BOOK SPINE POETRYÂ
I heard god laughing
a draft of shadows,
the shadow of Sirius.
Insearch: a way of being
the undiscovered self.
Fear of dreaming
when things fall apart,
the courage to be
laughter in the dark.
1. Hafiz
2. Octavio Paz
3. W.S. Merwin
4. James Hillman
5. Carl Rogers
6. Carl Jung
7. Pema Chodron
8. Paul Tillich
9. Vladimir Nabokov
photo by igloo
BETRACHTUNGEN
If we turn over your fists,
peel finger off palm,
like coffee for calm,
and the wind is not there—
we will try again,
this finger-combing of the air.
If your tears resemble
phoenix-ash, we will spit in them,
make finger-paint,
draw mustaches
on shadows in Plato’s cave,
and ask for rain to dim the fire.
If your feet only know flight,
we will follow them
until they lie like wrinkles;
furrowed but smiling,
caught with metaphor
and childbirth.
If your nature speaks brass,
and mine flint—
I will remember rules
were made to be broken,
and translations never
as good as native tongues.
When you look in my eyes,
and see human, not god—-
I will forge rings
out of flawed diamonds;
leave you to your quiet
inside skin.
— (Moore, as in Hillman, 1989, p. 16)
COYOTE/ESHU PUBLIC ART INSTALLATION COLLABORATION
w/ Joanna Walling
Here lies,surrender your joys.
your need to control,
a death, a rebirth
a world alive beyond your hold.
The passing of your restraint,
the spring from limitation,
surrender dawn to chance
at the thresholds of initiation.
At the crossroads you witness
dualities far at play
upon which way to turn
or which path future lay,
is the question you yield
to the space in-between,
cosmic myth and structured form
such opportunity never seen.
Consult instead
potential known and astray.
Consult the wisdom, consult the cunning
send the trickster home to play.
Find the force of nature
that both nourishes and destroys
surrender your control
Consider now, and lay below
at the foot of this tombstone
a symbol of your submission
to all that is unknown.
In the spirit of the eclipse yesterday. Photo by gallifreygal.
HOW I PRAY (2008)
The Composer draws a line from my tailbone.
Cleaves intestines, evades clothes, exits navel.
The horizontal line extends to forever—
which leads or follows when skies atrophy.
Every third moment my line inverts to the moon.
Chucks my feet, rivets my back arced, holds me.
Hands ineffectively dangle on stale terrain.
This vantage point reveals the moon is not
paper or butter, but a comma in a verse without
closure, brimming with possibilities of ands.
I avoid drinking water, reluctant it wick
from my navel string and extinguish god’s thirst.
Suspended with a gray ache in my mind,
I anxiously jerk my rope convinced it will retract,
snapping me against the Composer of lines.
— Dean Young via/ Rick Bursky
Photo by Katzi
I HAD TO WAKE HER
I, who had also
been father-less,
and therefore feather-less;
without wings.
I had to display
soft blankets
and brown skin
to eyes full of caverns
and endless skies.
Her eyes spoke,
even though
they could not see
their own tears.
I had to touch her
with the rough hands
of an artist,
nails clipped short.
I reminded her:
to the untrained eye
a geode is just a rock,
and an ugly one at that.
Only someone
close to the wild
can imagine wombs
full of crystals,
the fibonacci
of music made nature.
Photo by Justin Blyth
SOMEONE CLOSE, NOT SEEN, BUT FELT
He lives in my ribcage,
a fitting place
for a beast so tiny
and dark.
It is safe there,
warm and pregnant.
His gentle mouth nibbles,
like dog and bone.
Then my hair is long,
and my eyes have bolted.
He is still gentle,
but there is little of my frame
left to consume.
He licks the fragile
infrastructure,
aware of every gesture,
and mindful of his tail.
