Inside this temple are mountains and rivers
there are forests of oak, mountain lions and moss

Seismic shifts and lightening bolts are inside
enervating every silent thought

All the dancing impulses of nature are here
laughter, grief, hunger swirling
in the winds and time

There is ecstatic music, echoing through these chambers
and starlight – all the infinite stars

Ruminations of the cosmos are within
the poet
says
inside this temple, is the one I love

bird song
in the city
false dawn

Oh great goddess,
mother of creation,
this earth

What silent hunger
causes big breasted women
to wander in my dreams.

Oh happy happy death – this fool
asphyxiated in the heaving depths
of the cleavage of the beloved.

“The world is not respectable; it is mortal, tormented, confused, deluded forever; but it is shot through with beauty, with love, with glints of courage and laughter; and in these, the spirit blooms timidly, and struggles to the light amid the thorns.” - George Santayana

Lewis drives us to a deserted beach just outside of town
There’s a tranquil, silky ocean. It’s silent but for a rushing
over the distant reef, and Lewis talking shit
A lone seagull stands on one leg feigning interest.

I’m just not in the mood – it’s cloudy
He strips of his shirt and performs yoga
There’s a significant paunch, a few old tattoos and
we sit there in the white sand, ignoring him politely but
he returns from the shore and talks
myopically and with too much enthusiasm.

Mirra is hungry for company – my sister is lonely too. It is a soulless city.
So we all end up on this desolate beach with a fool in thick glasses.
But, how did I get here really? Did I miss a turn?

I remember, as a kid, stabbing at my heart with painful thoughts,
probing for feeling. But at some point it had all become too much
and I cut myself off. Now here I am fumbling down a blind alley,
in the broad daylight of my life
while the one I’m trying to love
is far away.

I know in the deepest place of me, there is a love
and the truth of my feet rooted in the earth
that is so great, I’m afraid to let it rip through
and I hold on as tight as I can
to the little prison of my self
afraid if I let love in it’ll break me,
like it did in the beginning.

If I can forgive myself and all these innocent people
I might just find my way home, if I don’t die laughing.

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as I begin to read your poems
their power enters my body.
Your faithful, deep feeling words
slip through my unsuspecting skin.
I feel them enter my bruisey heart
as air enters my lungs.
there is an affinity.

I dive into the pool.
it takes me a dreamworld moment to orient my self there.
Underwater, time and the senses seem to unfold
I emerge splashing, back into the surface world.
Breathe.

and I understand your first lesson:
though I want to expand my vision and aspire
to carry myself and you
to the farthest horizons.
I miss the point.

I read your poems. I listen.
I feel your pain.
aloneness.
and I know that they are my own
and I understand that your voice speaks
not only to me,
but to anyone
who cares
to listen

So I begin to write in the first person
to listen to the voices in my heart
and know that this
is where transformation
begins.

~ rest in peace you fucker

[look, though ignoble, I'm just getting this out of my system, OK]

his brutal strength made me weak
his stupid love made me hate
his iron fist rules made me passive aggressive
his dogma made me at least, a free mind
Read the rest of this entry »

Pescadero. Baja California Sur.

All she wants is for me to give her my love
and she will give me the Moon.
How could she not become the Radiant Goddess.
Aphrodite.
The Ocean and tides.
How could any woman not bloom, in Love
like a cactus flower, under the desert moon
their beauty born the moment beheld
by the undivided self.

And I don’t know how to let go.
I find myself clinging fiercely to the rocks, indignant
And the waves are lapping at my shores

let me carry you my love
and I will rise and fall with you,
like the pulsing of your soul,
like the rhythms of your heart
the sun and the moon
come with me my love
be free.

I hold tighter! Terrified of (my) life
Love’s dazzling light.
let go a whisper of the night
be free an echo from the shore
I love you the sirens in the mist
become fainter
as the years go sailing by.

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The balm of benevolent poets
soothes my throbbing fear
like meetings with bunny rabbits

in fields where men-are-not near

Yet how could he feel the earth
When his feet don’t meet with grief
lies buried in his trudging soul

gasping

panting shrouded screaming fleeing dreaming
drowsy, drifting, groaning,
moaning

muddy

dark sounds from the deep

heaving ocean floors
ache like ancient bones

And the octopus knows the colour
of the sounds that well-up from within
and bruise the loving hearts of men
and echo through the ground

and echoes through the ground
echoes through the women
echoes in the Earth

the stifled sound of grown men’s tears
comes roaring up to pound
iron flood gates forged
in childhood’s shame

Take these masks away from me
I need to scream my pain

please, take these leaded masks away
I need to feel my pain

and learn to love
and live to learn
and caress the little things

travel in the blue-green world
on sunlit pelican wings
and visit the soft places
where poets melt their gold

and visit the soft places
where poets melt their gold

. . . A little while,
a moment of rest upon the wind,
and another woman shall bear me.
~ The Prophet.

Drifting
through the formless void, darkness

all around.
… there is a shimmer of sound

like the siren’s song
reaching through space and time.

And in an instant
in an ocean of seeing,
we agree to meet, on those distant
heaving shores.

And I am falling now,
falling through the font
swimming into Being,

into the dialectic,
the mythical, exquisite life
of Earth

graphic for this poem

The Mango

is anything but innocent
it beckons with it’s fullness
it’s soft golden belly,
glowing from within,
it says…
sink your teeth
into my plump curvaceous skin,
suckle on my gorgeous ripe flesh
and let the sweet juices
trickle down your chin.
Revel in the rapture
of my glowing roundness
and feel the warmth
enter in.