Van Gogh, 2006 Focus on the Crocus, 2006 Beyond the Black, 2006 The Color of Our Time, 2006 The Dark Center, 2006 Our Time in the Sun, 2000 Coyote!, 1998 Tiger, Tiger, 1998 Christmas Song, 1997 Paean for Mother Teresa, 1997 The Bird, the Rainbow, and I, 1997 Blessed One, 1997 Music in Maria, 1997 To Keats, 1995 Shadow of the Wolf, 1995 An Act of Charity, 1995 Complaint to Lesbia, 1995 To Mimi, 1995 Lines on a Carcass, 1995 To Maria, 1993 Courtship, 1993 Footsteps, 1993 Humankind, 1993 Phoenix, 1993 Demiurge, 1993 A Lonely Wing, 1990 |
VAN GOGHonce in a century of solar cycles a flame flashes out of the night to burn bright enough to enlighten the dim path from birth to death a flame so fierce it cannot last yet momentarily survives to show an array of absolute and pure beauty passed from the fingertip of God to the fingertip of an immortal man despite the endless evil of humanity one great and glorious man in a million shows the rest of us the course to redemption a tortured soul of the cold dark north who found a way to create joy amid the misery we make of the world he found the way through pain by seeing the suffering of others as his own transcending the anguish in his mind and touching ordinary images to life with the colors of the cosmos gold was in his emerald eyes as the perfect pigment of the star the everlasting universal hue captured in his fevered mind transmitted through his graceful hand to make holy icons of art sacred windows on the common events that lie seldom noticed in our lives Vincent you were victorious in your fervent strife you ignited the spirit of the flower consecrated the soil of human toil and rendered reflections of your being with colors struck off the core of genius known only to a few blessed ones who have briefly walked our world then vanished into their magnificent work
FOCUS ON THE CROCUSas the horror of humanity infects the planet like an endless plague of parasites feeding off its sacred bounty and toxic waste displaces elemental earth with carcinogenic compounds I focus on the crocus breaking through tormented soil its dauntless leaves reaching for the light in an attitude of prayer its hue-blessed blossoms rare bursts of joy among the drapes of sadness closing on the last act of this tragedy we like to call civilization where the crocus and its kind offer a vision of eternal possibilities
BEYOND THE BLACKlet us close our mouths, listen, and open our eyes to see the storm coming before it sweeps us all away for we talk too much to hear the screams of warning and we close our eyes to the sky laden with poisoned air to the fumy clouds draping Earth with the final curtain we fail to sense the shifting wind blowing into our faces fail to catch the stench of flesh rotten with waste as machines reflect the intrigues of our calculative minds and a ghastly fallout drifts around our arrogant brows like a profane halo flashed from the heat of burning souls I am no mad prophet descended from antiquity I can see and hear and feel no more sharply than you if you stop your headlong rush enough to heed the advent of an Armageddon of our own design you will hear a terrible cry from the tearing of dreams into tiny shreds of pain sparkling like grains of pale sand bleached and barren of hope and joy in a world caustic from the gas of spirits amassed in a frenzy of fashion I am no seer but I can sense the closing of the circle as an imperceptible blink in the eternal cycle of change so in this opening let us try our hand and eye at finding a place in harmony with the band of earthly things that sing the union song of synchronized life and death or we are not long for this gem whirling like a seed in space but we divorce ourselves from the family of the sun and moon and wander from scheme to scheme to dominate our world we heed not the swirling storm that gathers beyond the black let us drop the things we carry and stop the din of gossip where great ideas go undiscovered amid our heap of artifacts imagine what can be for all of us then make an art of life
THE COLOR OF OUR TIMEblack is the color of our time not the presence of all hues but the utter absence of light not the pigment of our flesh but the black hole of our souls that drains all luminous life till nothing remains with us but reflections of a glory that could have been honor yet fizzled like a damp match in a raging storm of acid rain black is the color of our flag whipped to shreds and threads by wind rushing from our mouths a profane anthem without melody shouted off walls around us crackling the air with cacophony so loud we cannot see to think about the monochrome mentality that sucks away enlightenment to leave a residue of nothing black is the color of our silence as we march in lockstep toward the inevitable edge and fall through a nightmare asleep with no chance of morning
THE DARK CENTERwhen grand clouds gather over the mountains rising from the tidal shore I want to take wing and fly into their ethereal mist gain the summit of their height roll over slowly show my breast like an eagle to the sun then dive into the dark center of an ancient forest unknown to the hewing hands of humanity where I can disappear into the sanctity of myth
OUR TIME IN THE SUNThis universal flower this galaxy blooms and reblooms from starbirth to supernova where planets explode and expand equilibrious orbits around a star swinging like ornaments in the void symmetrical designs of an Artist divine as every sphere flies farther and farther in widening circles each one bears life and flourishes for eons till gradually spinning away from the heat and light in flight becoming vacuous and dry and cold Mercury to Venus to Earth to Mars to Jupiter to Saturn to Neptune to Pluto they unfold on their way to oblivion now the Third Orb is taking its turn in the mellow medium of the cosmic gyre its time and place in the sun for untold seasons a rolling blue heaven of water and wind suspended between the twin hells of ice and fire the planet that bore us in the warm shoals of salty seas to swim and run and fly entities spun off the master matrix a chorus of creation in harmony with the spheres from this whorl around a cosmic luminary we can see the way from birth through being to death a breath wherein life is what we do between glimmer and flash and the fecund beauty of this dynamic globe a vision of true religion all we need to know so worry not about the end for it is but foreshadowing an outer orbit where darkness and cold dominate the world but only for as long as a dreamless sleep lasts then a gleam appears in the void and spheres explode like a perennial Spring to redecorate the sky with another world where god dies and is reborn
COYOTE!Yes you are the coy one I know but do not know you O ancient spirit of the wild in that shaggy coat on those spindly legs your eyes, ears, nose alert to every flash every tick every scent in the air you stare at me from your prevalence that place overlooking the maternal sea you watch me in my monstrosity to see a movement in my eyes to hear a click from my machinations you know the horror that comes from my kind the blind hatred that terrorizes your terrain but you do not know our fear of you the reason for our cruelty you do not know how your presence frightens us because we see you as the enemy like all that threaten our fantasy of dominion yet little do we know that you guarantee our existence for if you thrive we thrive if you die we die but our destruction would be nothing to you except losing the easy pickings of our waste for you have been here for eons and you are a spirit aloof the proof that life enduresyour howl echoes the wind the cry of the whale and the buzz of the honey bee although you run at the sight of me at the sound of my infernal machine at the scent of my fouled flesh I smile at the sight of you at the soothing quiet in your territory at the wild fragrance of your province and as you run and become one with the chaparral I long to join you in the hunt my nature leaps to follow you darting through manzanita rushing to leap granite and crags and calamity thrilling to being alive on this grand sphere yet I must be still and watch you disappear from view but not from vision
I laugh at your cry I would wane at your death and though I dwell on the verge of chaos I still see you standing there high on the Earth
O Indomitable One I hear your plaintive song on the seaborn air I remember your vigilant eyes and I revere you till I sleep forever O Coyote you are the wild wonder of the world
TIGER, TIGERwhere is that beast with face of fire where those golden eyes of desire burning brightly through the forest blazing night and day where the fang where the claw that rip the weakened flesh where the purifying strife the primal balance struck between life & death that test of strength before the dark where the stark asymmetry that flashes among the trees on limbs of muscled heat reminding all who walk the land that time is told in heartbeats and power is with the bright
now the deer is multiplying with the ease of luxury to reproduce in weakness around a patch of grass it comes to pass the fearful jaws of God's design have been locked by the murderous machinations of man and that huge rumbling roar like thunder from the continental skies has been silenced as flat as desiccated hides or body parts to please a wanton race
that gorgeous Asian flame is disappearing into the mist of memory now only vestiges in stockade zoos and pictures on plaster walls remind us of your renown because another wonder created in the glory of God's mentality is fading from the land where rapacious inhumanity tramples into dust all the various vitality that makes this beloved Earth the perfect place for death & birth as guarantees for life
Tiger, Tiger where will all the fire go when your great flame goes dark what will Nature's Spirit do when life & death no longer weigh around the world when swarms of peopled pestilence trample flowers underfoot topple trees for firewood and render golden cats into robes of vanity superstitious talismans and soup for insanity
Tiger, Tiger your face is full of terror your flame is fading faster than the glow of culture limned in ages past aghast I am at losing you the holy spirit of the night and day what shall become of thee
O Tiger, Tiger if you should disappear and no longer see the rising sun what shall become of me?
CHRISTMAS SONGWhenever summer falls into autumn I feel the death of things around me as harbingers of my inevitable destiny and the darkening days of December freeze in me the fate of frost where hope is covered with sadness like a leaden air and memories seen in icy pools as only snapshots of life but when upon an evergreen I come while walking in the chilly woods bedecked with berries brilliant as embers glowing in a familiar hearth sudden joy lifts my gaze from gravity and thaws a smile deep within my sorrow for there amid the darkening season a pillar of prayer points into the sky reminding me of another destiny the promissory note of good news heard in a wildbird cry the sigh at winter solstice becomes less plaintive when glimpsed as sunshine to break through the darkest days of January that month of death cannot a curse upon me cast as always threatened because the breath of Aprilight is scented in the pines of Christmas tide and turns into epiphany when everything seems lost it costs me nothing to see the forest green even payment is a promise of the spring so ring the steeple bells every hour throughout the dying days their tolling is not funereal but accompaniment to pending birth so cheer the advent of the flower a power elegant enough to melt suspended animation beneath the cemetery of snow and make the meaning of the Earth a prophecy fulfilled in brighter times
PAEAN FOR MOTHER TERESAHow can one find the tranquility for composing lines out of profound feelings when the Mother of Love has died? How can the loss of her life ever be endured since an infinite space the place left by her leaving only proves the gap widening among us? She taught us love not the sentimental delusion we fancy not the pretended doting of family but the mind-searing gut-grinding heart-crunching generosity for the most rejected and neglected of people. Charity. How easy a word! So often spat like a bad joke or dripped by hypocrites on the steps to power but she salvaged that precious word among the jetsam of our progress she planted it with her tiny hands upon the festering flesh of the forgotten she raised it Lazarus-like from sick and mangled bones among the stones she cultivated the word in a garden of contemporary terror and by her saintly hands it bloomed amid the stricken of society and it was good
she spread it among the filthy streets like flowers for a festival for too brief a span of years she lived and died among the forlorn as do we all but she knew them she knew their unbearable suffering the horrifying anguish in their aimless eyes and she touched them with her magnanimous hands and she soothed their trembling limbs and she bathed their diseased bodies and she fed them and she nursed them till they fell back into the oblivion whence they came whence we all came and they are we for we live with the destitute poor despite our weight and wealth despite our grandiose strutting on this stage we too lie there among the miserable their hearts beating as ours their bodies craving as ours their minds fearful as ours they dying as we are dying yet by tending to them in their morbid misery with the tiny mortal instrument of her grand immortal soul the greatest of the great cared for the poorest of the poor the sore and the sick reflecting from the mirror of humanity
she reached round the world with her mothering arms she embraced you and me with her holy charms though we are the lonely though we are the lost though we too are the wretched who suffer the sins of our kind she cared for us all for too few days in this woeful world we lay in the lap of her love. She was our pieta.
THE BIRD, THE RAINBOW, AND I (To hear a melody composed for this poem, go to The Music of Sean Damon.If I were a bird so airy and bright, and you beckoned to me, I'd land on your hand, if I were a bird so cheerful and light.
If I were a bow arching the sky, and you became sad, I'd color the gray, were I a rainbow painting the sky.
But you see what I am and should take me so. If you want something else go fish in the stars. You know what I am-- then just take me so.
BLESSED ONE (To hear a melody composed for this poem, go to The Music of Sean Damon.I think of you when sunlight glances off the quavering sea; I think of you when the moon dances upon a glassy stream.
I see you when the morning light unveils the sylvan hills, but also in the darkest night when everything is still.
I hear you as the ocean waves cheer up the rocky shore and in the middle of woodland naves with wilderness my lore.
You are with me everywhere, however far away. No matter how I'm fraught with care, you sanctify my days.
MUSIC IN MARIA (To hear a melody composed for this poem, go to The Music of Sean Damon.There's music in Maria's name, a tune I've always known, a melody in memory, heard since I was born.
It comforts me in misery-- the joy of life it seems. Even when I'm sleeping I hear it in my dreams.
When uttered in a quiet way her name is more than prayer; when sung in harmony it's all that I can bear.
There's music in her lovely name-- a holy aria. I sing it to the heavens: Thank God for Maria!
TO KEATSWhen people speak of ghosts adrift across the panorama of the mind I scoff at their credulity and gloat in my intelligence for only fools could think they see a wisp where body might have been this mattered life but a blink a wink reflected off a tiny sphere that disappears eternally into the roiling stream at best a memory at worst a dream yet as the autumn leaves turn brown and whirl around me lonely in a chilling wind I think of one melancholy soul who haunts me through each passing year not to frighten but enlighten to the truth of all I need believe the spectre of a glory in the eye or in the hand of man and the song of this immortal bard the spirit that ingratiates the lark incorporates the word into a faith echoes in the dark to brighten deathly silence and intimidate the sadness with a rhyme a line a precious grave glowing off the tablature enraptured by the magic of his voice upon a page the music in a phrase I listen for the harmony inside created by a psychic flow between imaginations I listen with my soul attached and watch a mystery enfold with art the ritual poet priest and beauty grace inherent in the feast at least I have gained a rationale for hope at most a goal in life having lived enough to know those wondrous works of that young man too soon to die so long to live who scaled Parnassus between the mount of Shakespeare and the crest of Yeats to sing into the sky to sing to light the very heavens and spark a cosmic shower illuminating centuries of night
SHADOW OF THE WOLFWhat this we do against the wolf this murdering madness this monstrous zeal to blast them into dark oblivion why do we conjure such a wickedness there in those wiley hunters no different in their way of striving from thousands of other fang & claw kinds that catch and kill and tear the tender flesh why do we fear and hate and murder those eaters of the eaten while we too run abreast of them to dominate the fields of prey
I say we see in those bright looks those cunning minds that harmonize survival a shadow of ourselves long denied inside of costumes custom made to bless our fantasies believing deities of such imagining must favor fools who claim to be born godlike though sprung from slime as vulgar as any found along the teeming seam of sea and sand electrified by a meteoric sky where all the brothersisters of the sun and moon have risen to glorify the world I see in them in those resilient masters of the chase a race of roving bands that ran across tundras and savannahs to catch and kill and tear the tender flesh and built some golden towers with manipulative minds to monumentalize humanity with grandeur and with grace
but covered imcompletely by our artful clothes the nature of the wolf lies within us lurking with its burning eyes to seize a moment to survive for we are just the beast at heart pretending to be spirits meant for heaven and any shadow of the monster in our souls reminds us of our equanimity with all alive despite our dreaming in form of prayer the wolf recalls in haunting howls that Eden yet exists on Earth where we no more than they deserve what we can make of paradise
AN ACT OF CHARITYI always thought love was simply felt a warm flow along the heart like a mother's soothing hand upon a sigh and when a pretty face smiled at me I thought that delicious pain was love as only gods could know then ice would quickly melt as the madness of romance flashed out of a vernal sky and fired up the fantasy of mind to blind me to the truth of beauty
but now too late for youth I find that love is more a giving than a taking a gentle yet constant ray of light which may delight or merely reassure a dying life that someone cares about the pain like bending to the ground even if it hurts even if the world displays a mocking face to help a wounded bird
the race of humankind is both blessed and cursed beyond all others on this puzzling course of cosmic links by having mental eyes to see around the center of a moment to where an act of charity can help a fellow in the fields of strife to know in life some peace if but a glimpse between the dawn and the dark
hark to what the heart can do for them instead of they to do for you love is more than merely feeling good at what a mother or a lover does by nature when the tide is still love is but a strain of self turning out to touch another soul with kindness generating heat in place of cold a breasted beat evolving into song for all to sing
COMPLAINT TO LESBIAIn gathering flowers while you may your preference for pistils flies in the face of April and verifies a cruelty an act of terror to the heart devastating the history of the wild rose that sweet flower of life meant for men-women its tender petals pulsing toward the opposite pole where Apollo meets Aurora across the shining sky
all the flowers of the field depend upon that good old connexion to yield the fruit to manifest the cosmic destiny do not let your genes languish in a dessicated pool in keeping with that cursed kin who perish without proper offspring doing well for zero growth but could be hell yet you an angel of the light because of your delight in the sheen of life why then sacrifice your glorious gender upon a butting bed when progeny to save us all could come from fruitful penetration
I hear the howling wind or is it a lover wailing on a lonely hill
turning in upon yourself will kill the rose stop the song and tear the golden tower down renown is but an echo in a vacant room so dance before me in your gauzy gown your terpsicore will raise applause and a million poles to fly your fragrant flag
O please no hag with hags should you become but step with me in passions pas de deux where we become a holy one of matching hemispheres to spin harmoniously through nights of light and days of yang in yin the human race is won like others round the sun by male to female conjuring wake to sleep of works in living art to magnify humanity so stop the inward turning and spiral out to meet the truly gay where cross and arrow consort to make the Earth a world
TO MIMIIf love at first is sighted through the eyes as some believe and many have since English Will wrote to ladies dark as mystery but bright enough to make divine a mere man then I when looking into your fair lights could only in reflected beauty shine and be abreathed with incandescent thoughts of memories and dreams in dormancy
if love-- but here I falter in my foolish flight for I a poor man given up to art and love and all that Nature offers us without the wealth of things or a name of worldly fame now I do merely make these humble words a simply sung reality to break the spell of ghost or fantasy that may inhibit who we are
so let us speak beyond the seen look upon our feelings faced to find a harmony of mind amid the noisy kind and know the quiet goodness in our souls
LINES ON A CARCASSLying like a log across the beach at first it seemed but driftwood so I started not to care yet around it horror hung in atmosphere of death then I would see the hint of rotten flesh the air confirming fear but curiosity adamant I stepped upwind to look closely at the huge corpse of a living thing long and thick as a redwood trunk though tapered to a torpedo shape as if a rusted artifact of war finally stormed ashore having decades rolled along the crystalline floor of silent seas
the simile struck me to the heart when I perceived three oozing bullet holes bored into the suntaut flesh man made orifices that made no sense except to signify the race for total domination for it must have been a mammal of the ocean though flippers now only sad little bones where limbs of liquid speed had flown a sealion probably a male by its massive neck traced with stringy fur once glorious a royal action of the coastal surf and rocky isles that fought duels mounted mates and sired pups year to year to keep its kind abreast of the great tug-o-war of life but this majestic mavin of the fin invested forest had lost the struggle to the master race when fishing for a livelihood became condemned by riflefire when burning lead sank that magnificent craft of God and a smoking trawler growled back to port its belly stuffed with fish
see the travesty of Darwin here excuses why the world is going to hell as we pile lox onto points of toast while sipping bubbles of nepenthe and talk to friends of prices high and low how slow we are to see the end of all the misery we cause to brothersisters of the landairsea our greatest tragedy may be the closing of our eyes to events fore & aft to hide the desperation we will feel amid our starving billions not for want of food because we can easily invent to eat substitutes for the wild but we cannot reinvent a balanced world and what may be preserved in artifice cannot be grown on missing trees or extracted from barren seas for to know the spirit of life beside ourselves we need to believe and practice a religion more that heeds the Way of Earth than human pride echoed from the sky before we find our own kind rotting headless carcasses beached upon an alien shore
TO MARIAYou ask for words to signify the beginning of knowing our magnetic hemispheres sparking in the shadows of uncertainty like light glancing off glass in unfamiliar rooms
to show you of my heart and mind I oblige your thoughtful request embedded as a jewel in the matrix of our flesh and blood an alarming notion that wakes me from this demiurge to attend to the balancing between us an equilibrium needed for the matching of a pair the making of a whole
the act is not to create myself to gratify your eyes but to be a natural man on the way of my becoming while bearing nothing else than truth as I seek to know who you are
to squeeze the essence of myself to stain this page with indelibility I strain to make visible the secret of the mystery that you may see the circuitry the pattern of my being before these letters disappear into the sanctums of our memories and we go on in other ways to find and touch the centers of our lives
I reply with words neither sentimental nor sublime to satisfy your curiosity to find a way beyond the flesh and meet your soul with mine to know if we can make a sphere of our own that gives more meaning to time
COURTSHIPTo impress women of beauty some men build their bodies to look like ancient heroes others build towers in the air most drive machines like tame mythic beasts and many keep treasures to dazzle female minds to win women of grace all men strut like warriors as if to save a castle from barbarian hordes we act upon our animality at its greatest power so I a simple man encode my primate call in simple words on a page
FOOTSTEPSThe strong iambus drives the language like a drum; trochees halt and go as if the end uncertain, but the anapest tumbles along with no thought of a moment in time; dactyls reverse the downbeat to detain the momentum, then the spondees and the pyrrhics with their long couples of matched beats go in great strides till they reach the last rhyme.
HUMANKIND We are but animals in this world of living things not gods yet as some would so desire for the breach between sea and sky leaves little room for error though we think mistakes prelimn success scars can mar the face of beauty alter vision and cripple sporting kingslet us not build statues to ourselves but dignify our heritage with tributes to the future far beyond the importance of you or me our kind can be sanctified with endless acts of love planted in the Earth and in the hearts of children like seeds from fruit ripened in the sun a deity truly known
PHOENIXI see a chaos coming periodic as the birth and death of a star I see the great orb shifting to right herself under blankets of pain layer upon layer of evil waste of a decadentribe
I see a slow silent horror spreading across the face of the Earth deaf to prayer too late for done deeds the Mother's festering flesh diseased like teeming shoals of a perverted estuary
I see the great veil of life turning brown the shield torn apart an eye of God glaring at us wandering in & out of the maze learning nothing of the design and so fascinated by our own beating hearts we fail to keep in tune
I see ashes in the sand where once a golden tower stood and people climbed the marble stairs to seek the signs of eternity but now stone and bone are dust unblessed by any rain and the only hope for humankind glows beneath a gray powder of dismay
I see the embers of this hope smoulder beneath a thick fall of sin as radiant coals flicker with purifying fire struggling to be born like a fetus of magma fusing into a great bird whirling in a flash of wings flaming out of the cauterized decay to signal with a lyrical cry the rebirth of humanity
I see the storm the ash the embryonic bird and I pray
DEMIURGEHow deny the force within me driving unto you these imaginings of God and the rose channeled into throbbing flesh
how restrain this elemental urge to find in your dark mystery that magnetic feast pulling me into you holding till night opens like a flower
how ignore this wondrous magnitude cycling our great pulsing body into an infinitude of living spheres lest I were to end this surging strife and with a long last cry forfeit my life
A LONELY WINGfog freezes on the trees the moon draws blood with the ebbing tide insipid air surrounds me the vacuum left since you died pictures words memories fade from mind as the sun descends beyond the invisible sea only music carries me day to day like a lonely wing upon a warm and soothing wind the melody sets me free the melody I sing
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