Under the Flowering Jacaranda

Fragrant, lilac colored flowers cluster

Together, like hands from a multitude,

Stretching out five-fingered petals, pinching

At the air, reaching out in a last gasp, to grasp

The idyllic serenity their aura emanates. Worries

And judgments fail to cloud their perceptions –

Blossoms signal a momentarily eternal spring.

Purple carpets the ground, providing a regal

Setting for a picnic tryst. A lingering

Scent of harmony drifts on the laconic

Breeze, calmed by the jacaranda present.

A nearby brook enunciates the whispered

Secrets which the gentle wind whistles

Through the tree’s branches. Along the Paraná

River valley, just like a mother’s love, its

Music never ceases, singing through Brazilian

Guitars made from its wood in the way

A baby coos its contentment after suckling.

The jacaranda nurtures without words,

Caresses without touching, and spreads influence

Throughout its sphere without arguing, teaching,

Scolding or demanding. It simply loves for the

Sake of loving because all-which-is deserves

Every ounce of love it can well up and offer,

And nothing is ever lost when love is shared. 

Somnolent Caterwauling

A dark, summer night melts the icy moon

With undying, undiscovered memories

From within the heart’s furnace.

Tomorrow’s eternal wick

Glows, golden, beyond reach:

Pinching fingers

Try their hand at cheating.

Phantasmal fantasy

Flicks dandruff shrugs

Off stooped shoulders -

Another galaxy rejoices.

The unbinding grasp

Releases somnolent caterwauling

From the screeching scratch

Of a desolate desert. 

Destiny's Highways

Birds glide
through calm breezes
and knife
through turbulent winds.

Sages trudge
over rough roads
and stroll
on smooth byways.

Birds and sages know
all influences -
strife and suffering,
joy and serenity -
as equal partners
on destiny's highways.

By a Stream

As water undulates and flows
over and between rocks and pebbles,
winds breeze and billow
their frolicking oscillations,
and soil nurtures life, providing
the stage's platform, and moments
inscribe hallucinations upon mirage.

A bird flutters from a tree limb
and delicately perches upon a rock
to sip cool refreshment.

Trout linger in eddies,
their watchful eyes scanning
for unsuspecting insects
to buzz within leaping range.

I sit in an inarticulate hush,
shaded by the broad-leafed arms
of a walnut tree, thawing
in the summer morning,
reverie soaring among the clouds,
polished by simplicity.

Abandon to the Mission

A clarion call rang out through the still ocean;

Octaves resonated harmonically in waves,

Rippling out in every direction, singing a melody

Whose harmonies stretched beyond the audible,

Ringing tones through light, calming the constant,

Frenetic action, condensing dew drops of form

Out of pure potential’s cosmic continuum.

The taut fabric which stretched throughout the whereless

Gave way to indentations and the sudden weight

Manifested by illusion snared companions in attraction’s

Web; together, they danced across the eternal sea.

Wings of doves whistled as they fluttered,

And they whipped up motion out of contentment;

Great orbs sang their harmonies to the celestial

Melody weaving colorful thread trails,

Implying order in the splendor of illusion’s fabric.

The melody of the primal song urged the inert

Into spontaneous activity, and illusion came

To life, electric magnetism generated awareness

Within every thread of color, and the rainbow

Wrote upon the face of the waters with infinite

Voices, each singing a harmonic counterpoint

To the ageless yet haunting melody: an unending

Choral mass fizzed through the cosmos effervescently.

The sacred rite of universal love uttered

Its call into every corner of illusion:

The mission of every consciousness;

The undeniable motif sprang forth –

Forsake personal entitlements,

Yield to cooperative inclusion;

Fulfillment requires we abandon to the mission. 

The Existential Moment

Streaks bend perspective

into spiraled staircase clusters

of stagnant, static, stiletto-

bladed magnets that revolve

in undetermined orbits,

while gravity improvises

unceasingly with matter

to a variable time signature.

The effort to endure

strings together

happenstance beyond

probability’s grave and

out of limitation’s reach,

while infinite possibility

plays jacks with

the existential moment.

A rungless ladder slips

on horizon’s shoreline

beneath a B-flat chart bearing

Miles Davis’ signature,

while Dizzy cheeks balloon

to breathless intervals,

re-imprinting jazz’s jagged

edges upon a smooth delusion.

The master sculptor’s

marbled impressions incubate

upon a Kaifeng Jew’s silent stele’s

hieroglyphic history, while a frozen

instant’s cubed, crystalline equations

compensated for incapacity

with certain death, awaiting

the existential moment.

Inarticulate Slipstreams

Bright night's asphalt steam devours
Hillside necking parked moon showers,
Beam's arced water sparkling tridents
Subvert firefly monuments;
Devoted tingle gardens' walls'
Cupboard door cradled ghostly shawls' -
Forests - now plow sunrise corn highways'
Sight broken breastfed one act plays.
Iridescent repossessed dreams
Of inarticulate slipstreams
Cascade by newborn unsuppressed
Symptoms with an acid-etched countenance;
Dispelled conditions' snowflake flair:
Wilderness - an unbuttoned stare.

Memories' Amber

In the night
light rains
from the solitary
every-star grains'
blanketed amusement
the constrained shining
all-in-one star's
perpetual light

I drink it up
to quench your thirst

You are my gift

All knotted up
indispensably untethered
your indivisibility severed
while crimson fractals
glistened individuated sparks
of memories' amber
from ancient seasons
when the unredeemed
schism fracture
birthed infinity

I-we lie
together
under the weeping willow
sorrow forgotten
stardust alive
looking through
tomorrow's eyes

Perpetual Revolutions Shimmer

From All Hallows Eve
until the next Samhain day
a worthy operation works
upon each of three hundred
and sixty-six midnights
soar through dark's blackest reaches
fathom the staircased bowel's depths
of the Great Pyramid
seek out the calm eye
of turbulent Jupiter's hurricane
which no hazy mist obscures

From All Hallows Eve
until the next Samhain day
the magical rite performed
screams its birth on the final solstice
when a cold wind gusts
through the northern winter tide
and judgment bells bellow
the highest neap captures
greed and lust in ebb's onset
and the dreams of the meek
etch future's glyphs on the blank wall

From All Hallows Eve
until the next Samhain day
time circumscribes impregnation
gestation a mere
fifty-one spins more
until the door to Aquarius
creaks open gaping-eyed hearts
witnessing the Great Wheel
perpetual revolutions shimmer
a constant seed
an eternal garden

Tolled Dull Waste

Fowl wind's
brash past
stashed
sky, blew
flush guts'
gust: blushed.

Sever all
thrill-kilt
stilled
lie, tolled
dull waste
waits: sculled.

Corrupted file's
flies memorize
disguised
profit: net's
nest subsidized.

Unrecalled Dreams

Walking through ancient corridors
over rickety bridges
behind new moon shadows

Singing atonal melodies
without breathing

Collapsing umbrella fantasies

Stranded on the edge
of a sand grain
without any salt

Drenched by your wordless rhymes
in my unrecalled dreams
as a cricket gasps

A tiny black kitten
with white paws
and a tiny white tufted ascot
who mews in the softest voice
scampers over to me every night
so that its owner raises a fuss
as it nuzzles into my lap

I hear my dead mother's voice
in the haunted river willow
awaiting the hand of cancer's taut grasp

Solaced Wistless Sighs

An old man sits alone in the desert

Where he dreams of an island paradise

And when the late night slips into stillness

A faint light's illness whispers lies

Winter winds howl madness through the trees

As the faces from his past make him cry

Can a tall tale promise forgiveness

Though a wall wails solaced wistless sighs

Since birth he's lived to remember

Everyday he screams his lot to the sea

As the sand mainlines the sunshine

His hand combines refined melodies

When the old man climbs a mountain

And sits on a rocky terraced ledge

The bowels of the Earth will shudder

As his mirth fills mutters, wonders fledge

The Morgue at the Buddhist Temple

The morgue at the Buddhist temple

included news crews' oglers
after six Jesuit priests tried to revive
Russian television in a city bus.

People walked onto the highway
consuming the first fetuses.

An overpowering stench
began handing out
six-month sentences
for a water-only fast.

At the gates where people cross, thousands
gather to mourn exposed potential.

The Chinese news media died
in a chic blazer of sagging standards.

Largely censored
and threatening delay,
a divided Parliament
trivialized critics
with a non-binding,
but embarrassing, gaffe –
censure for old timers making bail –
pleading from the stage door.

A warning may not be enough.

For the most part,
life goes on.
It always has.


The following is a commentary which I wrote to accompany this poem:

Individuals encounter restriction and repression. The most basic and natural social desires among all individualized living creatures is for freedom of movement and choice - in other words, self-determinism.

As greater forces of repression, restriction and homogeneity of character and socialization are exerted within any nation, religion, society or culture, the more tension and pressure builds up within the individuals comprising the unit of socialization until an explosion threshold is ultimately reached.

The history of humanity can be categorized as progressive in that it has been marked by a constant movement towards empowering self-determinism and spreading freedom of personal expression and individualism.

Senses perceive motion. Minds perceive motion through space and time. As the motion of a body through space increases, its corresponding motion through time decreases. In the same way, as governments and cultures increase their restrictions on individuals and the pressure to conform is commensurately heightened, the urge to assert greater individual autonomy also grows. However, the desire for self-determination and individualism always remains a hidden undercurrent because it wells up from within individuals and remains mostly unspoken until a dynamic leader appears (capable of expressing what the individuals feel inwardly, but which they, often, either have no conscious awareness regarding the feeling or are unable to articulate it to either themselves or others) who excites and energizes masses of people beyond the explosion threshold.

With the perpetual transition from moment to moment and season to season, the vine of liberty blossoms with more and more flowers, yielding the fruit of self-determinism. The vines of liberty line the pathway toward the liberation of those collectives of people.

Liberation is a currency. Self-determination is the product that currency buys. Wealth, in such a socioeconomic system, can only be defined as transcendental harmony - which reflects the wisdom of individuals to respect all other living creatures and the understanding by social collectives that individuals' personal liberty must always have primacy over any and all collective interests.

an isolated night

a raging wind swirls
at the fabric fix
edging reality corners
when suddenly the center
of a tortured emotional
hurrIcane arises from sacred
howling dogs salivating
salvation in witness of quail
blood spilled on the asphalt
bandaid suffocating fertility
while famished tears
deafen drowning ghosts
under a shadow-filled core
ticking the midnight moment
nourished by a preservative
laden canned fruit charade
where an ancient canyon's
hermit crab crawled under
profit's calculated violence
wondered up by the sewer stench
flowing through the veins
of an isolated night
tattered by expectation's
breathless decay

Cassiopeia

A shooting star streaked,
cracking momentary brilliance
upon the new moon's canvas,
tattooing the black void
with its sole illumination.
The glowing, aphrodisiac aura
embraced emptiness, draping
vanilla and honeysuckle scents
on Cassiopeia's shivering
shoulders of silky alabaster.
Her bright eyes sparkled.
Cosmic winds seeded discovery,
eliciting an amused pleasure
acknowledged by her alluring
Mona Lisa mystery.
Only Adonis and Aphrodite witnessed
my brief, parking lot caress.
She planted an eternal garden
in the placid waters shimmering
from the forest of my heart.

Purple Plums

Imagine a single,
shriveled pitted-prune
in a bushel of freshly-picked,
sweet, firm, purple plums.
Tiny beads of perspiration
trickle across goosebumps
eliciting witness to arousal.
Unblinking eyes gasp
at taut, silky flesh
when moonless midnights'
anticipation shudders.
The juice of the meaty delicacy
dribbles taboo down lust's chin
in a dream just before awakening.
An insistent shimmer-shiver
rapidly tattoos desperation
with every pounding heartbeat
of untarted forbidden flavor.

Up I Conjure Learning Inner Whole

Up I conjure gift rapt down
Full of sour sweetened void.
In not lying you walk out
On me, giving getting off.
Now sew future summer past,
Here a humble stumble gone:
Live-in maid made furnace die
Black the grey, doom-bloom, bleached white.
Hush the instant droning sound!
Start to measure leisure's end.
Back when battles had no front
Sky cried coddled, cobbled ground.

Learning inner whole,
Creating game's transitional
Room doorway, talking.
Riding French questions,
Twilight columned writing
(Cross-nailed language):
Endless experience vehicle.

Atoms Moving in the Carpet

Alcoholic sink table vision
of teeth in Popeye's mouth
toweled bookshelf isolation
while watching atoms
moving in the carpet
and daddy's angry fists
on mommy and my
disillusioned tears
childhood hula hoop invaded
toothbrush drop drills
coerced sirens'
rabbit eared chair pillow
molestation promising death
after life in Davy Jones' Locker
while freedom found hope in ideas.

The Hill of Desire

I knew a man
who liked to say
"He's so full of shit
his eyes are brown"
I think it's the opposite
when you're full of shit
all the melanin
is sucked out
of your skin
and your hair
it drains into your feces

I used to masquerade
as white
but the pay wasn't good enough

now I'm not for sale

I'm not a high
dollar hooker you know
I give my poems away
to everyone who wants one
freely baby
for free
guess that makes me
a common street whore

Parents teach their kids lies
about the birds and the bees

Flowers never say no
they don't share
their sex directly
flowers make love
in a ménage à troi
they need a third
to inseminate for them

See the roamin' Roman kat
combin' his cat
in the catacombs

I'll let Will
take me until
I surmount the hill
of desire

Without a Lighthouse

Grinning innocence
broadly disarms
the recalcitrant; while distant,

bright, wide eyes
capture the periphery
nakedly unaware.

Pastorally pristine
property pockets
pantomime, partially
premiering play's
partitioned preference.

Unrewarded redemption's
fog bank snares
without a lighthouse.