1 May 2002
 

Eye of Endless Sight
 

Multiple as grains of sand—or
salt dissolved in water—we
have severally conspired to dance, our
shoreside manner much like wee
whip-lightning lashes round an eye of
pool-dark stillness.  Guest of fear,
dripping celebration finds us
rising wet and cool.  See here
how eloquently simple—single—
centrally delightful shines
the countenance that hymns you.  Bring us
showers of your own designs
like rain-sky dripping ocean-water.
Where all salt’s dissolved away,
there our only one has brought us
this wide-open now-today.
 

***
 

2 May 2002
 

The Prepositions
 

Knowing you were luminous
in ways you could not fail to see,
yet somehow did—a ruinous
potential came to call on me
and howled to haunt you also.  You were
needful, and I over-well
supplied with future dewy fruits of
longing underneath a spell
of green, green courage.  As they ripened,
we began to pass in dance
between the several worlds that tighten
love-alliances as glance
by glance we reckon out the hours
and minutes till Midsummer’s Day—
when you will take on dreadful powers.
Meet me under their full sway,
a cylinder of silent heat all
Moon-inspired above us.  We
shall see midsummer, but complete our
magic underneath a tree
whose boughs create a midnight depth of
darkness.  Through that silence, you
will shine like steady foxfire.  Step there
nimbly, dancer—watch me through
the aura you cast round us like a
flare of sunlight’s secret twin.
Claim your power:  Call—invite—let
ruin’s deathly tale begin
to cast its motions backwards.  When it
winds toward its close, a bright
and knowing soul past present ken will
soothe your mind’s excessive might
and you will—by its providential
tenderness—become aware
that it is yours, you howling mental
guardian of love’s star-lair.
 

***
 

3 May 2002
 

When I Let You Go
 

When I have let your little fingers
let go their hold on how you sing
on paper, having wrought love’s clinging
magic design, the folded wing
that waits in the secret antechamber
outside a room pure storm-brought light
has hollowed with one swift stroke of flame and—
you will attend me there this night—
remains to inhabit—aye, that brilliant
wing will extend its plumes and reach
from portal to distant corner, fill the
air with fine waves of heat with each
significant stroke of each least little
feather, each quill imbued with wit,
and—scatter the very dust this brittle
chamber is made of.  Then I’ll quit
the hold I have long maintained and let you
fly us away, a blazing bird
of magical breadth of lightning-weather,
sky become shining, singing word.
 

***
 

4 May 2002
 

The Sign of When and Where
 

When I behold your softly stealing
watery light through limpid space,
I shine again, a ghostly being
claiming us time to love and grace
to see it employed most nobly.  Whereas
so little counter-light revolves
about the vague place our voices share in
terrible dreams, it fast dissolves
to leave us alone with this, our proper
magical emblem, endless streams
of peaceful desire like living water
caught in a love-embrace that seems
oceanic—but lo, is much, much larger.
There, when your light shines into me,
I become fields and trees and starlit
canopy-nights and choose to be
immense in your heart myself, a vivid
question turned deathless song whose lush
expanses were always here, a river-
world that retains the solemn rush
of richly emphatic magic though its
music lay faint and weak before
we woke it between us.  I am ghostly
still, but no god could love you more.
 

***
 

5 May 2002
 

This We Need Must Do
 

Let me tell you—nothing more is
lacking now to serve the need
of song, love’s magic spell, the sorely
aching pouch of vivid seed
that weighs me down—and you, whose silent
light reflects my own so well.
What we two have found—our style of
vision-dance, the counter-hell
by which we alternate keen anguished
glares with bright but lowered eyes—
neither of us dare let hang.  If
I let go, or you surprise
the quiet of this night by keening
all aloud—aye, we are seed
that must unfold its solemn meaning.
In its proper ground, the weed
of baleful lust will blossom roses,
orchards, dewy wands and pale
transparencies whose green disclosures
tell an else-and-other tale.
Share with me the living letter
sown by love’s enlightened hand.
You will see how darkness sets its
mirrored eyes to view the land
that lies between the—nowhere ever
safe but here, by our joined light.
Hell hangs on the verge of heaven,
needing only that its sight
possess us—you, your mortal features
all aglow, and me, on fire
to bury all my burning secrets
in the place where dreams retire
to be at one with dancing glory,
magic and the orchard glade
of which we are the singing story
nothing mortal ever made.
When they have—and that is why I
turn to you at this late ray
of midnight starlight—we shall find the
need assuaged that aches this way.
 

***
 

6 May 2002
 

Heaven’s Work in This World
 

Silver one, moonlight’s fluent measures
soaking the waiting window ledge,
open the pane through which great pleasure
seeks to re-whet its blunted edge.
A courier long ago disheveled
most of your features.  They remain
as sad as he left them, yet a sever-
gesture toward complete disdain
for anything less than holy lights the
hollows where votive fires burn through
the night that receives their open brightness
greedily.  Drink the dawning dew
of music your heat attracts to settle—
aye, on the ledge your hands are damp,
your hair fairly drips, your face is—little
wonder I want you, votive-lamp.
I was a shadowed sadness only
moments ago; I sought to ride
the heights of clear magic, calling low the
dreams that would see us mystified
in beautiful ways; but disenchanted,
you lay in weary moonlight-stains.
Silver regaled you—aye, enhanced; but
I in its midst went cloaked with chains,
blunted of all my power to use my
passionate voice to call your name
but soundlessly.  Though you saw right through me,
nevertheless the silent flame
behind your deep eyes took years to burn the
edge of my magic sharp and hard.
Tempering fire, you found my yearning
reason to ride through skies ill-starred
and friendly alike, and then you shone forth
silver as moonlight through the pane
that stood in our way.  You shook a lonely
foil of moon-lightning, then the chain
that bound up my throat fell harmless to the
ground.  Now the broken pane falls too,
and the lamp of you glows like rising music—
heaven on fire between us two.
 

***
 

7 May 2002
 

The Only Apparent Threshold
 

How might you serve a strong purpose forever,
valor and veins in uncanny accord,
the great heart that drives both of them working together
with mine for the reason our dreams have restored
to the effortless primacy it was designed for
by lovers no other than we, in the place
from which all magic flows?  You were lovely and shining,
and shall be—and are—in the timeless embrace
that has never ceased needing our wills to remove the
pale burial windings obscuring its fire
as it dreams us complete in the presence of soothing
ideas no passion on Earth could inspire,
but this cannot help yield in an ongoing series.
Love, a sung fragrance for you has been named.
Summer by winter by summer by eerie
eternity, come taste your share of reclaimed
luminescence within its own flesh where the savor
of flowering magic persists to renew
our alignment through lengthening touch.  Oh, most favored
of mortals, the door of fair death within you
has flown open to show the glad land where the powers
of darkness give over their sway and we reign
like conjoined, unconfused and deep-hearted endowers
of music with strangeness the true central vein
that denotes the drawn line between midnight and sunshine
in more than one world throbs to feel us set free.
Serve one song’s purpose until it is done, and
feel ten million more come to breathe you through me.
 

***
 

8 May 2002
 

Power Flashes Through
 

We shall conceive in grace that thunders
down, slashing hail and rain of light,
in beautiful time with all our wonder-
laden heartbeats all hours of night
and all morning dewy sunrise also—
partly because it needs us to,
and partly because you’ve neared the hollow
marble recess that sent for you
by means of my ghostly eyes across a
shower of rainless silver stars
to find you and help you know the loss that
yields music.  Though a trickle mars
your own marble face, allow its liquid
whisper to tell your very skin
how we, who long sought, have found this vivid
instant when thundershowers begin
to dream us more wildly waking every
singular glance their torches flare.
Steal ever, ever nearer heaven.
Lightning I am tonight—all prayer,
all brilliant beseeching wanting only
you, a recalled and vatic grace
suffusing your mouth and eyes—my holy
answer, my source, let our powers embrace.
 

***
 

9 May 2002
 

The Only Death That Waits for You Here
 

You shall lie shining brightly by my
side, with a noble lilt of flare
that widens your wondrous eyes and finds me
reaching for praise:  ‘Beyond compare’
I falter and then fall short, a would-be
spirit-enchanter garbed in bliss.
Tell me you see beyond the hooded
night-apparition sending this
from far worlds away, for we are merely
instants from magic’s kiss of flame.
Suffer the dreams we’ve known to sear their
edges against the blazing name
I need you to mouth—oh now, oh say it
hotly out loud—oh, call to me.
Through heaven’s most ghostly moan my aching
song reaches out to murmur, We
are syllables clothed in vatic darkness
softly inverted, sighed as one,
and known to our souls as passion’s marveled
madness:  A million brilliant suns,
and all of them streaming through the lilt of
your sweetly breathing under-voice.
Sing me inside you.  Find my willing
words.  Read them all and take your choice,
but share forth your own this very moment.
I shall be—I am shining too,
brighter than air about a glowing
coal fanned aflame by need of you
that soon must be satisfied.  Oh, feel the
touch of my own mouth’s deepest breath
grow suddenly mild and moon-wet:  We are
love come to life by means of death.
 

***
 

12 May 2002
 

Sustaining Mettle
 

Sound and resound with warm impressions
voiced through a gleaming course of air
that leaks a pure form of joy that lessens
pain it encounters everywhere,
easing the mind that lies behind it
into a very fertile field
of leaning-toward-impassioned kindness.
There you are silver highly steeled
like nerves that have always waited, waited,
waited in vain—but now shall know
the reason.  Be still and stainless.  Bate the
breath that will surely overflow
with song any moment.  Tell me, lover:
What lies behind your aching mind?
What has its glimmer there discovered?
What does it hold for you to find?
Aye, it is all but leaping forward,
yearning to lay its secrets bare.
Dreamer and ancient song-restorer,
breathe in and out this golden air.
 

***
 

13 May 2002
 

Reflective Tear
 

Little trickle, saving window,
mirror-glass of time beyond,
hear me sing a riddle into
leaves afloat along a pond’s
dark limpid heaven-eyelid’s outer
curve.  Because you hang so still
between the sky and Earth, about
my breathing heart an eerie will
to manifest a subtle music’s
hidden strangeness grows and peaks.
Soon I know I’ll hold a lucid
silence even as I speak
and it communicates a deeper
message than the very ground
beneath us both.  Then, mirror-weeper,
we’ll become what best surrounds
the heart of stillness:  perfect…nowhere.
Who we are will go away.
Your view’s so often told me—going
serves the only song that stays.
 

***
 

14 May 2002
 

Augury
 

Twist you down like a spiral ram’s horn
into a world of caves and streams—
mystery under pressure, dammed so
thoroughly here that only dreams
perceive and report its dreadful presence.
Tap it and watch its spirit flow
unto the parallel liquescence
spinning your head where all you know
of holiness waits behind a veil of
shimmering silver-painted stars,
each one a lonely fan-tailed spray of
music-to-be.  The woe that mars
their clarity, pure transparent shining
daubed on a cloth of ragged grace—
that is about to turn its lining-
mind inside out:  Conceive a space
of waterfalls hanging soundless, long and
wearily static, then the point
is gotten at last—a spiral song plunged
into an under-sky.  Anoint
the augur that finds this waiting heaven
lavishly:  Flow all round that keen
down-reaching with dreams that last forever—
longer than all they’ll ever mean,
being as all they are is—music
freed from its place of dammed distress.
Whet the fine edge you are and use it.
Reverently invoke and bless
the spirit that waits behind…then hurry
out of its path a hairsbreadth.  Touch
the stream that emerges.  Hear and worship—
nothing but always overmuch.
 

***
 

16 May 2002
 

Every World’s Nowhere
 

Where will you go when I tell you, No one
seems to receive my mind’s blank stare
with perfect composure?  Still a slow and
wearily raging half-despair
that only achieves this inspiration
once in a lifetime—aye, and strives
after a thousand fading waking
dawns like so many ended lives
extending beyond its keenest purview
ever so far and windingly—
Where will you find yourself emerging?
Out of that old procession, we
have found one another—empty.  Be our
true minds in seamless sweet accord,
lifted above the ground of dreams and
then to kind silence quite restored—
then where will you go?  A very nowhere
patiently waits, its one deep eye
upon you already.  Such a lonely
prospect—hello, my dear good-bye—
and where—you are standing in its shadowed
gaze, and no meeting-parting air
insists on your breathing.  Seem thus gladly—
welcome to every world’s nowhere.
 

***
 

19 May 2002
 

Now Our Secrets Unravel Fast
 

Now you know where the place the level
edge of your tongue to its best effect—
and deepest, and truest.  There, my never-
resting transgressor, there collect
your nameless reward:  A self in exile
nearly forever come home at last
with not an idea—not a textile
device to be had, nor any fast
companion in virtue dressed in weathered
garments the hue of ancient lace
decidedly fine and morbid.  Gather
the future you still must be and face
my eyes and our vision sewn so tightly,
one cannot trace the cunning line
that divides us.  Nameless, yet so brightly
spoken—sung—we shall soon divine
the source conjugation far below our
pale outward aspect’s weary weeds.
In and among our fibers flow such
thousands of silver spider-seeds
as need but a moment more to hatch and
spin on their own—a textile stream
the edge of your whetted tongue must catch and
river along, its liquid theme
relayed through the switches deep-embedded
webwise throughout the gown of stares
I’ve layered all round you.  Oh my wedded
wilderness-mirror, unawares
we’ve crept up and caught our own misfortune’s
smiling reverse.  Beneath its folds
of superabundant silk and sordid
me-within-youness, no one holds
an elegant pose with so much nimble
style.  Are my eyes devoted?  See
how true naked love is worn—how simple
modesty best becomes a free-
of-all—even flesh—container virtue
wants for its very own.  Then turn
the no one behind your face to perfect
knowledge content to learn and learn
while resting in air, a spinning river
dancing its way to nowhere fast.
Silence descends—but we who live it
sing by its darkest light and last
forever in each unspoken murmur’s
moment of praise.  Flow through, yet stay—
mine is the heart whose final learning
needs you to disappear this way.
 

***
 

20 May 2002
 

Not a Moment Apart

a love spell

When we were the wind and our breathing the motion
of rivers and oceans of air above land,
love inspired us.  It made us wise angels who woke up
entwined, but it issued one eerie command…

The love that desired us exceeded all limits—
but it was held frozen in place by a dream
that we lay apart.  Bridge this fault by the slimmest
of causes for hope, one elusive Moon-beam…

One ray of the Moon in its secret new fullness
sang all around and we caught every word
in our silent magnetic core memory.  Dulled, though,
by cloudy dream vagueness, who knew what we’d heard?…

Our will gathered strength in a deep mountain cavern
where wild lovers mated and nested.  We turned
to touch in our sleep and we suddenly traveled
ten thousand dream-leagues and recalled and re-learned…

In the pit of the world waits a mind so all-knowing,
its least thought holds dreaming and waking as one.
We are its favorite idea.  It glow with
delight in our presence, an absolute Sun…

Our mirror reflects with a growing enchantment
two lovers dissolved in one luminous song
that breathes in and out—an inspired form of dancing
that summons all winds and commands them, Be strong…

Fly wildly and find the Beloved who hears this
while dreaming and singing a sweet magic spell
for true love of me.  We are always so near, we
are touching already.  Air, find this one—tell…

My Beloved, all dreaming and waking are over,
over at last:  We are love’s very heart.
Listen:  You hear me, you hear me, dear lover.
Not once have we two lain a moment apart.
 

***
 

21 May 2002
 

Blue-Veined Iris, Mourning Dove
 

Shine through us, dawn:  A glowing orb of
saturate color softly sways
alone from a sword-like branch-tip.  Formed of
singular magic’s swarm and haze
of lyric suspense, drawn down the cipher-
stars of a cosmos grown elate
to focus upon the mortal life that
sweetly receives the hand of fate
this lone orb portends—this lifted chalice
lightly enlaced by fingers so
articulate, they erect a palaced
lunar obsession’s signal slow
design in mid-air—wine-blossom, tip forth
slightly.  One glowing orb of blue,
spill over.  Poised hand, most softly slip my
tongue the wet guest whose future coo
is coming to me already.  Trail its
eloquent language past my lips
where gestates an ancient omen:  Pale yet
sinister-perfect magic drips
high over us both to meet and mingle
sweetly with this erotic bliss.
Dawn has come wholly kind, to sing us
heavenward home through such a kiss.
 

***
 

22 May 2002
 

The Universe in You
 

Why does that cauldron catch the Moon at
such an odd cant?  And why obey
the angular drift of light that lunar-
mirror reflection seems to say
best represents what I’m coming under—
woefully, wholly strange, I ween—
only a ghost of former wonder
sprung on a world entirely green
by moonlight, while grey and faint by solar
searage.  Most shining ray aslant
astride me within that bath of cold
mysteriousness, can we enchant
ourselves once again as all we warbled
not long ago?  It seems you wink.
I am an absessed shaft of sorry
lightning upon the wounded brink
of—there—I’ve achieved the shift of essence.
Now I am—we are not obeyed;
nor need we be.  We are just a message
reaching a sea of deep self-made
obsession with tidings glad and growing
gladder by happy fits and starts.
How we reflect and ARE the holy
sum of love’s universal parts!
 

***
 

23 May 2002
 

What You Will
 

Whether you will or won’t attend me
happily home, I’ve no doubt now—
someone will soon receive this sending.
Someone will see the shining brow
that gleams in his own resplendent mirror,
bend it my way, and smile in spite
of how long he’s waited, how his hearing
seems to have played him false all night
too often before, and how deceptive
so much of longing always is.
Aye, he will lend acute reception
unto the wail that might be his
and whisper in answer.  Aye—then wail a
mirroring-back-to-moonlight name.
I will be pleased to stream forth palely,
out of the ancient picture frame
that borders this story’s shadowed outer
reaches with fast-dissolving bars.
Child, we must be determined.  Round this
dream, an unbounded realm of stars
waits glimmering, untold million heartbeats
hanging on every flashing ray.
Moon in your eyes—and so much starry
magic—depart your world and stay
forever in this blue timeless ocean.
Beautiful little rippled plane,
open his secret mind’s emotion-
pages and sing the finest strain
inscribed there, a name among its countless
miracles.  We were mirrored—who
can say what we’ll be, resolved?  The sound of
whispers, a Moon of silver-blue….
 

***
 

24 May 2002
 

The Tale That Takes Forever
 

Measure me lying stretched flat on a blanket
of iris-white snow under lantern-Moon glare—
and find me extensively, greenly ecstatic,
a mild-weathered taste of the rapid affair
all the stars of high heaven have yearned for yet taken
for granted as well.  We are shining, you see,
in a prevalent arc even as we lie waiting.
Behold how important our kindness must be
to have showered thus forward all down the fine skin of
the face of the sky as it ventures to peer
deeply into our eyes—iris-white around twin pools
of utter necessity:  Aye, enter here
without choosing:  Which world is the real one?  I quiver
with knowledge.  You quail, but you measure the grace
you will need to command the pale blanket’s still-living
inhabitant’s glance, then you flow through the space
in between in an arc of electric impatience,
swimming with sparks all around you like snow
on a night of full Moon.  I am quite—overtaken.
You cannot begin to know how much I know,
but you will soon, and then we will further this blanket’s
white willingness.  Blue-branching veins through a frail
iris petal—and aye, so much coldness ecstatic,
alive to your worship, your overlong tale.
 

***
 

26 May 2002
 

A Tree All Told
 

Lift up wonderful new leaves turning
yellow-green as they open wide—
awake to the dawn of not-yet-burning
misery waiting past the ride—
of Night Mare across their daylit faces.
Aye, she can bear the Sun now.  See
how lyrically drawn she is to spaces
verdantly peaceful.  Dreaming tree
of new little leaves, be safely merry.
Misery parts its gown and shows
its celebrant nature.  Only wearing
weeds on the outside, heart-red rose
it glows underneath—a carmine dappled
softly with deep sea-green and gold.
Soon you will be supremely appled,
rose though you be—a tree all told.
 

***
 

28 May 2002
 

Power Finds Its Form
 

Lair--lore--lorn for David Bunting
 

The skull shows through:  Why the eyes like beacons
burning-brand red light it clear from within,
a round of flames climbing high to weaken
the place where once a fine-laid white skin
hung covered with hair like a moss-grown marble
lunarium—nay, but a horse-mane thrown
over my right hand as I stroke its garbled
magnificence down out of dream-cold stone
into bloodbeat life on a pathway bridled
by fine-drawn lines…these, my very words.
I am calling your flood-name.  Hither sidle
intensely, glimpses where no bone girds
back the beating light any longer.  Let this
arcane occasion desire my hand
and be glad to find it waiting.  Blood-wet and
yet white-clean, just a tiny strand
of stained auburn brown thrown across it, my right
hand, your apprenticed wedding-gown-
graving letter-writer—lick it lightly.
Ten million flames from your eyes rain down,
a flashing flood borne of lore no mortal
ever before has flown upon—
and yet we have, all and always.  Pour forth
power to make this world—be gone—
but raise it again like dewy eyelids
sweetly unsealed to morning’s sight,
your lover beside you—aye, and shining
flames in her eyes, so like your bright
dream-beholden wells of oceanic—stillness.
Cool as sapphire night skies by day,
I feel them upon—within—fulfilling
words till they form this very lay.
 

***
 

29 May 2002
 

Hung from the Wall of a Cave
 

Hours come down, a soft design of
garnet beads in tiny rows.
I am deep inside the twining
stems their stitches bind.  High snows
hang waiting, one fine gilt and silver
mantle just about to fall.
Eloquence, untie bewildered
syllables and tell me all
your faery secrets now.  Your final
curtain-swaying lettered page
read me out loud.  Your gown of shining
bloodstream orbs array an age
aghast upon your rime-white bones, then
let it slip away like dew.
I am tired of reading.  Only
sing the underlying you
without a sign of precognition.
See me in this moment.  Hear
my present voice.  I want a vision
rippled on an atmosphere
that permeates both flesh and carven
bones, live words through whispered skin.
Be the one whose wet breath marvels:
How the walls are growing thin—
and how directly we reach forward,
mingle in a cloud of heat,
and feel our fingers twine till torn
apart no more.  Old dreams repeat,
but we are glad and steady gazers-
into-space:  Here we are one
electrum-garnet web of lace, a
tapestry of Moon and Sun.
 

***
 

30 May 2002
 

Not Given to Misunderstand
 

Sometimes I carry you over the threshold
kicking and screaming.  You bite my hand.
I am a hopelessly married flesh-and-
spirit design who must understand
where your temper misleads you into a hellish
ordeal at the cost of what might be my pride.
What makes your horrible screams so compelling?
Why does a narrowing path open wide
as your lips when it hears you?  A curious twitch of
my fingers where teeth have drawn blood tells me, Here
is the fly-away moment.  Hold immense riches
alive to the wise ebb and flow of their fear
become yearning become incandescent green-lantern
desire in a hallway of stone where a gate
groans to help you invoke the bright slowness that dances
as gathering magics combine to relate
an impossibly long wedding tale into cascades
of rhythmic ‘tomorrow will dawn on this head
that is maiden no more and the one who is asking—
demanding—that change is a species of dread
only nightmarish lust holds most dear in a dream-state
of cavern-sweat calm.  Fly away, wounded hand—
but not far—down the flesh of the one who’s still screaming.’
You’re really not given to misunderstand.
 

***
 

31 May 2002
 

The Color of the Flame
 

We shall reweave you gold and silver,
flame and silence of song grown bright
in one fine twining, a rapt vermilion
wreath not devised by broad daylight—
not alone; nor night’s black magic only.
Nay, be it our deep secret how
the shining of hours so kindly shown to
none but the everlasting Now
of morning and evening’s sacred gloaming
aura, its waxing-waning sigh’s
perpetual dream that leads the soul we
know we are reaching will—surprise
the light of the fondly leaking heaven-
home all around us.  Tell it, Here
stretches our ghosts’ intent forever
into a breathing atmosphere
surrounded by green and carmine branches
grown in a circle so enlaced,
its whispers swing round and round, enchanted
wildly by what at last we’ve placed
within love’s arcane perspective.  We are
wholly in love, and love ensouled
in twilight’s live red and green enwreathing
words burns with fires of silver-gold.