Cactus

prickly like
a sudden poem
a heart that breaks
a life undone. My fingers
to know the pain of you
reach. And there - the many million stabs - 
I gasp and pull away to find a
tiny thorn trapped in the labyrinth of my fingertip, 
maze of my identity - and now, the pain, too, me.

wisdom of trees

A man who was broken came upon an ancient tree,
and begged, "Great grandfather oak, teach me how to be
stable, for I lack the strength to face this life."
The tree replied, "Climb these limbs of mine, child, and see
whence my strength derives." The man did so. When
his face met open sky, he saw the
leaves dancing like careless children. The oak explained,
"Mid-summer noons, angry autumn winds, jealous frosts, prideful showers
weather me, each as each will. I don't resist,
but move when I am moved, sway when
there is music. In that concurrent movement
is stability." The man, for he saw, leant against that aged tree
and set his heart free, as his roots grew
deep, deep, toward his quiet home.

To us!

where is our substance?

when we chant the cat is not
le chat n'est pas
el gato no es,
om for the religiously apathetic
cloistered in wide open-to-the-heavens skulls,

what matters lacks reference.

what matters, lacking reference?
all speech becomes
an emphatic stutter: N - N - N!!!

Does it come to this, friends,
this double-sided coin, our god, revolving
on a pedestal, winking
like a sleepy eye watching coals,

and us wrenching something to call poetry
from the nothing we call all,
from the - the - the -

The Word

i worship the idiolectical 360° gradation;

my altar is all:

plato, buddha, allah, darwin, and the

rest that lulled to sharpness gray

matter under mind

and you

and you

when you say what you think you know are

All Mighty.

Neither bible nor textbook can

hold The Word i seek, but i bow

before each

eye that looks and mouth that speaks.