In the Tiergarten, Late October

Above the falling leaves stands

the angel of victory: something

great has been conquered

for the walkers in the park.

All is equal to my desire;

the trees ache with the color

of my heart. The ghosts of all

past summer suns are here, haunting;

here a chill wind blows just so

to sweeten the loneliness;

and here, like a warm body through

a curtain, I can feel my secret—

the one we have by existing and hide

in our existence, where it is safe

from every mind, angel’s or mine,

because it cannot be whispered.

The Oak

I like to sit beneath the oak

in autumn—there’s peace there,

with shade and shrunken leaves

and acorns dropping through the air.

But it’s the one unfallen yet

that keeps my peace profound,

the acorn that will crack my head

wanting this very ground.

The Races

It’s like this—at recess the bell,
us rummaging for bottle-caps
in teacher’s lounge recycling;
the rain has come, has wrecked
our gravel field and spilled
an ocean onto its southwest corner.
Spectators mill, a coliseum’s worth,
carrying water in ziplocks
to deepen gravity’s groove
for the races.
                        Taken seriously,
these things are great; we can race
bottle caps with the best of them,
all our hope small-packed upon the cap
rushing doomward into murk
not supposed to be there, really,
for it was we who stoppered the drain; 
we who won ourselves something better 
than genepool’s cruel game. 
                                              Ah!
and there’s my cap, over gravel 
dams and white-water, stuck 
behind a twig—O, I cannot, 
no, I cannot make a grave enough face.

Kleenex in the Toilet

The Kleenex has no loyalty.

We cling to our existence;

the Kleenex crosses over,

entering the foreign element

without hesitation,

never looking back.

Exactly how grace might walk

into its disintegration.

But suppose it were more like

a soldier dragged down in the mud,

stained by unwillingness?

There it goes,

sucked into the muck by its own porousness,

its frank defencelessness

against the infiltrating waters

that capture it from within.

Plunged and pressing deep,

a dry tip reaches up

like a hand –

and the eager weight of the stagnant pool

drags it under,

and I fear for my soul.

Wasted Time

i: past                                                                  ii: present

those bodyblind days                                                      blink, body’s eye

in fresh dust floating,                                                 blink away a petal of me,

motes in a mad eye,                                                 the masks that hide

new to the neighbourhood                                                 us from each other,

and rootless                                                   gorgeous motes of self

we wore ourselves out                                                separating

everywhere:                                                 brother from brother

we were childhood                                                 

and vast as play                                                 blink and 

                                                           wrestle with original sin,

cards, books, video games,                                                 enough

cares stored on shelves                                                 to stir my dust;

and days we never                                                 I want to see 

took a look:                                                 everything: 

we had selves now,                                                a sickness unto death, 

even eternity                                                       and what are we

had no power                                                 

to undo that                                        the hours,         

                                                                        the hours we wasted –

what freedom! death                                                        listen, my childhood friends!  

the only place we couldn’t go,                                       can be made unwaste –

our minds not mazed but                                   no time is gone              

amazed and not                                                   until time-glutted souls

by why but what:                                                      swell into flower

we spent our when                                                   and bodies mesmerized

right away, exactly                                             forget to be dust

when we wanted,                                              

and holes grew down                                     blink! blink or be caught                

like roots of void                                                behind

into our souls,                                                        a beautiful nothingness:

sucking the dust                                       it is more than time           

for its flower                                       that separates us

Birds on a Lawn

Birds guard

what cannot be coerced,
defend
by not knowing they defend.
Their high fortresses
withstand all thoughts,
even the worst:
the smallest things
always learn of destruction
first.

Knowing with wings
and beaks
exactly what they do,
birds have no need
to represent it, too.
What are thoughts but air
to see through?
And without mind
birds slurp worms off the lawn
and have only one back
to be crept up on.

Next to this, my consciousness 
is confusion,
my awareness the feeling
of having too many backs
turned, 
suns streaming in on all sides
of my mind
which a descending hawk
might use to force my eyes
to blink.

What am I guarding
when I think?

Evolution

a blindness
white as canvas
caverns and caverns
of eyes and patterns
blooming upward
through life’s
long long stem

(patter patter patter
go the gammas
on the windows
of matter)

things throw outward:
this is a flailing place,
all holes fill
with a liquid face,
a roared morphology
echoes in the cave,
and now life,
having gone upwards and downwards
and side to side and backwards,
has only inwards
left to go.

but truth has no crack,
no plant, no insect
on which to feed.
introspection
has no natural selection;
here, no strange shape
suctions stone
or breeds.
at last there is nothing,
nothing but yourself
to outcompete.

Postmodern Night

Last night made the fields heavy,

rolling vapor into water-beads

on the ghosted grass, a condensation 

of spectres. Nothing deadly.

It came with the dark’s slow slaughter;

now everything denser than itself with data,

burdened by over-knowing,

all the useless clarity and angles in water…

Ah, with words grow the weary;

transcendence, never more a burden

than now – and the postmodern search

for emptiness finds its next vessel for theory.

As the weight is brought down into dew,

the drinking is deepless for the waking;

all sip the shallow cups of the morning

and lap a thousand plateaus to make do.

To be at Home in the World…

The world its own doorway, wide as itself,

Welcomes the wanderer, a world away:

“Put your pack down, stay, stay,

My threshold comes to you today.”

Wait, wanderer, what welcome, this?

A home everywhere: nowhere;

Any may knock, any sleep there;

Entering, entering the air…

“You do not look but find the knob,

Wanderer: what more to do?

To live, to knock: my door follows you,

Your walking your walking through.”

Wait! Where the knob, where the bell?

An eternal search; torment, it meant,

As under the door, in inviting scent,

It emits your discontent. 

“How, I, more open? Any wider than me?

The message of that fragrance:

Having too much and wanting your presence,

I have become an entrance.”

Wait! The world a door, wide as itself?

Then your eyes must be wider than this!

Looking for it, all else must miss:

The world wants your eyes an abyss.

“The tongue never tasting cheek,

The eye blind to lids, air unfelt to trees…

Why should you have more sense than these

Of your life? I come with too much ease.”

Wait! Would you enter then, be “at home” –

A sixth sense, nothing other than unease…?

“Only the feeling most natural to me,

Where anything enters, needing no keys...”

Wait! From ease, unease? It, too much a home,

        Welcomes too silent and invisibly...

“But this, wanderer, the way of me:

I, the world, very gesture of letting be.”

What is a welcome one cannot flee,

O monstrous hospitality?

“Ah, again: that, not in me – in thee.”

Christmas Shopping

Our Christmas shopping must go on,

there's no stopping it; already at dawn

it's the sound of puking wallets

on the street, as purses yawn.

A gift card, a new gadget, a face lift…

Behind: those market hands, invisible and swift,

control their main commodity:

the definition of gift.

So we shop, in meager imitation,

praying gifts might still be new creation:

for perhaps grace is such, even these hands

could copy incarnation…

When the only true shopping was done

before the world was begun,

and all our gifts but therapy

for the wound of being so outdone.