Bivalves, Raw (haiku)

for Bob Stein

Guilty, I ate

Malepeques with him, on our

anniversary.

from "Stations of LIght" : X. Peter

X Peter

(The Risen Lord forgives Peter.)

So now you know

the light

years’

lengths

He will

travel

to forgive you Peter.

So now you know

that peace

is the better part

of justice, Peter.

Now you know

that courage

nourished by fervor,

flourishes,

Now you know, Peter

how long

the reach of

His love is

So, now,

you can love back.

Dark Night of the Water Park

after San Juan de La Cruz

From this little Hell
located within
in a Paradise
fashioned of hard
plastic, I call out to you
wherein negation is impossible
like painting a sun-
less room dark red, not-
withstanding light as it is
shed upon flesh gravity ravages yet
bathes it in fire-light
where rapid descent thrills
and to kiss the ideal
Spanish wine from your lips
from afar is exultation
as pupils adjust to changed
light which is shadow within
warming the blood of tomorrow as today
the cracked veneer of beauty’s
complexion restores the complex
luster the universe
smoothes over, loses and
gains which time
waters and soothes,
leaving the war-
torn outer layer supple,
as love moves;
as love moves
my ear and tongue
as pain registers and sacrifice
devours. Angels
hijack the mortal receptors
once God has stripped
the bones clean for stock
to be taken
in, and a holding pattern
ensues. In holding pens
we are detained, where we
erect, as contemplation fails
to displace
the din and dim glut
of the familiar and reach,
awash and consecrated
intoxicated by smithereen wetness
greenly drenched in melodious drunkenness of
faith as all around, even here
in the presence of the ice-
blue mechanical roar of a beast
we nurture and spoil
like a false god
we finish off
with rhythmic gushes
helped along by the pump and timer
of a colossal metal heart
and the rhythmic dumping vessel
hitched to an axle
that delivers
its inverse fountain
eliciting laughter lovely as bells,
the audible delight
of the truly innocent
souls who await
the pummeling baptism that doesn’t
come cheap wherein all that is
moist sublimes or is converted
amid the unintelligent design of a climate-
controlled cathedral to vapid
ingenuity, a getaway fashioned
to mimic a rustic
escape from it all
where choirs of pines
adorned in snow might
attend were it not for
the blips and projections
of imitation reverie
and counterfeit imagination
observed through the caustic
disinfecting veil
of a chemical that wrings
tears from the head
in a spot that sorely
lacks the voluptuousness
imagination is full
of amid excesses and extremes
of temperature and radiance
that comprise the central glow
of a bare and punishing inquisition
bulb, the glimmer of truth
raving in the throat
of a silenced poet;
it redefines itself and us
as glory
shrinks away, and when I listen,
Juan, I peel away -- When you speak
of a lover’s skin, when I hear you sing
like some gorgeous Arab in a cave,
of a sigh, of hair upon a pillow,
or the lover’s neck,
it is everything
human in the dark that can be
known, the hair, the kiss,
everything I lack and
all I want:
the meat of the soul,
the root of
its most sumptuous
spirit incarcerated in flesh,
encased, incarnate with all
its terrifying
excellence and holy pandemonium.
When I listen, I hear you within
even here amid the false
bounty it’s easy to imagine God
would want no part of,
amid these mechanical waters
and synthetic islands stinking acridly of
bleach and wealth and purification,
amid this wet void
I push away so as to hear
and come
to, as you elect
to creep into my temples
in stealth with your Persian tinge,
and blue Islamic splendor
and Andalucian moon which made
to love by keeps watch,
nosing through
the Christmas-cold as it does
finding not
a saint -- far from it --
but a poet and a lover,
therefore, in whom canticles
curl up like kittens in spots of sun --
they throb softly aglow
and take on lives
of their own,
solid, diffuse and sacred,
for better or worse,
like the stubborn vestige
of a song that refuses
to dissolve or slide off
into silence, obstinate
as a sentence
handed down,
cut off from all that is holy
and all that is not,
like a vow,
obstinate as the refusal of mystics
to be silenced. In stillness you break
in, and slap the warped
tarnished halo from this head;
as an interior pleasure takes hold, so magnetic
even God might have a hard
time saying “stop,”
urging your own hell-
bent fellow poet, baptized into the
effulgence you advocate
not to mistake chastity for frigidity,
nor sensuality for sin,
nor spirit for meat
nor talk for song,
nor song for mere song,
as she stakes her mystic’s
claim ablaze upon some
middle path lit with stars,
a heaven-bent jiva,
a womanly morsel
amid the myriad gleaming
array that is God’s vault
studded with black
pearl, a girl rabbi longing to kiss
and tell and give
birth
to the knowledge of
Him with every mote of Her
knowing
to go on
believing
you have arrived
at the answer
is the clearest sign
you know
nothing.
So I bind
my heart to the clouds,
I sleep in the fire
of your arms, Juan,
called to your
arms,
eyes
half shut,
one ear open
to a cosmos I erase and
embrace because all is
forgiven
into the light
of a dream fruition
ignites
which is more
like a dream or hunch
than knowledge;
I am awake, I imagine
its tide
breaking -- I succumb to its broken
waters which within
me move out;
I feel it,
crowning:
Yes.
The Queendom
of God
is at hand.
 

from "Stations of Light"

XIII The Women are Holding a Vigil in the Upper Room

The women are holding a vigil, they are waiting in the upper room.
The women are holding a vigil, they are waiting in the upper room for their prayers to work.
The women holding a vigil in the upper room are waiting with all of the other disciples.
The women holding a vigil are waiting, their power is waxing, but their voices are steadfast.
The women holding a vigil in the upper room are patient but they mourn and lament waste.
Fruitful and generous, the women holding a vigil in the upper room mother and nurse.
The women in the upper room holding a vigil know there is strength in their number.
The women in the upper room have confidence in mystery and are wise.
The women in the upper room who are holding a vigil study and discern.
That their legacy in battle is a meager one does not imply
that the women holding a vigil in the upper room waiting can not fight.
The women holding a vigil in the upper room are a ferocious
tribe of peace makers.
The women in the upper room waiting and praying are made in God’s image.
The women are waiting in the upper room for deliverance
when it comes they will be ready and in place, “standing at attention.”

excerpt from "Stations of Light" / " XIV Pentecost (A Love Poem)"

In this quaking
chamber of my heart
I carry a small torch

where a halo might sit.
I summon the force
which drawn downward

might dissolve
the lock the mind
holds upon itself.

I summon the might.
The voice in the light
that lavishes the strength

of its fire upon me,
is the voice that throbs
in the fire, the voice that breaks

news, the force that breaks
open the Word, the promise
kept: the created Word

that transforms, more splendid
than a newborn’s wail, heroic feet, cello
strings, the commotion of larks as they cavort and

feast on bold scarlet
berries tinged with glints of light;
the Word immediate; comes

as a caress, as if
to say: take a piece of my heart;
as if to say: it burns for you,

my dove, as if to say:
take all of me
as if to say: whoever you are I love you,

as if to say: whomever you call me
I am love
as if to say: come,

love. As if to say: come.

from "Stations of LIght "IV Jesus Meets His Mother

You are all, Mother,
you could never stop

in me, as I am all you
could never imagine

I might be-
come. One

last time, Mother,
say “Yes.” Call out

at my crowning,
See me, Queen, of

all
I am

at the threshold
between being

and not,
watch me

watch you; know
the full force of

sorrow, so you may throw it
back at me, the dark weight

Love is. Say “Yes,”
Woman, bring forth new

life once last time.
Forgive me, Mother,

for you now know
what it is I

do. Feel how
I am

in you,
Queen,

as if I never left:
fruit of your womb,

which, ripened,
now falls

not far
from the tree.