Posts Tagged ‘Fire’

You Started This Blog, Now Write

Posted: August 24, 2010 in Rant, Writing
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I can’t count the number of times I have exhorted myself to sit down and write on this damn blog. I sit in front of wonderful technology, with multiple screens, and everything that I need literally at my fingertips, and I can’t do it. As I age, I feel myself becoming more careful, more conservative. I think I have figured out part of it: now that I have a platform that is beyond scribbling in a spiral notebook, or sketching on the beach in an art pad; drawing on big sheets of paper while bored in class or even pecking away at a keyboard into AppleWorks, I am aware that I have an audience. And that’s frightening. I don’t want to let you all down.

And that, my friends, is the problem. This is MY blog, and — as Eminem has deftly reminded all of us — I’m not afraid. This is pretty simple to do: just write.

“Write, and be prolific / Not everything written is monolithic” ~Thee Froggacuda, 1988

That is the best two-line poem ever for Michael. And I wrote it. I have ignored this advice from the past me to the future me, and it is powerfully captured as a nine word reminder. I think everyone can benefit from this. It’s a simple distillation of my “press record” rant. Nike has made an entire multi-year campaign out of “just do it” that everyone loves because everyone needs to hear that repeatedly over their lifetimes.

I have a lot yet to be said. I am Thee Froggacuda. Release Teh Tadpoles!

Ho!

once again it's on

So here’s what I did, relatively present tense: I got a little inebriated, put on the new Chicane album “Giants”(reference: Middle Distance Runner), and reskinned my blog to give it a whole new appearance, even to me. After some WordPress admin tweaking to get the elements in the right places, I hit the button labeled “New Post”. And I sat in front of the screen daring myself to write something — anything — and publish it. Tonight.

I am angry with myself that I let the Kanji-Part-1 blog lay fallow in the Drafts folder for as long as I did. I was waiting for the Muse to strike me with inspiration and that’s not how she visits you or I: thou must seeketh out the opportunities, and if you have a fully functioning blog, just write for no reason, any reason, because you are writing for yourself.

That is the point of a personal blog — [insert legal-compliant disclaimer from professional life] — it’s to be able to write; not about whatever you want, but also not because you have an audience. I’m a Libra; there’s a balance to be struck. This gift of a new album from Nick Bracegirdle even has a beautiful song on it called “Where Do I Begin?” Synchronicity is serendipity. I am learning that restraint is not always care; however, baring my soul is not always as simple as it used to be. That’s why there are archives, and I will never regret being unemployed and casting around for a project important enough to deserve all of that free time, and entering all of those poems and stories and rants you’ll see on the left-hand side month-by-month, year-by-year. There’s some good stuff in there; I am committing to digging some of it back out and throwing it in my face again. Here, on the Virtual Lilypad; you can come along and read if you like, but it’s not for you. It’s for me. Because I can’t help but think that I am actually smart enough to code messages into my content for my future self. Maybe it’s a function of being on the bleeding edge of human evolution because I have ADHD and society and civilization have not caught up to how many threads my brain is processing at any given time.

literally -- burning love

literally: burning love. // Jamie Huffman

I am a single human being trying to make a difference with my life. Everyone struggles with this same thing. I write who I am because at an early age I was inspired by Jared D’nofrio to tear out the back of an old math notebook and try to write poetry. Shit, we were studying Byron, Shelley, Wordsworth, Pope, in school, and if he could do it; why not me? Well, Jared’s stuff was great, and I never thought I could equal that elegance…but I gave it a shot anyways. It was like drawing block letter names of girls I had crushes on and spending a whole science or math period at Correia Junior High School coloring them in uniquely with fluorescent hi-lighters. Y’know what? I just found that I was good at it.

DJing is a lot easier than writing. You get to express yourself with the beauty of other people’s interactions with their Muses. The problem is this: if you are good at something, don’t you owe it to yourself — and everyone else — to share it? That is why I have a drive to capture things in cages of ink and tape and 010010 and MP3. I think this is fundamentally the human condition; interaction is like breathing to me. I have just forgotten that I can target myself, and that I am my own primary audience.

I cannot depend on messages that I have coded myself in the past unless I make the effort to read them again; to listen to them again, to experience them again. And I certainly cannot pass any of my current wisdom on to myself in the future unless I produce content right now. This is the heroic circle of one’s life, Scar.

The Archangel Michael wields a sword. I’m not so good at the martial arts. I promised my ninja-to blade to my youngest godchild, anyways; Belén is going to be a better Samurai than her Unkle or her Father. But this Froggacuda character has a wicked tongue and sharp teeth, and I’ve been representing as Thee Froggacuda for almost 20 years now. Recognizing that you have a sticker that reads PROTAGONIST over the mirror that you never look at, finally you understand: this is the Muse trying to shake you free. The Muse is me. The problem is that I never look in that mirror: my mirror until now been everyone else except me. All of that is changing.

I am Thee Froggacuda. Ribbit; fuck you.

20-20

Posted: December 8, 2008 in Poetry, Rant, Writing
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I.
There was a woman
Who I loved with all my heart.
It’s the only way
I know how
to love.
The problem I have
With falling in love
Is that I just keep falling
And falling on through.
It’s a perpetual autumn;
Storming leaves of memories,
Possibilities,
Skeletal trees.
And turning my collar up
Against the cold of this world.
Holding my hands out
To the warmth of the fire
That we had kindled
To keep the darkness at bay.
Every time these things end
I look up from the glow
Of the smolder, the embers,
For the ignition of a smile,
That familiar, beloved synching
Eyes to eyes:
It’s just understood
We’ll revel in the work
To pile on more fuel
From our common woodpile.
But nobody is there
Across the coals from me;
I’ve fallen through
The bottleneck of the hourglass
Along with all these ashes.

II.
Songs get tied
Like complicated knots
Around my feelings;
They remind me of how
I used to think about forever.
Some are bright blossoms
Stolen from yards
On the way to your window
In the middle of the night
To kneel and present you
With a moonlit bouquet,
My Juliet.
Another is the crosshatching
Of spray painted poetry
Hanging in midair
Amongst the tree branches
Between the shadows
Of the stars that were ours;
Witchcraft and wizardry
For an unrelenting passion.
Tapestries of smoke
And of tie-dyed freedom;
Soft paws of haloed kittens,
The chocolate and the champagne
Of the once in a lifetime.
Threads on a magick loom
Synchronicity unparalleled,
Spiderwebs like a hammock,
An embrace as if I was coming home;
Touch burning like the fire of a faerie,
Or the resurrection of the phoenix,
Tracing sigils in the sky,
Re-ignition of belief
Like a firestarter
Or finding a soulmate.
I am haunted
By the breadth of my music
And the depth of my commitment.
The failure
of my eyesight.

III.
The carnage is absolute;
A battlefield strewn with my corpses,
Beer cans and shrieks and cigarette butts,
The best of intentions and
The stench of taking things for granted.
These raw wounds
I have sustained over my lifetime
Of loving how I should have been loved
Never seem to heal;
They just ooze and pulse
Making heartbeats painful;
A crazy accumulation of luggage
Like owning an airport carousel
Of baggage you can’t strip off.
It just grows with you,
Older and less attractive,
Smelling faintly of urine and gangrene
When you can’t bear
To perform the required surgery.
It hurts too much;
I’ll excise memories I want to keep
Along with the decaying flesh.
Retrospective or post-mortem;
It’s still the death of a relationship
That I thought would live forever
As if I had infinite chances,
Infinite quarters.

IV.
I was pinned to a mortarboard
Like a butterfly from a caterpillar,
When I had to eulogize my friend;
My brother, my partner-in-crime,
Someone who understood
By the merit of not being female
The depth of love and an enduring relationship.
I don’t ever want to do that again.
It is the same with love;
I know I can, and it will be better,
But the pain of losing someone to provoke that work
Is too much to accept;
Besides, who the fuck will do that for me?
The answer is as clear as hindsight:
20-20.
I listened to my voice echo hollow through a church
That he wouldn’t have appreciated
To the people who were left behind,
And became even more haunted.
I did my best to represent,
Tell tales, romanticize, believe
And I went home with ashes in my mouth
To cry, cry out, want to evaporate,
Disappear, erase myself from existing
Because I had lost something precious:
A true friend.
It’s a lot like losing your love
Because you have lost a friend.

V.
The light switch is off.
This is the eye of the storm for me.
Now I deal with the still shatter of leaves,
The cold of being alone,
And shoving my hands into the campfire.
There is no warmth.
This destroys the fabric of memories
That took deep commitment
And sweat equity;
Deeper resources than I had without you.
And I see them all retreat,
As if they never existed;
Vanish into the thin, thin air
That I breathe.
Flatlined.

VI.
To move along,
Because there is nothing to see here;
It’s a pretty penance,
My cross to bear;
One that gets weightier
The more years I carry forward,
This boulder I am pushing uphill.
It’s that lost luggage from the carousel;
It’s those old wounds from the battlefield;
It’s those lyrics of happier times
When I would write, compose, sing
Of how I loved being in love
And how I expected forever
But you only had right now to give.

VII.
Perspective is a function of wisdom,
Which is a byproduct of experience,
That is what happens when you live and die
Through these things.
Perhaps they build character;
Actually, they create defense mechanisms
To try to prevent this from happening again
And again.
Expectations collapse
And you lay bricks and mortar in the fortress
That you think will keep you safe
But not sound;
You all are quite persuasive.
Certainly isolated
In the aftermath
Of bequeathing your everything —
Heart, mind, soul —
To your everything
Around that campfire
And you look up and discover
That she is long gone.

Far Reaching Visions

Posted: December 20, 2002 in Poetry
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Inside, a glowing silver sliver
A secret, a blossom.
Hush now, stop grinning madly.
Cup it, feel it, close your eyes;
Potential beading like dew
On electric arms reaching.
Promises made to be kept
Keeping on, sparks flying,
We reforge the sword
With breath and sound,
Far reaching vision,
Laughter and love.
Wave aside the old firestorms.
Bless their sighs into heat mirages.
An invited return
To my rightful place
At the right hand of the Goddess.

Realized

Posted: October 18, 1995 in Poetry
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Three nights I have lain awake
Storming through half-sleep dreams
And possibilities, thoughts,
Mental magical carpets,
Half real, half realized;
Doors half opened and swinging
Smooth computers peripherally
Analyzing and verifying
Believing yet incredulous
Of the panoramic impossibility.
The stark lightning of imagination
Energized and rampantly naked;
Leaping obstacles with merry, nimble feet
Barely touching – gracing – the earth.
A sweeping wave of everything
Reconditioning, revitalized
Colorization by raw power
Of a reality as credible as anything,
Dreams of genie lamps opening
Construction paper flowers blooming
Water falling, cities lit by their own fires,
Shadows mocking their creators.
Stories so rich in texture
That you live them overnight,
Morning comes when it comes
With the snap of the blind
And a sense of weariness bone deep.
Aches from riding warhorses,
Twinges from old wounds,
Bruises and abrasions that quietly throb,
That you don’t remember receiving.
Nights pass in a variety of times
Lying awake, or so I think,
Chasing reflections in mirrors,
Tuning in to the colored snow
Falling inside my eyelids.

Hang On to the Rope

Posted: June 26, 1995 in Poetry
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I wish I could string and sell
These beads of sweat;
They keep dripping in my eyes
And leaping
From the tip of my nose.
I can’t stop pulling on this rope –
The mine car can’t slip any further
Down those tracks.
I don’t know why I took this job
But it’s a challenge
And I hurt in every bone.
I’ve found muscles I never knew I had.
They’re singing so they must be helping.
I know I am never going home again.
This firelight and the ring of the hammers
On steel bars punching through the rock,
They dance in the furrows of my limbs;
I’m drenched because my mind
Hasn’t grown into this wiry body.
Veins like gnarled ivy,
Tendons like Brazilian peppers’ roots,
Fingers and arms like acacia limbs.

Fire and Frogs and Falcons

Posted: June 3, 1995 in Poetry
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Oh how I wish I still had my voice
Full of fire and frogs and falcons,
Wisdom, water, and wedding songs.
Something is quenched within me now,
No time for me to find out how,
To prevent this erosion of my character.
Once upon a time I thought I’d never stop
I wrote until my hand would drop off
And the sun rose once again.
I am scared, I am frightened;
I am losing track of me
But I guess, since I have never been here
That at twenty three,
It’s called maturity.

Rioting Raindrops

Posted: March 12, 1995 in Poetry
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The rain came down
Like cartoon anvils,
Spending itself on the cement
In an assault on the town.

The parachute-less troops
Gathered in the low-lying spots
And took over the streets
In order to regroup.

Rioting raindrops,
Seething and churning,
Swallowing curbs and sidewalks
And the floors of a few shops.

En masse, they moved
Like a swarm of fluid ants,
Chewing up the asphault,
Around, under, and through.

They occupied the intersection
Several steps from my domicile;
A congregation of soldiers
Moshing in misdirection.

The storm drain was debris overrun
By the midnight attack,
Mouth buried in what was handy,
Gagged by the silver-headed ones.

They celebrated down the gutters,
Their comrades swept down from the hills,
Retreating, they left for the ocean
Until their cries became gutters.

Discontent and garbled threats
Of heavy grey clouds yet to come,
Of their shock troops, the hail.
Big drops, little drops; they’re all wet.

Promises of thunder, their drummer boys
Their standards of lightning
And the wind-demons who bear them;
This I hear in the storm’s noise.

I stood in the lee of my apartment
Water draining from my hat and jacket
I watched the fury of the rain banshees
With a certain amount of excitement.

I love the rain and the wind; all weather
Which drives people inside to read books.
They boil kettles and build fires –
An opportunity to be together.

But I like to be outside in the dark
Of wildness and wetness and the glory
When the streets are reclaimed by the Mardi Gras rain
And the world’s turned into an amusement park.

Remember This in Time

Posted: March 2, 1995 in Poetry
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I promise that someday
I will be faithful
To my journal again.
Another sacrifice
To the fires of my economy.
The poet-sap has dried,
Hardened to a cloudy yellow
But I guess beneath
This bark I’ve grown,
The blood still boils
And the words still run
Like antelopes or
Like a persistant brook.

Once Upon a Sky

Posted: December 20, 1994 in Poetry
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Once upon a sky,
I saw, imprinted: smoke
from the pretty bonfire
of each lie, lie, lie.
I saw this thread from afar,
black and hanging from God’s suit:
my hair stood on end from the heat;
it’s burning bright like a star.
The twin scratches at my insides,
carving words in my skin,
inciting organ against organ,
organizing rebellions within.

THIS BRIGHT LIGHT

Posted: December 7, 1994 in Poetry
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Ah, this bright light —
I was a closet Vampyre,
dancing on cardboard tombstones
with flexible skeletons
who beat chopsticks on
overturned Folger’s coffee cans
— it shrivels the flesh
and weakens the bones.
I’ve heard of the process of aging before,
from people older than I
(that was all that mattered back then),
but I opened the door
just by living this long;
it was a voluntary process
to keep myself “sane”.
My closet life still lives —
the dust and cobwebs are real,
cardboard and coffee cans lay around
— it’s a mess just like I left it.
I have little time to clean up,
much less to dust them off and play;
something I swore I’d never say.
I wished to conquer this aging
in this age.
I watched the best voices of
previous generations
wither and fade,
mature and become jaded
as either adults or escapists —
I wanted to outdo them all
by keeping busy
preserving those things
that people forgot to remember:
those things that go bump in the night
and lurk shiny red-eyed in the closet.
This bright light
— reality for those who think it so —
is the bread and butter of adulthood,
and it cannot be avoided
through ignorance or rebellion:
they just won’t go away.
This revelation comes with
the exposure to aging;
the fact that changed my whole game plan.
Closets, shadows, mysteries and skeletons
beating Folger’s coffee cans with chopsticks
are for children and lunatics:
people who aren’t grown up enough
to withstand the scrutiny
of this bright light.
I hold to my original wish —
I have remembered so far
you must bend like the willow
young grasshopper —
Seuss did it,
King does it;
to each his or her own closet.
Oil your hinges,
dust your skeletons,
tune your Folger’s coffee cans:
Magick is the marrow
that runs in those bones,
and still fires the eyes shiny red.

The Blessed Heart Sacred Moon Wanderlust Spelunking Club

Posted: November 7, 1994 in Poetry
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I am the sole member
of the The Blessed Heart Sacred Moon Wanderlust Spelunking Club
and I lead myself through the Scottish bogs
under a sky liberally sprinkled
with the Milky Way galaxy.

Wet shoes and grey spirits,
feather boa fog tendrils bathing my sock-tops,
no compass points me to my Holy Grail.

Two kittens accompany me
getting in my way and making me laugh aloud:
an unheard of sound in these waterlogged fens.

Hiding in the ferns, one black/white, one silver-grey,
amber eyes watching my pen dance in this damp campsite,
a smoky fire beating quiet drums
to wrestle back the velvet curtains of darkness.

I’m waking all night to watch over the dreams of Dawn;
her restfulness insures the beauty of the coming day.

Balancing Act

Posted: January 27, 1994 in Poetry
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When does it all come crashing down;
a sawed-through tree trunk,
an old building downtown —
this balancing act of teacups and champagne flutes,
china, crystal, candles,
coffee, coriander and cinnamon.
Sanity on low wattage wire
heating up in the house walls
threatening to start a fire
when the force of gravity falls.

The Cataclysm of the Mirror

Posted: November 17, 1993 in Poetry
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I’m looking at myself
in the mirror and wondering
who the fuck I am –
wire-rim glasses, two day old growth of beard;
cigarette dangling from my lower lip.
FUCKING POETRY – I’ve been gone so long,
writing to myself, watching
my pen bleed from word to word
across the page,
tasting every letter,
thinking every penstroke: the speed of poetry.
And fuck it if it’s not – it’s mine:
my thoughts, my wisdom, my reminders, and my beliefs.
Soon, the anger manifests in obscenity
and thinking of destruction and Godzilla,
not caring, not feeling anything but
pinpricks in my feet from stepping on rooftop antennae.
Flying like a bird, a beast, a leap
from a cliff, to die, to live, to believe
in myself and my vomit, my eyes,
my power to change myself, thus the world.
My wildfire magick of angels and cataclysm,
comedy, tragedy, hope, lightning flying
from fingertips and pen nibs.
It’s all the beauty of the plumbing behind the sink.

I Can’t Breathe

Posted: September 15, 1993 in Poetry
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why can’t I
just be another guy?
but I’m a person
with a snake-sharp tongue
and I’m a ripped flannel…
I shoot my mouth like a shotgun.
riddles and rhyming and rhythm,
not taken seriously enough to stay honest
just another number in the GTE phone list.
I lie and I lie and I lie
to convince you all
that the poet is just another human being;
that I am just another guy.

I thresh through these lines
like a dog wrapped in seaweed,
thrown with stones in the ocean:
I can’t breathe –
there’s all the smoke from the fires I’m lightning,
I’m telling the sheriff that I’m struck by lightning.
when does it all stop echoing ‘round in circles?
I think it’s just another dream.
I’m on a porch with a candle and a carpet;
there’s crickets all around
and I feel wonderful without the world dragging me down.
look, I see you don’t understand with a frown.

I can’t even repeat what I’ve said.
I can’t think of a poem I’ve written,
then read,
and thought that this is it, this is perfect!
I’ve even given up trying to rework it.
I don’t want to write for a living anymore
I feel like the homework that’s always lost to the dog
and I don’t remember whatever
I expected from myself anymore.
these fireworks of joy that I wished to paint the skies with
are nothing more than explosions
of white-winged moths from a log
that I’ve kicked walking alone in the woods.

An Ill-Made Candle

Posted: September 4, 1993 in Poetry
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you almost caught your room on fire
with an ill-made candle;
but forever with me is
the image I have when you explained
that you rushed it outside
burning your hands
naked and dripping from the bath
and dashed it to the ground.
all I came by to see
was a broken ceramic plate
and an enormous water stain
on the walkway,
and you, with a burnt thumb.

Black Jack

Posted: June 6, 1993 in Poetry
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I
and when the madness comes
she creeps around the corridors,
pausing to stomp on cats’ tails
pausing to drive in rusty nails
and slam subconscious doors
behind my eyes.

II
it would be easy one day
to fall down and stay,
not moving, wherever I was
and not respond to my rescuers;
to get placed away for refusing to speak
or move or do anything for myself.
so easy and tempting, just for a week.
I’m sure they’d find something to do with me.

III
I GO ON THIS VICIOUS CYCLE:
I love her forever.
Can I trust her?
I can trust her.
Will I love her forever?
I love her forever.
Can I trust her?
I can trust her.
Will I love her forever?
I GO ON THIS VICIOUS CYCLE.

IV
the air was full of birds,
these pigeons and seagullls
that I had disturbed
walking along the beach by myself
wondering if she’s all by herself.
but putting that aside
would we have walked on by
all of this wild-winged fuss
if it wasn’t just me but if it had been us?

V
keep on going until the pen runs out
and finally I might figure it out.
I’m pulling apart flowers for answers
and neither type of petal reassures
me of this thing I’d like to realize
is right or wrong or right before my eyes.
this pile of broken flowers, growing higher
is colored like a cheerful winter fire
but dead without the red that makes it gay
is my heart, ashen cold and worn away.

VI
I’m frozen in the moment
that I’ve jumped from a high place
trying for the water;
it’s not enough to miss the rocks.
frozen
in the
moment.
it is stealing over my face.
look closely. there’s the rocks.

VII
I made it to 21. like blackjack.

VIII
that Catholic skull that I dreamed of
at least once a year since I was seven or eight
was me, laughing at least once a year
that I was still stupidly here.

IX
the idea of breaking
so many hearts,
of making the many upset,
of shaking alll of these folks;
it seems like the ultimate cannonball
in the jacuzzi of life.

The Prince of Spring

Posted: May 31, 1993 in Poetry
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for all of my twenty years
I have had one healthy fear:
that Love will find me cold and dry
for being a Prince and held so high,
but my heart longs for fiery blood,
wide-open eyes and Love, true Love,
not courtships played to gain the hand
of the Princess with the tracts of land.
for Love that fountains from my soul
for the heart of a girl who’s honest, whole;
someone to Love me and someone to share
all of my fears with; someone to care.
for I am no better than any man.
a Prince or a Pauper, the same we stand
in God’s eyes you’re worthy or not,
it doesn’t matter, the gold you’ve got.
Love is life’s most precious thing,
even for me…
…the Prince of Spring!
for I am the Prince of Spring.
for I am the Prince of Spring.
for I am the Prince of Spring.

Imitation of the Goshin Traveller’s Spell

Posted: April 16, 1993 in Poetry
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“I invoke thee,
thou diamond fiery very majestic star”
from your bed of night-pillows
and molten stardust;
your gaze may guide my deerlike footsteps
through the overgrown gardens
of my lover’s distrust.

Untitled Poem #151

Posted: March 7, 1993 in Poetry
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there’s a shadow who lays on my windowsill
from the crow who sits on the telephone wires
and if I wasn’t home reading up your poetry
I’d be out in a forest setting fires.

Untitled Poem #147

Posted: February 11, 1993 in Poetry
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I can only know
that time will tell me when
I can be in love again –
meanwhile, what do I do?

love has struck me down
and lifts me higher and higher
each day is consumed in fire
but I’m not quite sure for who.

I am a poet – I dream
and emotions may come easily
but this flood is confusing me;
I’m not sure what is right.

this horrible uncertainty
an important indecision
melting myself with derision
but not shedding any light.

Sorcery

Posted: February 8, 1993 in Poetry
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I have never felt power like this:
the strength to bear people’s friendship
without the artifices of forging my emotions
like the signatures of the dead
on a current document.

I find I’m liked for who I am
not everything I claim to be or wish I was;
pretense has always dampened the fires
that I was wanting to stoke;
I find the call is honesty and enthusiasm.

As soon as I found myself wonderful,
I couldn’t wait to show it of by being so –
no longer shivering in trying to be magnificent
so that I seem wonderful, I see myself
wonderful so everything I do from
my clear mind, my open heart, is wonderful.

The recognition of emotions for what they are
no matter how much they hurt in their true forms:
guilt or anger; shame, sadness; pain and love.
is a truth I must learn to find.

Inkslinger

Posted: January 20, 1993 in Poetry
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my ink gleams wetly
before it dries;
my love burns fiercely
before it dies
or so it seems,
disappears to surface in flying dreams.
love long corridors of paisley flowers
love perfect fires and books for hours
space and time,
meter and rhyme,
still my ink flows on and across
a purple crayon for my thoughts
to bring them to life, to tally my fright,
they hold me and make me, blindfolded, a Knight.

A Short, Balding Dwarvish Bard

Posted: December 12, 1992 in Poetry
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It was a time of Dragon’s fire;
Twas then the souls of Kings were born
From darkness, fear of Demon’s ire
There rose a hope for those forlorn.
The simple men whose lives were led
With doors barred shut and fires high:
Those women who did fear to tread
After the dark had seized the sky:
These common folk, no sorc’rous king
Did bring the Magic to the World,
But not in Swords or Magic Rings,
But in the form of boys and girls,
Who, taught the strength of father’s might,
And told the lore of mother’s art,
Grew tall and strong against the night,
Grew wise and bold and good of heart.
This plaque which no one sees the same,
Is said to be a craft of Elves
To whom the tricks of Magic came
With ease; it is one of their spells.
Yet others call it Dwarvish make,
Their skill with metal’s not unknown,
But who had such the time to take
And sink this plaque in fireplace stone?
It took not Dwarf or Elf to cheer
The Hearth, the heart of every room,
It is the men and women here
Who saved us all from Demon’s doom.

Without Trying

Posted: February 14, 1992 in Poetry
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I
I can wish as hard as I want without trying.
Maybe it takes a nervous breakdown
To examine the croak of a frog.
A rich man tapes his hands to his sides
Drowning in treasures but refusing to decide
Which pearls he wants to wear for eyes.

II
To the grey lands to search for the sunken man,
Glowering in the shadow under a rock.
“Come in under the shadow of this red rock –
“I will show you fear in a handful of dust.”
Of ash, of bone, of moon, of stone;
Cadaverous, skin a dizzying kaleidoscope of veins.
I screamed, hands clenched to my eyes, alone,
Falling apart under that brittle stone.

III
pretending to have misplaced my watch,
I asked a current friend for the time.
she looked at me curiously, sadly,
then asked why I no longer rhyme;
walked away as I demanded an answer
from myself; I never saw her again.
time to find another friend.

IV
Sweating and dirty from working,
I keep forgetting to steal some of the diamonds
I’m mining for other people.
At home, I’ve got this dusty blowtorch
Right next to my aspiration to smelt the world.
Been a long time since I burned anything
On purpose. Last time it was my wings.
Pushing the dirt around on my face
With the same oily rag, I promise
Again to go on a picnic in a forest,
Then pause, shaking my head slowly
To get rid of an echo.

V
O black soil, heavy and rich, warm
With the fires of life, thick and moist
Under my nails, in my eyes and ears,
Filling my lungs with blood,
Burnishing my skull with her coppery breath,
Arms sunk to the shoulders in the forest earth;
Black earth goddess.

VI
A poem incarnate: thee, poet.
Vision, mind, thought, dreams,
Thinking in every sense of a word.

And a blackbird.

VII
I came forth with a handful of seashells
(to the froggy applause
of the people’s jaws
creaking in their mechanical sleep),
Following May, who’s going home
To dwell with her enigmatic stone.
Placing shells to wait on the sill
And for her to discover
Like a faucet-spray of dry flowers.
Walking on the sidewalk I’ve
Empty hands in my pockets,
Imagining how she’ll find them
Over and over.

VIII
Flying through the rain on a wind of strings,
He flew with the ease of a soul,
Tall and clear-eyed with violins in his hair.
I saw him from the shore
And waved him out to sea,
Rushing over the water’s open grave.

IX
The dreams,
they poured their hearts
out into the bowl of my fingers,
flesh and water and soggy stitches,
Lost and drowned
in the ashes of childhood,
the sorry sons-of-bitches.
I breathed into my palms,
Taking each by their tenebrous hands,
And throwing them into the darkened heavens:
stars like two flung shoe-fulls of sand.
Spinning around and around underneath,
Watching them swim, these stars, good-bye;
Constellations of the smiling faces
of my parents,
One on each half of the sky.

X
I ran through the stacks of cars
After him that flew away by the seat of his pants.
I, too, cannot answer the question:
“What is the grass?”
I can no longer remember.

Standing under a leprous moon,
In a field of strobed weeds,
In a circle of garish flowers
Bowing outwards,
Heads trembling in a sort of gleeful fear.
Looking at my arms, my hands,
my fingers,
The vegetation was purple, orange, yellow, green,
turned pale by the light of the stone in the sky
shown bone by the fire suffused in my eye.
The moon grinned, sunken in the dust of a scream.

Hoka Hey

Posted: November 5, 1991 in Poetry
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A candle
Burns
With a certain virtue:
Demon, saint
Hesitate;
Damnation speaks
I am
Revealed in
Flickering shadow
Heaven
Slender shining
Tear streaked
Patience beast
Dancing
To the sense
Of smell
Sing praise
To the arch
To the pedestal
Nod the fire
Dream the sleep
Of kings.

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