Posted on November 16, 2019 by skipavm@gmail.com

These errant eddies of poetry…
Words whirl and clatter,
collecting in brick and mortar corners
Until the wind reminds us
Her verses are ever present.

#25wtT

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Invisible as the Wind

Posted on November 16, 2019 by skipavm@gmail.com

This One is invisible
as the wind
Her signs wave sinuously
Her effects are seen
in the swaying limbs
the robin’s roost
balanced in the tabernacle
The one clear note
in the branches’ babel.

She is the glint
within the gem
I am a specter in Her smoke,
unclear, unheard,
love-lost, I am
the perfumer, the flavourist
She is the scent
of South Asian
spices and flowers aloft.

There is a vial in the machine,
enmeshed in sinew,
pure crystalline
set in a bone cage,
arc lights of obsidian
scratching the dark;
and though nothing is seen,
I know She is the where the breeze begins
in the hollows of a heart,
invisible as the wind.

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Going Home (Costa Rica Series)

Posted on October 15, 2019 by skipavm@gmail.com

I’m thinner now, I’ve no belt holes left,
While there is food in abundance,
my appetite is always for something else
Many a poem is left buried on the beach,
and each night as the tide ebbs,
these unspoken words
Are dragged out beyond ocean’s reach.

Freed of my father, I go forth fatherless.
For my grandfather whose garden flowers I smell,
I’ll raise a child of that lost fragrance.
For the one of silver locks and light eyes,
with him I’ve fallen, over my arrogance.
For the true Beloved of God, my lips are pursed.
And for the silent one, I enter broken, leave whole…
For you all, I depart the clutches of hope,
because nothing knows water like thirst.

I’m going home to build a church
in the desert of my soul.
A mosque for the nameless.
The temple of the faithless.
Here is where my book unfolds.
I’ll bleed into the parchment
made of the finest linen,
where my poetic impudence
is finally forgiven.

Like Yunus, I go quiet and wordless
to ripen under the Great Author’s sky.
And when fruit falls,
I’ll dip the pen of “me” into the ink of “I”
and write of the word of the lamb and the lion,
kiss Mary’s feet and Muhammad’s eyes.

A friend said, “In the flaws of human love,
Divine love seeps in…”
I know now
that through the flaws of our own divine love,
It is human love that mends.
 

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Exit the Poet

Posted on October 14, 2019 by skipavm@gmail.com

Around her, I wrap
my consonance and alliteration
like the arms of a wandering
lonesome stranger.

And upon her ears,
I lay aphorisms and missives,
manicured lines
in a collar of kisses.

Her eyes are closed
as I recite,
her heart hears
the secrets
that my poems try to hide
…from both of us…
Oh, but my words are
a thin disguise.

Mindlessly drumming
with a dried ink pen,
scanning the book stacks,
their dusty ruins
of too much literature
amidst a dearth
of truly living
on this sensual earth.

Tricked by my quest
for a poem’s last line,
I keep rewriting her face
until the truth untwines
the tangle I’ve made in the garden of love.
As much as she reads,
no verse is diverse enough,
for the buds on high branches
are beginning to weep
while I’m drunk with the fragrance
of flowering weeds.

Truth is beauty,
which without love, deceives.
Her preferred poem is silence,
so the poet leaves.

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Wild

Posted on October 11, 2019 by skipavm@gmail.com 
Waiting, 
is this poem,
a garden in the wilderness, 
like She is the Wild within my heart.
As Layla is to Majnun,
within my madness is Her home
here, 
our reunion is where we part.
 
Oh, how wilderness encircles wild,
like this whirling man 
circles chanting child,
while 
Rumi circles 
axial love
I circle Her
in orbits, beguiled 
in concentric currents, 
scintillations radiant
and all the while,
 
waiting, wading
through unseen tear ponds,
under floating veils, suspended,
water falls,
pied flower petals, 
raining upon, 
Her lovely face never cedes,
this fragrance swells
in spells, I seek 
Her depths, and with depth
the deluge springs 
from colored artesian wells
and other hidden 
wild things.
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Martha Heller’s Wayward Christian Men

Posted on October 11, 2019 by skipavm@gmail.com 
Martha Heller took in wayward Christian men
I was one of her boarders for a year
I wasn’t Christian 
but I was in pain
and that was mostly why she took us in.
She named this place Raspberry Springs.
 
It is 25 acres of forested Virginia land
between the towns of Fry and Jefferson, 
pinned to the side of Mar Lu Ridge,
accessed by an unmarked drive way, 
too easy to miss. 
And it all lit up when the sun would set. 
 
The Heller’s built guest quarters 
a hundred yards up the hill
Purely a functional structure
housing servants who care for the ill,
no elaborate architectural design, 
aside from a common commode, 
no common areas.
Its simplicity, purely in the service of the divine.
 
Several small balconies 
jutting out of a maze of small rooms, 
each with westward facing, 
perfect kingly views. 
Yet it stored rag doll men, 
with little to gain,
and nothing to lose.
 
For a while I lived on the opposite wall 
of a spindly fellow
whom I only saw 
once in a while
Always half in shadows
moving about quietly
He was a recovering drunk
I was recovering from sobriety.
 
I often heard him crying, 
his sobbing came from everywhere
It made me sad, out on my balcony, 
ironically slowly sipping my warm canned beer.
Then one day, 
maybe because I paid my rent on time,
Martha moves me to “the big house" 
and the entire basement became mine.
 
Five years earlier, Martha’s son had died
the spindly fellow would confide,
"Cancer took him you know."
Two years later,
she finally had the courage 
to let the hospice nurses go.
There were no meals to be made
no medicines to give,
just bills to settle
and lives to live.
They kept her son comfortable,
wheeling him down to the raspberry pond,
There, his eyes would come alive and colorful, 
though his body was gray and gone.
 
Now, the uniformed caregivers 
were only reminders 
of when he was alive...
and when he was dying.
I can imagine the caravan departing,
rolling down the dirt road,
Martha, up the hill crying,
while her husband,
toiled silently in the boy's room,
disassembling the bed,
he’d later haul out
to an old tractor shed.
 
Though no relation, 
Martha Heller shared my mother's maiden name.
She always said,  
this is why I came;
to find family again.
This is why she took me in,
and treated me like a Heller all the same.
 
How had it come to this?
From my sprawling ranch property and 
well stabled horses,
to the company of convalescing druids.
While, my own children who‘d recently learned to talk and read
were 30 miles away on the other side of Raspberry Springs.
I had become the ghost of a woman’s dead son,
a shell of a Christian man.
And this is why Martha Heller
took me in.
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22 August 2019

Posted on August 22, 2019 by skipavm@gmail.com

Again – this poet is going into non-poetic mode (or am I). I’ll still post poetry – most is not on this site and being prepared under a separate manuscript – I’ll show some soon. Meanwhile – another day.

Intentions. You cannot turn a horse or a bike to the right if you are looking to the left. The simple attitude and azimuth of one’s attention will change the body’s response… even the horse is sensitive enough to this. So what is your intention… how specific, where is it stored within you, how often do you revisit and reaffirm? If you do not know, then where are you going? Do not take it too seriously… just hold it and go about your life and you’ll see where you go – or rather, you’ll go where you see.

A teacher galloped his horse back and forth across town exclaiming, “where is my horse!? where is my horse!?” The people would shout to him as he sped by, “Sidi! but you are on your horse! It is underneath you!” The teacher responded just as anxiously, “Yes, I know… but WHERE is my horse!?”

Just because you are doing as you wish, WHAT specifically is your wish? The teacher knew where the horse was relative to him, but he was asking where was the horse in the grander scheme of this universe. Your intention is your horse, you’re on your horse… so where is your intention?

While visiting my son’s guidance counselor, I noted a note stuck to her computer… a mantra of sorts… it read, “Wake, Pray, Slay.” And I got to thinkin’

Wake – become aware of yourself… “in” aware of “out” and “out” aware of “in.”

Pray – every word uttered, every thought, each step from the bedside to the mirror to the car to the office… EACH is a prayer. Speak only when you know God (and/or your highest self) is listening, and listen only when you know God is speaking (Abu al Hassan Kharaqani said this). Even the scuffling of your feet on the pavement makes a sound – a prayer. It is a sound you make AND a sound you hear… even you are listening and speaking to you.

Slay – seize the moment, win the ecstasy of presence… be the frolicking child of the now and own the world with each fraction of second. For to wake and and pray IS too slay.

First day of sophomore year for my son…at a new school. He is trying to be present in each step… I hear the blow dryer going and soon he’ll be dressed and we’ll be eating breakfast. Getting to your seat in the classroom is no more important than taking the first step out off of the bus… or the second, or the twentieth. If it is 500 paces to the front door, then you have 500 prayers and places to visit.

My daughter will be off to Norway soon – any day, provided she wakes up to catch the plane on 26 August. Sometimes it seems like she’s lifted her rudder out of the water and lowered the main sail of her ship… she is in the rolling ocean. And you know what, THAT’S O’KAY! I’m the dad in the crow’s nest, looking for high sea’s – preparing to shout down to her, “raise the main lassie, we’re coming about!”

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20 August 2019

Posted on August 20, 2019 by skipavm@gmail.com

A dear friend suggested I blog… so, I’m blogging under “Daily Scribblings.”

This is a page where I will simply compose thoughts in prose and see where it goes.

There are creatures in the trees… night crooners and sqealers, squeekers and screechers, crawlers and jumpers. I, on the other hand, am a scribbler, a scrawler, a tapper; here in a foam sack. Each of us is perched and proclaiming, waiting to pair up.

The cricket and I are poets – you are here reading my words, but who is melting to the impassioned pleas of the cricket outside my window. I am snapping my fingers in approval of its poem – all the night is a stage for bards.

If I told you a coyote ran through my dream last night… 300 meters away, along the crest of a snowy hill; would you stop reading this? I was playing chess with an absence I cannot name. When the coyote noticed us, me and my companion, “not her,” it stopped and turned toward us. As it approached, its grinning eyes filled mine with anticipation… my Knight and her Bishop lowered their swords. Make your next move coyote…

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A Heart is Contraband

Posted on August 20, 2019 by skipavm@gmail.com

O’ masked heart
steal this hidden houri
from the bold arms of dubiety.

O’ heart, my captain,
sail us swiftly through az-Zuqaq
to the Tibouda promontory
Let me hear her whisper
“Espana”
And save this ship from peril.

Sweetly place her silhouette
anywhere, be it
rippling Arizona dawn
Or Dusted Andalusian sunset

Hold her henna’d hands
A kiss for every fingertip
in a lighthouse
on Ras Uarc.
Shall we die here, my love and I,
or forever live
alive,
apart.

Allow me to be her thief,
her gentle highwayman
in whose embrace of certainty she’ll find
a heart that too,
is contraband.

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The Antiquity of Memory

Posted on May 16, 2018 by skipavm@gmail.com

Joy’s carousel of vision quivers,
stretching her arms of imagination,
my ears are tickled by the din and screech of children
Jumping rope, tossing lucky’s,
and buzzing dilly dally between playground sundries.

Where once, the soles of our soul’s shoes,
Pressed in red earth dust, stirred
In love’s fleet and gentle turns
the hems of their khirqas, gray and frayed
So sinuously rising, falling, in sighs sublime
Poems, we maundering bards wept
In Rose petal tears,
That taste of blood moonshine.

Sun rays still dress the clouds in blushing rose,
as the specter of Sakki serves the mey at dusk,
Oh, so elegant a pour,
His intoxicating touch.
And the trees beyond the golshan
stopped their sway to listen
and a ghost dancing on the ridge line
Stopped his sway to listen.

There is an radiant abode in the ruins
Where memories shrink in the shadows
And catch fire, like wolves’ eyes in a forest black,
crackled, scaling cinder skin
Oh, unplayed oud
thy hollow weeps quietly,
in rosewood, cut and hewn, and tears within.

Our hands raw from working the garden,
thorns and briars take their share of blood
Yet flower petals remain in our aprons
Gathered in the rain of wind and effort and love
Let’s reach for those silken lucky’s and toss them in
on the court of laylay,
Joy’s carousel of vision quivers, and listens.

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