Spring 4-16-06

Raise your flowery head
up from the damp earth
stretch your chirping bones
up to the full moon
all the rivers are rushing to meet
your beating heart
all the children of Adam
are waking to your throaty chorus
rain over rain weaves
a carpet of happiness
and the youngest stars
stare over your body with
wonder and amazement
we have thrown back the blanket
of winter's bones
and fumbling for the light switch
have accidentally turned on the sun
What joy!

may 9 2008

We run from our defects
towards your Perfection
covered in the dust of sin
from the situation we've
put ourselves in
squandering our value
heedless of the suffering we cause
enshrouded in the shadows
of self delusion
victims of spiritual diffusion
O Allah transform these flaws
in the mirror of your Prophet's splendor
bless him in accordance to Your Grandeur
and praise him in accordance to Your Measure
and grant us the benefit of Your Pleasure
and reward us from the endlessness of Your Treasures

We run from the despised to your Beloved
we hunger and thirst give us Satisfaction
we are empty shells fill us with Glory!
annihilate our disobedience
sustain us with obedience
pen success in the preface and appendix of our story
and translate the rest
from what is worst to what is best
grant my waking eyes with the mercy reserved for the elect
and reanimate this heart of death
with the undying drink
the unlimited breath
scented with paradise
of creations best
and i will stand
and be fearless

hesperian maneuvers

white cherry blossoms appear
a motor, a gear has turned
spring lifts its sleep bones
puffs of white flowers delicately
taste the vanishing tang of winter's steel
diminutive white petals
stick to the ground
living organisms plug gently
the cat song the leaf's stir
the open kitchen windows
the neighbor with her cigarette
the mosque's open door
the bone dry umbrella
the thick pliant grass
bare feet upon a cool floor
o guardian of spring's swooning dance
light my way along this
wayward boulevard

subluminary

we were always told love was an ideal
but love
love shits and pukes
love falls asleep
love takes tylenol
love snores
love pisses on you
love laughs when you stand up
with something stuck to your ass
love gets bad grades occasionally
love tells you,"You suck"
love thinks you're stupid
love blames you when you waste money
love wishes you would just Be A Man!
love tells you your breath stinks
love has conditions
love has caught you masturbating
love is sneaky
love wakes up constantly at night
when you wish it would just...

love was, is, the stars looking down on you
from heaven

may 25 2010

check breaths, plumb depths, heave chests,
treble clefs
down and down we go
no applause to our private soundtrack
just a lonely instrument
the rain
whispering whispers
the mountain is my backpack
the sky is my pocket
the road my belt
the throttle, my emptiness
i know this life is the truth
because i wish it was a dream
keep on moving
don't stop
never stop,
never ever stop

october 11 2010

masquerade decade
laconic meander
inches from the median
candor never was my strong suit
preferring to encode
the brush strokes of my
masterpiece in the moonlight
on your cheek at night
while on the pillow next to me
stars encased in melody
circle round the hemispheres
raining down their alchemy
perfecting my elusive dreams
before stealing them again
"i love you" hides behind
the shadow on the wall
morning fades till brightness
plays butterfly and babies wake
tattooed where no one can see
hearts shoot their cannon balls
hidden there's where i'll be

september 3 2010 morning

the stars dance
in the daylight hours
headlights emerge from the sun
in the rear-view mirror
and ahead the fog and shadows
swallow up the road
happiness and music
call loudly into my brain
between headphones
in the sunrise of a friday morning
coming up on a road
with a quiet beginning
and a lazy end
from manteca to oakland
and back again
into the open arms of
my best and only friend
and the warm and stinky hair
of angels

september 3 2010

beauty poised
creation stirs
younger days climb down the mountain of memories
perfectly fragile
invincible and alive
the war cry is reduced to a whisper
by the fury in her eyes
and the ghosts of what may
have happened in by gone
hungry years
collapse silently
in the graveyard of the present
beauty poised for a moment
soon to leave
too soon to leave

december 7 2009

i walked down a familiar street
and on the doors i once knew
the same numbers stared back at me
though the doors themselves had changed
and the walls once blue and brick and red
were now a different hue
i didn't think such things could last
back then i didn't care and my love
could last the time it took to kiss
between bites of an ice cream sandwich
i was persistent as stepped on gum
on a hot summer day
and i stuck around like ancient tattoos
obvious but impossible to decipher
until you made them dance
everywhere the buildings are the same
when seen from the windows of my car
as if i could walk the way i once
did with my chest laid bare
and the sun's blade cut me to the bone
and i longed for such mysteries
as moan deep beyond the gulls and
the gorge hissed and broken over
rocks nicked and cobbled under
reed and river grass sung out
like the frozen scream of stars
as they expire in the pitch black
of wilderness midnight
tamely i lay back and die
in my reclining car seat
asking the Almighty for a
heart to feel such melancholy
joy again

november 23 2009

basket weave basket weave
the cats inside the caster's grieve
the lickle lights upon the dancer's sleeve
limber wil-o-wisps kilowatt danders bleed
and all the local yokels yell ciao bella!
waist deep in the cranberry bog
feet tickled by ancient wood cabinets
and scalps perhaps of paternal heritage
long mummified
o whither to turn our withering hearts?
the skip a beat and launch a fleet
helen-esque of troy not keller
neither beowulf nor old yeller
clandestinely uncharted like
virginal deltas puring forth
rivers of unadulterated pangaeaic purity
woe to the ox bows of disgruntled hypocrisy
and approach of middle-aged lies
woe to the silt and sediment of entropy
impossible to dislodge as funnel cake
from the glutton's mandibles
and so disband this disarray
and lump yourself into the clay mountain
into this face
eventually,
even the stars will set

november 21 2009

clandestine harbingers clustered like grapes
hold hands in the meadow
surrounded by apes
licorice moonbeams
with katana like hilts
clash against my desires
like plaid on kilts
umbilical cords dangle
twice on the wire fray
Chestershire smile double dutch
suma cum loudly
against the burnt magenta
and now here i am
two atoms collide in the accelerator
forming a gravity rainbow
if it once was love
now, it's something else

november 13 2009

"it was a fine idea at the time.  now it's a brilliant mistake" elvis costello

it's friday the 13th sitting in my car beneath the glen oaks carport
the space is #280 and there's a millionaire somewhere with a million such spaces belonging to him
where poor poets dream their dreams in ink and paper on borrowed time and beyond him
a billionaire that owns his million dollar space and so on and so forth until we reach
the Owner of all things; and my pockets are empty and my heart is an empty bottle
filled with the memories of all the dreams i once dreamed and although the hope persists it's been
replaced with a wistfulness that the decisions i made perhaps could have been weighed
more carefully.  O the dreams, God would that I could have sprouted wings to reach you
but nothing more than a dreamer have i been.  and lets be honest a dreamer must wake up
eventually and the desire that remains is that the truth will be better to face
than the dream of truth i once had when i was young and believed the truth
could be had by one such as me

november 10 2009

cigarette smoke on the night-time street
barely a whisper and the coffee is sweet
shoulders sag low from the worrying weight
i stare at my feet and look up at the light
the palms' shadow tufts barely sway in the air
i exhale and swallow,

put it in God's Hand and head back home
get back with family and away from alone

november 9 2009

food and thought form a knot in my chest
i ate too much middle eastern food at the free buffet
lady smokes a cigarette and stands up
nothing left of her perspective there
where she sat
but the lake and the building so stoic
make us seem frivolous in that oakland kind of way
where people's expensive clothes look
intentionally worn out
as i cross the street the seconds
tick away so quickly
it wasn't so hard to reach the other side
the last time i tried
up on the 25th floor my colleagues
are waiting and pretending to get
something written down
that proves we've used our time
oh we've used our time alright
we're falling apart within ourselves
or dissipating