play out

i was on the other side,
i was blind and silent as numbers.

i was an instrument of parachuting clouds,
i was a fugitive and an oath to the moon.

i was sown into the plaited earth,
i was boys running and assailing open fields.

i have sons whose purity heaved

with the wildness of the forest,

and who listened to the great
overtures of the Mother when she sang.

sons are a translation
of some ancient scripture,
written on the expanded sky
that rains down their truth.

i was a matter of fact,

i was vigilant and a fleeing disregard.

i was posed in a museum,

i was disordered and rending the flesh.

i was happiest in the silence of breathing,

i was pen to paper and a fragrance of joy.

i have daughters whose riddles menaced
me with their adoring contradictions,
and who heard from the lips
of oblivion lessons about joy.

daughters are a revolution
against some ancient tribe,
taking up arms with the fury of Athena,
building temples upon the hills of cynics.

i believed in the walking

and the waking of mornings,

of the summers of long grass

and the night sky of august.

i trusted in the wonder

and the wander of the soul,

of the change of autumn

and her tilt toward reclamation.

i was a child, living among

the length of wonderment that

stretched as far as i could see,

and i lived in the moment.

my children lead me

away, in a playful manner,

like the laughter caught

in the petals of flowers.

and i put words to the page,

imagining these things

are clear, to make sense of them,

but i think they'd rather i not

and to just play

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she doesn't like the rain through the window

she doesn't like the rain
through the window,
and a kiss is a prayer.

she doesn't like the reeling
gravity of a destroyed
passion either.

but she loves like a
whirling Eros,
and her hands are growling.

(this is a woman
who abandons the sea
for the beach rose after all.)

she says people are good
because they are and
they want to be,

but she doesn't like the rain
through the window,
and a prayer is a kiss.

she finds god wading in the
menace of the purest chaos,
and she still shades toward love.

she thinks too much
about the limbs of all
those fallen branches,

she thinks too much,
but she doesn't like how the
stars are just collapsed promises.

i don't know this
woman as much as
i say i do.

don't be fooled; men
menace good fortune
wherever they find it,

they sing their own praises, thinking
to do so is to fashion for themselves
something of an infinite well.

when in truth, we have no
original waters, only women
do, and it is made from their blood.

we met because it had to
be, and all the fine excuses
of life were scattered.

i should make allowances
for my own blind failings,
i should be easy on myself

and walk backwards for awhile,
to keep my head from looking for
something; to learn to breathe.

but
however
anyway

she is stained glass
in a hungry cathedral
wanting to be dishonest,

but she can't do it;
her womb is too much
of a sacred psalm,

because this is a woman;
and the laughter of her
child holds the real taste of blossoms,

not the words of the poet, or
the vows at the altar, or
the hands of the lover.

people change and
the camber of their hearts
is the shape of real love

that pierces through
the thunder in a
plunging field.

it is unscrupulous
in its designs toward
terrorizing the unfaithful.

it is made to muscle
out the conventions
of the lofty and the proud.

the women i know are not
hungry for you, my friend, but for
an audience with their own destinies.

for example...

this is a woman
who wears sequins
at the funeral of her history,

if only to announce
to the world that the rain through
the window is just another nuisance;

that she is on the verge of
reconnecting to something primal,
something eternally in touch;

that she embarked, she dived
in, she sojourned toward
something you don't understand.

i don't know this
woman as much as
i say i want to.

i try too hard, that's
really the problem,
my want is a toppled pier

that has surrendered to
her breaking waves, her
formidable tide.

but
however
anyway

she doesn't like the rain
through the window,
and her kiss is scriptural.

it is given and not taken,
it is a profuse offering,
profitable to those who understand

that she is equal to the task
of whatever rain that might
come through that window,

and that she needs you not.

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unglassed

i'd like to think they put
them here, in some
half-insouciant effort to be found
by a lover
who takes them,
in a fit of passion,
the way that happily-
ever-after tied things up
nicely for you-know-who.

the world has never worked that
way, really. it's filled
with the dead ends of
guilt and the traffic stops
of never-ending untidy
shame in which so many
of my friends have found
themselves drowning;
this universe has no driver.

but i'd like to think they put
them here, stained with
the imprint of heavy feet,
like a bronze chalk outline,
and that this lover discovers
them and goes about
their kingdom on a horse,
or at the very least a compact car
that they had to buy
second-hand,

with a bad odometer and
a slack tire;
and that they have only coins to
pay for gas and that they have a bad
tooth, and that they forget to call
their ailing mother, and
that they've been reduced by some
for being less-than and
that they're lost in a small-cloud way.

so that when they find
their lover, and slip on these
unglassed sandals with their
toe-prints and smelling like
ripe unreasonable failings,
she appreciates that they
came back anyway, despite the
world's caving-ins, and that she
knew it was for a just cause.

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all the bells that ring

all the bells that ring above the confounding swirl of this meager life are made from the dust of the innocent heart-core of the premiere stars. children, beholden to which life they illumine, - before their great course - are cast in this stock by the hands of some divine intervener force, and then released down onto the unsuspecting dim unbelievers. i have trust in fate who bows her head toward me on this cold planet, and bestows on me a kind of lighted resolve to always see love in frames of virtue that they so easily make when they breathe out Truth. i don't understand much of anything really, except the lovely dreams of my children, who have made a dance of life seem like a whisper. their arms receive me and i harmonize with joy in their offering, and to this father the bells peal through all darkness and call me to dance.

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