Blossoms

The flowers in your words
Are rhymed with pollen

Which gets all over me
As I read

It sticks in my hair
Infiltrates my clothing

I share it with those
Who rub up against me

Perhaps they will be pollinated
With your sentiments

Perhaps they will bring forth
Hybrid orchids of meaning

Connotative color swirls
With delicate petals

The nectar of verbal orchids
Attracts inquisitive hummingbirds

Who dip their bills
Into the raw juice of those minds

Rich fuel for their own mental flying

The Irony

As I read
I begin to indulge the old romance
That crazy old romance seizes on my mind
The idea, so affective

That thoughts have value
That ideas have longevity
And are seated concretely in mental space

The apparent proof of that conceit
Is ranged before me
Chartered knowledge etched in ink
Bound into volumes for the contemporary eye

The vast architecture of knowledge
Appears as the skyline of a distant city
Bright contrast against the void

And now that city appears lighted
At the head of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream
The pyramid incomplete
The eye
Life as the ordering principal
Complexity reaching forward from the brine
Reaching forward from feet of clay

Two Related Bodies

it is not
that humans have a history
a record of our momentum

but that humans want history
history is what is lacking in us
all other animals carry their ancestries
with them into this present moment

none of them needs a myth to explain
the separation of its personality from nature
none has forgotten
there is a moment created
one moment with eternal changes

exists
in spite
of time

the natural resonance
that orders our universe
only appears in time
colors resound within visible boundaries
octaves ring clear to the ear

the day plays evenly with the night
seasons pass and recur
the moon pulls and pushes on the earth
as if prodding the sleepy earth

heavenly bodies observe stellar relationships
the moon weighs heavily
on my mind

"The Voice of the Wolf" from The Firebird

The institution of Monogamy
Is the mark of a female dominated cultural state

It is the error of the generations
Allowing inferior males to pass on their traits
In which the state of man continually declines

Monogamy is impurity itself
It is the face of perversion

(every feminine institution
of a cultural state
appears as gentle and sweet
but under its cloak hides the cruel repercussion

But let us not forget that the Natural State
Has ended and the Cultural State begun
Because men became inadequate to their task
Stupefied by feminine love
Mercy stayed the noble hands of our ancestors
When violent acts were necessary)

It begins w/ Felicity
(The Firebird)
Riding Leviathan and taming him
Placing Reins upon him

The noble man arises
And he kills and he kills
But he cannot kill enough
Still the degraded hoards come forward
To their slaughter
Born in ignorance
Dumb to their own pain

(The language, the language
is divorced from their minds
They have not the words
Or have not the courage to use them)

And still they come forward
Begetting degradation upon degradation

In the Cultural State, War
(Which in the Natural State
Is fought one man against another)
Is both necessary and good
Exterminating poor men of breeding age
And all their would be descendants
Else we would be over run with poverty

In a beautiful cultural ceremony
The costumed Armies march upon each other
A most noble ritual suicide
With bravery and glory
Blessed with female tears
Their legacy canonized
With feminine sentimentality

Turkey Breast Pot Roast (unh!)

Ever see those packaged turkey breasts on the bone in the grocery store?
Here's what you can do!

1 packaged turkey breast (on the bone, on sale, about 6 pounds)
Chopped veggies-- Onion, Carrot, Turnip*, Garlic

Here's the Rub:

1/4 cup peanut oil (you might use olive oil)
1 tsp. Rosemary
1 tsp. Thyme
1 tsp. rubbed sage
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. course ground black pepper
2 tbsp parsley

Directions: Peel the veggies. Chop them into large pieces. Put them in bottom of crock pot. Use as many as will fit in your crock pot w/ the turkey. Combine all rub ingredients. Place turkey breast in crock pot. Brush rub evenly on all exposed surfaces. Cook on high for 4 hours (350 degrees). I served it with a side of mashed turnips. Instead of gravy, I used the drippings--but you could make gravy from the drippings.

*you could use rutabaga instead of turnips

My mom said this was the best meal she has had in years. I couldn't believe how good it was. Very economical and nutritious. It has really increased my confidence in the kitchen. I'm getting down right cocky in the kitchen. Some people just don't have it going on in the kitchen like I do.

The Spirits at the Pub of My Soul

Deep in my being there is a pub
Where every archetype is served
In the evening I make a visit
To get what I deserve

My emotions are invited
All my thoughts are entertained
Every ghoul has his own stool
And every chin is stained

The bartender is mysterious
Invisible you know
His whispers pour his drinks to me
They appear from empty holes.

Today my pub is populated
With ghostly clientele
As my band of spirits appears on stage
The crowd begins to swell

The band strikes its first chord with me
Pyramus and Thisbe start romancing
That Hindu couple Shiva and Kali
Begin their dirty dancing

The Grecian gods and goddesses
All sit round their steaming bath
And Milton’s Satan grimaces
As he drinks his cup of wrath

Even Michael the Archangel
Is caught up with all the rest
The spirits dance together
In a Dionysian fest

Only Satan maintains reason
And sits there in a stupor
His own minions dance around him
Chanting, “party pooper”

And when the music’s over
My drunken ghouls begin to boast
In a moment of silence I clear my throat
And raise a heartfelt toast:

“Here’s to every spirit
Both the living and the dead
And to all those spirit’s out there
Of whom I’ve never read

Wherever your destination
As you stumble through the night
I pray you make it safely
And before the morning light.”

You're black
And I almost didn't notice you
But then you turned your eyes toward me
And I knew that it was Larry on the table
You know...He knows
He's not supposed to be up there

Three Animal Poems

The New Squirrels

Did you notice
How the squirrels have changed?
The new squirrels are not happy
They are small and black and fearsome

The old squirrels were friendly and brown
But the new squirrels have circled
The brown ones away

Their beady black little eyes
Sparkle with orneriness and ill will

And they preach at me from their elevated pulpits
Scolding me with public pomp and posture
So fiery is their moral rhetoric
I cover my head in shame

Absurd little conservatives!
Casting down acorns of scorn upon me
Tails shaking with furious indignation


Raccoons

A trap for a raccoon can be fashioned
From a small hollow log
Five penny nails and a dime

The nails should be driven inward at angles
Their points make a small circle
With the shiny dime beneath

A raccoon’s paw slips between the nails
It grasps the shiny object but
Pointed nails prevent it from removing its fist

And how like a man is this funny animal?
Excruciating tactile curiosity!
It knows it will be caught
And yet it must possess what it has touched

You should see it when the trapper comes
Hopping around the hollow log
With its tiny fist pinned inside

What must enter its little mind
As the trapper approaches?


The Pigeon

The maimed pigeon
unable to achieve flight
circumnavigated me on the dirty sidewalk

It’s left wing broken
it could not but flap its right wing
and so it scooted around me in a circle
its beak scraping the cement

I seemed to be the focus of its rotation
standing alone with my feet together
as it disappeared on my left
and reappeared on my right hand

I must admit I pitied the hapless creature
hesitatingly, I lifted the heel of my right shoe
intending to crush its skull
and end its pain

Just then it looked up at me
with its calcium eye into my face
and shouted coarsely at me
in unmistakable German

“Ach!” it said

Unfortunately I do not speak German
but the glint in its eye
communicated not fear but rage

I understood only that it did not pity itself
and also that its pain was not considerable to me

I did not pity the bird
but my own discomfort at the sight of it

Moments later the bus arrived

Rationalism

There is no such thing as simultaneity
If events are displaced in space
Then they must be displaced in space/time
But simultaneity is imagined within perception

The big bang occurs at conception
Space opens outward internalizing a universe
And time is simply a measure of our displacement
From that moment

We are all drifting away from each other
Our heavenly bodies, our personalities
Apparently, the universe will become a cold
And remote place where nothing coheres.

But behind this world of sense
And substances to be experienced
Lies reality
It is not a spiritual reality
It is not experiential or psychological

It is mechanical
It is subject to the rigorous laws of mathematics

It is a blind and deaf place
Where myriad numbers multiply
The big numbers eating the little ones

Our living bodies express the coiled chemical
It combines and recombines
And it appears that this sensual world
Is only a product of those mechanics

And beauty itself appears as a trick of the senses
A routine, A flattery of specious breasts
And lilting voices

Toward a Philosophy of Romance

Toward a Philosophy of Romance

What do they mean when they say
You can't put a value on human life?
The bear that is chasing you through the woods
Certainly does put a value on your life.

How humiliating that situation is
When a person's flesh is of higher value
Than that which the flesh sustains

The soldier marching into the meat grinder
The prostitute standing on the corner
Both understand their flesh value
They understand the material and economic necessity
Which has placed them in their situations

But while you are running from that bear
Who is chasing you through the woods
Consider what it is that is compelling you onward
Away from the bear that is time
And the surety that he will run you down

Its this sentimentality which inspires all action
And on which all value is based

2.

What is wrong with 2 + 2 = 5?
The terms are well defined
There can be no confusion
In this sense it is just as good as 2 + 2 = 4

But 2 + 2 = 5 is an incongruity
And that's really what we don't like about it
Its falsehood

We prefer our mathematical statements to be congruous
Our judgment against 2 + 2 = 5 is an aesthetic one
This aesthetic is seemingly universal
It is easily taught and well understood by children
Perhaps the study and practice of mathematics
Would be impossible without it

The undertaking of science would be a fraud
Without an aesthetic preference for the truth

Idealism

Beneath everything there is a drummer
Who has been drumming very slowly

The Tabla has been dictated
Living performers interpret the fatal command
Resistless amplifications
Subliminal reiterations
Frogs blurting out in fractal fragments of it
Birds hymning it

Matter rises animated before it
Compelled to dance vigorously
Mimicking its symmetry

The Dictator of Resonance
Whose force leveled Jericho
By the arrangement of his arms
Will sound the seventh trumpet

The attention will be called
Into the highest chakara

For now the body [churns under]
Gigantic molecules
Producing fierce flame within

The course bodily energy
A consuming red flame

The cumbersome molecules
Must be digested with torrential mathematics
Burning too slow and hot
To attain a higher color

The Emotive mechanism
Has a measured rate
Vibrating in minute orbits
Churning gear ratios produce the flame
Creating orbital resonance with numeric frequency
Associating colors by sympathize vibration

Entire regions of pitch buzz within us
Consonance and dissonance are physical terms
They are emotional terms
The planets resonate in orbital vibrations
Octaves below human sense
Worlds away from color and sound
And yet ordered in the physical family

And beneath everything there is a drummer
Who is drumming very slowly with his hands
He projects an interested yet detached smile
He is deeply satisfied and patient