Begin
Rest aside her dreaming heat--
her pale-rose bone-contoured heat--
Call to love through the strange years
of trips & leaps, call, it listens--
The bites of remorse become history
as well flicks of kind, red moans & blow-outs.
******
Rouse
Twin creatures fall to their soft & grip,
pull & stroke, look for your god in the cloud
when proof & glory a million striding birds
through city, desert, crying seas, breathless
skies, twin creatures for the task of making
the land holy free for all, or choking it empty.
******
Two
We walk through night's mists,
travellers in a strange world,
sleep together in crooked dreams,
nameless things within flare up,
seeming subside by morning.
******
Along
Along your flesh find silence.
Closer to release, closer to now.
Love bountiful but little known.
Sing slower, untangle its ways.
******
Noise
Love comes in great lights & murmured strokes,
come in the slow working hustle of days,
suddenly high now, pink & wild noise.
******
Jennifer
Dream of old cruelties, raised again
by within's burn, a face returns to
smile & crush, take me close, bite &
bite again. Nothing near but dark & light
limbs, shame's twisting soil. I wake to a
face gritless with adore, rainy window, unbroken.
******
Element
A grassy dream of clouds & accelerant,
of sun cast small between my hands &
understood, of a knowing that does not
make tough fists of the mind's jewels,
& one day, & more the next, the world's
leaves fell back, & a calm, & a music,
& a greater excitement, rang high, walked through.
******
Canticle
'Make your meal, wash your plate,' said
the dirt-man on the dead road in fullest
high night. 'Nothing is real, chop wood,
carry water,' he continued limping by
me, his cold fire's try at rending my book.
'Swim harder, drown eventually,' I shot
back, & return from that year's bite, its hoary masque.
******
Sunday
If god was answer enough, if world was high
enough, if memories explained or book
did not disappoint, if clusters of years
& bouquets of friendships didn't
fall away, if any other knot had held,
I would not be singing to you, burnt, new.
******
Swathe
Breath of beloved, spinning dreams, shadows
of a moving instrument, the night's ticking, &
worlds everywhere unknown & colliding.
Room's stone walls white, poor recall of
human history, shed years easily, what
here came together, what here was riven.
Many covers against the damp coast's
press, she breathes the hours close
to me but gone within, I follow too, gentle unveiling.
******
Good Angle
War trucks across a western desert,
slow in the crumbling dusk, men prepare
for the brittle night, its many tests.
A meal by starlight high & shadows near,
fraternity awhile, everybody made the day's
end, fright in awhile, heart shot out &
it all stops. Hope looks far across the
desert past shrub & plateau toward a
wordless hour neither death's cuff nor life's blind.
******
What Still
Many things lost my faith, beloved,
cities' cool alluring fury, seers' upraised
licks, sweep of pending hopes in human
web. Pain more the body's now, only rebels
strum my mind high. Still, love will not
go, & Art her partner grind & toughs me on.
******
Lean
The hours by acceleration & doubt, days
of a kind but not within, what persists
a smoke, rattles up a year & another. Sad
its shape does not keep too. This life a
room, read the spatters on ceilings & walls.
Each step about crushes the burn a bit, &
where & how & why yon closed window & door?
******
Sick
The world bears its cruel by every hand's go,
none beauty washes out. Try otherwise or goodbye.
******
Beloved (20)
She is everything
I startle & awake
Everything still.
******
Terror
Hands frozen. Night endless. Awake
to the next dream. No music. No sugar.
******
Body Dread
Thinking: break down is all, is the sum,
the holiness to none bowed. Moving hours,
distraction, then another, truth without
soft cannot maintain. Hope wilds through
all, cut hand in the dirt, feeding beast
in the snake's maw. Something raises again despite.
******
Revital
Strange grit of voices, foul gash of lights,
sometime desire for less & less, for little,
for none. Faith twitches brightest with
the few knots minds cannot unclench.
Where the soft, whither next? The days
still come on, a burden, a wing. What
of this grasping heart, that phantom limb?
Evening breaks sienna in the hustling
dust. The sirens gain their braided cry.
******
Then
Eventually several kinds of time, slip,
twist, none. Shift, angle, returns. Field
in fire ten years ago with high figures
falling, explain, she asks for a cigarette
a thousand times & smokes it through
her tears. Another dances, here, then,
always. Accumulation explains, entropy desists.
******
Falling Sharp
Collapse to whorls of dull, streets with
no curious ends, days flaked of high.
A beat, another, waiting. Where the inner
branching paths, the sudden fruits of music
in hand? Where anything at all. Some face
passes by the hundred. Hours the same. How long?
******
Stray Wise
Best mystery falls bloodless through
the fingers, does not sag & slop with
stormy portent, symbols hustled close &
twined up for easy use. What does not give
way leaves no bones to mark passage or
remain of any kind. Its pursuit a new world
from soul to soul. Of no kind another's clue can bear.
******
Balance She Said
Spark believe me it's in the blood,
visions & high splatter let fall easier,
the blood bears unfolded the crimes &
every ideal, memory loose & sugaring,
tis blood remembers you, blood will cross
the ground & recall you again from nothing's tide.
******
Empathy
World's hustle will squeeze a hand
crooked, blue an eye to the driving
heat of kindness, loons' cry in the shadows,
what sweet potent when creatures feed
together & stroke the greatest moon's night.
'Ware the blood's troubled signal of a nearing face
or offered offered purse. Sleep fully to dream's
wise of stars. Wake wide to what pricks, what soft.
******
Sentiment
Ruins revive in dream, a tall clutch of
orange trees some mind's scirocco night,
some years ago, some hours, low eyes advising
not deep but deeper, the music far on
stage, alone suddenly, call it the world,
climb up further, solitude beckons so, & sigh,
a fragile necklace of blue shells that life's remain.
******
Limbs
Succor in the making impulse, raise up
hid worlds for a sing & a shine, counter
hours of dirt with carved pretties, twist
from flamed-out icons to what may yet
arise, old nights of dance sure built it
high, new ones the only chance awaiting.
******
Bond
Roots deep as blood, deeper, something
Like fair dream of a private cosmos
& then behold! What leaves from love,
what fruit of desire. Deep as blood,
warmth in the night, sweet as power
when its coax & caresses a new world into being
******
Sorrow
The years take by sudden words, twists
through abrupt shadow, love's survival by
move, rile, strange, pain dims novel
to common, live sadness then aging
sorrow. Remember the brilliant hours,
wings upon a golden sky, music flashing
your adored faces, childly ecstasy at
arrival, at departure, at the stars
themselves & their wild possibilities.
******
Intensity
What cold, what cruel, how the moments
rise up in a fist of light, awareness throbs
in witness to high green & raging pink, again
& again the stone impediment, night's wild urge
scatters in sunny markets & calling
faces. A man awoke from his crash &
named himself nobody, began his new
crawl. Harder still to refuse such lure,
to take the bite & burn, respond true & twice harder.
******
Map
That night in high neon, street corners
multiplied the city's fury, four ways &
more, breathe hard & slow, this feeling
of magick surge is ten thousand years deep,
I will accelerate by this music raising me,
I will sit in this rusty cafe divan & my ink
will be night's high neon mixed with my crazy
heart's full moonlight, & I will sing, &
I will fear, & I will remember for when
the crippled hours come around again.
******
Turn
Sky departs & the years weird into smoke,
cities flicker by, faces in a moment but I
learn to avoid names, best to let mountains
& streets pass wordless too. Suddenly, a
moment, music high enough to pillar the
universe & its every creature. A laugh,
this hour, this seat, this stroked bit of
green. Gone again but for its clue, its
breath through the veil a moment, turn,
just turn! Sky returns but what of all
the passage since? What fades, what remains.
What runs through strong enough for
sentiment & war. Turn. Just turn. Just turn!
******
Yield
What reminds of the treed courtyard days,
mind later singing faster than the moonlit
train, dancing with the dirt road aliens, graveyard
spooks & their obscure sweets of comfort, grinding
the last of night's potent in a bed of dust
& wires, dreaming the walls throb with
golden snakes, some pretty coming tomorrow
maybe? That was long ago. The western air
rouged with promise, brushed taut, sheens
through my eyes & hands until choiceless
my old woes & other years spasm new music &
less deny their muscle & bone to these fragile going hours.
******
Accelerate
Pain rife through the blue land, no electric
finery can dim, hurt untold by star-readers
& idol hustlers, the day was high with numberless
cruelties, night brings cover not relief. What
hope, greater potent than coin & tome & fist?
Twist elsewise, there’s play in the bonds, &
other hands groping too. Stories of a better
breathing world outside the city’s flu, call
to raise the unseen & feel the jostle among
dreams, hark breaks in the days mono
passing. Not men saving the world nor world
salving men, what survives the blue land is
passing through now, waving clover in a roaring stone canyon.
******
Wild Lands
Buried in this day’s hunching music,
what chimes unheeded in the coarse
wild lands, what magick loose in shadows
of shadows, what missed by minding
the talky noise & nearer hour’s glint?
Stretch toward dream antipodes even as
they snap with daylight’s oncome, as
no faces in the carriage or market to
confess the great terror and seduce of
everything. Pretty masks shine with lights.
Blood & the mystery of all this, a day’s
snare in youth bloats into years, a forgotten
soul’s great will becomes history’s steel titan.
Whatever grace or moonlight reveal, will you
trudge by nonetheless, nobody’s slave but your own?
******
Tenderness
Not enough the past a slough of
remember & regret nor each day's task
to spark a new fire, deeper-boned way
of kindness. Not enough. Freeway's night
herd ever coming, acceleration without escape,
what drags along, shades & stumps alike.
Not enough. Cries by tinkers & godmongers
alike over steel & green dissolutions, worlds
of peril, sure only of blade or beaker's
counsel. Not enough. More bearded, ragged
figures in the rain. More rain. No tremble
in things at new year's best answer.
Not enough! No bars drawn but what
a heart concedes, no past's shadow but
a soul still leaning back. Whatever remains
to service or slave, call tonight brutal
with new, let its blood & matter wild
the world or bury in daylight's next swallow.
******
Missing
Your absence a flu vining through
my heart, hard twist of quivers, shouts,
calms, & night's great conjures fever up
restless & subside blank. Low I await
your sliding touch, blue-eyed intense,
nimble laugh, gaze loving into my dust,
fingers wild & slow til I tease back
rowdy live. Old shades never far,
pains raise new spikes & lash through,
thin comforts recall lesser days,
dark hours tangled lost & foul. Twist,
quiver, rough pass, another, still love
in me greens toward your light,
we swim a twining flow to a rich high
of fruiting melodies kind & luscious.
Random the world kills one spark &
bloodies up icons for another. By what
softs & shines creation, I pledge myself to you.
******
Coming
None else but to sing true, sing true,
songs like shaped winds of joy, music higher
than coins, playing is conduit, secrets
sought dissolved in melody, power of green
more rhythm than evolve, the gift sparkles
in dreams while the suffering wonder how long.
******
continued here:
http://www.spiritplants.org/phpbb/viewt ... =2660#2660 (http://www.spiritplants.org/phpbb/viewtopic.php?p=2660#2660)
grouse
i've decided to post the 'new songs' in one thread, rather than one by one, and when it gets too long, i'll start a new thread...easier to follow their progress and keep track of them...there are now 4 posted as of tonight...
tonight added 'noise,' fifth in series, a series that began with very short poems, tentative, not sure if i would go on each day, or how...
i love the flow - the variance of line and verse
the periodic reappearance of 'pink'
the distinctive present moment of it all
judih
added 'jennifer' this morning...about an early love whom i recently dreamed of...funny some we remember the good things, some we remember the hurt...this person the latter, sadly...
added 'element'...strange little knot...
added 'canticle,' something like a brawl with a zen monk, or something like it not...heh... :twisted:
added 'sunday,' writ on a sunday earlier this month, at a crowded little coffeehouse on a snowy day, journeying almost beyond ability to write any of it down, but i held close and these words came along...
added 'swathe,' something like a moment needed capturing, those late nights when beloved is asleep next to me, and i look around our little home and am intensely grateful, nearly too much for words....
tonight added 'good angle,' sort of a war poem but i think going for something else, something additional, some farther way of seeing if that is possible...
added 'what still,' i think the flu i got was coming on, i felt darkness coming, body darkness...it would last a time...
added 'lean,' i can see now how the body darkness was really badly affecting my mind...all thoughts low and sad...
added 'sick,' this one was in depths of hard flu...i was on lunchtime at work and going down fast...just wanted to burble something out...it got even darker...
added 'beloved (20)'...i was still really sick when i wrote this one...it swam through my head as i lay up for hours in bed...but it was KD's birthday and i had wanted to give her a poem gift...i remember it was near midnight when i cohered enough to fetch my notebook and read it to her...a poem of words heard in a flu-driven dream...
a stream of soft tributes
each a different branch of driftwood
in ethereal flow
judih
Now, I'm not at all concerned with being 'politically correct' or whatnot, but that crap spouted by piratepants is just pathetic.... Guess you feel ya gott get some type of a reaction eh?? Sad to see a first post so lame........... Yo mods: How's about clearing this crap up.... Spiritplants has always been a 'black tie' place. Let's keep it that way..... Hey pirate- slack-person.... With your type of offerings, why not go post on some mysogynistic (sp?) white power site?? Surely you have frequented such :roll: --------------- senorsal-------------
black tie? I rarely wear a shirt, pants or shoes...
added 'terror'...from the depths of flu sickness, hardly able to get two lines out by way of report...
senor--
that earlier post has been deleted...
Thanks 'fer sweeping out the trash cen..... senorsal Now, it might just be me, but stuff like that just strikes me as so passe, so revolting and misguided, that I get sort of incessed, outraged by same...
still the sickness roiled within, fading enough now to let some words out again, but it was a struggle, overcome for a few lines...
added 'revital,' a poem in part about leaving a sickness for clearer days, and coming again to the larger matters that in part induced the sickness...it does not end, just takes on one costume and another in the dark and the light...
added 'Then' this morning, a poem remembering a hippy fest in the mountains of Vermont (northeastern US) some years ago...the raging bonfire in the field surrounded by trees, the full moon above...how i went deep that night, danced and died, met survivors of my wake the next morning... :wink:
added 'falling sharp'...i was on lunch break from bookstore located in a yuppie scumfuck town near seattle...sitting in a coffeehouse looking at the plastic scene around me, wondering what the fuck to write about...feeling low, trapped...
added 'stray wise' this morning...strange noisy little poem...of the same kind i seem to have been writing for years...yet always another one waiting its turn, heh...
let em flow
always amazing to see where your mind is wandering (and how)
added 'balance she said,' titled from a comment my beloved KD made, and it stuck with me til this short poem came along...happy when the moment itself is music to be sung, no reaching effort needed...
added 'empathy,' another in an endless series of warnings...
added 'sentiment,' i think memory looks differently from different years...maybe it gets deeper, more brittle, hurts more, then comforts magickally too at moments....
added 'limbs,' a bitchy little poem that makes its point...
this morning added 'bond,' back to the love poems, i like this one, it gets to the base of things pretty straight...
added 'sorrow' this morning...i find myself looking back not in anger as some artist once titled his memoir but more in melacholy and bewilderment...most of those that mattered to me over the years are still alive yet i could not account for them in the least at this moment...one begins to reach more and more into the realm of the invisible for comfort...is that why people find god or something of the like later, return to their childhood faiths, ask for deathbed rites? .....................
added 'intensity,' about, in part, a friend of mine deep in the drama of surviving a stroke, barely, and a gender identity crisis...anger, empathy, fraternal affection, all...
just posted 'map,' remembrancing a day years ago in boston when the journey was very deep and long and i was feeling like the invisible free conduit between universe within and without, writing it all down helplessly...that night recurs to me often among the thousands i remember little nor care much to...
8)
this morning added 'turn,' a more cheerful mystic freak poem than in awhile...heh 8)
today added 'yield,' a reminisce becomes a small hopeful vow...see it twist...heh...
added 'accelerate,' another one of my poems positing hope not in matter of this world, but in the world itself, its nature...what drives this kind of poem into being i don't know...good it does though...
added 'wild lands' this morning, ranting common to my thoughts about freedom what souls are willing to do for it or not do for it, loving safety as much as flight, what safety? where?
added 'tenderness' this morning, it was a sunday night journey i wrote this, sitting at my favorite seattle punk dive cafe, watching the distant lights of the interstate freeway, continuous, missing my beloved, scrounging around for beauty deep in my mind and reporting what i found...
added 'missing' tonight, this was my valentine's day poem to my beloved KD, who was traveling far on that day to get some medical aid...the poem is self-evident, is the reason why the New Songs are dedicated to her.... :)
posted 'coming,' a brief bit of philosophizing, but it's my summed neatly...there are now 36 New Songs in this thread...long enough to need a sequel...that to come...
this series continues here:
http://www.spiritplants.org/phpbb/viewt ... =2660#2660 (http://www.spiritplants.org/phpbb/viewtopic.php?p=2660#2660)
8)