might do: whether
category five storm of
gentle breeze (I believe
zephyr is the
dictionary-designated
euphonious term)

dulcet,
mellifluous

not
much of that
going around

sorry guv’nor don’t get much
call for silver-
tongued in the streets
round here

but with grace it rose, and rising soared
swept on a path I could scarcely predict

the force of chaos will always
smudge the map, distort the plan

to make
mischief or

be provident

IN SPADES

the world got hotter
and the
happy clappy
industrialists said
“don’t worry
lead to
gold it’ll
all be
alchemy

you’ll
see”

hard to see in
the fossil-fuel fog, acid
cloud cover of Venus

but right
they were
when
the entire climate
shifted

the four elements followed:
(like clubs following diamonds following
hearts following spades)

earth became
magma
air
plasma,

fire
got laser focus
and water
(with all that H)
went fusion
reactor

changing the whole nature
of the mythology game

as hearts follow diamonds so
I dug our grave with
this
death spade

SPECIAL TERMS

Tags

Angel, Drowning, poem, poetry

SPECIAL TERMS

an angel phoned me
when I was
busy drowning

bobbing up
and down in
the deep end
of the swimming pool

hold onto the rail
the instructor told me
but what time
do I have
for rails
and rules?

you ask me
“how could an angel phone you
and how could you answer?”

I direct you
to the miracle of
this saved-from-death poem

the logic of the thing
not my concern

swallowing water and then
suddenly gulping down
on spirituality

my angel here
with an offer I could not,
was barely in
a position
to refuse

a dial direct
special offer

I signed
on the dotted lines

ignoring
the small print, the infinitely demanding

special terms

TELL MYSELF

Tags

California, eternal recurrence, Golden Gate Bridge, Humanity, identity, Nietzsche, philosophical, poem, poetry, Reader, wordplay, writing

TELL MYSELF

tell myself I am
right hand writing the left hand
MC Escher postmodern
don’t
know what
I’m doing

and you scream at me
I’m not poetry just
trajectory
(we all so sexually underutilized)

sat next to a dead German professor on some
park bench and him saying
we got to be glad to
be back and
nothing so Apollonian
raw desire, unfiltered, will
not put the chaos in it

but
try to bridge
try to span

and here I am now spanning
the mist above the sea
between Oakland and Frisco

my heart at
this moment pure California

a humongous bridge
a
suspension bridge

a Golden Gate Bridge
between the real and the imaginary

as if you
reader I’m trying to
connect with, build
my bridge to
are not imaginary

hanging over dark, dark ocean
somewhere between the ordinary and
the unreal

what a dialectic that must be

I write
you
in your absence so differently

MILLENNIAL

Tags

apocalyptic, Global warming, metapoetic, poem, poetry, writing

MILLENNIAL

waited a century
for a poem

waited a
millennium

the snow fell
the sun shone
the icebergs, iceshelf,
glaciers did melt

and so
as the seas rose

I made a sail out
of very big paper

enough space there
to write a poem
help me
circumnavigate

oceans of space
oceans of time

LIKE WATER

Tags

poem, poetry, Water, Water power astrological

LIKE WATER

cannot write the water
abracadabra oxygen
and hydrogen

cannot be
the water that
flows

streams
sweeps across us
through us
as ripple, as wave

but let
me just pose
try a little
experiment

act as if
I can nail
down water
proclaim to the world
I am the water that flows

crucify the very feeling that
water is thing finite, thing limited
that the nature
of its being
a trivial affair

with the power
to destroy cities but
found civilizations
bringing art
to the world
and music
and literature
and air conditioned reality

water
just as apt for
all its
life-treacheries as
air, earth and fire

and yet
with your
penchant for chemistries
of venom, sanctity and vengeance

I sense in you
deep capacity for
restoration, remembrance
memory that
returns to
the beginning of time
r

SADALSUUD

Tags

Aquarius, Aries, Pisces, poem, poetry

SADALSUUD

I’m alone now
the Pole Star

Pole Star
North

or Pole Star
South

but my pen
cannot guide me here
cannot connect
cannot show the way

stuff on the page
it drifts, floats away

a pen
is not a mast

the page
is never a sail

and me
just one day away
from the assuredness, certainty
of cardinal fire

from true child of Mars, planet
of the red laser eye

somehow the ocean
tempted me

to jump too early
or I fell too fast
without parachute
just
diving

was already buying into
fishers of men thing and
other
absurd Galilee philosophy

and so
was born creature of water
displaced from true fire
creature
not of star
but of the
huge space between galaxies

but there was a star
waiting on my horizon as
my eyes opened

Star
of the King (as it
was named by the great
Arabian astronomers)

Star of a
new age

age of
flow, of river
of immortal brotherhood

great Sadalsuud
your light in my eyes

for this
only thanks

MAP

Tags

poem, poetry, Sexual innuendo, sexual symbolism, wordplay

MAP

I drew a
crazy map
of your
body

semi-crazed
not
world turned
upside down

just went to
town
on your
Southern
Hemisphere

no space for North,
East,
hardly any time
for West

but so much South
it fills the mouth

in fact might
just as well

dedicate all
of my cartography
to your Southern Continents
islands amid
the oceanic expanse