Inconveniences Rightly Considered

Like the #myWANA twibe--and does that not get at it? Tribe of tweeters? A collective art? A collaboration of otherwise cordoned off creators?

  I suppose it could be worse if we could talk about the shortening of URLs to something like https://n.on/SenS3/ or the rest, et all infinitum

  https://whatwerewe.doingthinkingthebeautyofURLcould.oureyesandcrossourTaslongaswecreateafullstopat.com/mercial_enterprise/instead-ofthe.org/

  For there're organizations and corporations, the latter swallowing the whole in body, the former giving the body to the whole, profit & non-

  I still have these doubts, questions, uncertainties that give faith some breathing room, even in the midst of this medium we use, questions:

  Do drug dealers hashtag their work like #hashish (coincidence) or #uniformity (that's irony) If no, how they get paid in this climate? #DARE

  If threads of @ chase back to a source, is the most recent like the roottip or the budding leaf? If so, does that make the original a trunk?

  Do sources come as result of conversations held in real-time, in RL rather than DL? Can we conclude that we participate in continuum? Hmm...

  & how's that different? The layers prism into our eyes, refract #rehashed thoughts, retweeting what we ourself tweeted in re: unto another'n

  Or'f my one-armed uncle Billy (RIP) got his hook on here his kleft hanmed woulkd mnake senmce buit hjs rugjht's a hjoiok. Mean right hook...

  So where's the expression for Billy (RIP) who drove me on a jetski when I was ten using his hook for the gas and his left hand for his beer?

  Also, doesn't automated tweeting defeat the tweeting purpose? If people gave a tweet, people wouldn't tweeting automate like mother tweeters

  My friend went to prison there heard people use profanity, twittering about, trying to express the inexpressible. No poetry, but only curses

  Like: tweet tweet tweet Dude tweeting took the tweetareet tweet tweet book atweetingway from weet twitterytwat me, don't you tweeting tweet?

  "Never been more proud of my education," he said, "because I'm the guy in here that can express various shades of angst, ire, woe, euphoria"

  To which I'd add acedia, zeal, poesy, ignorance, lighthearted jubilation, discontent, murderous wrath bits of joy and sorrow sprinkled about

  We are more than our words, we are our wordings. We are more than our tales we're our tellings. We're more than poetry, we're our poetrings.

  The action in motion, the progress of prose, doing rather than merely being it-- like marriage (where people do it)-takes more than footnotes

  Not that footnotes're invaluable, but only the ones you're reading, not those you've read. In media res come the footnotes, not postscripts^

  ^Schaubert, Lance "Twoem" (Twitter:Joplin, 2012) #51. He continues, "Because they add subtext to already established thoughts, reflections"

  ...and we continue as if they never happened, a daydream, reverent reverie saturated with subliminal messages and author's intended meaning

  View translation

  It's certainly a betterfluffalternativeflufftoflufffindingfluffwaysflufftoflufftakefluffupfluffspace. Especially this one:___________________

  So yes, footnotes've value, but only insofar as they work the midriff, plunge into middle earth and meet us halfway into the action, y'know?

  WE INTERRUPT THIS BROADCAST TO BRING YOU A SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT: [Insignificant product] will give you [divine virtue] if you [shady action]

  NOW BACK TO OUR SCHEDULED PROGRAMMING: Of course there's a difference between intermission and interruption, and though I'd agree with Nouen

  "The interruptions are your work," he meant in terms of the least of these, not the most of these. Interruptions work as poor, lame or blind

  Not interruptions as in rich, mobile and visual. ∴ no, I don't listen to the advertisements all the way through. Because I've better things

  To do: Better things than these. Better nobler, more manful framings of this cubby hole of a world before we crowd ourselves out and falling

  Falling, falling toward the black linoleum. That's what happens in a crowd: trample damage. Good for the rats, bad for the butterflies, see?

  "Wee sleekit cowerin' timorous beastie," Robbie said, & he truly meant "best laid" when it came to plotting grounds, when it came field mice

  For we do, we do we do go on and crush one another beneath the weight of worry. We self-motivate ourselves until no one else feels motivated

  Where were we? Who gives a-- Say! I do like green eggs & ham! I do so like them Walton, Sam! & I would retch them in a train and in a car and

  My, what a lot of funny things there are. (funny [fuh*knee] adjective 2. – "unusual in such a way so as to arouse suspicion") Funny guy, Sam

  By this time, all three of you who follow this nonsense will expect me to ask you to retweet and, not wanting to disappoint: please retweet!

  But don't retweet out of pressure, but rather pleasure, not out of obligation, but out of a sense that you (pl.) are doing something herenow

  We (the collective "I") plan on saying something together as we begin to redefine the restrictions set around us from an SMS world, txtNptry

  one more "T" makes: TEXT and POTTERY, which is so interesting considering the plethora of misinterpretations of personalized plates on HWY44

  But yes, RDRVR (or any other license plate or SMS or tweet, for that matter) could mean any number of things, one stencil for phantom rhymes

  RDRVR could be "red rover" or "rad raver" or "Our Driver" or even "Rider Ever as in the eternal biker gang in the sky which is why, I think,

  Brother Scott teaches usns that context's king, which, in the context, means interpretively not (as others libel) for allegiance or idolatry

  Much like Hebrew without all the dots & tiddles, propretonicreductions & other fancy linguistic words that don't apply to the matter at hand

  RDRVR with an "M" at the end might pluralize it or with "'M" might dualize it--the duality of Red Roveraim, two lines, two teams, a face off:

  RDRVR RDRVR SND TWTTR RGHT WVR where "W" is the Vav or Waw, functioning as vowel and consonant, similar to our letter "Y"--duality of context

  Like "Y" or "W" or the phantom "RDRVR," GOOD and EVIL exist in context-abstractconcept sof right and wrong don't come from physicalityorsubs

  stance, they come from the application of virtue and vice unto myriad moments like the addition of cacophic or harmonic vowels to consonants

  Hebrew & Twitter & perhaps license plates, taught us that. RDRVR for an orange 2012 bug might be "RedRover" but for a Lexus "OurDriver" fits

  "RiderEver" fits for a philosophy professor's Harley (or Honda)--I know one who has one just like that but the license plate's way more hokey

  something like "DSCRT" I assume is a triple-entendre between the Ebonic "Dis Cart" the mispronounced "Duhcart" & the philosophic "Descartes"

  But who knows? You explain the joke and the funny dies with it, like dissecting bubbles-the effort's in the blowing not the popping. Myself?

  I like to watch them float off, hoisted on humor, buoyant above us by our own attentive tittering never probing the work of the comedian for

  if probed, then popped if popped, then foundered if foundered, then no longer funny. But to make a funny? Blowing alone in our corner? Puff?

  Efforting our own ruach upon amalgamated water & alkali until orb "music of the spheres" globe of hydrogen bonds exists, that'd be something

  And so absolutely I respect the comedians for they confusticate and bewuther me by taking the longest way around to turn a very short phrase

  In this, stand up comedians are some of our only public #poets left, cause they do the same thing with language &'ve a single measuring rod:

  They laugh? Chortle? Chuckle? Giggle? Twitter? Titter? Crack up? Be in stitches? Roll in the aisles? Or, at least, they even crack a smile ?

  If yes, then success. If no, then failure. Thats the formula for good comedy. For this alone #poetry fasts into the next millennium, exiled,

>   seeing the land of milk and honey from far off, daring not to go in until the infidels clear themselves out, having cannibalized one another

  For poetry's an unmeasurable thing, with no quantifiable canon. Comedy? She's a form of poetry, but the only one that we can gauge or assess

  For get that this makes us a bunch of asses-sors, forget how it degradates our legacy, our great-grandchildren's education, forget that our-

  kids actually envision the literal end of nature (not 2 mention the literal end of literal) that they'll grow up in a climate where students

  Exist: To learn, perfect, and complete a given task. (rather than: To learn how to become a good, decent and responsible human being) getit?

  Forget that we've forgotten our roots, our etymological roots where "politics" has something to do with the city instead of TV or newspaper,

  that "education" has something to do with leading out like a wandering prophet rather than "socialscience" brainwashing or worse, employment

  that "religion" means a binding-a sense of self-committed devotion rather than a systemic means of oppression, violence, or false politicals

  and that "media" means middle like medium like art-advocacy between the living and the dead, ignorance and truth, love and enemies> not lies

  which means that "social" #media –socialis meaning "allied" or socius "friend"–could mean a society of advocates OR a society of united foes

  I spose that it's up to what the people put up with, for that's always the case: the twisting of words in the context of our nation may ruin

  us yet. And yet, and yet I bet there's something more to us than meets the eye, for we've toppled triple times the regimes than any of our f

  -ormer fathers, collectively, a global nation rather than one - begged to believe nations & colonies still exist on this ever-shrinking ball

  We don't, and that's enough, for they will die off before we do and if we refuse to believe lies, if we hold to our integrity-that is enough

  It's enough to say "I'm not like that, whatever I am" with no set agenda, for Robbie agendas "gang oft agley & lea us not but grief and pain

  ...for promised joy" will pull through, I believe and that's where he & John too were wrong. The present only touches thee, yes this's true,

  And "Och I backward cast my eie on prospects drear" as well, though there are good memories too, we must not forget our triumphs as a people

  But the forward part-why guess and fear? Why guess at all? For it could be worse or better or both, but if we hold our integrity, I believe.

  That same man, after all, said "You did not have a home. There were places you visited frequently, took off your shoes and you'd scratch yer

  that we can still do greater things yet, greater things in word and deed in paint and power, in the vulnerability of our trusting commonhood

  One man said we're not as strong as we think we are, this is true- the smallness of us. But our smallness is our strength, weak lowly things

  feet cause you knew that the whole world belonged to the meek and you did not have a home, no you did not have a home." Which is, I must say

  honestly true: homeless people own the world, no one else. The nomads, the gypsies the hitchhikers'n hobos get it: all's grace, naught's due

  You cannot claim what was here, neither can you truly create-you may subcreate, innovate, remix and rework, but ex nihilo is not for us "Get

  your own dirt" goes the lame joke, lame because true to a cliché, true to an assumption, true in our bones, the things we walk upon so often

  Then the #fruitninjas and #angrybirds of the world come and tell us that lie: "Old things're lesser, stupider, more foolish than new things"

  Clive called that "chronological snobbery," acting like we're better than our primogenators. #Success & Successor may be #LinkedIn roots but

  unlike all of these other words, I find them woefully unrelated (in context), an eitheror addition to the end of one propaganda becomes the-

  brass of its opponent, for this's the #dilemma of our age: success or successor? Win or emerge? Fame/fortune or greatness/fragility ? Chosen

  my side, have you yours? For I hope to live a mythological #life rather than profitable one [that my name's forgotten] my story's remembered

  Thats our question & inheritance: to flee, or not to flee? Whether tis nobler in the mind to fight another day the small campaigns of men or

  to stay unarmed against a sea of troubles, and by remaining end them? To brawl, to beat or more, to catch some sleep at night from peacing ?

  These are the grammars from whence we choose: corporate takeover, espionage, and seduction OR corporeal rupture, confession, trust-building

  The one from self-preservation spawns apocalypse, the other from self-immolation sows a neocosmos, a curded, honeyed milky whey, a new manna

  These visions I see with mine waking eyes, and when I go to sleep the nightmœres come in twisted forms: cubicals, 401k's, tax-deductions, a-

  pplicable Christmas bonuses, FICA scores, litigation, reverse-engineered drone strikers, rigged elections, genocide coverups, reserves call-

  ed "Casinos," drug cartels named "state police force," and Senators who in another life called "this life" worked for banks, pharms, trucks

  Prepared 140 ways (four short of gross) as George Washington Carver might have asked us to, a future union in diversity (and not uniformity)

  of Pacific oceans washing over, flooding stores of warheads and hardheads and jarheads, of the old "Come Together, right now" over me and my

  dead body, if that's what it would take. When our generation leaves the solipsistic, over-invested side of their convictions and wills hers-

  elf to die for the others, for the cause, rather than to kill for it or worse, kill one of our global brothers for it, but to die fullbore -

  I always wake soon after (three-hundred and sixteen characters pass quickly in masks) and remember that this's all a very bad dream or #joke

  More like me see the world gossamer and gilded, Edenic and Urban, Garden and Guarded, city and country-the difference of culture unculted or

  and unafraid for one another, to release our clinging to sustenance and to embrace quietus, to walk freely into massacre- Boston-style - and

  relinquish ourselves to whatever red, grey or blue coat takes us--that to me's courage, that to me's conviction, that to me changes the world

  for it was a similar sort of death on the edge of the empire that crushed Rome and it will be that sort of death that brings us into new age

  But don't mind me what do I know? I'm only some affected soul on this edge of empire: part Ozark, part Appalachia, part Cherokee, part Jew,

  part Zimbabwean, part Barbadian, part Shawnee Forest--a noname upstart from a line of carpenters (union & otherwise) that chose ink over wood

  I should go on like this, should continue in characteristic restriction, in #thevoice people use #thesedays, #amwriting something more here.

  Then again, art consists, as Gilbert said, in drawing the line somewhere. Somewhere we must refuse to type, to fill, to censor, editorialize

  Then again the time comes where: silence... listen... (and then again) hush... shush child... the wind gasps answers back, hoping to startle

  In the end gag or tweet. I'm the former: _____ ______ __ ___ __ ___ _____, _____ _______ ___. ____.

  Giving Up the News

  ...Is harder than hearing. How you shatter

  Bones as a boy before the season

  Ends and you ache to even the score

  And return to the team, or take a sick

  Gardener's groaning for the great outdoors

  Or a landlocked lady of the water

  Or a shut-in sailor. Soon you will find

  the lane to the life you love is behind

  The avenues in the alleys where even the news

  Seldom will stray: in the singular voice

  Of the Clarion call of Christian thought

  And Philosophy's prude
nce and the power of Historic

  Agreement gathered in the grisly books

  On the shelf till you're sure that status updates

  And news is a nightly enigma that cannot

  Be solved as quick as stitches on broken

  Hearts or the healing of a holy man's pride.

  Untitled Man

  I play this thinking game

  as an artist by the scene

  Or dancers sitting oh-so-serene

  moved beyond their minds

  nothing comes out right

  Angled.

  spirit groans

  fashion my true name

  on a stone

  The Gentry Moved in on Halloween

  Blameshift

  market boy

  leaves (yellowed)

  hit by carts

  The Wild West

  The Wild Wild West is what they call

  Baltimore's broken -- the battered western

  End of The East. With Indians murdered,

  A white western needs rewritten as an Eastern

  In this city's sinning. For soon The Black

  Man is made a modern native

  And Manifest Destiny masquerades

  As eminent domain. Even the firemen

  Ponder the plastic pouches and shopping

  Bags that are blowing like bits of tumble

  Weeds in the weather of the western films

  Will blow by, or the blue and red

  Illuminations of the long trucks

  Of paramedics that paint our earrings

  And our whorings that hedge us by habits and the vices

  Of saloons and not our longings. Leave the duelings

  And high noon hoarding of respect

  And the Trail of tears take and replace

  It with the praxis of peace. Power is a fickle

  Thing when the thunder is thought awful

  yet is bark and no bite, a bumbling shout

  That's strikeless and strong, when the stranger in town

  Is the sheriff who is surely the scoundrel and the brigand

  The wandering wicked. What are the natives

  Left with to love? Left with the tyrants

  to rescue hope? they would rather die

  At the hands of hell than husband evil.

  The Yoke of Mothers

  A Queen is a King who carries the weight

  Of the world within her. Enwombing the younglings

  And entombing their titles, taking their passings

  On a pilgrimage or a parade. Powder she spreads --

  The ashes of embers that echo the flames

  Of memories marking men and their gains

  And lovings or leavings. The leftovers abide

  Within her insides. As if she's an urn

  Made of flesh and flight, flare as her throat

  And incubating her nest of ashes for fires

  To crack their creases in cognate eggshells

  With phoenixes inside. Fertile, embracing,

  The life light leaves and then backward

  From manhood to Godhead and then childhood again

  Nursing on the nectar newly replenished

  By matriarch's mam'ry. Making, when we die

  Embattled, the bridge to the births of the sires

  Taking twine and a twinge as they hoist

  Their father's firearm. The fumes lift

  And stands the structure: see how Queens

  Bridge we broken princes to our Kings?

  Mother of Exiles

  Eight-hundred. Their open mouths

  Similarly sing songs we all know

  Though know not: their tongues -- they show

  No face cards. Nimble, demure, go ghosts

  Of the Mind of God, mad sod made sad,

  Triangle eyelids, squares and trundle sides,

  But they're still eyes, you know. Stopping together

  They see as one. Smell as one though

  Misshapen besides, share the same tastes,

  Touching race to race. Liberty Regal --

  My crimes are crude forms of your name!

  Languages languish, lampposts made fenceposts,

  Made into metal pikes masked by barbs

  And whatever the shipyard itemizes

  For cordoning cows. Killing clouds and

  Roosting with pigeons unrich and sundry,

  Your overture oxidized, olive and sickened

  Remembering tyrant, Napoleon moneyed

  Whose citizens ceded céleste to us

  In the form of a figure with flair for the gracious

  His Frenchmen entrusted freedom to U.S.

  As a strike at his reign, as a slap on his chin.

  And the chauvanists of Chauvin? They chaffed cause they ruled.

  Perhaps it is time we handed the torch

  To some budding statehood of freedom?

  To places now warming, their playboys deserted

  To United States, knighted for evils

  Done in her name. Dead are the ways

  Hospitable Yanks hosted each other

  In the wake of the voyage. We opened borders

  At the start so we'd found this state of migrant

  Pilgrims who had dreams. Pilfered dreams

  Of mixed-race babies and the peace they imply.

  We did it at the start. Will we do it again?

  Can we become a nation on pilgrimage

  And leave our little bit of land?

  Guantanamera

  You sing it. Yourn -- they mourn, they

  Wring it over, ragdolls and wine,

  Listening somber, listening longer

  Than anyone else in the "N" train's crowd.

  Others ignore you, mothers note the

  Boredom born in baby faces.

  Teens spend their braincells as tender

  On turn-based games in their tiny screens.

  You sing it. Yourn -- they mourn, they

  Wring it over, opium petals drip.

  None here know: Now is Cuba.

  The sounds of the lady: alma my lover,

  Alma mi mater de terra mi pater--

  Torn out of time the trucks of the fifties,

  The men who make more on donuts

  Than dentistry or law. Done are the days

  Of teeth and order, taken, embargoed so

  Long ago, oh. The Long Islands

  Commuters make no memory of this

  Your National Anthem. Theirs announces an

  Empire's entrance, an empires sins and

  Strangleholds. But strings on your

  Guitarra strain to say, "We are strong

  Because we stay carried away by

  This woman, my Cuba." The closest we come

  To a fair hearing? "Come here.

  Is that guy singing something about

  Guantanamo bay?" Goes away: intimacy.

  You leave it. Yourn -- they mourn, they

  Wring it over, towels and the blood.

  Train doors slide.

  Your pronedance moaning dulce o(u) salé

  Dies as our crowd's tide washes you away.

  Rio Sunset

  Ghosts in the gold, ghosts in the late

  Grate growing wet from grey waters.

  Ghosts in the water gushing its spray:

  Men in it which men aren't mainly,

  Shadows and shades, shadows in spades

  Twinned and twining, twisting liquid

  Pining from physique, from playing rain:

  Where are the men within? White water at

  Nighttime walks is a newness to me:

  Beguile and charm, enchant and bewitch

  Illuminating liquid marvel,

  For we have arrived to watch one another

  Move from my side to madre's porch.

  I leave it, I leave things

  Charged and I think of thunder.

  Upon returning to the tempest the tinkers

  Heavenward woke f
rom hydrant halls

  Their cap clatters, is cast away

  By grey ghosts in the grizzled pipes,

  By poltergeists who perk to fight

  The Zeitgeist of the ziggurat's kings--

  Landlords and landlord things loved

  Not by common creatures or their cats.

  Mats are soaking. Maybe children

  Choking goes unnoticed for tonight.

  The streets, they melt. The streets, they smelt

  Of sulphur, of piss, and perfume until

  The ghosts grist us back our grates.

  A native child takes note:

  "You play? You playing in the puddle mister?

  In the black river we built, we reached?

  You've passed to my crossing con tu perra?"

  Was Venice very varied like Brooklyn

  Before it floundered in the foaming sea?

  Was Atlantis loved by little kids

  Who gave its flooding streets felicity?

  Pigeons and Turtledoves

  Watch and the world withers before you

  As you sit and sip. Seats on the peaks

  Of stool stumps rock. Staying on wheels

  Lateral that lean? Like we are just sliding

  Towards the wakes? Towards the streets

  And their dangerous drakes? Dream about biding

  Time and the tide. Teach the childer

  How racist we aren't. Reach in and neglect

  The trails of tears, the transgressions repeat

  And the childer chase a choo-choo south

  To the mouth of the rivers, to the moats in the seas

  And the spaces of heaven to be seen by our watchers

  And the holes where hobbits hide and bide the

  Time and the tide. The Shire will be razed

  Again as the evil gains footholds but

  She hates the hillsides. She hides in Coney,

  In Bay Ridge and Rio, in the bowls of seas

  Crossed on floating things. And she clings to a hope

  Of water rising. But the flames get anxious

  So a mother migrates amid the poorest

  With turtledoves two she treks south

  Pregnant with her God. Prepare the way

  Of the immigrant illegal who aims to save

  The privileged by hanging. Prepare the way

  Of the homeless heavens. The refugee -- oh how

  Did he die for deporters? The dark-skinned child

  Of the Middle East? Mary migrates

  to the Edge of the empire. Even the Romans

  Meddled in the Middle. And made their Maker

  Into their brazen image: a terrorist.

  Do suicides always slay?

  Do immigrants always pilfer the union?

  Or do some save nation states?

  And even steal our sins?

  Gotham Wakeless (A Cittandine)

  I saw the consequences of our chosen fate

  we read the world's ending in cardboard and mile-high signs

  – to be so near by so far, so far cause so close –

  on intricate sandcastles grown men make, which vanish at night.

  You have not died. You had fallen asleep and will now wait...

   

  I met the kite club at the beach. They grow wings, yet stay

  tethered to this sand through snares imposed

  by those whose consequences cage our chosen fates.

   

  Where Astoria's humor meets Inwood's bachata under the eldritch lights

  no seer can take stars by astrolabe Home.

  There we write world endings on mile-high, cardboard signs.

   

  I met the Minotaur at the center of the West Village labyrinth.

  He said to me, "What, you want a fucking cookie?" And clip-clopped off.

  You have not died. You had fallen asleep and will now wait

   

  for thirty minutes on the other platform for a fifteen minute train ride

  or walk for forty. You choose to walk, repose

  from intricate sandcastles grown men make, which vanish at night.

   

  (Walking was a bad choice at two in the hot mornlate).

  One-hundred dollar ticket for a used two-fiddy swipe-o

  I saw the consequences of our chosen fate:

   

  Hell's Kitchen's tiny forts fading in a purgatory of might,

  Chileans shouting to Arabs "In English! In English, poto!"

  We read our world's ending in cardbored, mile-deep signs–

   

  "This here's a misdemeanor. Ever been arrested?"

  "No." "You sure? You ain't lying? Cause in a sec I'll know."

  –you have not died. You had fallen asleep and now await

   

  flat Triangles Below Canal Street to grow up spires.

  Still in two-thousand years they'll stand on Wall and go,

  "This seems to have been some sort of market site,"

  on intricate sandcastles grown men make, which vanish at night.

   

  Though not yet midnight – drinking five minutes later

  means you missed the train and will wait until another ghost

  goads dioxide into humid carbon from some unknown palace of nether-sky.

  To be so near by so far, so far cause so close

  we coax the world's ending onto bright rag signs

  trim intricate sandcastles grown men make, which vanish at night.

  You hope for consequences of The Chosen fate:

  we will not die. We had fallen asleep and must now wake.

  CSA Potluck

  Ciders spiked and the simmering wild

  Rice that she rendered in a root soup

  For the CSA staff and Martín

  As we planned produce. Patience is a talked

  Dialog dance. We drive one

  another nutso with no thought

  To listen along out of love for the mind

  Of fellow men: we fight for time

  to speak and spank. Speckles then form

  On the hull of hope that harden to coral

  And barnacles black to burden dreams

  Of things thought but now thunder afar

  Like the rain that could render a ruin to garden

  Or drown deserts but died in the air.

  Listeners left when loamier soil

  Bid them back to bear a lighter

  Burden of talk: the beauty of heeding

  And having been heeded: hulls that are smooth.

  Beckon

  When you sail between both soundhouses

  You will hear

  that the lighthouse ain't the only keep

  emitting sense

  for the feelhouses – those phalluses –

  reach, tingle

  make the hairs... how they stand on end,

  shivering.

  And the scenthouses billow upwards,

  smoke signals

  of the fragrances, fair and foul, to come:

  ethereal masts.

  When you walk between both soundhouses

  feel free ----

  for the lighthouse wards off crashes

  twisting counsel,

  for the feelhouse wards off creeps

  – it begs permission –

  for the scenthouse wards off stenches

  olfactory white ----

  The soundhouse wards off sounds-to-be.

  I walked outside in Tuesday morning's

  cold, gusts, ice

  between a man and a woman both

  saw neither

  until my periphery noticed

  me between

  two soundhouses: both emitting scrapes

  scratches, both,

  nails upon jail cells, burrowing,

  two humans

  scraping gilded tax papers for sums

  hollowed. Both

  harrowing one more future of

&nb
sp; reinvested change.

  The Lottery. Scratchoffs heard, unseen, warn:

  "crags ahead in the dark"

  Prog Code

  From the broken bytes of Bernie's movement

  A scrapyard assembled. Seams were bound

  By unseemly stitches, a scarlet old thread

  With a green or a gold or a great navy

  And the parties perished and progress was encoded

  On the minds of mankind and the matriarchy

  And they plugged in the power. They primed this well

  With a meeting map and a Medium for social

  Events converging on varied issues

  And the code progressed. Clearly the machines

  Were intended to tame tyrants and bind

  Bureaucrats to their base, to the blue virtues

  Of the life we live, learning from each

  To each and earning an evening with the mic

  Open and our ears too. Every noble

  Adventure varies, but viking and coder

  Alike will leave the land they know

  For the sake of a sudden search on a new

  Map and a morning maybe-we-could

  And a vision of voice. Virtue will emerge

  from the bricks of brothers bound and sisters

  Who were run aground from the graves of sailors

  Who journeyed on out, jumping at fate

  For a mainland where mountains had made a life

  Of namelessness and were nourished by the Native Good

  And in this the thinking of Thy Progress

  Is regress towards the right uses of the riches of creation.

  Holidays

  Notes from Heschel: The Architecture of Time

  Techno-civilization

  breaks existence – time for space –

  more objective(s), more to place.

  Having more ain't being more,

  might of space still dies at time's

  borders. Existence beats its

  heart not in spaces, but times.

  Set out to control my space,

  gain some power, forfeit time.

  In time: not have, but to be.

  Own not, but give some graces.

  Not control, but share. Subdue

  not spaces, live in accord.

  We forfeit life when control

  of space, accumulation,

  concerns us first – stocks and Fords.

  nothing's more useful than It –

  nothing's more frightful than It –

  poverty once degraded

  us, but now we are threatened

  by Power's degradation.

  Enjoy your love of labor

  but hate your loving of gain.

  Hearts and pitchers break before

  the fountain we call 'profit.'

  Technical society

  grows up from propriety –

  tools and spinning, farm and house,

  sailing, aleing, data, blouse,

  each in spatial surroundings.

  Subdue? Manage nature's force?

  Worship nature in mountain,

  forest, water, flame or stone?

  God's not space. Is man alone?

   

  Inside the universe you

  like to see God make presence,

  but do we get to choose how?

  We want God in space, not time,

  in nature, not history,

  as if Godhead were a thing

  not a life-giving spirit.

  Pantheism worships space:

  Supreme Being is no more

  than infinite space minded

  – deus sive natura  –

  extension – space – but not time.

  For  Spinoza, time's mirage –

  he wants philosophy warped

  to geometry's place.

  Primitive minds won't realize

  ideas unimagined. Space –

  where imagination rules –

  we revere sacred image.

  Monuments, places, banners,

  flags, national shrines, statues

  – memorials stultify

  ends, aid amnesias. Though too

  sacred to be polluted,

  not too sacred to exploit.

  To retain the holy, you

  fashion gods you can confine:

  mere shadows, shadows of man.

  THING is the category

  heavy on our minds. Concepts

  – all – we mold into its form,

  attending to seen, smelled, heard,

  touched, tasted. Reality

  is thinghood. Even our God's

  conceived by most as a thing.

  We're blind, we're deaf, we're muted

  to half of reality:

  all that is shy, all that won't

  identify selves as things.

  The insubstantial we make

  inconsequential, know

  not what to do about time.

  Time is sarcasm. A slick

  treacherous monster, jaws like

  furnaces burning moments.

  We shrink from taking on time,

  face to face, escaping to

  space instead. Possessions are

  repressions – fuel for near flames.

  We can't conquer time in space.

  We can master time in time.

  For the higher goal of all

  spiritual living is not

  to amass wealth of data,

  Evernotes evernoting,

  but to face sacred moments.

  Please do not use your moments.

  Please don't abuse your moments.

  You cannot spend your moments.

  Your cash won't trade for moments.

  They aren't alike, your moments.

  Not shells, nor stamps. Your moments,

  sole, enchant. Savor their spells.

  Each hour's the only one given

  exclusive and endlessly

  precious. Holiness in time –

  to this, to sacred events –

  we must attach, we must build

  our great cathedrals – Sabbaths –

  Our architecture of time.

  Qadosh. "Holy" in Hebrew –

  mystery and majesty

  of the divine. What was first?

  A mountain? An altar? Man?

  No. "God blessed the seventh day

  and made it holy." No thing

  was holy at creation.

  God did not become a tree.

  God did not grow up from rocks.

  God's not stuck in Jupiter,

  atom clouds or public stocks.

  God's not mere geometry.

  He chose time, but we choose place.

  God's right here in history,

  builds his cathedrals in time,

  palaces and brandywines

  of hours and seconds like a

  castle in the clouds, G.K.

  called them, without regular

  rules of architecture. Then

  he takes his time with timing:

  For providence means that he

  takes the sixfold pain and toil

  of spoilt maidenhead, agley

  schemes of mice and men, takes a

  murder here, lies and theft there,

  and reupholsters them all

  the way down, down to the bone.

  Reordering disorder,

  he takes eons doomed to die,

  deemed by men to make men cry,

  and turns them till they catch then light,

  until he finds their prism,

  folds it into his white bright

  of all, and redistributes

  moments, rewriting from old

  component parts and pistons,

  cheery-picked the engine of

  time and put a new one in:

  His very self within man.

  God, defined by history,

  became History again:

  Fir
st he set aside a day,

  Then he taught us, way by way,

  "Take the time to face my face,

  take the time away from space."

  In time, Lord Sabbath

  Was put to rest

  on Sabbath. Rose an eighth day

  called it "Today, if you hear

  me, don't harden your hearts." Glimpse time...

  Ode to a Carpenter

  In hopes that the world relents before

  breaking your back for a third time

   

   

  Below the old dark basement stair there sat

  your drafting desk, whose nuts, whose rambling arms

  belied the old fine flicker of forge and vat,

  of framing, making, building, dreamt-up forms,

  of vision, hope from unsung pioneer

  will one day invent his masterpiece, his tour

  de force. Aged desk, are you prepared to tell?

  Has time arrived to meet fear

  with nose, to nose? If asked, work surface, flour

  everything kneaded, ease us--all is well...

  Tinkering sets and Lincoln logs dispersed

  along with the plastic basketballer toy

  buried within a young man's cedar purse,

  casket of treasures, strong-box made of boy.

  Always I played with playthings left from when

  younger and younger versions of you lived

  in worlds where daydreams folded on the earth.

  Desire and intent

  informed a simple world that muted moved

  en route to Blissed Everlasting: Birth. Rebirth.

  Soon come the fadings, manhood disenchants

  in worlds without enchantments, glamoury.

  When Everyone is worried, caught in rants,

  conned, abused, used, massaged with emery--

  they take (cause taken), break (broke), bricked (in turn)

  because they know not if the "what I should do"

  can break the reverie

  of all I've known and know to do: to burn.

  And thus the good we know we never do do.

  Or do we? Really, do we only ill?

  I think that the good men in this world are good,

  that every bad man still in bed feels

  all his guilt growing blackened mold-food

  upon his own soul's plinth and weeps inside

  the backside of eyes, either eye like glass,

  Man who, unmanned, unarmed, unmasked regrets.

  From such no evil hides,

  though some exist like their remorse can't outweigh past

  sins. Godly-born sorrow makes for better brides.

  Repentance without regret ain't hard to get...

  For grace does marry mercy to the just,

  it pays the debt with money from above,

  the death deserved by inflictor still a must,

  yet made innocuous, the vile removed.

  Our resurrected Savior is alive

  who died: it is his demise that extricates.

  Be free. For good men get their goodness from

  the Ghost Whose Life still thrives

  in all things, reminds us all that "Grace on grace"

  applies to the apple, airplane, smile, the broom.

  For the begotten's better still than the made,

  for making takes what's given, makes it less.

  But the begetter rears up a peer, his shade,

  his shadow, fellow, counterpart to bless.

  Was not the Father him that Christ promotes?

  Got not Christ glory making man his friend?

  The Spirit earned his praise in Mary's womb

  slept not with her, but woke.

  Begetting is the better thing: to die

  so what's begotten remains (empty tomb).

  I can't achieve your feat: No you? No me.

  No you, then none of me of whom you're proud.

  I say that in begetting me, a seed

  freed freedom -- piece of you. Behind this shroud

  hid Heath -- a kinder man -- and Lauren came,

  who is favored in form and pax arsa.

  In Heath -- that open land untilled is a bond.

  Distill these two, their fame

  still trumps my own. You see? Like a dream, far as

  I know, your achievement cannot soon abscond.

  "But Lance, my boy, all men beget!" How true,

  but not intentionally. And none can

  beget this son, these three. Dad, it's not new,

  but older things are often better: you stand

  where others flee. You foot our bills, you ache,

  give when there's none to give, and give still more.

  This means more than the theories relative,

  which split atoms, dry lakes.

  carpenter, learn from Carpenter this trust:

  Beget: to give another life, chores.

  Through ecstasy, family from family lives.

  This, I believe, is genius.

  Cradle of Stone

  It's not when he came

  Not his time of birth that matters

  But that he came

  Established his throne in fame forever

  Little babe, little sage,

  Little cradle made of stone

  Holiday fervor with

  Capital's seduction

  Mass produces our nativity

  To dysfunction as a scene

  Rather

     Than our story

  That proves again Epiphany

   three, no twenty

   star gazers

   poets from the east

     invading a town

  Whose newly crowned king

  strikes fear in a once-bold

  Herod, a grip of fear holds him

  So, in the night he fights

     Waging war with the firstborn

    Babes helpless to onslaught

  But our story proves through his wrath which,

    However gripped by fear he remains,

  Won't last the night...

  Our star beckons

  Twelve shepherds, deck the halls of time

    With their presence

  God's angels reckon the word by him

  For his manger clothes aren't

  Mangy at all, but a robe

    Whose train chugs glory

  Yet our story's one of a twelve-year old

    Lost in a temple, but far from alone

    kept company by riddled rabbis

    as he teaches his teachers

  Parents had left and still he spoke when found

    "I'm here for my father."

  People loved him

    A man, hilarious, the life of parties

    Bent toward healing and feeling

      the pain of the poor

    Loosing their chains to set them free

  People hated him

    This man, vicarious in spite of word-traps

      Sent from heaven?  He's a heretic & crazy

      the bane and a sore in our side,

    soon they'll make him king

    if he stays

  So chains came on a night

  surrounded by saints & scoundrels

    his friends and fouler men

  All watching his silent march

  Up an infinite hill of skulls

     Scourged and taunted

     forgotten in time as guards

  put his own clothes on him

    yet they weren't shamed rags at all

   but the famed robe whose train chugs glory

  Death met glare as he locked his jaw

     He obeyed to rule.

  And he would stand

    At the turn of the week with Holy Hands

  And side proven faithful

  His true, grave clothes known only as a robe

    Whose train englories,

  As our stor
y strolled out of a tomb

  Talk about making an entrance...

    It's not when he came

  Not his time of death that matters

    But that he came

  Establishing his throne in fame forever

  Little babe, Little sage

  Little cradle made of stone.

  Baltimore Buildings

  ...Are a weird weave. Windows, for instance,

  Speak of the seasons of certain men

  In America and their Maids -- of the Michigan sticky

  And Virginia giant juniper leaves

  And the Boston bricks baking and the drenched

  Patoka tempest that tidally rises

  The rivers nine. Read of the south's

  And the northern nuance's names and acts

  In these ruddy roofs. Read of San

  Francisco's solving in the sequence of row

  Houses hanging. Ahead of the eastern

  Apartment pillars. Ponder the deep

  and whore houses high meeting

  In medicine's middle -- maybe old John

  Hopkins will hold the healing of a city

  Walking The Wire, woken though broken

  By racist ruts. Uproar this crossroads

  That houses the homeless, how we forget

  The closeness we share -- cleave out our

  Inconvenient orphans or neighbors

  Or black babies. Baltimore will

  Never neuter the niggard past

  Of white hate: wonder at the houses

  that remember many masked lynchings

  and the return of tyrants. Too many of the

  Towers in the terran towns would rather

  Fall than befriend a fascist or an Arab

  Baby whose brain is bundled in the modern

  Swaddling clothes. Or a swindling Jew.

  Yeshua, Yes, You are not welcome:

  You come to your own. They can't receive You.

  Vulnerare

  In the Christmas Carols are the covered truths

  About the battered beauties who then love

  Despite the signs, the signaled fears

  That cue our cowing, that create our fights

  And fletch our flights with the feathers of something

  That kidnaps our courage. They execute a

  Plan as if plotting, as if placing a mole

  Merrymaking among our jaded

  Ranks who revile, who renege on Christmas

  Spirits like Scrooge. See the lovers

  Leave us, laughing? Look at them thrive

  As they come alive and call us to rise

  And love the leavers and lend to the dreamers

  And sleep with the slackers who slumber in parks

  And cosign their causes -- they co-habit

  With certain failure. See how they risk,

  How they frisk their freedoms? Frayed are the strands

  Of ambition they owned, once before this

  Chance went and chose them. Now they will linger

  A little bit longer over the poor and the poor

  In spirit like the Scrooges, who seek three

  Spirits to speak so that they can see.

  These risky rogues. These reddened lovers

  Who grace and grace, who grant and then give

  Like gods who go gayly along with

  Single-celled existence and our minor

  Attempts at terror. What truth I see:

  Non-entity enters our Eve as a baby.

  For the Love of God

  Could we with ink the ocean fill

  Oh, God I know how we have tried

  where pipe has burst below the Gulf

  or man poured into it his pride

  of place and privilege till it stank

  of sweat and sin and suffering

  and floated to a poorer shore,

  our lavish petty offering.

  And I, I stand before them all

  The Worst with pen then pen again

  all bleeding in my pocket's heart

  the black, vague, unpublishable.

  And were the skies of parchment made

  not skies we've used but walls and trains

  and bathroom stalls and table tops,

  felled Amazons, fried Kindle brains.

  We've written on the ocean floor

  and staked our flags into the sky,

  we've sent The Beatles to the void

  Un(d)sealed gas chambers with a lie.

  Though not of parchment, still of waves,

  though not of paper, still the sound,

  though not the skies, we've taken reams

  from flame and water and the ground.

  Were every stalk on earth a quill

  we seldom use the reeds today

  unless our name's Hermione,

  we choose to press – it's keys we play.

  As beatles scuttle down night's wall

  the sound, the sound of typing rose

  to me – a terror glazed in prose –

  some dragged-dead sound: a typist's maul.

  We've hammered, punched, and primed the keys,

  grew one long tail to history.

  We've stroked Your love like a lover's spot

  but to its climax bring it not.

  And every man a scribe by trade

  I hear that literacy's rising

  in the places tech has preyed

  on countries without road or school

  for power, peace or shade.

  They read the books we've never read:

  The Whale, the Brothers (less undead),

  The Hunchback, and The Book once made

  by sixty-some in sixty times.

  That Book, they learn, was bound for them:

  to give them pardon for their crimes

  and learn to write along with Him.

  To write the love of God above

  oh let me, help me, make me try

  or if not Your agenda, love?

  Whose program bids me come and die?

  For if it's mine, my death is vain

  and if my country, death is hate,

  if for family, kilt the dove

  That lights upon all kindred fates.

  To die for writing all your love

  on sparrow backs and under crates

  would push me past some sacrifice

  for kin, self, business, or the state. 

  Would drain the ocean dry

  (reverse of Noah's time and place,

  fulfillment of temp's cry)

  if loaded in my pen all space,

  if I, immortal, write

  forever then another day

  like a programmed keyboard meant to play

  each song of languish-made-okay

  till I wrote myself to the Judgement Day

  I'd need another night.

  Oh God of mercy, give me strength

  to write I must write:

  nor could the scroll contain the whole

  this too we men have tried,

  for no more books than about this man,

  nor sculptures, planes, or grains of sand,

  nor half of all canvas (if canvas can)

  were made for any other theme.

  God gave instead our light its gleam

  behind the man who cried

  the blood, which better forms an ink

  for pens, unlike our kitchen sink

  of ocean black and draining thin:

  red letters, scroll of skin.

  though stretched from sky to sky

  that skin-made scroll at one sky's end

  not tanned, but soft applied

  to wood and iron, bone and piss

  first slayed, then buried, still is this

  your prince, your savior, one called Chris?

  (We hear fiend hiss his lie).

  But then, three days, our scroll's complete

  then rising up, new body meet

  foretaste of healing: skin to sk
in,

  scroll stretched from death to life again

  and from sky to sky ever after end

  enigma knows defeat

  in red ink larger than the sea,

  in a scroll of skin like a prophecy

  written on either side,

  in reeds like railroad ties on end,

  like printer paper gauze descending

  upon a warmed-up grave, ascending

  Love to Love aright,

  rewrote the tale of the world's ending

  Love with Love in sight,

  He lives and does not need defending,

  Love. From Love we write.

  To Love,

  ...

  with Love,

  Insight.

  Sinking

  As the vinyl turned once more

    sounding closing cord

  As the needle soft arose

    toward its resting board

  As the old man slow approached

    knowing sounds no more

  As he lifted up a disc

    placing it in drawer

  As now walking out his den

     in his study's core

  As now seated in his chair

     foot upon wood floor

  As crossed-legged, smoking pipe

     fireplace before

  As he drank a last cold scotch,

     sank down on cold floor.

  Asking in his very self

     (wondering all the more)

  "Did I ever love another?"

    Died there on the floor.

  Inconveniences, Rightly Considered

  Untitled Ablist

  Cut from the ending and pasted here:

  not with hands, with running meat, just in case I get my hands cut out from under me.

  A young man asked

  "Legs or hands?"

  Asking me which I would choose

  to lose if given quandary

  the paralytic point of view

  Or

  Captain Hook's dual-wield?

  "Hands" I said "I'd keep my hands."

  For what are legs to me?

  For I can run and stand and limp

  But legs shame amputees

  Hands, of course, have given legs

  To those who make Olympic games

  And I have written of the fame of

  Walkers

  If you had a moment loose

  To see the simple plain recluse

  Who weaved her web with two small hands

  And not by legs, you see.

  Both hearts and hands affect the poor

  No room for legs, but HANDS the more

  We lend the more we open for

  An army grasping love.

  Yet still I wrote this with my feet,

  The Speed of Sound in Water

  Waves hold up

  pillars hold up

  The Brooklyn-Queens

  Expressway

  Beneath the

  concrete surface:

  hear ye nether

  sounds, you see?

  Still above

  instill below

  the din of men,

  of fishing--

  rubber hooks

  rounded, calling

  Me from the deep--

  run aground?

  Or deeper

  dive? The acid

  air, it muffles

  sound in sleep

  City Who

  Never Sleeps, I

  call you to the

  ocean well

  beneath the streets

  above and rock

  we rockabye

  under the

  wheel wells

  and their splashing.

  When It Hit the Saltlick

  when it hit the saltlick --

  sunlight -- crystals added white

  to what'd released its color

  when it hit the snowfall --

  dayglow -- crystals made it better,

  bright

  Salt of the Earth

  adults drawing from light's

  Abode magnificate

  Innocents in their first flurrious

  attempts at changing

  the landscape(s) together?

  Not.

  White.

  unbright, unilluminated

  melted, grimed, calcified

  on the subway's aisle.

  Innocence from holiness?

  Holiness from innocence?

  without a solid light

  Source snowplow and dozer alike

  rearrange piles of slow-eroding browns.

  My Hooker

  I write too few poems about Tara.

  I forget she enchants children, scaring

  away dark tears with bright blankets, how she

  summons them to play, whore and Bowery.

  You'll say, "Don't compare your wife with a whore!"

  Not whoring but the non-whoring part

  Of being a whore:

  How even prostitutes must find Sabbath

  when bad men proposition her form er.

  She may refuse her coin, trade for a bean

  and plant a garden in the brothelyard

  and tend to it all year by daylight's guard

  after many untended nights come out

  into the streetlamp light to shout,

  "Wake up and see! Wake up and see!"

  calling those who've been rough with her, too free:

  men turn to kids

  taste unforbidden fruits

  like children on an airplane who

  cry until one kind hooker

  hooks them not by a flash of skin

  But an orange blanky.

  Upon Finding Your Old Prison Letters

  It was freezing and fire and filled with the smell

  Of men who made due with maybe two

  Pairs of britches and who probably shat

  One anyways in the evening. Yet over it all

  You sing your song of something like a hope

  Or a cosmic comedy, of a careful need

  To never neuter the novelty of prayer

  Again if God would go on helping

  You and yourn. The yearning to "Never

  Disappoint my parents or my Papa in heaven

  Or my family and friends." The food your cellies

  Invented and vented like vases of steam

  That you lovingly look at and leave thinking:

  "I could open an Interstate Railway

  Powered by pretty and precious containers

  Of steam or magma." The structure of life

  To come has come and the collective ambitions

  Arrived though eroded like rare Greek

  Marble men who made it through

  The wars and rains, weathered by things

  They never knew would neuter the drive

  And the hope of the heavens their hands raised

  To praise and opine. Epiphany is a "showing

  Upon" where a promise pours forth as

  Manifestation. Maybe the hope

  And the prayers you prayed have passed away

  To make a means for the modest ambitions

  To rescue your reason from the rigor of jail

  When the hope of Heaven and healing prayer

  Were the better broth on a blizzard day

  As your blood froze, as it nearly boiled

  In the summer in that box, and you screamed your hope:

  "God protect and guide me out

  And bring me back to brew coffee

  In Sikeston Missouri safe and not dead" ?

  Home

  You yanked up years of dreaming

  When they pulled the plug out. Powerful longings -- 

  How they flounder in flame. But fleeting are the ways

  Friction frees us: it frames our pains

  But tames truth -- is the time we spend

  Bitter a better base for erecting

  T
omorrow's morning? Minds fashioned

  After the evening will ever fade

  In the dreaming dawn. Dreadful, I know,

  But the beacons are lit, they beam out,

  Lingering light leads the way home

  And the Fatherland foams with a fibrous tide --

  This undertow aiming to pull

  Us inward and upward. Isn't it scary

  To leave the land of your long birth

  For the country that's called Camelot by your people?

  Inheritance: Part 2

  We're a people without homes

  We trod a world of shadows in our sleep

  Choosing tiptoes while you plant our feet

  Still we're learning how to belong to The Meek

  As a people without homes.

   

  In a global house of bones

  half in flesh incarnate loyalty

  Just like us, you came fleshed Deity

  As we walk, so we own, both the barefoot meek

  Over global house of bones

   

  Call it: "Valley of Dry Bones"

  "Can it rise?" people ask, hoping homeless meek

  Take off their shoes and scratch their feet

  Just like Zeke raising up both the dead and the bleak

  Bare feet raising all dry bones.

   

  None of us will have a home

  Every place will be ours when there is no sea

  Kick off your shoes and you'll soothe your feet

  'Cause the Heavens and Earth all belong to the meek

  For His presence is our home.

   

  "Birds have nests

  Foxes have dens

  But the hope of the whole world rests

  On the shoulders of a homeless man --

  No you did not have a home."

  Looking into the Abyss while Chewing Glass (and the Abyss Stares Back)

  To Della Beyond the Veil

  You yearned for your homeland.

  Always do. After the era

  passes you, you pass too.

  Music styles wane as moons,

  Norwood's fiddle when new knew you,

  knew grandkids too, never me

  though or the little themes that we know,

  millennials make do. My how the strings

  request of me: "Play." Can resonance reach

  across a sea? Out from you

  unto we who sing? Or... are the strings

  synced to this season of century gone?

  Their song sung and strings rung out

  whenever loss leaves us songless?

  I've made my mothers feel

  not so proud. So crowds take me.

  But you are yearning. You quietly burn.

  Obscurity scorns the scoop, awards --

  The sounds of clapping cloven from hearts

  Like you and yourn. Younger men make

  Mistakes of fame, stake their claims on

  Followers fondling, but fallow grounds

  Grow up greenlings, great and silver

  Towering trees take seeds to start,

  Kernel and soil, corn and soot.

  Thank you for thinking of us,

  Toiling away at tender things,

  Toiling away like tinder twigs

  Will smolder -- sparks and older twine.

  Hope I that I will integrate

  The privacy that premies bring

  To wombs or moss weathers in shadows

  Or stalagtites steal from stubborn ores

  Deep beneath the dungeons.

  The axis of our world acts unseen,

  Yet it spins and clings to spiritual things.

  We owe ourselves to owlish beings:

  Nocturnal, wise, weathered, silent,

  Sure to sneak snow mice in cold,

  And watching, ever watching us

  With eyes that know. With eyes of stone

  That melted long ago in the River Jordan.

  Færwel Welfær

  safety