Being Under and Down

Knew that sensation of being under and down

Shedding light skin rubbed smudged bunching dull edges

Infinitude left in the moment carries right right the way down

Inner thighs the bruised breath the head rests near the bevel

Undone beneath brow ridge the eye suns in the sundown

Cast arcs reaching far past the cave where heart gauges

Thumps fear beats the loudest the darkest is down

Prise prison til lengthen the sentence lies down

Narrow scent sent long long hallways serious sound

Check echoes of memory the trail follows the ground down

Shoulders relay it follows rolling train of the serpentine spine

Phantom arms yearn for knowledge from every ledge down

No hips hold such blood vesselled in delicate harbour

Sorrow shifts levels tails ripples in destinies down

Marrow and morrow and endless days laying down

Subterranean terrors near carefully sharpened sense

Eyes are streaming dreams in the darkened way down

Shutters of shadows flashing light waves listing in rhymes

Borrowed burrowed furrowed the body smoothes it down

The groove grows the road ploughs rows tossed in dust

Childhead turns in undertows mid time laid down

30 - 11 - 10

Rest My Tired Soul

Rest, my tired soul
At the foot of this falling water.
See the wide arms of softened rock
Woven again into moss and bush
Welcome my small body on this opposite bank.

Hush, my climbing thoughts.
Let the rustle and the lisp of lacy water
Brush my mind away, and listen
For the gulp and the swallow under this
Where bass notes on rocky chambers play.

Sing, my worn-out senses.
See the beak of blackbird dipping
And the scuttling, skipping of his feet
Take a rising path through leaves and moss
All the way up this wet-soaked bank.

Feel, my frozen clay of skin.
Count the waves of ripples swaying
Folding the light towards my feet
The sweep of breeze and green fronds nodding
Yes, I’m related to this scene.

Pause, my moving life.
Study the constancy of this waterfall
The left, the right, the middle paths white
Of milk of Mother Nature’s dream
Casting small boats of fleck and bubble before me.

Warm, my tired heart and mind.
This course of life-renewing kindness
Is written within me too, my body’s tides
Of falling and rising waves of energy
Are held by earth and stream and sun.

19 – 11 – 2010

Talk of Such Things

Talk of things where one holds one’s breath.
Walls of citadels dusty with the desert’s wrath.
Face of fear, and death is stalking the streets.
I cover my heart now aware it is heaving red meat.

Night is swarming with locusts and lies.
All appearances wear a disguise.
In darkened doorway does my body give in,
Disappear in my chest and grow thin.

Eyelids shade like a camel’s wisdom.
I ride on the storm from my fabulous prison.
A troubled genii in a bottle’s throttled torment.
But the blood clutches the feet on the pavement.

The singular eye turns a gurney of gyres.
Golgotha is its claim and desire.
What witness am I that I’m caught in this web
While the light of the world rose into red?

The wash over me clears my mind of illusion.
Such imaginal memories seem not a delusion.
Wouldst my heart drip with red and the light lift my lungs.
Wouldst my breath give away and such speech light my tongue.

Meditation On A Photo Of Red Cloud

Grace falls from heaven.
This healing grief.
My throat catches.
I cannot express the way
This crosses my heart.
The suffering that bleeds
Into the plains.
The rivulets that run into the earth.
They are channels
Like the grooves of my forehead.
From the diamond centre
I am pierced like an arrow to the depths of me.
What has happened to my people?


17 -3 - 96

Face

the eyes looked with equal regard.
the smile knew to whom it belonged.
the nose loved to slope like the fresh-fallen snow.
the sinuses inside made a rorschach of light-filled cavities
filled with the aroma of rose.

the eyebrows pondered gentle distinctions.
the eyelashes surfed on the wind.
the teeth took their place in white ranks four apace.
the tongue breathed and swum under the palatial roof hung
with ribbons of rouge-coloured banners.

the cheekbones were hands holding clay.
the temple touched soft clouds within.
the brow fell like cotton-cloth hung for a movie.
the eyeballs now knew they were orphans and only-childs
but for each other adopted at birth.

the ears whispered secrets in shells.
the hairline drew a scribble of mane.
the jawline swooped down to the rock-rolling sea.
the windpipe was a sand-dune sculpted at the base of the edifice
face of a pharoah under the moon.


2006

Body

The shell of your toenail.
The delta of your toes.
The plinth of the wedge of your foot.
The Doric columns of your ankles.
The catamaran prows of your shins.
The gunstocks of the muscles of your calves.
The armourplate shields of your kneecaps.
The pipeline bridges of your lap.
The concrete jetties of your thighs.
The curving balustrades of your buttocks.
The scarab wingplates of your haunches.
The balcony edges of your hips.
The plunging neckline of your pubic hair.
The underground train of your penis.
The mountaintop meadow of your stomach.
The glowworm grotto of your ribcage.
The ceremonial blade of your sternum.
The dark-rimmed sunglasses of your chest.
The snow-capped ridges of your shoulders.
The melting icicles of your arms.
The rudders of your elbows.
The leather drinking bladders of your forearms.
The bookends of your wrists.
The dovewings of your fingers.
The hotplates of your palms.
The metronome of your clavicles.
The flowervase of your throat.
The treetrunk of your sturdy neck.
The footpedal of your jaw.
The double sofa of your mouth.
The handmower of your nose.
The roseblooms of your ears.
The thunderdome of your hair.
The prairie winds of your forehead.
The hedgerows of your eyebrows.
The surfacing air bubbles of your eyes.
The candlelight of your smile.


3 – 11 – 07

Confession Without An ‘I’

The body, as a condition of life, seems like a prison.
All it’s troubles, restrictions, and efforts to appear other than it is.
Walking down a country road, alone, finding a quiet, even pace,
There seems obviously this division between one feeling and the other.
Call them personality and soul if those words are useful.
The soul, naked and so vulnerable in its dedication to be different,
Wants to touch the body as just being this body, inhabited from within.
The personality seems to be the body’s representative, for how it wants to appear.
So willing to change the measure and shape of the body if an ‘other’ appears.
The soul, so tired in its captivity within the body, the domination of the personality.
Soul, so infinite and vast, contained within the privacy of its depths.
The body, as a condition of life, seems like a prison.

So much seems to have been lost if this knowledge of soul is possible.
Suicide contemplatives have at least the intelligence to consider mortality.
All the woundings and restrictions of the body would release to something.
The body is Jesus on a crucifix, the radiant body is the soul simply shining.
So much sadness and loneliness and freedom in the life of the private self.
So much desire for the totally trusted other, to open and confess to.
So painful the make-dos, the indifference to the thought of something else.
So impossible the cage of the body, dominated by the personality.
All the happinesses are temporary without this one happiness.
The soul sings to itself the glories of the world, the beauty of the trees.
The world is a dreaming of cicadas and clouds, lives and meetings.
So much seems to have been lost if this knowledge of soul is possible.

The soul is embarrassing in its ardent loves, its delight in anything.
Extremely shy and extremely confident, its life seems undeserved.
The personality, as advocate of the body in the world, covers the soul up.
What a miracle to even walk an even pace, to move a little slower or little quicker.
To breathe behind the eyes so the sight can swing from limb to limb,
To feel the chest lining up with the trunks of the trees in greeting.
The soul wants to find its mirroring in the world, without intervention.
The eyes want to rest on the colour of the roses growing by the vines.
Just as it is would be fine enough, nothing left behind, destroyed in its wake.
Not the personality, feverishly making and unmaking, modifying and make-believing.
The freedom to consider what comes along, find thoughts and words for it.
The soul is embarrassing in its ardent loves, its delight in anything.



8 – 02 – 07