Monthly Archives: August 2016

The world is known through sense and wit

Before there was the highway there were trains

The greatest mystery of pomegranates

Lost dogs, lost dogs, they don’t know how to go on
For what’s use of dogs alone upon the boulevard
Perhaps upon a time they were wolves in packs, strong
Imagine their surprise to be alone, to stand it hard

I knew a woman once so lost in debt and pain
She stepped into a sidewalk, raised a thumb and left
She said it was her calling to travel and abstain
From all the futures all her debt was built to heft

Abandoned ones, they are too heartbroken to why discern
They walk the streets and forests to return what’s lost
Aged five years in five months, her skin was burned
Leave out a bowl of clean, safe water, and the cost

of it all was counted against all abandonments
Walk tough from the houses, set loose all the hounds

We will all die; before we do, let’s eat
and act like we belong together at
the table in the restaurant, we seem to’ve sat
among a crowd of strangers, while the seat
was kept unsat upon for only us, so dine
on every morsel that arrives from the back
And drink all the wine ’til we’ve emptied the rack
We will all die; before we do, recline
into the moonlight, capture meanbeams, laughing
at the hideous faces that look down from on high
The squinting of stars, the clouds chafing
Wait for the sunrise at least once on a beach, sigh
waves, dance to their sigh, stay awake, baffling
all reason, together tonight, for we will all die.

I imagine brains are malleable things that grow

…and how I suffer, Lord? You say I do
not know the meaning of the term
My belly full, my bed so soft, I go
to doctors when I’m hurt.
                                         I squirm
inside my jaw, my neurons twist, my heart
beats black and feels like void, but no
I do not suffer. It is passing, merely part
Of what we mean to make our soul Your boat
And contemplate the mysteries You make
Of what we’re told to want in life
And what we’re told that it will take
And how these twins are liars, laughing strife
And so, I do not think I feel much pain
It’s only summer storms, some mud, wet stains

For days it rained, the dragon flower pushed
out from the vine, a swelling dress of feathers
Fire tinged the edges, red and yellow, better
watch it grow, the bloom will burst all rushed.
It only sings an evening, bursting tresses
Scenting out a perfume for the night moths
The long tongues of petal, stamen, wroth
at us for daring dragon blooms with our caresses
The fleeting beauty of the dragon, one night
It sinks and rots away and swells the egg

The mayflies come in spring and fly three nights
They spent so much of life trapped dirt and beg
To swim into the sky to chase the light
And fall a burned out husk, a shell, a peg

How strange it must be to be a citrus tree
So far from the mountains of Korea and China
Where they say the species came to be
The trees don’t hold to a mecca or medina
They don’t pass stories down, face east
And remember the hills, the community,
There are no immigrant stories, no beasts
That haunt their mythologies, just seeds
That know enough to grow, they grip the ground
And wherever they land, they lack familiars
The song of the flower, the roots spreading mounds
All known companions sought, unfound, no conciliars
No single prophet risen to speak of mountains
lost trees awake in orchard rows like muted islands

The Word of God is silence, can you hear it?