Nighttime Wonderings

I am so very, very tired...my eyes first opened at 5:00 this morning, and, one very long day later, it is now after midnight. A great part of my mind cries out for rest, but another part remains energized, calling my hand to the page as candles burn merrily in my gorgeous, silent living room...What is it that would drive my ink hence? What is it that would propel the drowning man to kick his ineffectual legs, or the falling woman to flail her arms in flight? Perhaps, even in the moments of sheerest desperation, there is unconscious hope, irrepressible as the tide, or wind, for salvation within the very act of demise itself. And what, after all, is the Artist’s life if not one prolonged suicide note? We shall all die, but some of us choose to make peace with reality, and leave something of ourselves to be known when we are gone...

Does existence ever wax, or is it condemned to wane for eternity? Is the nature of all things decline, or are there pinnacles and abysses, forced into the repetitive, obsessive beauty of a perfect sine wave? Or does each of us determine our own unique pattern?

Certainty, for all things, lies in their beginning and end, and so to ask such questions somewhere along the murky road of middle is to defy the nature of one’s present location. As such, I shall now cease, and consider other things.

Any suggestions?

For Pleasure

I lived and died for Pleasure,
Now she lives and dies for me.
My call is her obedience
That through her I only see.

How sweet her taste
How rich her sound
Upon my waiting skin!
Embrace, for she is willing
To teach of love and sin...

(Or so it is they call it,
Who refuse her blessing’s whim.)

She serves me;
How she kneels in haste
To see my wished command!
My lust returned in greedy match
Seduced are we, as one.

And so I walk with Pleasure
For hers is the worthy step
In death and life she follows me
And her footprints, soon, are gone.

Tao of Chuang Tzu

I dreamed of flight in butterflies
And then they dreamed of me.
The simple song each wing replied
My eyes, awake, yet see.

Each thought they bring is climbing grace
And covers tears with smile
A truth is light in darkest hate
That none may bargain once received.

And still they drift before my eyes
Though dream I not in day;
Mere fragments of perfection
That in chaos find ballet.

And so I smile, as in my dream,
For I know the gift I’ve freed:
I saw no butterflies in sleep;
It was they, awake, saw me.

My Sky is Lilac

My sky is lilac.
When all the world sees blue
I see its cousin, in love with crimson dreams.
My truth is voiced in whisper, silk, and dew
When to all others
Softness is a scream.

My friend is love
And love is more than God;
A hummingbird that licks its languorous way
From branch to eye.
Worship is sight
And the screen on heaven is a roving sigh
Of painted clouds, who drift
Lest instead they die.

The noise is an infant
Choking on sobs of its own birth
Which it never in choice condoned
But live it shall
And jabber proud and tall
Until it reaches sky
And claims a home.

Their life is ice
That melts away to blue
So freeze I shall,
For I see not as others do.

I Shed a Tear for Beauty

I shed a tear for Beauty
As a nightmare stained his brow
Supine he lay, in discontent
Known by those whose heart is spent
In defense of all else the world renounced.

A peace betrothed his sleeping tryst
With all the sky forsakes
Unto my heart, which blushed in song
To know each breath’s embrace.

I gazed in silent wonder’s lust
For an autumn’s golden glow
Until he stirred, and snow dust fell
To frost his tossed repose.

I knelt beside his ageless face
Whose raven brow and lash
Creased and fluttered with a sigh
To join the realm of man.

His stare met mine in glittered night
And saw my lowly dew
A dance, and he was standing,
So I rose in shaking whim
His hand of grace
But touched my face
And its tear o’erspilled again.

His somber strength I felt then smile
As all before was freed,
Then Beauty took me in his arms
And made sweet love to me.

A Word to the "Fairer" Sex...

Dig your own grave in the wet earth of febrile iniquity...borne of the sickness of your gangrenous claws, which clutch him as a flea-ridden rat crawls over a corpse in search of any last morsel of remaining sustenance...For that is all you are...a starving rodent in search of food, and your touch is death. I know not of your sharp face, nor your balding fur...I know only of my yellow-eyed feline instincts, and they tell me to loathe all that you are upon his grey flesh.

Speak, and his ears will shatter...appear, and his eyes will wince...love, and his heart will break...

How dare you love him...and reduce his supple glory to the rigor mortis of lost hope? How dare you make one so beautiful as he doubt the extent of his radiance? Would you but smother him in your own quest to breathe? Would you rend asunder the muscle that beats in his chest only to accuse him of doing so to yours? What is your will...that the mustang’s back be broken to wear a saddle? That the starling’s throat be coated with honey to prevent a song more lovely than yours? VAIN CREATURE, I ABHOR YOU...and though kill him you may try, it is only a matter of time before he does, too.

The Night

I walk in shadow, with hooded tree and veiled
Starlight, which sings sweet hymns between my step
And all the visions my sea has seen and sailed
Are banished in a will of recompense.
For what should eyes beseech when Sun decries
His love, the guileless Lady of the Night?
From her he turns a selfish, lordly face
And whispers nothings in the ear of Dawn
Who blushes, and the day thus carries on.
A plaintive sigh my throat shall therefore sing
Unto the Night, who is loved, at least, by me.