Poetry – Hakomi

Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.”

T.S. Eliot

 

Poetry from the Hakomi Site

The poetry can be read with the music and interpreted as an abstract companion with the art. Each music composition, painting and poem is associated with one of the 24 chambers of a particular site, of which there are currently four that have been released. The one shown on this page is the Hakomi site. In the WingMakers.com website, in the art section, you can view the poetry and James’ notes related to the art and poetry in the Mixed Media Galleries. Nearly 100 paintings have been released from the four sites: Ancient Arrow in New Mexico; Hakomi near Cusco, Peru; Zyanya in Southern China; and Aadhya in central Australia. There are seven sites in total, spanning all seven continents. Jamala, the site found in Finland, will be the next site that is released.

 

 

 

 

Chamber One

A fire for You

 

On this, the shortest day of the year,

I have journeyed to the Great Plains

to build a fire for you.

 

The night air is cold like a cellar

cut from ancient stones.

But I found some wood among the deserted plains

buried under the grasses and dirt,

hidden away like leaves

that had become the soil.

After I cleaned the wood by hand—its dirt beneath

my nails and the fabric of my cloth

I sent a flame

combusted by the mere thought of you.

And the wood became fire.

 

There were hermit stars that gathered

overhead to keep me company.

Your spirit was there as well

amidst the fire’s flames.

We laughed at the deep meaning of the sky

and its spacious ways.

Marveling at the fl at mirror of the plain

that sends so little skyward,

like the hearts of children denied

a certain kind of love.

 

You played with spirits

when you were young among these fields.

You didn’t know their names then.

I was one.

Even without a name, or body,

I watched your gaze, unrelenting to the things

that beat between the

two mirrors of the sky and plain.

 

I believe it was here also

that you learned to speak with God.

Not in so many words as you’re now accustomed,

but I’m certain that God listened to your life

and gathered around your fire

for warmth and meaning.

In the deserted plains he found you set apart

from all things missing.

 

Dear spirit, I have held this vigil for so long,

tending fires whose purpose I have forgotten.

I think warmth was one.

Perhaps light was another.

Perhaps hope was the strongest of these.

 

If ever I find you around my fire,

built by hands

that know your final skin,

between the sheets of the sky and plain,

I will remember its purpose.

In barren fields

that have long been deserted by the hand of man

I will remember.

In the deepest eye of you

I will remember.

In the longest night of you

I will remember.

On this, the shortest day of the year,

I have journeyed to the Great Plains

to build a fire for you.

 

 

Chamber Two

Soul’s Photograph

 

Who will find me

in the morning after

the winds rush over the barren body

that once held me like a tree a leaf?

Who will find me

when mercy, tired of smiling,

finally frowns in deep furrows of ancient skin?

 

Who will find me?

Will it be you?

Perhaps it will be a cold morning

with fresh prints of snow

and children laughing as they

lay down in the arms of angels.

Perhaps it will be a warm evening

when crickets play their music

to the stillness of waiting stars.

Perhaps it will be the light

that draws me away

or some sweet surrender that captures me

in its golden nets.

 

Who will find me

when I have left and cast

my line in new waters trickling

so near this ocean of sand?

Listen for me when I’m gone.

Listen for me in poems

that were formed with lips mindful of you.

You who will outlast me.

Who linger in the courage I could not find.

You can see me

in these words.

They are the lasting image.

Soul’s photograph.

 

 

Chamber 3

Forgiver

Last night we talked for hours.

You cried in unstoppable sorrow,

while I felt a presence carve itself into me

source and savior of your dragging earth.

You feel so deeply,

your mind barely visible

staring ahead to what the heart already knows.

I see the distance you must heal.

I know your pacing heart bounded by corners

that have been rounded and smoothed

like a polished stone from endless waves.

For all I know you are me

in another body,

slots where spirits reach in

to throw the light

interpreting dreams.

Prowling for crowns.

 

Are there ways to find your heart

I haven’t found?

You, I will swallow without tasting first.

I don’t care the color.

Nothing could warn me away.

Nothing could diminish my love.

And only if I utterly failed

in kinship would you banish me.

 

Last night, I know I was forgiven.

You gave me that gift unknowing.

I asked for forgiveness

and you said it was unneeded;

time shuffled everything anew

and it was its own

forgiver.

 

But I know everything not there

was felt by you and transformed.

It was given a new life, though inconspicuous,

it wove us together to a simple, white stone

lying on the ground that marks a spot of sorrow.

Beneath, our union, hallowed of tiny bones

beseech us to forgive ourselves

and lean upon our shoulders

in memory of love, not loss.

 

Blame settles on no one;

mysterious, it moves in the calculus

of God’s plan as though no one thought

to refigure the numbers three to two to one.

The shape stays below the stone.

We walk away,

knowing it will resettle

in our limbs

in our bones

in our hearts

in our minds

in our soul.

 

 

 

Chamber Four 

Nature of Angels

 

Midnight in the desert and all is well.

I told myself so and so it is,

or it is not,

I haven’t quite decided yet.

Never mind the coyotes’ howl or

the shrinking light.

 

Holiness claims my tired eyes

as I return the stare of stars.

They seem restless, but maybe they’re

just ink blots and I’m the one

who’s really restless.

 

There is something here that repeals me.

In its abundance I am absent.

So I shouted at the desert spirits,

tell me your secrets

or I will tell you my sorrows.

 

The spirits lined up quickly then.

Wings fluttering.

Hearts astir.

I heard many voices become one

and it spoke to the leafless sky

as a tenant to earth.

 

We hold no secrets.

We are simply windows to your future.

Which is now and which is then

is the question we answer.

But you ask the question.

If there is a secret we hold

it is nothing emboldened by words

or we would commonly speak.

 

I turned to the voice,

what wisdom is there in that?

If words can’t express your secret wisdom,

then I am deaf and you are mute and we are blind.

At least I can speak my sorrows.

Again the wings fluttered

and the voices stirred

hoping the sorrow would not spill

like blood upon the desert.

 

But there were no more sounds

save the coyote and the owl.

And then a strange resolution suffused my sight.

I felt a presence like an enormous angel

carved of stone was placed behind me.

I couldn’t turn for fear its loss would spill my sorrow.

But the swelling presence was too powerful to ignore

so I turned around to confront it,

and there stood a trickster coyote

looking at me with glass eyes

painting my fire, sniffing my fear,

and drawing my sorrow away in intimacy.

And I understood the nature of angels.

 

 

Chamber Five 

Final Dream

 

Strike the flint that burns

a lonely world

and opens blessed lovers

to the golden grave of earth’s flame.

 

Listen to the incantation

of raindrops as they pass from gray clouds

to our mother’s doorstep.

Dreams of miracles yet to come

harbor in their watery husks.

 

Stand before this cage

splashed with beauty and stealth

and arranged with locks that have grown frail.

A simple breath

and all life is joined in the frontier.

 

Here is the masterpiece of creation

that has emerged from the unknown

in the depths of a silent Heart.

Here is the laughter sought

among rulers of death.

Here are the brilliant colors of rainbows

among the spilling reds that purge our flock.

Here is the hope of forever

among stone markers that stare through eyelids

released of time.

Here are the songs of endless voices

among the heartless dance of invisible power.

 

There is an evening bell that chimes

a melody so pure

even mountains weep

and angels lean to listen.

There is a murmur of hope that sweeps

aside the downcast eyes of hungry souls.

 

It is the fragrance of God

writing poems upon the deep blue sky

with pin-pricks of light and a sleepless moon.

It is the calling to souls

lost in the forest of a single world

to be cast, forged, and made ready

for the final dream.

 

 

Chamber Six 

Afterwards

 

I’ve set loose the guards that

stand before my door.

I’ve let cells collide in suicide

until they take me.

If there were stories left to tell

I would hear them.

 

Behind the waterfalls of channeled panic

spilling their prideful progeny

I can stay hidden in the noise.

Being invisible has its cameo rewards.

It also keeps visible the durable lifeform

murmuring beneath the wickedness.

This is truly the only creature I care to know,

with luminous ways of sweet generosity that suffers

in the untelling universe

of the unlistening ear.

 

When I am found out—after I am gone—

by a stranger’s heart whose drill bit

is not dulled by impersonation,

I will open eyes, peel away skin,

awaken the heart’s coma.

I will set aside the costumed figure

and redress the host

so its image can be seen in mirrors

I set forth with words bugged by God.

When these words are spoken,

another ear is listening on the other side

beaming understanding

like lasers, their neutral light.

 

The common grave of courage holds us all

in the portal of singularity,

the God-trail of rebeginning.

 

Somehow, so seldom, words and images

thrust their meaning into heaven and conquer time.

But when they do,

they become the abracadabra

of the sacred moment.

The pantomime of the public’s deepest longing.

 

Afterwards,

the improbable eyelid glances open,

the skin folds away,

and the heroic eye awakens and remains alert.

Afterwards, the words eat the flesh and leave behind

the indigestible bitterness.

The emotional corpse shed,

an insoluble loneliness.

The cast of separation.

 

 

Chamber Seven 

Warm Presence

 

I once wore an amulet

that guarded against the forceps of humanity.

It kept at bay the phalanx of wolves

that circled me like phantoms of Gethsemane.

Phantoms that even now

replay their mantra like conch shells.

Coaxing me to step out and join the earthly tribe.

To bare my sorrow’s spaciousness

like a cottonwood’s seed to the wind.

 

Now I listen and watch for signals.

To emerge a recluse squinting in ambivalence

inscribed to tell what has been held by locks.

It is all devised in the sheath of cable

that connects us to Culture.

The single, black strand that portrays us to God.

The DNA that commands our image

and guides our natural selection of jeans.

 

Are there whispers of songs flickering

in dark, ominous thunder?

Is there truly a sun behind this wall of monotone clouds

that beats a billion hammers of light?

There are small, fl at teeth that weep venom.

There is an inviolate clemency

in the eyes of executioners while their hands toil to kill.

But there is no explanation for

voyeur saints who grieve only with their eyes.

There is only one path to follow

when you connect your hand and eye

and release the phantoms.

 

This poem is a shadow of my heart

and my heart the shadow of my mind,

which is the shadow of my soul

the shadow of God.

God, a shadow of some unknown, unimaginable

cluster of intelligence where galaxies

are cellular in the universal body.

Are the shadows connected?

Can this vast, unknown cluster reach into this poem

and assemble words that couple at a holy junction?

It is the reason I write.

Though I cannot say this junction has ever

been found (at least by me).

 

It is more apparent that some unholy hand,

pale from darkness, reaches out and casts its sorrow.

Some lesser shadow or phantom

positions my hand in a lonely outpost

to claim some misplaced luminance.

The phantom strains to listen for songs as they whisper.

It coordinates with searching eyes.

It peels skin away to touch the soft fruit.

It welds shadows as one.

 

I dreamed that I found a ransom note

written in God’s own hand.

Written so small I could barely

read its message, which said:

“I have your soul, and unless you deliver—

in small, unmarked poems—

the sum of your sorrows, you will never

see it alive again.”

 

And so I write while something unknown is curling

around me, irresistible to my hand, yet unseen.

More phantoms from Gethsemane who honor

sorrow like professional confessors lost in their despair.

I can reach sunflowers the size of

moonbeams, but I cannot reach the sum of my sorrows.

They elude me like ignescent stars that fall nightly

outside my window.

 

My soul must be nervous.

The ransom is too much to pay

even for a poet who explores the black strand of Culture.

 

Years ago I found an

Impression—like snow angels—left in tall grass

by some animal, perhaps a deer or bear.

When I touched it I felt the warm presence of life,

not the cold radiation of crop circles.

This warm energy lingers only for a moment

but when it is touched it lasts forever.

And this is my fear:

that the sum of my sorrows will last forever

when it is touched, and even though my soul

is returned unharmed,

I will remember the cold radiation

and not the warm presence of life.

 

Now I weep when children sing

and burrow their warm presence into my heart.

Now I feel God adjourned by the

source of shadows.

Now I feel the pull of a bridle,

breaking me like a wild horse turned

suddenly submissive.

I cannot fight the phantoms

or control them or turn them away.

They prod at me as if a lava stream should

continue on into the cold night air

and never tire of movement.

Never cease its search for the perfect place to be a sculpture.

An anonymous feature of the gray landscape.

 

If ever I find the sum of my sorrows

I hope it is at the bridgetower

where I can see both ways

before I cross over.

Where I can see forgeries like a crisp mirage

and throw off my bridle.

I will need to be wild when I face it.

I will need to look into its

unnameable light and unravel

all the shadows interlocked like paper dolls

and cut from a multiverse of experience.

To let them surround me

and in one resounding chorus

confer their epiphany so I

can hand over the ransom and reclaim my soul.

 

When all my sorrows are gathered round

in an unbroken ring I will stare them down.

Behind them waits a second ring,

larger still and far more powerful.

It is the ring of life’s warm presence

when sorrows have passed

underneath the shadows’ source

and transform like the dull chrysalis

that bears iridescent angels.

 

 

Chamber Eight 

My Son

 

My son is two.

I watch him walk

like a drunken prince.

With his body bare I can see

his soul better.

His shoulder blades

gesture like vestiges of wings.

His features stenciled upon pale flesh

by hands that have been before me.

 

He so wants to be like me.

His every movement like a dusty mirror

or awkward shadow of a bird in flight.

Every sound an echo heard.

Every cell pregnant with my urges.

But my urge is to be like him.

To return to childhood’s safe embrace

and certain honor.

 

If I return to this place

I hope my eyes will look again upon his face

even until his blades are wings once more.

Until I have circled his creaturehood

and know every hidden cleft

where I have left my print indelible

unable to be consumed.

Until all that he is

is in me and our hands are clasped, forged,

entwined, in voiceless celebration.

 

Until we are alone like two leaves

shimmering

high above a treeless landscape

never to land.

 

 

Chamber Nine 

Wishing Light

Sun walks the roof of the sky

with a turtle’s patience.

Circling endlessly amidst the black passage

of arrival and retreat.

Moon can shape shift

and puncture the confident darkness.

The weaker sister of sun

it bleeds light even as it dwindles

to a fissure of fluorescence.

Black sky like a monk’s hood draped

over stars with squinted eyes.

Stewards lost,

exiled to overspread

the dark lair of the zodiac.

This silent outback where

light is uprooted and cast aside

beats like a tired clock uneven.

It dreams of sunlight passing so

it can follow like a parasite.

Tired of meandering in absence it

wants to live the speed of light and feel its directness.

Wishing to stay alive in light years

and not some recumbent eternity.

Desiring the sharp pain of life

to the dull, numbing outskirts of ancient space.

Darkness follows light like a tireless

wind that pours over tumbleweeds.

But it always seems to outlast the people

if not the light.

 

Chamber Ten 

Nothing Matters

 

Space is curved

so no elevator can slither to its stars.

Time is a spindle of the present

that spins the past and future away.

Energy is an imperishable force

so permanence can be felt.

Matter flings itself to the universe,

perfectly pitiless in its betrayal of soul.

 

You can only take away

what has been given you.

 

Have you not called the ravens the foulest of birds?

Is their matter and energy so different than ours?

Are we not under the same sky?

Is their blood not red?

Their mouth pink, too?

 

Molten thoughts, so hot they fuse space and time,

sing their prophecies of discontent.

Listen to their songs in the channels of air

that curl overhead like temporary tattoos

of light’s shimmering ways.

 

Am I merely a witness of the betrayal?

Where are you who are cast to see?

How have you been hidden from me?

Is there a splinter that carries you to the whole?

 

If I can speak your names

and take your hands so gentle you would not see me,

feeling only the warm passage of time

and the tremor of your spine moving you to weep.

 

Space is curved so I must bend.

Time is a spindle so I must resolve its center.

Energy, an imperishable force I must ride.

And matter, so pitiless I refuse to be betrayed.

 

So I stand naked to the coldest wind

and ask it to carve out 

an island in my soul

in honor of you who stand beside me 

in silence.

Lonely, I live on this island 

assured of one thing:

that of space, time, energy, and matter;

nothing matters.

Yet when I think of you 

in the cobwebbed corner,

hove led without wings

like a seed planted 

beneath a dead tree stump,

I know you are watching

with new galaxies wild in your breast.

I know you are listening

to the lidded screams 

smiling their awkward trust.

All I ask of you is to throw me

a rope sometimes

so I can feel the permanence 

of your heart.

 

It’s all I need 

in the face of nothing matters.

 

 

 

Chamber Eleven 

Arrival

 

I have held a vigil for lucidity

out in the horizonless fields where nothing shines

but the light of my fire

and the silver disk of the endless night.

 

Suddenly, it’s clear that I’m alone in the wilderness

without human eyes to reach in to.

Alone with my treasure of sounds

in the pure silence of arrival.

 

 

 

Chamber Twelve 

Awake and Waiting

 

Child-like universe emerging from darkness,

you belong to others not I.

My home is elsewhere

beyond the sky

where light pollinates the fragile borders

and gathers the husk.

In the quiet of the desert floor

my shell lingers in the pallid dusk

of a starved garden.

What holds me to this wasteland

when others clamor for shadows

and resist the vital waters?

Where the ripening magnet

holds us blind.

 

Far away,

kindling the presence of a timeless world

hunting for memories of a radiant love;

wingless creatures

tune their hearts to the key of silence.

It is there I am waiting.

Alone.

 

O’ Paradise shore

give me the heart to bear.

Give me the lamp that sings at night.

Give me the wings to strive against wind.

Give me the smile to translate life into light.

 

Time obliterates the human moment.

No one is absolved

while beauty burns to charred ash

too frail to last

too secret to call.

I will see clearly again

past lives coarsened by time’s reign.

My light will retake its wings;

its evergreen roots will embrace the sane earth

once again.

And this tiny fragment,

spinning in silence among giant orbs unseen

will resolve my soul and help me find

the one heart awake and waiting.

 

 

Chamber Thirteen 

What is Found Here

 

What is found here

can never be formed of words.

Pure forces that mingle uncompared.

Like dreams unspoken when first awoken

by a sad light.

 

What is found here

can limp with one foot on the curb

and the other on the pavement

in some uneven gait

waiting to be hidden in laughter.

 

What is found here

can open the swift drifting of curtains

held in mountain winds

when long shadows tumble across like juries

of the night.

 

What is found here

can always be held in glistening eyes.

Turned by silence’s tool of patience.

Like feelings harbored for so long

the starward view has been lost.

 

 

Chamber Fourteen 

Forever

 

Memory, like a root in darkness,

piercing light with its stem

has found me.

Ordering my world

like architecture of feelings

bound to you,

held for you as shields of hope.

In the dispersion of love,

identical throbbing

has been our call

answered in the sweetest caress

two can share.

And you wonder if ecstasy will diminish us

like rain the sun or

wind the calm.

When we know one another

in the deepest channel of our hearts

we can only utter one word

cast from this stone’s mind: forever.

Forever.

 

When winter calls my name

in the highest desert of light,

I will not despair because I know you

in the deepest channel of my heart

where I understand the word, forever.

Instantly healed by your caressing lips

that unmasks all that has tortured me.

The panting of mouths

tired but astir in passion’s flame

can only cease when I have entered you

forever.

I carry you in this flame,

emerald-colored from my dreams of you

beneath the trees within

where your beauty consumed the sun

and snared my soul so completely.

I cannot truly know you apart

from a throne.

 

Spirits made to shine beyond the din

of boorish poets

that strike flint below water and cry without passion.

I have known you forever

in lonely streets

and the thundered plain.

In wilted villages and cool mountain terraces.

I have watched all of you

torn open to me speaking like a river

that moves on forever.

And I have waited

like the greedy mouth of an ocean

drawing you nearer to my lips

so I can know you forever

as you empty into me abandoned of all fear.

 

Chamber Fifteen 

Longing

 

Longing, when the eyelids open

upon the deepest stimulus held by your lips

and the amorous kiss becomes my orbit.

 

I ache and long to have you with me

so close our skin would melt together

like two candle wicks sharing wax.

I only know that what is of soul

is of longing and ache.

It delivers me to the edge,

the precipice where I look down

and see myself inextinguishable,

longing to be consumed by you.

 

And in that glittering place

let me stretch with your heart

at full speed, blind and intent.

Let me dwell in you

until I am so familiar with our union

that it becomes part of my eyes.

With memory full,

we can walk home,

hand-in-hand,

in the permanence of longing.

 

So much a part of the other

that the other does not exist.

 

 

 

Chamber Sixteen 

Song of Whales

 

Your voice lingers when it speaks

like rippling heat over desert floor.

It draws my heart and I find myself

leaning toward its source

as though I know it will take me

where you always are.

It draws me near to your breath—the spiracle that

holds the words of home.

 

It draws me to the blanket you hold

around your soul you so willingly share.

If you were to dive below the waters

where the whales sing their songs

into the gathering of deep currents

that pull our courage along,

channels that flow free of worldly levels,

you would find me there.

Listening to the voice I hear in you.

Feeding my heart in the waters of deep blindness

where currents flow

mindful of you and your spirited ways.

 

Sometimes I listen so perfectly

I hear your soft breath forming words

before they are found by you.

Before you can bring them from

the deep blindness to your heart.

 

I wish I could take your hand

and let it hold my heart

so you could see what I know of you.

So you could know

where we live where we always are.

And you could pull your blanket of words

around us and I could simply listen

to your voice

that honors words

like the songs of whales.

 

 

 

Chamber Seventeen 

Imperishable

 

Through this night I have slept little.

My eyes, closed like shutters

with slats that remain open,

wait to invent dreams

of some charred reality.

I sense you, but no weight on my bed.

No shift or creaking other

than my own restlessness.

 

Wandering words

self-gathered, self-formed,

and released to the night

like a mantra slowly drowned in music.

Your presence grew with the music

devouring it in silence.

You came to me so clear

my senses aroused in electric storms of clarity.

The buzz of mercury lamps

alongside rutted roads,

shedding their weightless light.

 

In all of this waiting for you

no fortress or foxhole bears my name.

I lay on the Savannah

staring at the sun hoping against hope

it blinks before I do.

My wounded cells,

tiny temples of our mixture,

have weakened in your absence.

I can feel them wail in their miniature worlds.

My feet resist their numbness,

deny them their war.

 

As I lay here alone

waiting to be gathered into your arms,

I ask of you one thing,

remember me as this.

Remember me as one who loves you

beyond yourself.

Who pierces shells, armor, masks,

and everything protecting

your spirit in needless fervor.

Remember me as this.

As one who loves you unmatched

by the deepest channels

that have ever been forged.

Who will love you anywhere and always.

 

And if you look very closely at my love

you will not find an expiration date,

but instead, the word, imperishable.

 

 

Chamber Eighteen 

Another

 

One skin may hide another,

I remember this from a poem when I

launched a fire across a field of deadness.

At least, to me, it seemed dead.

I felt like a liberator of life force

renewing the blistered and dying grasses.

Actually, more weeds than grass,

but nonetheless, the flora had flat-lined.

I peeled back skin with holy flame

and brought everything to black again

as though I called the night to descend.

From blackness will arise a new skin

cresting green architecture from a fertile void.

 

As the flames spread their inviolable enchantment

I saw your face spreading across my mind.

Remember the fire we held?

I hoped it would unfurl a new skin

for us as well.

Forever it will roam inside me

invariant to all transformations and motions.

(Einstein smiling.)

One person may hide another,

but behind you, love is molting a thicker skin

than I can see through.

No flame can touch its center.

No eyes can browse its memory.

I want nothing behind you in wait.

Seconds tick away like children growing

in between photographs.

I will not forget you in the changes.

Cursed with memory so fine

I can trace your palm.

I can inhale your sweet breath.

I can linger in your arms’ weight.

I can hear your exquisite voice

calibrate life with celestial precision.

 

One purpose may hide another.

I heard this as the fire died out

to reveal the scent of the wet earth

and growing things.

I could feel my love decompose

returning to the uninhabited realm

where it belongs.

Where all hearts belong when

love is lost, and the code of the mute,

coiled in fists that pound,

reveal the wisdom of another.

 

Chamber Nineteen 

Missing

 

Facing another evening without you

I am torn from myself

in movements of clouds,

movements of earth spinning

like the sure movement of lava as it rolls to sea.

Yet when I arrive from my dream

you are still gone from me

twenty-three footsteps away;

a bouquet of the abyss.

 

When I look to the east I think of you

softly waiting for me

to chisel you from the matrix

with smooth hammer strokes

from my hands.

Freed of barren, untouched shoulders,

you can open your eyes again

flashing the iridescent animals,

valiant vibrations of your rich spirit.

 

Your picture is the centerpiece of my table

I stare at you in candlelight,

the windows behind, black in their immensity,

only enlarge you.

Making you more of what I miss.

 

At night I go among your body

to feel the presence of your heart beating

something golden

spun from another world.

You can feel me when this is done

though I am invisible in all ways to you, but one.

A reflection in the mirror.

Beneath your eyes

you see me dancing away the body.

Dancing away the mind.

Dancing away the incarnations

of my absence.

 

 

 

Chamber Twenty 

Half Mine

 

When I see your face I know you are half mine

separated by the utmost care to remember all of you.

When I undress my body I see that I am half yours

blurred by sudden flight that leaves

the eye wondering what angels carved in their hearts

to remind them so vividly of their home.

 

When I see your beauty I know you are half mine

never to be held in a polished mirror

knowing the faithful hunger of our soul.

When I watch your eyes I know they are half mine

tracing a trajectory where sensual virtue is the very spine of us.

When I hold your hand I know it is half mine

wintered in kinship, it circles tenderness

beneath the moon and well of water when the feast is done.

When I kiss your lips I know they are half mine

sent by God’s genealogy to uncover us

in the delicious cauldron of our united breath.

 

When I hear you cry I know your loneliness is half mine

so deep the interior that we are lost outside

yearning to give ourselves away

like a promise made before the asking.

And when I look to your past I know it is half mine

running to the chokecherry trees

invisible to the entire universe we found ourselves

laughing in sudden flight

eyeing the carved initials in our hearts.

Sparing the trees.

 

 

Chamber Twenty One 

Language of Innocence

 

When a river is frozen,

underneath remains a current.

When the sky is absent of color

beneath the globe another world comes to light.

When my heart is alone

somewhere another heart beats my name

in code that only paradise can hear.

 

Is my heart deaf

or is there no one

who can speak the language of innocence?

Innocence, when words

suffer meaning and gallop away in its presence.

I have seen it.

Felt it.

I have loosened its secrets in the blushing skin

when upturned eyes witness its home

and never turn away.

And never turn away.

 

There is this world

of slumbering hearts and hollow love,

but it cannot carry me to daylight.

My craving is so different

and it can never be turned away.

 

 

Chamber Twenty Two 

Compassion

 

Angels must be confused by war.

Both sides praying for protection,

yet someone always gets hurt.

Someone dies.

Someone cries so deep

they lose their watery state.

 

Angels must be confused by war.

Who can they help?

Who can they clarify?

Whose mercy do they cast to the merciless?

No modest scream can be heard.

No stainless pain can be felt.

All is clear to angels

except in war.

 

When I awoke to this truth

it was from a dream I had last night.

I saw two angels conversing in a field

of children’s spirits rising

like silver smoke.

The angels were fighting among themselves

about which side was right

and which was wrong.

Who started the conflict?

 

Suddenly, the angels stilled themselves

like a stalled pendulum,

and they shed their compassion

to the rising smoke

of souls who bore the watermark of war.

They turned to me with those eyes

from God’s library,

and all the pieces fallen

were raised in unison,

coupled like the breath

of flames in a holy furnace.

 

Nothing in war comes to destruction,

but the illusion of separateness.

I heard this spoken so clearly I could only

write it down like a forged signature.

I remember the compassion,

mountainous, proportioned for the universe.

I think a tiny fleck still sticks to me

like gossamer threads

from a spider’s web.

 

And now, when I think of war,

I flick these threads to the entire universe,

hoping they stick on others

as they did me.

Knitting angels and animals

to the filamental grace of compassion.

The reticulum of our skyward home.

 

 

Chamber Twenty Three 

Separate Being

 

Waking this morning,

I remember you.

We were together last night

only a thin sheet of glass between us.

Your name was not clear.

I think I would recognize its sound,

but my lips are numb

and my tongue listless from the

climb to your mouth.

Your face was blurred as well,

yet, like a distant god

you took your heart and hand

and there arose within me

a separate being.

 

I think you were lonely once.

Your only desire, to be understood,

turned away by some vast shade

drawn by a wisdom

you had forgotten.

So you sang your songs

in quiet summons to God

hoping their ripples would return

and gather you up.

Continue you.

Brighten your veins

and bring you the unquenchable

kiss of my soul.

 

Drunken by a lonely name

you stagger forward

into my nights, into my dreams,

and now into my waking.

If I try to forget you

you will precede my now.

I would feel your loss

though I can’t say your name

or remember your face.

I would awaken some morning

and long to feel your skin upon mine

knowing not why.

Feeling the burn of our fire

so clearly that names and faces

bear no meaning

like a candle flicking its light to the

noonday sun.

 

 

Chamber Twenty Four 

Beckoning Places

 

Of beckoning places

I have never felt more lost.

Nothing invites me onward.

Nothing compels my mouth to speak.

In cave-like ignorance, resembling oblivion,

I am soulless in sleep.

Where are you, beloved?

Do you not think I wait for you?

Do you not understand the crystal heart?

Its facets like mirrors for the clouds

absent of nothing blue.

 

Invincible heaven with downcast eyes

and burning bullets of victory that peel through flesh

like a hungry ax,

why did you follow me?

I need an equal not a slayer.

I need a companion not a ruler.

I need love not commandments.

 

Of things forgotten

I have never been one.

God seems to find me even in the tumbleweed

when winds howl

and I become the wishbone in the hands

of good and evil.

Why do they seek me out?

What purpose do I serve

if I cannot become visible to you?

 

You know, when they put animals to sleep

children wait outside

as the needle settles the debt of pain and age.

The mother or father write a check and

sign their name twice that day.

They drop a watermark of tears.

They smile for their children

through clenched hearts beating

sideways like a pendulum

of time.

 

And I see all of this and more in myself.

A small animal whose debts are soon to be settled.

Children are already appearing outside

waiting for the smile of parents to reassure.

The signature and watermark

they never see.

 

Of winter sanctuary

I have found only you.

Though I wait for signals to draw me from the cold

into your fire

I know they will come

even though I fumble for my key.

Even though my heart is beheaded.

Even though I have only learned division.

I remember you

and the light above your door.