Drop Out

The nefarious you, the ogred they:
Quarantine that vile mechanical creation,
Isolate it unto silence and coarse mud -
Away from my sullied soul.

Your unadorned cubicle, their musty cell,

This is not my home,
this is not my desire.
It is not my noetic clochan of meditation and salvation.

I have left the vulgar race behind,
Jumped off the unsteady ladder,
Bailed from this careening bus.

I don’t want your life,

Your expectations,
Your thumbs.

 

I‘ve chased money and it gets further,

I’ve chased success and it drops behind the racing horizon.

I’ve never walked toward joy purely.

 

So now I’m dropping out.

I‘ve had it with your denigrations,

With the flesh failures.

 

I shall be seen moving on the streets

And in the communities,

But I am gone.  

Seen, yet removed.

Industrious, yet returned to high purpose.

 

Raised to the intended new life,

No longer begging to be the rich man.

Appearing sick to festered eyes,

But reclaiming the agricultural spirituality.

 

Where do our expectations from from? With in? With out?

Who do they serve?

Should they remain?

They are found in the clay of creation.

And my freedom turns toward digging for truth.

 

There is recoverable freedom somewhere.  

It is the substance of being of human.  

And it can not be imparted from the inhuman.

My center, my joy, my heart’s true desire.

Three Wisps

Three wisps of clouds travel the hazy heavens.  

The dome of the sky containing the cool of the day 

for a bit longer this morning. 

The sparrow has left the nest for his rounds. 

The mouse is off on some errand. 

This voyeurism is made under shade, 

on a porch, 

in a sorta comfy chair.

The suburban wildlife is wandering,

as the derelict house stands here.  

Slowly sinking; slowly yellow to greening. 

The cedar leans to threaten with inevitability 

Of a cleansing crash from a supersubstantial sabine. 

 

There is a night shade to this moment. 

Crickets keep their evening routine within shadows. 

The coolness of the day dismissive of the intruding sun.

 

Three wisps.  

The dome of creation containing all that can be. 

The cedar portending all that will be. 

And I, in an alley, flaccidly placidly watching.

 

Endurance Retold

I gave you a song about those two trees over there.

Surviving just beyond their precarious adolescence,

Soaring to see beyond our crumbling buildings. 

And I told you a limb had splintered on one tree

While the other grew strong and proud.

I told you that I stood there and watched it happen. 

Though I did not tell you the rest. 

Restrained by the form, I was short of time

To tell you about the moments I spent watching.

Moments, and perhaps even hours -

Time spent on important matters of soul. 

Hands on my hips and I surveyed nature. 

(Nature is often my poetic subject, and by that I am most surprised). 

Looking to juice meaning from the mundane. 

I stepped out of my shelter and breathed the succulent air. 

Those two oaks opening the leaves of their pages 

And unraveling timeless theology. 

I read the icons to the ceiling of their vaunted vault.

The vengeful sky roiled with porphyric percolations. 

Their dark bloated billows eviscerated themselves

And pummeled the earth with sheets of damaging and deifying water. 

I stood motionless, planted as the trees,

A reader of their lessons and revelations. 

Washed by the deluge and ignorant of the thunder crash,

I planted myself in obedience to the bucolic cathedrals’ example. 

The width and breadth of the storm hurtled west to east

Though I stayed in my place to see what would be. 

Remaining steadfast until the shower ceased, I spied a new world out there. 

The world had the two oaks as their regnant lords. 

Under their protective span remains (even now) a bistro table. 

One chair remains as it was before the winds. 

The other toppled on its back with no agency of its own. 

And my time of contemplation was completed. 

Returning to the menial tasks of occupation

The second chair remains defeated for another contemplative surviving another storm.  

Endurance

Two oaks rooted deeply in a green field
In a countryside a mere mile from you. 
I approach their ancient stand, my needs sealed. 
And the blanketed sky yields its blue hue.

Motionless by the oaks waiting for change. 

Dry air cedes the world to the droplets massed.
And I the witness planting pedals upon the range
The storm washes me, I stay, 'til ire past.

For the great length of the divine drenching, 
I remain still in that place while the rage raged.
Tranquility in my heart enduring
Each storm fails to uproot while life goes aged. 

And one oak limb splintered and fell to earth. 
The other nourished, adding to its girth. 

Love is Essential

Loving is essence and essential.

Yet who can maintain it for their mortal dash?

To love is to give 

And to give is to sacrifice.

Love and life will require it all.

Your essence dashed upon the rocks.

Your life scrubbed raw. 

All that is built,

All that is gained,

All that serves,

Shall be required of you at the dread tribunal

Stripping you of pride and glory.

O man, it is not yours to take to your cave.

To give and to love for the dash is the command.

And life’s failure is assured -

As much as the yearly cracking of crooked manacles

Maniacally parades through the shortened days.

To love is to die.

To die is to be stripped.

To be stripped is to be freed so Janus may return.

O man, O people, can you love?

Can you love for your narrowly chiseled moment?

The granite void upon which we hang

It is failure.

To fail in gain is to sacrifice to love.