Turning Point

Your cry was like a chord from a harp, suddenly flung into the night.
Every soul struck by its sound turned and trembled in astonishment.
The sea stopped rumbling and raised its head to listen.
Fishermenís hands let go of the net ropes.
Pearl divers drowned, their palms full of pearls.
The shore gaped in anguish.
Bugs burrowed beneath the bark of trees.
A wan, waxen tremor crossed the face of the moon.
Children stopped playing and fell shuddering against each other.
Lovers reaching for one another leaped apart and took flight.
A leopard dropped a just-killed gazelle, although he had gone hungry for a week.
From dire, dry deserts rose savage shadows, overrunning the oases.
The lash-marked bodies of slave women tossed and twisted on beds of reeds.
From massive mountain ravines rained a rubble of rock.
Thunderstorms gathered in the skies.
This night saw the sinking of many ships.
This night many a shrine to love was swept into ruins.
This night many hearts found themselves homeless.
This night filled with a shriek, swelling from your voice,
daunting all remembrance.
You alone heard nothing, so deeply were you rocking in the midnight cradle of your mind.
The weak shimmer of a waning smile worked slowly over the merciless beauty
of your face, betraying the secret fires of your lusting agony.
Of all this, you alone knew nothing.

Introspective Masquerade

Beloved, your hands are so cold.
Why do you say that?
Beloved, your hands are so warm.
How do you mean that?
Beloved, do you love me?
Yes, when I have no reason.
Beloved, do you hate me?
Yes, when I find a reason!
Why do you always have second thoughts?
So I can ease my search for the truth.
Why do you always leap to conclusions?
So I can speed my search for mistakes.

Beloved, do you remember that little bullmoose braying in the frozen midnight
and rubbing his rack against the cusp of the moon?
How can anyone forget him? He is the unbending dreams in us all.
We stood there sevenfold, and yet in that wintry night
none could unsnarl winterís tinkling, tangled tresses.
Gaining insight enriches, but the life of the rich is hard.
Beloved, do you remember the white-haired donkeys,
whose veins surged with fire
and whose eyes shimmered with unknown fear?
Yes, I remember! They are the fiery dreams in us all.
Beloved, am I deserving of approval?
Anyone who asks that deserves reproval.
It is the sea that least needs any more water, and the heavens any more stars.
Truth of feeling starts when you are ready to drown
to celebrate the beauty of the depths of the sea,
or to be stretched asunder while grasping
the splendor of the stars.
Beloved, am I deserving of reproval?
Anyone who asks that deserves approval.
Beloved, is it easier for us if we face the cold together?
Perhaps not for us, but it is for the cold!

Yes, there is much that cannot be understood in the deep well of
understanding...
Daydreams. Nightdreams. Pipedreams.
Nothing truly gets lost in the swelling surge of sensations
5000 ideas 500 words The accounting of asses!
We all have the courage to remember. We all have the cowardice to forget.
Ideas pull apart and words implode in blinding blasts.
The melodies of failure! The symphonies of exhaustion!
A single sound survives and washes ashore.
Wells of fire flare up and surround swaying columns of water.
Yesterday subsides with agonizing slowness.
Future fireworks are still being formed.
For whatever finds form, decay is ahead, and not just of the head.
Catacombs gleam darkly.
Hecatombs beam brightly.
Which do you choose, love or cowardice?
Which do you choose, fraying or fortitude?
Living intensely shortens existence.
Living cautiously lengthens languor.
You will not a seaman make if afraid of the waves.
You will not a leader make if afraid of the struggle.
There are the wretched who are not worth shaming.
There are the deranged who are not worth upbraiding.
Who fails to struggle is a cripple.
Who fails to think is a crook.
Down with the thunder!
Lessen the lightning!
How long will you play the ass?!

In a dead-end street of problems the mist swirls,
and in its chasm suns sprout like hyacinths.
We have not been struck!
With bared hearts we collided with bare rocks.
Smiling, we scatter into emptiness, and as we fill the void it becomes
something else.

There Are So Many Flowers, and Yet . . .

Last night I had a dream, and in that dream a memory returned.
Years ago in springtime, I was in the woods.
I chanced upon a glade, and all around it were wondrous wild anemones.
As I stood gazing, I noticed that one of them was returning my look.
Its eyes were full of the ardent devotion that a glance
conveys better than words.
Deep in its eyes, hope and shyness contended.
This mutual attraction filled each of us with a strange forboding.
Our wordless conversation continued till sundown.
I dared not come closer, for fear of trampling the other blossoms.
I was afraid that if I touched it, I might close off its glance.
Oh, how I yearned to be a flower, and growing beside it!
And perhaps it, too, would have wished to be human and feel the bitter sweetness of
human desires.
Unmoving, I lay there till nightfall, numb with joy.
Then darkness fell and swept everything under its carpet.
I took leave of the flower and it faded in my memory.
Last night I had the dream.
In that dream the flower was born again.
It looked at me in silence.
Its eyes were my own eyes.
The dream said the anemone was still in bloom.
Every springtime, when I can get away, I go to the woods.
I search for the glade and the flower.
I long to take my beloved away with me.
I search diligently, my heart strained with anguish.
But my dearest is nowhere to be found.
It is lost, and soon I may lose all hope.
Oh, if only I had never met it!
Oh, if only that dream had passed me by!
Each time I take to the woods I have the feeling that
that bygone spring is still to come.

Striking Matches in a Pitch Dark Gallery
(Excerpt)

I am an ember from under the ashheap of millennia.
When will you let me burst into flame?
I am a shivering wind, tirelessly trying
to escape the darkness of a dense thicket.
When will this rotting tangle of hollow tree trunks finally fall?
I am an animal choked with thirst chased by packs of yelping dogs.
Each time I reach a river I find it dry.
I am a rock plummeting into infinity.
I am falling through the abyss inside every heart.
I am a star overhanging a dizzying nothingness.
Why does not even one comet cut across my solitude?
I am the echo of galaxies racing in blind panic.
There is nothing further from me than my own voice.
I am a cloud that shrouds the summits,
and the pealing of an unheard bell dying out,
and a relationship that fails to flourish,
and a sigh which has no purpose,
and the cool space between two people talking,
and the yes that one never dared utter,
and a dazzling mask hiding deep distress,
and an engraving which resists reproduction.

Nothing can separate the intertwined opposing truths
of my unchanging self.