The fallen flaming leaf
Waits for the snow in vain,
Hopes to cool the burning wreath
That leaves its heart in pain
Before the winds of decay
Silence passion’s ecstasy.
Nothing is ever lost;
The rain that fell today
Becomes tomorrow’s frost,
And huddled in the grey
Shroud of a cloudy sky
Every droplet refuses to die.
Beneath an uncertain sky I stand,
Facing the direction from which
New seasons weave together strands
Of memories formed from the twitch
Of muscles: hearts that yearned and failed,
Listless lips that fell in love and ran aground.
Renewal
It was raining sunlight when I rose,
Cascades of warmth densely falling
Like poetry written in prose,
And my heart, through stops and starts,
Galloped ever closer to repose.
December 2, 2009 12:00 PM
Myth
“The only thing truer than Truth is the story.”—Jewish Proverb
Scrawled upon the tattered pages
And etched into the voices
Of shamans, poets, warriors—the masses,
A thousand stories telling the human story
Turn men into gods and gods into men.
Long before I heard the tale, I saw
The actors brandishing swords, hurling
Their tears to mingle with the seasons,
And knew that though a hand belongs to a man,
Its gestures belong to history.
And so I beckoned the storytellers,
Reached out to the depths of awareness
Where metaphors and hopes were born,
In search of the hopes and the metaphors
That would give meaning to the days.
At night the actors were dressed
In the wild extremes of emotion, and I danced
Cheek to cheek with bliss, despair, unyielding love,
Until sleep bled into wakefulness
And nothing seemed real.
In the crucible of the human psyche
Two plots are forged: one reveals
The desire to construct cities, institutions,
The other explains why mortals toil
To make a lasting impression on the earth.
Lifting a pen, the poet’s ink mingles with the blood
Of the living, the dead and the divine,
Yet naked and alone, he must admit that
Though all people are poets, all poets gods,
No image compares to the beauty of sunlight and stars.
Monday, October 12, 2009
The Poetry of the Morning
The morning repeats itself, its poetry
Heard where feet first touch the floor
Upon which the soldiers of old
March in lockstep, fighting in vain
Against a newer yet ageless force.
The morning reveals itself, its long
Limbs stretching namelessly
Across the face of solitude,
While through a thousand windows
Sunlight makes mist of dreams and dreamers.
The morning teases itself,
Its abdomen pressing against
The smooth back of darkness,
An embrace replete with the hope and fear
Of another day.
Yet the morning surprises itself, too,
Its stark clarity sometimes
Sculpting a lover of longing,
An action of lofty words,
A poem of an idea.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
De camino a la Alhambra una promesa
se sometió a la distancia que la transmitía,
y yo, desesperado, con una fe incorruptible,
Inspiration and Action
Late on a winter morning, when through my window
Deceptive sunlight belies the frigid cold,
I hear a retinue of birdsong on whose shoulders
The feathered, colorful, migratory reach
Of responsibility brushes the bristles of thought.
I pause, as though suspended like the steel cables
Of a bridge that crosses a body of gleaming longevity.
The horizon, filled with bare branches, bare sky,
Barely covers the expanse of hibernated longing,
And my hands reach back into summer
To touch the flora and fauna that inspire seasons.
More sunlight, more song leeks into my room
And mixes with the filth I’ve neglected to clean.
A rush of cold air makes me dizzy with existence,
The erotic interplay of wakefulness and awareness.
As I step out into the world my shoes mingle with snow,
And my breath audaciously carries itself skyward.
In dilated, cerebral veins, a kite of sugar
Gyrates in the wind of synapses and electrochemicals.
A foreign force presents a passport, pleading permission
To enter the guarded gates of mystical musings.
Reticent, yet proud to have shirked my duty in favor
Of foraging the forests of history for vials of vitality,
I open the door and get to work.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
10:00 AM
As fighting flares in the land of monotheism, soldiers mass along the border between two nuclear states, extremism rages in the cradle of civilization, the stuff of life threatens to overheat the planet that sustains life and a superpower continues down its blind path of bombs, I pause to ask a simple question: who among us does not prefer peace? In truth, the answer is very, very few of us, but that extreme minority is responsible for fanning the flames that bring nations to war and destabilize the world. We cannot continue to allow that. It is time for the so-called “silent majoriy” to speak up against unspeakable acts, to leap forth with ideas, protests, actions that will prevent more madness. After all, when the dust settles there is still a gem of an orb rotating a mass of energy that provides so much life with sustenance. The great work of understanding the universe and creating a more just, equitable home for all is held back by weaponry, the people that employ them, and worst of all, the money that finances them. We live in an age willing to enrich itself by tearing others down, where the mindless pursuit of more comfort obscures the suffering of billions of people so deprived as to be unable to feed or clothe themselves. We know enough to understand the irrevocable connection between an injustice in one place and an action in another, yet we have yet to summon the courage to act on that knowledge. Who among us is willing to avoid making money on an investment that is legal, but unjust? Who among us is willing to forego still more luxury to enable that another may enjoy a meal, an opportunity, a life?
This New Year, let us commit to a shared responsibility. Let us recognize that if little girls in Afghanistan die while in school, then little girls in America will inherit a world that has lost their beauty, their ideas, their hope. Let us recognize that where we can we must act and where we cannot we must seek ideas, pressure others, and demand an end to injustice wherever it transpires. The global economic crisis is yet another sign of the way in which a few selfish people–Wall St. bankers, lax regulators–can cause untold suffering. But every day the decisions we make have repercussions around the world, like the proverbial butterfly flapping its wings that creates a ripple of air that leads to a hurricane. We cannot bury our heads in the sand and pretend this is not the case. Let that be our New Year’s resolution.
Read on for a poem I wrote on this matter during the run up to the war in Iraq.
We have pitched an innocent man against the
thousand blades of grass.
Once a week the battle is waged;
each green sword glints with dew.