Lion and Rabbit

imageI coo with subtle caress
imbued in our words
Aloft, then settling in the currents of my heart
Like the gentle lion
soothing his burnt paw
kneading in the cool softness
of a rabbit’s fur;
His pain pressed tenderly against
wrapped and fragile bone,
for so long
inflicted with the angst of the unknown.
Now I only wish to draw the veil
through the mist,
Await love’s pulling of ribbons
from unopened gifts.

So little time remains,
that I’ve erased its meaning
from anything I can count on.
Instead, time is marked
in the pulsing memory of moonlit ponds,
and blue flame clouds,
And high up night owls.
And by the ticking metronome
to the rise and fall of our breaths,
by angels turning the many pointed star
held in the crypt of my chest.

And interspace. What is this?
Measured by anything not there,
an atom, a planet,
an anywhere.
I have felt greater distance
with one by my side
than I have shared with
your soul across a galaxy’s divide;
A soul that sees mountain ranges
thin as air,
And rivers raging no more than
the silent stream
of a tear.

This love
is a delirious gray moth
in a labyrinth of mirrored passages;
my Beloved is
the glowing lantern hidden
within its center.
I am a vessel of flickering senses
and involuntary impulse…
Whichever way I run toward Her flame,
I find only my own reflection,
for Her light waits cooing around every turn
and I, in flight, burn
And expire
In that unfound flame desired.

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Having Tea in the Fall

menoHearing is different when
coolness fills the
transporting canals of the ears.
I rolled the rubbish bin to the curb,
its wheels sounding different before the
impending Autumn swallows us up.
No longer are we
melting to the ground.
I hear the trashmen coming.

Were you here now,
we’d not be frolicking, no
there’d be boiling,
you’d prepare black tea
quietly,
but for the occasional
spoon clinking against
fine bone china.

Bread goes in
while I’m getting out the butter.
Hot toast springs up, and
we sip over
the edge of each other;
eyes over lips
between euphoria
and pensiveness.
Softening butter,
sweet chutney,
we sip petals off
daisies.

Should we go for a walk?
Should we pour more tea?
No one asks.
We just sit, and sip,
amidst
assembling this puzzle
delicately, fragrantly,
we do this.

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Without Debts and Doubts

sunsetDay dawns without debts,
without doubts,
and later
the day changes,
the wheel turns,
the fire is transfigured.

Nothing is left
of what dawned,
the earth consumed itself
grape by grape,
the heart was left without blood,
spring was left without leaves.

Why did all that happen this very day?
Why was it mistaken in its bells?
Or does everything always have to be so?
How to twist, unravel
the thread, keep on pushing
the sun back to
the shadow.
Send back the light until the night
grows big again with day.

May this day be our child,
endless discovery,
aura of time recovered,
conquest of debt and doubt,
so that our life
may simply be
a pure morning substance,
a clear current.

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Writer in the Artist Studio – This and That

(a story about entering the studios of Nasser Ovissi – dictated on the drive home)

Oh, this sweet exhaustion.
This weariness from wanting,
this fire that burns towards having.

I woke this morning
and went to visit the Artist.
The colors on His gallery walls were alive.
Each portrait poured the water of life
into white woven canvas.
I was surrounded by an eternity,
Wing to wing with jeweled angels
arm in arm with all of burgeoning humanity.

Breathless from a palpating heart,
I walk quite trustfully
into this craft of love that entwines us
and everything we see, and hear, and do;
even among those things that remain hidden
from our deepest perception,
from our senses day-lit views.

Slipping into a ceaseless state of wonder,
swelling with the sense,
that my purpose is to be fully thankful,
that this bears fruit in expressions
that serve all
By this art within,
inspired by the Artful.

I am always transforming
In these threshold doorways.
This is not a road with many stoplights,
this is not even the road.
It is a wide and expensive flatness
the Artist’s studio
going in all directions,
endlessly.
We do not stop to turn or to let others pass,
nor do others stop to let us
for nothing impedes us
on this path.

Happiness birthed by love
is a writer’s cup spilling over,
cascading into an ever thinning
but never disappearing,
veneer of water,
purling outward infinitely.
These ripples do not expire,
it does not evaporate.

When I entered His abode,
it was into a place where my heart
was already waiting.
This is how lovers come up to one another.
Arriving where they had already arrived.
A rekindling of a bonfire spirit,
one that might at times smolder,
but is never near extinguished.

Maulana says that we are moving swiftly down the stream,
and what appears to be trees passing by us on the banks
is just the speed of our vessel leaving this world.

You and I talk of this and that,
these cycles of melancholy and ecstasy.
We see sinuating patterns where there are none.
In the end it is a white light,
in which to feel the spectrum
of all its hidden colors.

There are no cycles beloved friends,
we scintillate in a perpetual state of splendor
here there is no end
and to remain here we need not try,
we simply surrender, you and I.
A writer with an Artist’s eye.

Surrender to the resistance of effort,
Surrender this, for resistance is effortless.
This is what illuminate’s distractions;
and when these distractions lift on the light,
it is one Bliss about us,
it is all One portrait’s
indescribable sight.

We are part of the single thread
that weaves through time
and space
and our part is a whole.
What we want and cannot have,
is distraction, so have
without wanting.

The sweetness of the sugar cube
is not in the cube;
It is in us.
It is not on the tongue,
it is of the tongue.
The Us we seek, seeks us!
Let us turn toward it, not away
It is only ubiquitous Love.

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the word series

1.

Words are the rusted iron locks
on the chest of meaning
within the chest is the hidden key to them all
Silence is the locksmith.
(#25wtT)

2.

A swelling tongue
guides his breath
past parted lips
soft words adrift
warms her mouth
and soothes her throat
in ocean hearts
their dreams afloat
mind races
down river beds
breaching the banks
of what the other says.

3.

What shall we do with these words between us?
Tumbled and polished by mouth and ear
and then beyond our counting,
weathered thin to a translucent veneer,
until their vessel walls dissolve,
their pulsing meaning thus evolved
and you and I are no longer contained,
and our rolling along aboard this train
from I to you
and where there is no longer a you, or an I
or we two.
Where this traveling sentence stops
and the car doors open
and the conductor announces,
“please depart,
this train is no longer in service.”
All is One, One is all
their distinction has no purpose.

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Undressed by the Ocean

undressed by the ocean
humility slips
from her shoulders
down into ribbons
of waves at her feet
flesh from sand
blood from water
boldly stands
Neptune’s daughter
ocean’s edge to oceans edge
where from deep shadows
she extends
then disappears
until dawn again

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Still Nothing to Say

Every dereliction of duty
Each hesitation
One moment of indecision
in a shifting wind,
finds me swaying in your mirror
again,
I pause and then…

Every button that slips silently
Into its hole
reminds me of this quiet kismet,
game of words we wear.
You strike a match,
I light on fire.
Tis’ my turn now,
Your next word…
“desire.”

I loved her without food
And my body withers away
and still
I stay
So much shared, unbeknownst,
I’ve nothing to trade for love,
but love.
Yes, I threw my scale against the rock,
it broke in two
one gold, one dross.

Were you not here to love,
I’d still love you,
I’d still
Write for all the readers-blind
Recite for all the listeners-deaf
Paint until the canvas dries
and bend this note
with your absent breath.

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Posted in love poems, poetry | 1 Comment

Wild Inside

Languid lips,
creased in soft repose
sealing secrets there enclosed
that only a kiss reveals.
Blooms ponceau,
One might imagine worlds
beyond where
the corners curl
of a mouth that’s closed
and wild inside.

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Diya

high noon
I stared into the high noon sun,
until I became blinded by all but its memory.
Then I stared into that memorial as if it were my only one,
until not even the darkness could be seen.

When I could not turn away from,
nor toward any real perception,
it was love I found in a new light cast,
for only my heart to see the path
glowing in truth from all directions
winding beyond where spirits pass
where souls absolve their minds deceptions.

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Asleep with Dragonfly

This habit of lying on the ground outside
placing my ear to the earth.
So one warm fall day
I found myself in the arboretum,
my face nuzzled into the breath
of the forest floor;
I became intoxicated by
the sweet attar of velvet moss.

The crispness of the quivering leaves
left on the branches, whispered
a lullaby and I, pressed to the world
in its slow wobbling orbit.
was swooned, my eyes closed.

When I dreamed I woke,
there on a burgundy leaf,
a most placid dragonfly settled,
it had come to take company with me.
But I wondered who was in whose dream
– or were we both on the same side of the veil.
Every day, everything changes –
and the more closely I listen,
the nearer the answer of silence.

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Posted in character sketch, Short Stuff, vignette | Leave a comment