I Am

I am streets, streets, endless streets

winding, knotting, tangling;

dust matted deep into cracks

of the roads, of the wrinkles of the faces

wearing smiles.

Greeting Traders.

I am of a foreign music, of a secret language

that rests precisely at the tip of their tongues.

I am a question forever.

Unaware, happily so.

At home.

I am tucked-in shirts, short-cut hair, well-trimmed souls.

A marriage between the calloused hands of Faith

strangling the sad face of Learning.

A faith misguided, misinterpreted, misused.

Unknowingly, happily so.

I am a sky like a big blue mouth devouring this desert,

and perhaps the desert does the same to me,

with mountains like crooked teeth,

shouting life into me that I might remember their bones.

For I can never go back.

Unwillingly, happily so.

Yahwe

You are an upside down painting

not to be understood.

Yet the critics, the painters, the buyers,

the liars

stroke chins and murmur contemplative

sighs at you,

write books of great size of you,

make eyes at you,

surmise of you.

I’m not surprised at you

if you are laughing.

A Music Festival

A square of dirt, fresh cut of corn-
their roots still vainly hug the earth.
A sheet of clouds, the moon above
peers sadly through the threads.

And walkers by the moonlight stride
across some farmer's summer land
and feel effects of magic smoke
with tickets in their hand.

But nothing ties together these
than what was spinning through the air--
a web of music, thickly spread
put spiders in their hair.

The Dove

Dancer in a darkened room,
Tobacco, Marijuana, sweat, and booze.
Magic shakes the walls to a beat calling you home.

Dancer forgetting the how's, when's, why's.
Dancing to nowhere with no one.
Dancing, examining with in-turned eyes
The creases in your brain.

And at once your mind is in the sea,
melded tight to ocean tides,
and currents pull you deep.
Your salt-stung eyes take in
the sea's beginning and its end.
But beyond, you cannot know.

Is there a shore beyond the water deep?
A shore to rest, to stand, to sleep.

You may not know,
For while you dance, you do not dance for answers.
And if you were, I would not give them, still.

You are a new-born dove drifted off to sea
And far away, away with me.

And I will never let you know
that wings are meant for flying,
for you would fly
away, away and free.
So dance, my Dove, instead, with me.

An Unquestionable Answer

The Navajo soul staring stories into the fire.
A wall of cricket song, wolf song and wind.
His shield is his song and his feathers and drum
and his prayers to the spirit of this ancient dirt.
But the tomb of his drum was, in secret,
beneath his in-turned eyes,
a question.

Are you there?

You say it might be better to wander high halls of stone
lined with lamps, wooden pews
Gregorian chants proclaiming good news,
but not too good-- Careful.
"Belief is suffering."

And every echo of every note on every wall
of cricket song, wolf song, and wind
is only a shrill question answered by itself.

And the Ya Sin,
Mele Pule, Euripide's plea, and King David's harp--
A mountain of songs of holy answers
that reach to God's reaching hand.
But in the roots, the caves, the core,
where nothing is certain
a question of doubt lingers and gnaws
and gnaws.

As I Wind You Up Once More

Unaware clock
Ticking a beat for a world of violent dancers

I'm consumed by thoughts,
caffeine, smoke, alcohol--
Substance dry;
anything to pass You by.
And I, a tired dancer to your changing face,
never having realized

You would not you if I would not I.

You decay me-- pages and cover.
You are Eventually-- my story, over.

So well I knew your face.
You have no concept of such things.

A Plea-- Answer

Here I stand,
feet root in the bronze earth,
wind blows up the bronze dirt.
Not a living thing but me.
Here to wonder. Here to be.

One small word.
Hello.
No return, or echo, or reply.
Only wind and dust and I.
Not a living soul but mine.
Hello?

Is that you?
Or am I making voices from this wind?
Am I now so willing just to bend
myself, just so, that I might never feel alone?
Am I making voices in this wind?

The Lakebed

Tomorrow weighs hard on the Now,
And the past holds me up or tears down.
But surely the choirs above with their singing of light
might lend some assurance from their astrological dance
to say something about comfort during the night.

Watch as I put words in Heaven's silent mouth,
and deceive my ears to hear
the joy and comfort that she shouts.

Tomorrow-- She shrouds herself in beauty, terrible as the silent sky.
And I, the present, now and here, stooped in darkness, gaze upward from the floor,
that she might shout a song to me that's not been sung before.

Past- the last old ragged sins that I have dragged until this end,
up to this sacred shore-- this now and here-- to cast,
at last, these sins into the lake bed deep
and sing Tomorrow's song once more.