DEDICATION

There is a perilous height aflame
somewhere, an infinite light that frames
a steep sacramental city set high
where I
exist,
and at my risk I mean to find it
mean to climb
rhyme on rhyme, time after time,
till I am blind
with the intimate sight
of the heights
the firewalking heart may reach
to bring back speech
and by the art of visionary rhyme
light another's rainbow climb.

I AM, ALWAYS

I AM, always,
center of a celestial circle,
always, active agent of
countless gathered wills.
Always, before me,
priest and high priestess
sit, strong antenna,
as the high and holy
Exquisites
lift my spirit into their love.

I call upon their power to assist
for I wish to bear witness,
offering no resistance,
neither to Adam nor Christ,
but simply bearing witness
to myself,
that this I do
may be the billowing silk
Spirit blows through.

OUR FUTURE SHAPES

Beneath the great eroded pillars of self-acceptance
powerful ancients gather in a sacred task:
to see our souls, like new,
resounding from our future shapes.
Locked away in ever-growing
circles of denial,
out there somewhere, hid away,
our future shapes,
their brightness, sunlight of another kind.
Only their sleep
reaching down into our deeds.
Only their sleep...

THE DREAM THAT LIGHTS ITS CANDLE FROM THE STORM

The wholeness we hide,
a weightless sorrow denied mass,
sits talking to me in secret.
It visits the Emperor's wig box,
stuffed with questions, and cries:
"O come away from here!
The air is thin and hollow,
its streets deserted.
Go and empty all your mirrors.
Listen without a face.
Take me to the silence yonder,
and I will gleam on every shore."

Cursed with the terminal problems
of a wrong image,
the wholeness we hide,
a weightless sorrow denied mass,
made criminal,
exiled without rights into shadow,
sits talking to me in secret,
while
in the high wardrobe of the gods,
twelve lambs, ballooning,
hold the pain of history in
for as long as they can manage.

BY THE LIGHT OF A DEATH SO SILENT

At the door where dark begins
those who dare drive beyond the blood
ascend toward the light.

Above the astral wail, the falling sky of Caesar,
a precious slant of energy welcomes workers home,
these marchers who move with ancient purpose,
who let themselves
resonate to a royal dream.

You and they climb the heavenly mist
to inquire at the gate of angels.

.To the guardian there, goddess with the overwhelming eyes,
you are fairer, more lovely than you have ever been.
Your soul appears as a child.
"You will go in with a new name," she decrees,
"New name writ in a language of light."

Through the golden archway you file, then on, to the wedding feast.

In the belly of the groom, a new purpose.
In the womb of the bride, a white altar.
Light and dark, made over into love.

.Beneath the cavernous gaze of the dove
singing hands weave one flesh of bone and star.
By the light of a death so silent
you hear angels winging round your heart,
you consent
to complete the climb of clay.

In the dark and empty tabernacle hole
of the goddess in us all
the blood roars its recovery,
stands barrel-chested, roaring,
as the four fire mysteries
echo back their phoenix roar,
and night receives another nova,
and soul sees at last with body's eyes.

Then the plan
to rescue from the sea-soaked shadows
every lost citizen of joy.
Multi-level therapies board the overnight train.
You find a seat, drift away to the clickety-clack,
while the forlorn whistle clears its throat
and the midnight modannas sing in their secret code:
"When things are being wrought beyond our present view,
there is a call, a drive, an urge to see it through."
And the clickety-clack clickety-clack drives the message deep
as the racing wheels wind through the mist
into the lands of sleep.

This I learned in a vision
when the endless stars came down to dance my dream
and your dream
and that of every moon-remembered son and daughter.

TO WAKE TO FEEL TO SEE

To wake!
To feel!
To see!
To be the light!
To be nothing
but the poetry of that light!
To sing of love
above the worldly lie!
To lay with Beauty!
To walk upon the waters of her name!

To not be the dark.
To trip over
something hairy in that dark.
To wind up
in the back row
of my own life,
nobody to hear
the minutes of my
last painful failure,
too ordinary
to be seen by worldly eyes.

To wail.
To weep.
To curse and rage
against the dark.
To wait.
To wail
and wait yet again.
To yield.
To own
I know nothing of that dark.
To court the dark.
To be nothing
but a portion of that dark.

To reclaim
from fear's clutching fist
the doll of all my days,
the ball of all my growth.

To teach its hairy shape
I am there to hold its hand.

.To walk around and not war against
the crystal-hoarding dragon
waiting to ignite my hate.

To sorrow
for the great mother-creature
crucified in all.

To slake her thirst
but heed her words:
I cannot help
till I am once again a child
bouncing on a straw-bale star,
no longer
a light-bearing indigo being
locked in a closet I cannot open.

To love the dark.
To sing the dark.
To learn to weave
one pure thought,
a cape by which to fly
to and from the dark:

"Love is
what gives the dark
a friendly face
and in that dark
my virgin birth
is taking place."

TINY FRAIL BODY

Tiny frail body
how poorly you suggest
windows of gold
bright with angel wings!
By your blood disguise
how you cheat my eyes
of precious treasure
you withhold!

Or do you twinkle
and does my weakened sight
rob you of your Godly might?
When I look and think
are there others
darkening my shutters
to make your splendour shrink
and will I ever know?

Tiny frail body
how poorly you suggest
God's golden ocean
where right above
faces
pressed against our sky
look on in love.

TO UNDERSTAND NIGHT

To understand night you must know
the language of a circle
the comma of a dream
the math of hidden meaning
the poetry between.