still
lead me beyond the darkness and give me light
she sits still
and bends
she is the light
her head touches the ground
this nether world is hers
there are no other lights
no spun words that break
break upon her prayers
she speaks into this underworld
riven cloth listless and limp
her eyes move linear
until her forehead is gods
an elegy spoken
became a bird
who flew to hell
its mouth held cries
its wings icarus
it knelt at hades feet
wings flailing while
hades held his heart
colder now and gazed
away into the cobalt
underworld inured
finally a word was spoke
an final one denied
till now
to life this crimson life
in erebus crushed
there are softened silences
that wake us in the heat of the night
and those that make us sit without murmur
becoming conscious of heartbeat and echo
becoming conscious of heartbeat and echo
some that will us to move and mark the ever present
mark us to kiss and fall upon the world with love, with love
silences that summon friends, silences that summon mourners
that wait at graves, longing, lingering, like gravediggers
then there are those within whom god will not creep
wild and ferocious as memory, that clog the words from within
and pin us to the mere mention of hope, while knowing all along that hope
resides in the tangible and in this present silence the tangible no longer praises
it simply mounts the eaves, the embers of love and empties it of all except the hollow
everpresent void.
sometimes god may be silent
god is love the good news says
sometimes god is also in the silence
god is the silence
god is
god
my hands surrender
like the final nocturne
betraying their past
I sense their sanity
and their taut tautologies
sometimes I deny them
for they are too eager
and they rebuff me
once I held a baby
cooing and lullabying
until it went still
my hands brushed her head
and never knew such
incandescent purity
another, hands held me
undergirded and aware
I needed others
I send words now
through these hands
they tap for me
bringing but the echo
of a mirrored way
now they touch my head
as if to plead for more
they lure my mind
and from the rub
beget inuring
are they me
or am I them
late night missal
i have heard it said
that all is in the text
and surely the essence
is there, the perspective
the mood, hermeneutic
i know though that words
though replete with echo
with instances, with irony
are but the rib of us
they mark us, and others
they scream to us of strata
bequeath only stigmata
these bruises of ecstacy
the wherewithal to love
the summoning, pleading
its all there in the glossolalia
tonight i have few signals
fewer now because
i have set some on stone
remember those
whisper
soon this sound
will abate
in the sense
that it will be
non-sounding
its heart was whispered
detected in art, in angel
softened, golden sounds
chrysostom
some sounds fade
and some live in symmetry
shaded by life, by love
by the searing pillows
of sense and swaying,
soothing me, till now
and echoing soon
I listen again, whisper it,
surround myself, fill
till all is this, this
this
Between
between the nomads
and the even steps
of the next dune
are the evening deserts
and the makeshift tents
that transport me
from wilderness to wild
to forage in such excess
is to gaze at times
into an open abyss
and contemplate
the thrill of oblivion
today, though
I am stuck between the petty
and the awful intolerance
of the few, who despise
the middle ground
for the end to symbol
and type
instead, am caught between
wisdom and the e'en
sided ambivalence
of tomorrow
surely instead of hate
we can contemplate
the temerity to love
with hands raised to grace
and bodies bent to love
to love and live
live and love
