"The Sea Unchanged"

Another day down and done,
another day yet begun.
Golden hues of death, rebirth,
rise with the Herons like a spear
over a crystallized horizon-
furied flight raging westward.

A tortured oaken coastline emerges,
home country and safe harbor;
cold arms of the sea let go
to warm embraces of the one I call beloved.
Jagged jetties reach out, their lingering stone fingers
stroking the feet of the blithe lovers near shore;
blackened shapes against the burnt amber sky.

At night, the sea twinkles red
and green and the shore rises from the deep
in honey-colored lights of life,
static-electric and bright, the streets swimming
with jovial masses hand-clinging and swinging.

Theirs are carefree days and careless whispers
unknowing of the men toiling under savage tasks
their mistress bids them do, shirts sweat-soaked
and clinging unnecessarily to their skin-
savage hearts in a ravaged land
where lace graces clinging chimes on a dusty porch
and a young girl smiles under a dirt-smudged face.

Gleaming eyes of children teaming the water's edge
when the whistle of lady steel sails into harbor
outweigh the hulks rusting at the pier;
their orange corpses a dotted horizon
of cranes, mastheads, and wheelhouses,
their bilges filling with water and mold:
the smell of mildew penetrating the decks as
mold and ivy grow up the clapboards
that once teamed with life and now decadent rot
ever simmering, swirling in the acrid summer afternoon.

Behind cracked, rotting picket fences
mothers cling babies to their breasts.
The sea claims what it wants like a lustful heart
ever hungry for more, an appetite
insatiable and perillously wreckless,
heaving boats and their crew to the deep
on a sad wind-swept night where the sounds
of the buoy bell drown out screams from sunken hopes.

Gossamer moonlight slithers
over the trails of ghosts
sliding along the tidewaters
and currents, mournful and slow,
a sinking eddy that denies advance
and transfer, a sinking eddy that denies
a home of a father or brother or son...

All the while, church bells clang
from the bellfry; they ring out their song
ceaseless as the tides and unchanging.
Clanging, they herald deaths of those away;
unchanged, they clang faithful to worship,
unchanged, they announce new birth:
God, the sea, and the bells, unchanged.

Sept 2005

†

"Tracing the edges of shadows"

Fill a cardboard box with your life:
Come-agains and forget-me-nots,
silver souvenirs of sojourns long forgotten,
a scroll of memories rolled up and delivered
to the door of the past waiting to be rediscovered.

There is no moment, there is no now,
the Crepe Myrtle and Spanish Moss
comfort me while I sit in their shade,
sparse as it may be, and I recall a time
when the days were filled with squandered hours.

Whispered promises broken in time,
the promise of youth wagered in Faust's bargain,
sound empty when they are made-
hollow words never spoken
but assumed by every man.

Your wishes consume all that is around you,
making a mockery of the reckoning to come;
the crucible waits for all, nobility but for a few,
and when the skin withers, the beauty
of the poetry of death fades into sad regret.

February 2005

†

"Electro-Static Night Sweats"

In the still quiet breeze of the night
walking along the riverside,
wet rustle splashing,
black and white since waves come my way
in electrostatic frequencies that equal
inequality and sound holy, all holy,
fury and calm and I am
reflecting the surface, reflecting me:
a torrent of static, overheard conversations
in my head in a café on a Saturday
when the lights are dim and red.

Glowing globes of phosphors
swirling above and the dancing of commerce below
brings me to a leap of faith I can't make
(protestations from a former protestant
who's given up the ghost to find the monkey
bones buried in the dirt, an African mother,
my African mother, the origin of our species):
Absolam, Absolam, what smoldering cities we make with greed!

And what will it make of me?
silver pieces bought Jesus' body-
What price then for the soul?
I am clanging and empty as a tin drum
rattling inside, a hollow tune:

How can you accuse me of your guilty pleasures?

Jan 2005

†

"Fear Not the Dragon"

And I fear not the dragon,
fire-breathing hush whispers
smoldering warm 'neath the stars,
apollonian in a hearth and a moon

Ashen drift to twilight's bosom;
wayward go the heavens
yet still are we,
amongst the vastness,

clinging, fighting with swords
raised high, to a cause that goes
unheard, a clamorous sound of metal
hitting metal hitting metal
Demon cries in a daylight

charge across the chasm,
to an unknown fate we ride
with withering faith
in battlefields of woe,

rivers red with tears,
mothers waving arms
hysteric in their wails
The flower of youth impaled,

the blood of heroes and cowards
runs through the fields
of springtime bloom
The sun shining bright

after a good rain,
the tears for the departed
drying and moving on

Dec 2004